Staged craft without comms or control. Is something broken?

[sreinmann]

Not that I should be complaining but this was news to me and I don't know if it was a glitch/bug or failure for me to understand how things are working in conjunction.

I'm running .25 with Remote Tech, Deadly Reentry, Real Chutes, and NEAR. I'm in hard career mode and while I'm fairly far in the tech tree I'm still meeting some self imposed goals and limitations. I have:

- three comm sats in KSO

- a Station in LKO with RC-L01 and 6 kerbals (This was asthetics and research requirements more than a remote tech need).

I launched an unmanned Mk2 cockpit (in a rocket configuration, not an in lifting vehicle config) with RC-001S and RealChute's stack chute to test a "reusable" light service vehicle. Something that I can boost my self-imposed Time-to-Launch window and get more launches done while not spending big bucks. On board was a KR-7 dish and a KP-10 antenna. Yes, as you can imagine, both those antennas burnt off at around 25,000' and I lost communication and control of my ship. I was kept on my trajectory though by a well balanced ship and NEAR aerodynamics. I believed that I would crash uncontrollably though without being able to trigger the chutes. With a slim hope that my trajectory would carry me to within 3k of the Space Center and so my internal antenna of the RC-001S would reestablish comm and save the craft, I stayed with it. But, I lost speed and slipped into a vertical fall about 11k short of the center.

At 5,000 feet my speed dropped to safe deployment and, noting that I was still out of comm and out of control I hit the space bar futilely - and lo, the chute opened! Yay, but ...? Is something broken? Does the RC-001S work even without comms for certain things? Is this a feature of Realchutes that I wasn't aware of, or just a feature of this part?

[Navy2k]

I might be wrong, but can't you set an atmospheric pressure at witch the chutes should deploy, haven't used it in some time.