Is there a way to recover spent stages?

[One Eye Jack]

So if I could stick parachutes on all my rocket stages and have them automatically open when it’s appropriate. Then I could continue with my flight and recover them later.

Can this be done? I would prefer not to use a mod for this but if that’s the only way to do it then that’s ok too.

[Jak]

you need a mod for it, ive never tried it but i think its called stage recovery mod

[One Eye Jack]

Originally posted by thicc boi:

you need a mod for it, ive never tried it but i think its called stage recovery mod

Thanks. I will give that a try.

[XLjedi]

Wish they'd fix that! ...if boosters are dropped in atmosphere, there should not be an issue with them deploying chutes and you shouldn't need a mod for that.

[doum]

You can try to almost achieve orbit with you first stage that have a probe, battery and chutes. Then finish orbit and still have plenty of time to go back to your first stage and land it or splash it. Work for me.

[Luke]

There are methods with stock, but not like you describe.

It is possible to ditch a boost stage in the atmosphere and have it parachute down, but it needs to land safely before your main (in-focus) craft leaves its physics radius. This is nearly impossible, and not at all practical.

Like, if you could ditch a stage at 2km and use retro-propulsion to send them backwards and get them to the ground before your main craft reaches 20km... you see how this is a not-very-useful idea.

BUT, what you CAN do, is use a boost stage that will launch you fully out of the atmosphere.

This would tend to be a super-heavy lift stage with lots of expensive engines. It can get a large payload into orbit, and then you can use your next stage to circularize.

By the time you are done circularizing, the first stage has not started re-entry yet. So you can switch focus back to it and fly it down. try to get it as close to the landing pad as possible.

This means you can't use very shallow gravity turns, you have to sort of launch straight-up until you seperate the first stage. You can still do a bit of a turn, but you dont want your expensive stage to land too far away. Or you want to leave it with enough fuel to correct its course a bit back towards KSC.

Keep in mind that you don't have to ride the first stage all the way up to 70k (though you can) -- only that the first stage should be on a trajectory to take its above 70k at the time you seperate.

[XLjedi]

Since I posted it in another thread... here's a link for a stage recovery mod

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/78226-14-stagerecovery-recover-funds-from-dropped-stages-v180-march-11-2018/&page=1

[RoofCat]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1395150412
put 20t LKO payload on top of it, get safely to orbit, decouple, land somewhere close to KSP with still some fuel left for final adjustments, salvage, continue with your orbital part.

There is no way to recover most SRB in stock as your upper stages go up increasingly faster while empty SRB fall slowly. For a while they actually keep going up due to inertia making it even worse. You will reach the range of physics bubble sooner than they will reach ground. And thus get destroyed. You could try chutes for quick slowdown, but falling with chutes is even slower. So you would have to cut them and use other chutes just above ground again while switching forth and back between ships. It sucks, I have tried. Also SRB stages unlike LF engines are rather cheap empty.

Mod can help or just use SSTO style like above. Be it rocket launcher stage or plane. SSTO is very simple in KSP.

[One Eye Jack]

Thanks for all the input guys.. I got the mod so going to give that a shot and see how it works for now.

Never had much success making a SSTO but I guess I need to work on that.... I have seen a few guys on YouTube build some amazing stuff so i suppose I should take notes next time I watch one of those. But Scott Manley I am not.... sigh.

[Jak]

Originally posted by One Eye Jack aka (astroknott58):

Thanks for all the input guys.. I got the mod so going to give that a shot and see how it works for now.

Never had much success making a SSTO but I guess I need to work on that.... I have seen a few guys on YouTube build some amazing stuff so i suppose I should take notes next time I watch one of those. But Scott Manley I am not.... sigh.

scott confuses me on top of his accent imo

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Originally posted by One Eye Jack aka (astroknott58):

Originally posted by thicc boi:

you need a mod for it, ive never tried it but i think its called stage recovery mod

Thanks. I will give that a try.

Put parachutes, a battery and a probe core on each stage. Then they act as indiependant vehicles and can be recovered once they land. For ones left in orbit, you cna send a recovery vessel to dock with them. Be warned though that this has several effects on vehicle function.

1. increased part count and per launch costs, which means less fuel makes it to orbit. If you have fuel production infrastructer set up this is not as much an issue. But if you are part count capped it can make the design unbuidable.
2. Increased vehicle compexity. This can lead to the game engine not proerly staging the parachutes, disconnects etc.
3. You only get a portion of the value of each stage, so the value recovered may not cover the increased cost for the parts needed to recover it. It is most efficient to refuel the spent section prior to recovery so you get the cost of the fuel.

[Jak]

Originally posted by Shadow Raider:

Originally posted by One Eye Jack aka (astroknott58):

Thanks. I will give that a try.

Put parachutes, a battery and a probe core on each stage. Then they act as indiependant vehicles and can be recovered once they land. For ones left in orbit, you cna send a recovery vessel to dock with them.

wait, if i put a probe on anything, it wont screw up?

[RoofCat]

Originally posted by thicc boi:

Originally posted by Shadow Raider:

Put parachutes, a battery and a probe core on each stage. Then they act as indiependant vehicles and can be recovered once they land. For ones left in orbit, you cna send a recovery vessel to dock with them.

wait, if i put a probe on anything, it wont screw up?

not in stock. Ships in atmosphere have different rules. The problem is the distance between the ship going to orbit and the parts landing and the timing for that all. If you get out of physics range bubble before they land, they are gone. Even with probes. You can switch to those parts and target higher Ap with orbital ship to have more time to return, but the timing is still inconvenient.
Weak boosters need to be decoupled too soon, are cheaper than chutes and probes you put on them and your main value is orbital ship trajectory which you still have to work on. So you rather stay with orbital part. While Kickbacks reach high velocities and altitudes on a ballistic trajectory and thus fly very far from KSC for a long time. You can't land them quickly.
You could add reverse thrusters, but that's just more weight and money spent and still won't be easy.


Why don't you just try different options for yourself? Main fun in KSP is testing and rebuilding.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

In the end, what you need is a SSTO design that can carry sections into orbit. Essentialy a Cargo Shuttle. This wi be most efficient. In the end its a design decision, for personell and small independant satelites, I use an SSTO spaceplane, but for station sections I use rockets.

If you are using asparagus staging, you probaby cant achieve more than a 50% recovery of stages, as the opposing stages will be out of physics range of each other. But with a single central rocket body, once the top stage finishes its escape burn, you can switch tot he lower stages and they should have an ETA for atmospheric entry far ebough apart to manually piot each one tot he ground. The first stage (numerically highest) is probably a wash, as those are generally ejected in the atmosphere.

Sometimes the only correct answer to "How Do I Do *THIS*" is "Don't Do *THAT* do this other thing".

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1335774469

[Aranador]

IF you do it right, and stage your chutes when you stage your seperators, and have your chutes set up right, you will wind up with recoverable debris that you can recover from the tracking station, to recover some cost of your recoverable stages. I like the word recover, so hopefully you will recover from reading that sentence.

On the other hand, you can build a manned primary booster that has enough oomph and fuel to lift your payload to orbit height, circularize, stage to seperate the mission payload, swap back to the booster, then de-orbit and land/splashdown. Thats what I've taken to doing. It doesnt need to be a space plane or shuttle, I baasically use a big old set of rockets strapped to a central hub on which the mission payload sits. Slap some air brakes and plenty of chutes on the lifter, and you can recover it fairly easilly. Jebediah loves flying this thing!

[Enorats]

The problem (and why you need a mod for it) is that as soon as your focused vessel (the one you're flying) leaves the physics radius of the dropped stages they will be deleted. The game can't simulate aerodynamic forces and the like in the background, so to get around that it simply assumes that any vessel not currently loaded into the game world (the focused vessel and any within its physics radius) are destroyed if they touch atrmosphere.

Mods like Stage Recovery simply check if you could potentially land the stage in a safe manner if you were flying it, and if so you get the funds returned to you (minus the standard recovery fees, which increase with distance from KSP - note that this is how the stock game works too).