MissileMonkey

From the bottom up, here is the spacecraft I've been experimenting with in the sandbox mode. Took a couple of cues from Scott Manley's tutorials. LV-T30 engine FL-T100 fuel tank Second FL-T100 fuel tank Third FL-T100 fuel tank MK1 command pod Mk16 parachute (appropriately staged engine and parachute, using SAS) With this configuration and some experimentation with throttle and angle of ascent, I can achieve altitudes of up to 70 km straight up, but at those altitudes I'm still losing the spacecraft due to "chute destroyed by aero forces and heat" on descent. Even angling the ascent direction thirty or so degrees off of vertical did not help. So on a hunch, I added a component to the stack. LV-T30 engine FL-T100 fuel tank Second FL-T100 fuel tank Third FL-T100 fuel tank TD-12 decoupler MK1 command pod Mk16 parachute (also appropriately staged, engine, decoupler, parachute, using SAS) The parachute is now more than capable of surviving even vertical descents from 70 km, since I dump all that excess weight before deploying it. In real life, a parachute can only function properly if it is not overloaded. The information in the program itself and the KSP wiki are a bit lacking on the technical specifications of the chute and the mass it is rated to carry. For that matter, there's no mass figures on any of the other components. A google search didn't turn up much more. I guess my question is: In KSP, are things like trying to figure the load on the chute just guesswork, or can we really apply rocket science to it?

Build a ship consisting of Mk1 command pod, Flea, and a Mk16 parachute on top. Done. All default settings, no tinkering whatsoever. Didn't touch the parachute config, didn't touch the Flea settings, didn't even take monoprop out of the command pod. Done. Launch to the pad, activate the Flea. Done. Go straight up (this is basically the worst case scenario, if you're trying to stress the parachute). Done. Flea burns itself out, the craft coasts up to a peak altitude of around 24 km. Done. About 24.7 km. Activate the parachute at the peak of its trajectory. (It doesn't actually deploy yet) Done. Still keeping the same orientation (i.e. nose pointed at the sky), fall tail-first straight down. See below. There was no mention in any of the tutorials about keeping the nose-up attitude. I was under the impression that the WASD keys wouldn't work once the engine quit firing, so I never tried to maintain any attitude. This appears to be all that I was doing wrong. Perfect flights and landings now since I held the spacecraft's nose up. Seems that they could save a lot of people a lot of grief by noting that this step is IMPORTANT! THANK YOU!

The only way I can get the MK16 parachute to work at all is by reducing the flea's fuel and available thrust to some low figure, thereby limiting the vehicle's ascent to about 5k meters or less. I have yet to see the MK16 parachute survive a descent from any altitude above that. None of the tutorials mention anything about the chute's minimum pressure and altitude settings, so I have to assume that the defaults should be used. (I have tried adjusting these to no avail.) I've also experimented with chute staging timing, also to no avail. This ain't right.

Hello. Noob here. Wish I had got on board this game years ago. I experienced the same problem with 100% destroyed parachutes, when following Scott Manley's tutorial. Looks like the current version of the Flea will lift that assembly waay too high, beyond the ability of the parachute to perform properly, unless you use the options to reduce the booster's performance, or maybe delay deploying the parachute until at a much lower altitude. I'm guessing that Scott was using a much older version of KSP when he made the tutorials, back in 2016 or so, and the Flea's maximum performance then was considerably lower in that earlier version.