Master Thread: Parachutes

[Claw]

Kerbonauts!

I am creating this thread to collect all of the issues with parachutes that burn up, are way out of balance, or any other bugs. In this particular thread, feedback about chute performance is welcome. There are a lot of these threads, and I want to collect the issues into one place.

Purpose of this thread: To consolidate all of the issues with parachutes in one place.

What parts: Stock parachutes.

Details: Are important. Provide pictures or a craft file of what's happening. If you don't know how to do that, see this thread.

What this thread is not: Do not use this thread for complaining or general bug reporting. Any such posts will be removed, since this thread is specifically designed to get to the root issues of parachutes.

Cheers,

~Claw

[KevinTMC]

I previously reported that a craft consisting of just one Mk16 Parachute and one MK1 Command Pod had slammed into the ground at over 16 m/s when descending over land (land altitude was a few hundred meters--not especially high), after a descent that had been gentle until the last 500m, when the parachute's full deployment had been slow to kick in.

I've been unable to replicate that precisely. I hadn't even come close, in fact (which surprised me, since prior to that crash, I'd had several rather close calls...some over water and some over KSC).

Until just now, when I experienced what certainly felt like a close shave.

This time, the craft had a service bay and heat shield attached to the bottom of the Mk16 chute and Mk1 pod. The parachute fully deployed over water--again at the default setting of 500m--with speed between 100 and 105 m/s right before deployment. The chute did manage to bring the craft under 7 m/s for landing, but only after it had dropped below 130m. The craft seemed to spend a longer time than usual at around 60 m/s as the chute was trying to ramp up to full deployment...another couple of seconds and Jeb would have been done for.

I know that's not much hard data; I will continue to experiment and report back if I have another fatal accident on the stock Mk16 parachute settings. I will say that the full-deployment performance sure seems to be differing from one flight to the next, and I'm having trouble putting my finger on what might be causing the variance, as the speed right before hitting 500m AGL has been fairly consistent.

Edited May 3, 2015 by KevinTMC

[WinkAllKerb'']

During launch when lower stage part are decoupled depending of there "distance from the main current stage" / "parachute pressure preset" / "parachute full deployement altitude preset" parachute don't properly and/or fully deploy. this tend to be kinda annoyin' when you attempt to maximize recovery on lower stage in career.

Mostly work properly only when the decoupled stage meet all requirement for both pressure and full deployement at the exact time you decouple.

But usually the main rocket tend to be too high or too far so parachute don't fully deploy and lower stage just crash on the ground even if they shouldn't.

I think parachute and there related physics calculation should have a parallel thread in the engine sidely to the current ship thread physics calculation even this or just precalculation replacment for when decoupling occur like "will the lower stage is supposed to crash ? yes or no boolean". Actually this tend to make the recovery functionality not as usefull and valuable as it should be.

thks for reading ++.

Edited May 9, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''
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