Heat Shields Not Occluding Drills

[Starhawk]

Drills placed behind heat shields are not properly occluded.

The game seems to treat the drills as though they are extended.

Test 1:  Placed a drill on a 2.5 metre tank and placed a 3.75 metre heat shield on the bottom node of the tank.  Offset the heat shield as necessary to occlude the drill.  Put craft in orbit with 200 km apoapsis and 32 km periapsis.  Set SAS to 'Hold Retrograde'.
Result: Heat shields and drills began to glow at about the same time.  Drills overheated and exploded.

Test 2:  Took craft from Test 1 and rotated drills 180 degrees so the bits were pointing straight up.  Repeated previous steps.
Result: Heat shields properly occluded drills.  No unexpected heating observed.

Pure stock install.

Happy landings!

Edited February 4, 2016 by Starhawk
Added pics.

[Jeanjvs]

This is happening with me too. My drills are protected by a 2.5 m heat shield and a Mk2 cargo bay, but they keep overheating and exploding, even though the rest of the ship survives the atmospheric entry without a problem.

[Dafni]

I had this too, on a lander that I abandoned for that reason, thinking some other design oddity in that craft must have corrupted the heat physics. I don´t even remember the exact craft, just that the drill was well protected and still blew up no matter what I tried. It was so frustrating I just stopped putting drills on crafts that enter atmospheres at high velocity, without even trying a different design. When I get the time I´ll go and try to reproduce it again on another craft.

[Jeanjvs]

I did some testing and i found a temporary solution: put the drills inside cargo bays AND put another part between the heat shield and the cargo bay (a decoupler, in my case). The heat shield occludes the other part and the other part occludes the drills. But, in my testing, this only worked when i used a cargo bay. I might add a few screenshots later.

[Starhawk]

20 minutes ago, Jeanjvs said:

I did some testing and i found a temporary solution: put the drills inside cargo bays AND put another part between the heat shield and the cargo bay (a decoupler, in my case). The heat shield occludes the other part and the other part occludes the drills. But, in my testing, this only worked when i used a cargo bay. I might add a few screenshots later.

Interesting.  I actually tried that when I originally came across the issue during testing for my Eve mission.  I had no success even with drills inside cargo bays.  Very interested to see your screenshots.  I will try and post some of my attempt which used cargo bays later on.

The workaround that I found was to attach a decoupler and then an I-beam and a short I-beam and then the heatshield, offset as before.  It will now be in a position to protect the 'phantom drill bit' that sticks down far below the main body of the drill.

The other thing that would work is putting the heat shields on the top of the craft.  But then you have to deal with flipping the craft around in order to ditch the heat shields and not to be ripped apart by parachute deployment while upside down.

Happy landings!

Edited February 3, 2016 by Starhawk

[Jeanjvs]

Here:

BTW, i found this during my Eve mission testing too.

[Starhawk]

Here's a shot of my unsuccessful attempt to use cargo bays.  I used 1.25 metre decouplers here although they're hard to see.

Here's a shot of the workaround I mentioned using I-beams to place the heat shields far below the body of the drill.

Happy landings!

[Starhawk]

Perhaps @NathanKell would care to leave a comment on this issue.

Happy landings!

[NathanKell]

The drill modules (well, their animator modules) don't implement IMultipleDragCubes, so the game has no way of knowing their shapes change.

[Starhawk]

26 minutes ago, NathanKell said:

The drill modules (well, their animator modules) don't implement IMultipleDragCubes, so the game has no way of knowing their shapes change.

Thanks Nathan!

Happy landings!

In that case, perhaps @RoverDude might care to chime in.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Starhawk

[Gojira1000]

Interesting. I'm managing to keep a drill alive in a service bay through atmospheric re-entry.

[sal_vager]

If it's far enough back it'll survive, I don't think the entire length of the drill has a collider.

[Starhawk]

31 minutes ago, sal_vager said:

If it's far enough back it'll survive, I don't think the entire length of the drill has a collider.

That's the thing, though.  As the test described in the first post indicates, flipping the drill upside down but changing the position in no other way results in the heat shield protecting the drill perfectly.  After the various tests I did (in a pure stock install), I'm certain that it's not about how far in or out the drill is.

However, as Jeanjvs and Gojira1000 have had some success with other methods, I'm sure it's not as simple as I first thought.

Happy landings!.

eta: I've added pics of my stock test to the OP.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Starhawk