overheating problem

[Cant think of a username]

I am just a new player, so I don't know much. I have just launch a rocket and added too much stages. It blasted off way farther than I wanted it to. I added a heat shield below the payload bay and the command pod. But the thing started to display overheat when I started to reentry. The science things on the command pod started to overheat as well. In the end, two of the four science experiments I had exploded. As well as one of the two parachutes I have. I landed at a high speed and crashed the payload bay. the command pod survived, but I loss a lot of science. So I wonder if there is a way to protect the parachutes and science with the parts I have so far (I don't have the monster/inflatable heat shield)

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Yep - there sure is.  And it's also the core part of your first couple of hours / days with KSP!  In fact blowing stuff up and failing gloriously is half the fun of the first few run throughs!

Fortunately, there's tons of good tutorials out there.  I'll suggest just this: if you can attain an orbit, try to have a reentry periapsis of no less than 30km  35-43 is probably optimum.  If you've got a lander set up correctly with chutes at the top and the heat shield at the bottom, it should handle just fine.  Watch your chute indicator and don't pop it until its grey.

Hint: if you know that side-mounted science blows up on reentry, move it up toward the top of the lander pod.

[Zhetaan]

12 hours ago, Cant think of a username said:

I am just a new player, so I don't know much. I have just launch a rocket and added too much stages. It blasted off way farther than I wanted it to. I added a heat shield below the payload bay and the command pod. But the thing started to display overheat when I started to reentry. The science things on the command pod started to overheat as well. In the end, two of the four science experiments I had exploded. As well as one of the two parachutes I have. I landed at a high speed and crashed the payload bay. the command pod survived, but I loss a lot of science. So I wonder if there is a way to protect the parachutes and science with the parts I have so far (I don't have the monster/inflatable heat shield)

First, welcome to the forum!

Second, it sounds as though you wanted to just leave the atmosphere but instead went too far up, which resulted in you reentering at too great a speed.  There are a few ways to do something about that.  You mentioned adding too many stages, so you can try eliminating one of them.  You can also try angling your launch so that you go more sideways than up.  You may not know this yet, but it is possible to change both the amount of fuel that you carry and the amount of thrust that your engines produce.  For later engines, you can change the throttle during the flight, but even for the earliest solid rocket boosters, you can adjust the thrust and initial fuel load in the Vehicle Assembly Building before you launch.

As to protecting the parachutes and science, it depends on where you have them mounted.  The key is to keep them out of the airstream during reentry.  This often means putting science parts in a bay, but if you are careful with your speeds, then you can have them on the outside.  For the parachutes, move them closer to the tip of the command pod (or to the exact tip if you're not using a radial parachute).

You won't need the inflatable heat shield for a very long time.

Good luck!

Edited May 27, 2020 by Zhetaan

[jimmymcgoochie]

Pointing up gets you to space. Staying there requires you to point sideways. When launching, try to turn gradually to point east, which will build up your orbital velocity and will also mean you don't gain too much height and drop back into the atmosphere at high speed and a steep angle which causes a lot of re-entry heating.

There are a few tricks that you can use to protect your precious science payload, and parachutes too:

- Put science stuff in a service bay. They're low drag, very resistant to heat, and yet can be easily accessed when you need to; some experiments won't work when enclosed in a service bay though, just keep that in mind. And parachutes won't deploy when they're inside a closed service bay either, but they might if you open it, though it's been a while since I used one so I can't really say for sure.

- Attach your parachutes near the top of your re-entry stage, which should not only be better shielded from heat but will also mean it lands pointing the right way up, reducing the chances of blowing up your crew pod with a hard landing.

- Try to make your re-entry section base heavy i.e. the centre of mass is close to the heat shield, and not close to the pointy end. If it's top heavy, it can easily flip backwards and expose the important stuff like parachutes and crew pods to the heat of re-entry rather than the heat shield.

If you're just launching solid booster powered rockets on sub-orbital flights, then turning to go sideways rather than up will probably help you most and there won't really be a need for a heat shield; if you're returning from the Mun/Minmus/another planet, it's OK to dip into the atmosphere more than once to bleed off some velocity before finally coming all the way down. Just make sure you packed enough ablator!

[Snark]

19 hours ago, Cant think of a username said:

I am just a new player, so I don't know much. I have just launch a rocket and added too much stages. It blasted off way farther than I wanted it to. I added a heat shield below the payload bay and the command pod. But the thing started to display overheat when I started to reentry. The science things on the command pod started to overheat as well. In the end, two of the four science experiments I had exploded. As well as one of the two parachutes I have. I landed at a high speed and crashed the payload bay. the command pod survived, but I loss a lot of science. So I wonder if there is a way to protect the parachutes and science with the parts I have so far (I don't have the monster/inflatable heat shield)

It mostly comes down to geometry.  When you're re-entering, the heat shield only protects stuff that's completely "behind" it-- anything that sticks out to the side, outside of the "heat shadow" of the shield, will be exposed to the airflow and will heat up.

However, it would be a lot easier to offer concrete suggestions if you could post a screenshot of your ship.   Picture worth a thousand words, and all that.  (Just post it to some image-hosting site such as imgur, then copy the URL of the uploaded image and paste it here.)

[Vanamonde]

By the way, the materials bay science piece is notoriously sensitive to heat. One thing you can do to help yourself is, after you take your readings with it, r-click on it and close the door. This keeps the science but resists heating better.