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About planned re-entry heating:


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They've also specifically mentioned reentry not requiring a heatshield part. They know it's a bad idea to turn KSP into a game that requires slapping heatshields onto everything in order to do anything.

If the heating is going to be so little that you don't even need a heat shield unless you're doing ridiculous 10,000m/s re-entries then what's the point? :confused:

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Different parts have different temperature tolerance ...

so I assume that there are parts that have to be specifically protected and others who don´t ...

not to forget that everything probably also is dependant on the angle of reentry (with other words, with a bad angle even those parts that are heat tolerant up to 3.6k °C will go bang)

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Would this invalidate most aerobraking maneuvers?

Not necessarily. I have been able to perform aerocapture maneuvers around Duna and Jool using the deadly reentry mod, and I am guessing that the stock reentry heat will be a bit more forgiving than deadly reentry...

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Not necessarily. I have been able to perform aerocapture maneuvers around Duna and Jool using the deadly reentry mod, and I am guessing that the stock reentry heat will be a bit more forgiving than deadly reentry...

Oh I see. It's not like insta-death if you forgot to put a heat shield on one place.

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Oh I see. It's not like insta-death if you forgot to put a heat shield on one place.

Deadly reentry IS insta-death without a heat shield, but if you do use them, it's quite survivable. :D

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Deadly reentry IS insta-death without a heat shield, but if you do use them, it's quite survivable. :D

Then my next question is that arent heat shield tiles heavy and won't they increase your parts count-by a lot with some designs?

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The heat shields are a feature of the deadly reentry MOD (and are about the same shape and mass of the stock medium and large decouplers, so it is not much). The devs said that the stock reentry heat won't require special heat shield parts.

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Then my next question is that arent heat shield tiles heavy and won't they increase your parts count-by a lot with some designs?

AFAIK the heat protection tiles of the RL space shuttle were rather lightweight (as well as fragile, which was why they could be damaged so easily ... something that caused the columbia desaster)

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Duna has a thin atmosphere, i think a airbrake manouver by graze the atmosphere would be not as fatal, mutch of the heat would be give back to the surounding space, specialy on the night-side.

A airbreake manouver at Eve... dont get me wrong, the last time i checked my pressure meter it was around 3x or 4x times over normal. I imagine your ship would get crisped like a sausage in a oresmelter, maybe even if you just graze the atmosphere. Eve is a bit closer to the Kerbal-Sun and it´s atmosphere is mutch hoter and thicker. No mutch room for heat to go, except your nice little Spaceship.

And i tottaly agree to the rest of the people who talked about the adventure. My first Duna Flight was with 0.16 - 0.17. A single bulky rocket, some stages, a eager crew of kerbals and a atomic drive at the back of the rocket. Took me a week to get it done, even when i got frustrated when my first landing went tottaly into the trashbin when i imagined that some of my landerparts couldnt handle a parachute-break and where simply torn appart xD

It´s about the adventure, to try it again and again and to get it done, for my part at least. It feels mutch better then just to put somethin together, has no difficulty at all, fly there, back and done with it. I look forward for re-entry heat. And for the campaign-mode where you rlly have to work with your money and kerbalnouts and to get the maximum potential out of your designs.

p.s.

because you asked, orbiter 102 (Columbia) had roughly 11% of it´s mass made up of the heatisolation called TPS (Thermal Protection System). Half of that weight was the silicade plates under the shuttle. The rest where parts all over the shuttle itself, covering it from every side. I guess the Dev´s will find a clever solution to the heatshield issue ;)

Edited by Ferigad
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Not necessarily. I have been able to perform aerocapture maneuvers around Duna and Jool using the deadly reentry mod, and I am guessing that the stock reentry heat will be a bit more forgiving than deadly reentry...

Very much this. Without knowing just how they're going to balance their reentry heat against reality and/or game challenge, we really can't say how much of an effect this will have on aerocapture/aerobraking.

With DR installed plus a heatshield, I did a Duna mission with return, and pushed things on the duna end (9km periapsis, straight from transfer orbit to landing in a single pass with no engine braking), and then on the return end did a single pass aerocapture maneuver that had me in a 500 or 800 km apoapsis orbit of Kerbin in a single pass. The surprising thing? The heatshield never showed any heat on either aerocapture maneuver. Just to test it to make sure I hadn't blown the DR install, I reloaded a save game and tried it again with a slightly lower perapsis at Kerbin (about 1500m lower), and not only did the heatshield register heat, it blew up less than 10 seconds after registering heat.

Something to keep in mind is that as has already been mentioned in this thread, Kerbin reentry tends to happen at a third the speed that it happens in real life on Earth, so in order to make it an issue in Kerbin, reentry heat actually has to be worse than it is in reality.

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So, it will be mostly a matter of clever engineering? Just like a weight is now. We can build ridiculous ships, and even fly them into orbit - if we are doing it smart. But if we overbuild in a wrong way rocket will collapse under its own weight, or engines will plow through the stack on the way up. OK, i can live with that. And it will certainly add another layer of excitement - watching the heat marker steadily climb up will be fun :P

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The idea for heat shields and paint decals are nice but will increase part count exponentially. Think about 2 to 4 times the part count. Also, heat will affect take off as well, so think about 8 to 16 times the part count. Now imagine if your rocket has to land on Moho or Eve.

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The idea for heat shields and paint decals are nice but will increase part count exponentially. Think about 2 to 4 times the part count. Also, heat will affect take off as well, so think about 8 to 16 times the part count. Now imagine if your rocket has to land on Moho or Eve.

I assume that heat during takeoff will definitely lie below the thermal tolerance for the parts of the rocket, considering the fact that speed during takeoff (while you are still within the denser layers of the atmosphere) normally doesn´t exceed 1 km/s

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I don't think there should be a toggle to completely turn it off, but have different difficulty modes like easy, medium, hard with different levels of heating. Also MR4Y how could adding heat shields increase part count 2-4 times? Its not like your covering every single piece. I'm sure there will be large inflatable heat shields that's one part that can cover large craft

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I feel like it wouldn't be implemented in Sandbox mode, as that mode is just to have fun in and not have to worry about real-life space program problems like reentry heating and costs. However, I'm just guessing here, it could be the devs have an entirely different plan.

But but ... I do want to deal with these problems, just not the financial ones...

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It will be a significant hurdle to overcome, but it isn't the first. Getting a rocket into orbit when the game was first released was quite the challenge for everyone. Then came the Mun and the challenge of landing there, even without the benefit of landing legs when it first appeared. There will be heat shields and other parts to defend against re-entry heat and perhaps against other forms of heat. Those same parts, as any other, will be able to be modified so one can avoid worrying about coming into atmo too steep. Therefore there is every reason to believe it will be implemented in sandbox mode. If re-entry heat proves to be too tough for you, you can easily modify certain parts to become impervious. Leaving any feature central to the experience of spaceflight out of the game experience would take away from the game tenfold. Consider that achieving orbit with a rocket you build yourself is a significant achievement today that newcomers find mindboggling. If you can achieve that, and even make orbit of another planetary body, then something like atmosphere heat should be considered child's play. The developers have yet to tone down the challenge of the game. Expecting them to do so with a feature such as this only hurts your own experience and expectations.

Why this thread didn't end here with this response is completely beyond my comprehension.

For that matter, it'll be easy to bypass reentry heat through mods or other config edits as it is with all game mechanics.

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Aero braking should not be effected too much since you are just skimming the atmosphere, not plunging through it.

I'll agree with you if you're talking about using aerobraking for small orbital trim manoeuvers, but most players are actually talking about aerocapture when they mention aerobraking.

In the case of aerocapture, you're dissipating large amounts of energy. Most of that energy is converted into heat. Whether that heat is damaging would depend on how well shielded your craft is.

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I believe the developers have said in a previous thread that it would not be possible to toggle it as you can't toggle heating in real life. However there would probably be some sort of inflatable heat shield to protect the ships.

There are tons of things that are not realistic in the game, so that is not a valid excuse for making deadly re-entry mandatory. It would just be frustrating for some people.

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There are tons of things that are not realistic in the game, so that is not a valid excuse for making deadly re-entry mandatory. It would just be frustrating for some people.

Well, with this argument we could also ask:

"Why aren´t we able to toggle gravity?"

or

"Why aren´t we able to toggle atmospheric drag?"

I am sure both, gravity and atmospheric drag are frustrating for many players as well ... maybe even more than they would be frustrated by reentry heat :wink:

Edited by Godot
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Learning by doing next baby steps isn't bad in KSP, because in fist days of playing you can had lot's of fun with the game without tutorials and knowing how to get to orbit.

Blasting off few random boosters and blowing kerbals up (and pretty much all early fails) are even more fun than actual success :cool:.

There is not too much issues with learning curve, because there's is always a lot to do for people with any skill.

Concept of reentry heat will show yourself up a bit during first hops into space most likely will not require heat shield of any kind ,but it will be enough to heat ship a bit ;).

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Well, with the cheater thing, you kinda can toggle gravity.

Bob and my first munar flight in 0.20 ended with a bit of cheating. In my defence, I had been planning on using vanguard EVA parachutes to land, and hadn't figured that the bit that let's you put the parachute on your Kerbal was broken.

With coming reentry heat, my suggestion is simply be ready. Command modules may have some heat shielding of their own, so even if you can't land at KSC, you should be able to land safe with an uncontrolled aerobrake, slowing you down for a landing in a few orbits.

That, or take precautions and build a cool heat shield for your ship. There are shield parts around to download, or make one with structural panels. They seem to have a fair amount of heat resistance.

I couldn't destroy a bunch with a heat based weapon, but haven't tried them with a reentry heat mod.

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Concept of reentry heat will show yourself up a bit during first hops into space most likely will not require heat shield of any kind ,but it will be enough to heat ship a bit ;).

Even though heatshields won't be required, I hope they at least add two for the Mk 1-2 pod, a standard heat shield and an inflatable, just so that it won't look odd re-entering with a flat surface and docking port facing the flames. :P

As for re-entry not doing much, I hope this is addressed with a difficulty setting so I could easily have realistic re-entry (well as real as ksp allows) without having to go and manually change a bunch of files. Also it would satisfy both sides, and allow people who want easier re-entry that option while those who want more of a challenge can crank the slider up.

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