Have you ever lost a ship in re-entry WITHOUT FAR installed?

[michaelphoenix22]

Just lost one after a beautiful mission to Duna. Though i used more fuel than i thought i would so i opted to just go straight from solar orbit and careen into Kerbin. boy, did i come in HOT!

I was doing close to 4000 mps. I wasnt aware that you actually COULD lose a ship in re-entry. I think what happened was the shape of my ship. I had my butt-ened faced towards retrograde like normal but the top wanted to spin downwards. Just as it started to do that is when it went BOOM! I hadn't even deployed the chutes yet.... was too afraid to at the speed i was going.

Anyone encounter this?

[G'th]

Oh definitely. Even in stock KSP you can still have the parachutes get destroyed if you come in to fast and you deploy them before you slow down enough.

But if you're talking about having wings fall of and such, not without a little lithobreaking.

[maltesh]

Are you running with Deadly Re-Entry installed?

I've never had re-entry kill my spacecraft, but I neither use FAR nor DRE. Early in the 0.16 era, I did have a few spacecraft lose chutes or smack into the ground before slowing enough to use chutes when returning too steeply from the Mun. On the other hand the Sunscraper craft I threw earlier in 0.23 returned fine even though it hit the Kerbin atmosphere at over 10 km/s aimed at an 11 km Kerbin periapse, and a couple versions ago, I threw a spacecraft into Kerbin's atmosphere at 26 km/s aiming for a 5km periapsis and safely chutelanded that.

[michaelphoenix22]

in my case though i hadn't deployed the chutes yet. Ive lost countless craft to THAT lol. and no DE mod either.

Edited May 24, 2014 by michaelphoenix22

[Tortoise]

I think you got FAR confused with DRE.

[Killerdude8]

My ships used to wobble apart during re entry, So yes, I've lost quite a few..

[Jon Tash]

Yes, I lost one time a ship when entering the atmosphere of Kerbin (in a completely stock game).

I figured that my center of mass was too high when I wanted to point the engines to my vector (retrograde). The ship begun to spin and wanted to point the front of the craft to the ground, even the ASAS with RCS wasn't good enough. Several seconds later and the ship was totally uncontrollable, it was spinning around and around. It broke in two pieces. I saved the Kerbals that were in the part where the parachute deployed but the propulsion part of the ship crashed on the ground. It was interesting to experience that without Deadly-Reentery or FAR

Since then I always look where my center of mass is (and will be when entering an atmosphere) when I put parachutes on. Drogue chutes saved so many kerbals.

[Guest]

I think you got FAR confused with DRE.

Nope, he didn't. He lost his ship to aerodynamic forces (recently introduced in FAR), not reentry heat.

[cantab]

Never lost one on re-entry, though I've been made nervous when I've come in fast and steep. I can see how in older versions the drag forces might be able to break a ship even in stock, but would be surprised if it occured in .23.5 with its lolstrong joints.

[zarakon]

Yes. A couple of my earlier attempts at SSTO spaceplanes ended in failure when the shifted center of mass caused loss of control when attempting to land. Also parachutes have ripped apart plenty of ships entering Duna's atmosphere

[magnemoe]

very high renetry speed and hard aerobreaking can break up an fragile ship but its rare.

Parachutes at Eve can easy destroy your lander because the opening shock is to hard.

[panfish5]

I think the only danger that aerobraking has is ripping off parachutes. In the last week I have sent 3 planes to aerocapture at laythe traveling at 8 km/s and not a singe one broke.

[Rocket Farmer]

Actually it sounds strange but I always deploy the parachutes while still in vacuum. I find this greatly stabilizes my landers decent after entering the atmosphere by putting my center of drag well behind my lander.

Also it seems to increase drag even before it fully deploys so I slow down quicker and take lower g forces when my Chutes do fully deply.

On the other hand ive never heard of anybody else doing this so maybe I'm wrong.

Does anybody know if a deployed but not fully filled parachute does create drag?

[merendel]

Without FAR or deadly reentry I've only lost ships on reentry for 3 reasons.

1 the ship was very flopy and the deceleration bent it in half

2 I came in so fast that the parachutes riped off when they deployed

3 I forgot to add/deploy said parachutes.

Now I've had plenty of things riped appart by FAR or incinerated by DE. STock on the other hand I have to do something very very wrong to have reentry be a problem. I mean seriously I've come screaming in from eeloo's AP on a strait fall to kerbin and had the ship survive. it was a small/sturdy craft but still.

[Rocket Farmer]

I agree with the above poster. In stock unless your center of gravity puts you in a death spin you should always survive.

My test of this was hitting eve square on from a reverse orbit. Ie instead of catching the planet from behind with 1,000m/s differential I hit it head on with about a 20k+ differential (eve and i were each moving at 10k a second in opposite drections) just to see how high of deceleration I could hit in the extra heavy atmosphere.

The chutes deployed just fine and the kerbal was fine after a lengthy 20g deceleration. Personally I have never ripped the chutes off as I deploy them in vacuum and never put too much mass to too little chutes and drogues really help as well.

[InterCity]

It happens to me quite often that some stuff gets ripped of my craft because i am terrible at aerobraking (and piloting SSTO's )

[bsalis]

In stock unless your center of gravity puts you in a death spin you should always

I agree. All my incidences have been at very high velocity hitting Laythe head on, directly from solar orbit. With docked craft, and CoM the wrong end.

It's not easy to botch a re-entry in stock but it can happen.

[Boris_T_Roach]

I destroyed a Jool probe a couple of versions ago by using mechjeb to give me a nice safe 30Km Pe for aerobraking on return to Kerbin, sadly I never noticed when the SOI changed the Pe changed to -300km and I'm doing about 15km/sec ....

The destruction sequence only started when a joint failed between a hitchhiker pod and the multi-connector thing..... but then it was BOOM gone in a flash.

But thats what you get when you re-enter your interplanetary probe than never designed to do anything more than an gentle aero capture at Jool....

Boris

[Dooz]

Most Of them Was me Overestimating Duna's Atmosphere

[Godot]

Not in reentry itself ... but in lithobreaking after reentry .. for examle because I released my chutes too early (causing them to disconnect), too late, or because my ship landed in mountains, on to of a steep slope (making it to roll downhill, thereby more and more disintegrating)

[cantab]

Yes, semi-deployed parachutes give increased drag. It's not much but they will help bleed off your speed.

Edit: The drag coefficient of a semi-deployed chute is 1, compared to normal parts that have 0.2, but fully-deployed chutes have 500. For the drogue chute though the values are 4 and 170.

Edited May 25, 2014 by cantab

[rkman]

Without FAR or DRE installed, i'm pretty sure ships are not supposed go BOOM during atmo reentry, so it might be a bug.

[Kasuha]

Without FAR or DRE installed, i'm pretty sure ships are not supposed go BOOM during atmo reentry, so it might be a bug.

In stock game, parts with lower drag coefficient have higher terminal velocity than parts with higher drag coefficient - they may stretch or bend the ship and eventually break it in a weak spot. Also lifting and control surfaces may add to forces acting on the ship - in high atmosphere they are usually not significant but when you are coming straight down, they may cause problems.

[rkman]

Ok, maybe not a bug, but probably not intended behavior.

[sumrex]

Most definitely, I learned all about stability issues. Vehicles that were balanced at the beginning of the mission were sadly out of balance due to fuel expenditures sending the ship tumbling to explosive ruin.