felcas

YEEEEESSSS I was just about to post here for people with the same problem. Those floaters from USI are much better then those of SXT!!! I placed 6 alongside its belly with chutes in the other side to make it land by its side, they cushioned the stage even at 45 degree angle. I still need to make some tests with standing up landing/splashing. They also worked over land too! +PLUS they look better then SXT ++PLUS the package comes with lots of other toys too, for example a collection of awesome airbags! Totaly recomend, very happy with the new toys. NOTE: even this wonderfull new toys wont helped me with a standing up landing. The problem is that as it touches water it stabilizes for a second and tumble, no airbag or floater can help with this. The solution is to use one side chutes to land it on its side and use the airbags or floaters to absorb some of the impact. Interesting, I will try and post the results for anyone else interested. Update: didn't work, unfortunatelly. For your situation I love to use airbrakes! They are awesome. I tried your solution in my situation and didn't worked. The problem is not the speed it touches the water or land as it do it at 4m/s. The problem is that once the lowest part touches water or land the speed reaches 0.0 and chutes are cutted, then it tumbles and the top part hit the ground or water with enought speed that destroy parts.

It is a phrase of effect for laymen people, not for kerbomongers like us

Hooo, there is another hint that will call up for your piloting skills. Read my previous message about the "cylinder of coolness". The interesting thing here is that if after all I said you still have parts destroyed you can try one last thing, your can try to tilt your ship nose up just a bit, a few degrees, what will happen is that you will partially expose one side of the ship but you will create an area of coolness on the other side. Lets say you have an experiment like a thermometer on just one side you can roll your ship before doing this maneuver in such way it will be located in the cool part. OR another thing you should also try is to roll your ship as sides get heated. This should buy you some time while your ship deacelerate to cooler speeds and be able to parachute. Good luck! Another solution would be to stabilize a low orbit around Kerbin and get back to the darwing board to develop a rescue ship to go up there and get it. I made this a few time and it is challanging, to fix up what I screw up in 1st place with resources from the game and not load and save. Maybe you can fit all this (except the engine and tank) in a 2.5 service bay? Or just get a science kerbonaut up there and collect all data.

As others said, you need to raise periapsis. Why? Because you are coming too fast. Since you don't have fuel to slow you down the solution is to use high atmosphere as friction to slow down your ship, it should flame but not long enought to burn any parts (or at least not any important part). You will overshot the atmosphere and orbit again. Each time the flyby on upper atmosphere will slow you down a bit and in consequence will diminish your Apoapsis (and your periapsis too). Soo be patience, you need to make several passes, I would say to start with something like 65km or 60km, if you get no friction, try with -1km increments (59, 58,57 etc...) Once you get friction and you see your peri and apo diminish you are on the right track, if you burn and get something that should not be destroyed, reload game and try again with a higher periapsis. There is a point you just can't get back to orbit and you will fall, if you didn't get destroyed by now, pray a little more. Extend the gear, they will help you with drag, but do this only on the final reentry. HINT: during endless re-entry tests I made I discovered that even a small ammount of fuel can save the day on retrograde. Keep an eye for any important parts (science parts?) that start to overheat, as soon as it reaches 1/3 or half the bar, apply full engine! This may just slow you down to the point where the part no longer overheat and save your valuable stuff. Actually in my last mission I just had to save a tiny bit of fuel on the 1st stage to retrograde enought to allow the airbrakes to open and do the rest. Finnaly, sometimes the situation is soo F#$%%up that you really can't save your ship as much as you try, just give up and make it again. TIP for your next mission, there is an imaginary "cylinder of coolness" that extend from the widest part in contact with atmosphere, soo lets say you use a 1,25 engine or ablative, thats the size of your cylinder of coolness, anything inside it will be protected from heat (considering you keep aligned with your flight path - pointing craft retrograde) soo, try to build your ship with that in mind, NEVER make a ship with protuding parts out of the cylinder of coolness because it WILL acumulate heat on re-entry.

It is all about speed man! All about speed!

Soo, I can use just one M700 Sattelite to scan all bodies? Once a body has been scanned the data is always available in the Tracking station?

Lets say I want to recover my satelite with the M700 Surface Scanner to get a few $$$ do I keep the data to be analysed on the Space Center? Thanks

Thanks a lot for the suggestion but I was already using RealChutes at this point. They are awesome (and complex). But they cut if when touching ground reaches 0.0 speed (0.5 by default). The feature you talking about is more usefull if the subject land on a slope and become dangerous to roll and gain suficient speed to crash, but in my case the rocket touch the ground the speed reaches 0.0 and then cut chutes then the rocket tumble.

I got it wrong, I thought lithobraking was about using a frontface resistant to absorb the heath for example the engine or ablative. Sorry for my confusion. No, I got confused, check my previous reply pls.

I am not complaining about the chutes not working at 600m/s @ 2000m, I am only noticing that in other circunstances the ICON STATUS is black and in this circunstance it does not show as black. even nylon and silk chutes does show black at their respecting limit speeds at 2000m but not the kevlar one. You think it is ok to deploy just to have a nasty surprise because the icon say it is ok to deploy. I am not complaining the chutes have a low deployment speed. I am going that fast because I am making tests, in normal play I would speedbreak with lithobraking and airbrake as much as I can and then chutes.

Hy, I would like to suggest a new mod, because I don't see it anywhere around. I am stuck with this situation that doesnt seems very realistic. I have droped stage that is parachuting to the ocean and as soon as it contact the ocean the chutes cut. It stand still for a few seconds before it tumbles and everything breaks apart. I think the rocket should fill with waters. I actuallly watched a documentary of NASA recovering one of Shuttle's SRBs that just felt in water, they plug in an inflatable cork and then they pump out all water inside to achieve 100% buoyancy. Soo, a mod that would let water get inside the rockets, slowly OR better yet a pump to fill the fuel tanks with water, this could be usefull in lots of ways specially for those who like subwater exploration. Big Thanks!

I need a little help to understand Mk-10 Airbags options. I tested them several times in diferent situations and with diferent setting but I get same results. 1-What is SPLASH FX? Is this just visual effects? 2-What is FORCE PERCENT? 3-Does BUOYANCY have any effect on land? (sounds stupid, but depending how buoyancy works it may indeed have affect how the mod works on land too) Big Thanks!

Funny, at 40.000m if I am at around 750m/s the icon staus is red. If I deploy it failure, ok no big deal. But at 2.000m and 600m/s the icon status is OK to deploy but if I deploy it fail. Bug?

Thanks! I will check it. I am doing more tests. To better understand in practice.

Yes, after a few tests I understand now that the botton part of configuration where you choose between main, drogue and drag is actually a calculator based on how you want the chute to behave, I thought this selection would actually select a type of chute but it don't, it only modify the a base chute to then behave in diferent ways. Now things are a bit clear. But then, if you are not interested to respect realism and just want to simplify things, you can just use a main chute with kevlar and you don't need the drogue at all, it is "kind of" a cheat.

Thanks, a valid observation, early users may fall in this technical trap. But I did know about this. I think I now better understand how RealChute works. The upper section defines only the cosmetic aspect of the chutes, not how they work The botton section is a calculator not how it will work, all the chutes will work the same way, diferent calculators for diferent uses to end up with the right behavior. In other words, I can use a standard chute to deploy at drogue chutes speeds, but it will just not look realistic. If I use the drogue calculator and the drogue cosmetics, I can define a base chute to work as drogue. The phisics wont limit the base chute and the base chute will define how standard, drogue and drag chutes will work,

You can't, it is a bug and if I am not mistaken I read somewhere in this forum the guy responsible for it said it is kind complicated to work this out, there is however a solution but he is very busy right now for this, he may look for it in the future. Yeah it sucks but the mod is great in soo many ways that I keep using it and I am thankfull anyway. By the way, we have the same name not very common. FELCAS=FELipe CAStanho

Ok but in the settings I can also configure the standard chutes to use kevlar. Are you confusing standard chutes with stock chutes? When I refer to standard chutes I am refering to the main chutes ok, but also in the RealChutes mod.

I understand, but I am not criticising at all I just want to confirm if my tests are correct if RealChute don't differentiate drogue from main chute regarding the deployment speed.

Have been using Realchutes for some time and loving it. However today I reeeeaaaallllyyyy needed to use those drogue chutes and I was having a bad time soo I tried a few tests. This test was performed with a craft coming back from suborbital flight at about 2500m/s. I managed to retrograde with a fuel reserve and then use airbrakes, reducing the speed to about 1400m/s. This craft had both standard chutes and drogue chutes. Then I keep looking for the chutes status light to see when I could deploy each of them (speed) and then both become available at same time at around 700m/s This brings me to the question: Is there any pratical diferences between drogue chutes and normal chutes or they are there just for cosmetics and fun? I thought drogue would open at very high speed while standards would open only at lower speeds. one helping the other. Soo what is the deal? I don't understand why both can be deployed at same speed. Thanks

Ok I just tested them and unfortunatelly they don't work as effectyvellly as I planned and I think it is not even their fault. Thing is the interactiong between the huge mass of the stage (14t) and the water is not realistic. Once it touches water and chutes are cutted it stands over the water about 1/10 of its length. In reality it would sink a lot more achiving a buoyance point and maybe then lay down on its belly. If the stage come down in angle on its belly then as ridiculous as it seems the water have a much more shocking effect compared to land. The rocket wont survive after the chutes are cutted but in land the inflatable actually cushion the rocket and nothing happen. This is weird. Anyway, thanks for the mod. I will keep it, very interesting. I need to find a way to flood the fuel tanks now. Anyone?

Ok guys and girls, I did looked after this on the forum and google and I couldn't find what I am looking for. So I am posting this here in hope someone can point me to the right direction. Situation: I am a salvagemonger. I recover all the stages I can. I do that: 1-because of $$$, 2-because it sounds realistic (you don't see NASA droping stages on peoples head just because they are not usefull anymore) and 3-because I enjoy engineering the stages for recovery, it is like a bonus challange/prize for the main mission. Until now they have been challanging but ok. But now I ended up with a complex situation as the stages become bigger and longer. I have this stage: mainsail with 3 double tank and a few other small parts, I can manage to speedbreak to parachutes limits and deploy them. I manage to make the stage land standing up or on its belly, however even when it lands on its belly it comes down with some degree, since it is too heavy and the once the rocket touch the ground cuts the parachute it comes down and crash at ground normally destroying the small and expensive parts and also the topmost double tank. For the record I manage to touch ground at 4m/s. And this is more a problem in water then in land, because in land I can just extend the airbrakes and once the rocket cut the chutes only one airbrake is destroyed ($1000 is acceptable), but in water the airbrake make no diference and all the parts that are topmost get the impact and break appart. Soo I was thinking what could be the most aproximated solution to real life. Inflatable Floaters that would expand as soon as the stage splash or land to minimize the shock of angled parts. OR A way to flood the fuel tanks as soon as it hit the water, this way I could control buoyance and not let the stage tip 90 degree to its side and break other parts. over ground I can keep with the airbreakers for now. Soo my question is: do you know of any mods that allow me this things? Does such thing exist? Thanks a lot!

Did you discover what this is about? A search on google only return your comment.

I used the tail cones because they just look awesome and slick and that also contribute as why I agree with you I prefer it instead of the 2.5 variant. The 2.5 was an exercice of new technology and more knowledge.

I will take them in account. I am already working on this project.