Starwaster

Someone DID do something like that with Procedural Fairings & Infernal Robotics but I don't use IR so I can't say how. They did post in this thread about it so if you search hard enough you will find it. On the otherhand, KW Rocketry has a 3.75m version of this part. Edit: I think later versions of this piece of hardware had the petals jettisoned completely due to fear that the Apollo spacecraft might hit the petals trying to pull the lunar module out.

Reentry effects have nothing to do with terminal velocity, as has been said elsewhere. The reason the TV limiter is not working for you is because it only takes into account the vertical component. Right or wrong, whether anyone agrees with that or likes it / dislikes it, it is by design that it only uses the vertical component. Edit: So, actually, it is working. It's just that if your vertical velocity isn't high enough to trigger it except for the brief moments that you see it trigger.

Press alt-F12 and then click Physics, then Thermal. Then enable 'Display Thermal Data in Action Menus'. Right click the parachute part and it will tell you exactly where the heat is coming from. If it seems like the bulk of it is coming from Conductive then it's probably as Gaugeforever says and too much heat is being conducted through the ship through the shield. The chute parts are smaller and generally have lower thermal mass. If on the other hand it's convective heat then it's not being shielded. Maybe check with ferram and see if that's intended behavior from FAR. But it's probably not going to be that much of an issue when DRE comes out. I did run DRE alongside FAR to make sure that Flight Integrator interaction was working properly and to see how heating was working with FAR in general and I didn't have an issue with chutes exploding, so I think it'll be ok.

Oh, no I don't mean any work was lost, just time in which I could have been coding was instead spent staring at pitch blackness. Were they deployed and then burnt up or you mean that just sitting there they were incinerating before you even had a chance to deploy? (because both stock and Real Chutes will be shredded or incinerated if you deploy while going too fast. Just like older versions of DRE used to do. Which means that from 7.0 going forward, DRE will no longer destroy chutes that you deploy too quickly. Because we don't have to anymore <VEG>)

Did you see the module manager patch I posted several pages back? it patches the fairings with reasonable masses at approximate atlas mass

I've got in trouble for that before. My probe science mod is NOTHING but config files and I got a warning for it. Because it had no license.

yeah that by itself is at best a stopgap. I played around with config only fixes when I first got to test the system when it was in Experimentals. The problem is that it's all or nothing and doesn't address the real issues. Also playing with shield conductivity is no good. They're supposed to be insulated just like real shields would have between them and what they're protecting. Anyway it won't be too much longer until DRE is ready for release. Sadly I just lost a few hours of coding and testing due to power outage.

What reentry heat balance is that?

What is Ioncross then, chopped liver?

Huh, I thought they were genetically engineered to like being blown up. I've been experimenting with a spreadsheet and inputting various values for the heat shield and one thing that I'm getting some good ablation rates from is from treating lossExp as a baseline velocity, inverted* If I change it from -9000 to -5000 I get some good rates. Not enough to threaten total burn through but about 2/3. I figure a Minmus return would probably blow a big chunk of that shield away Edit: * Nope. I've just been told it had nothing to do with that. Well even so it seemed to have worked. (at least in conjunction with my skin heating system)

Status report: Integrating past features such as G Force damage and fire damage. (G Force damage is integrated and working properly. Many Kerbals... died.... to bring you this information) Also tweaking ablation settings...

What's to calculate? It's specified in the part config file. Depending on what materials you think they should be then they're 2-4x heavier than they should be. And I posted a Module Manager config that brings them to within reasonable levels. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/119106-Are-fairings-useless?p=1911126&viewfull=1#post1911126

And you can add it to custom windows. I put all solar panel related options into the Vessel Info window

Not quite. There were issues with that O2 tank that were missed. The heater thermostat fused in the 'on' position during ground testing and the O2 boiled off much faster than it should have but nobody noticed or they didn't realize the implications.

You also need to factor in the density of the propellant. If volume flow of an ammonia NTR is equivalent to one that uses hydrogen then your mass flow will be much higher which in turn means your thrust is higher. You can also have a larger delta V budget for a more compact tank. (it's true that H2 is more efficient and powerful but that's per kilogram of propellant)

The effects of choosing arbitrary values over real life data has been more detrimental than beneficial in KSP's history. Sometimes it's called 'game balance' but regardless of what label is hung on it locally, we get stuck with things like weird aerodynamics or parts that are too massive or too light and some of us are left confused or amused because we realise that all that was necessary was to look to reality, which has all the answers we need. You can experiment with arbitrary numbers if that will make you happy. It is after all, your sandbox.

Anything starting with Assembly* does not belong in any mod's plugin folder. Nor does Unity*, Mono* or System*

Those aren't fair statements to make. Yes, the current stock implementation is lacking, but really only in one area. Aside from that, for the most part it is a reasonably accurate model of heat for a game. There's also (and I apologize for saying this but...) there's a certain amount of ignorance involved which I don't feel free to dispel but you really don't know what you're talking about here The stock system has a lot going for it but even taking into account slow reentry speeds that are common for stock Kerbin, it doesn't raise temperatures of a craft's parts nearly as much as it should be. As mentioned previously, this is because a part's entire mass is involved when it should instead be using a small portion of it. Sorry that things are taking me longer than I anticipated. Development is proceeding and at least 90% of the code is actually done. Things got slowed down a bit moving over to a new system that will allow ferram4 and I to override the Flight Integrator that is responsible for aero-thermo dynamics without either of us accidentally interfering with the other's work. That system is complete and both of our code bases are utilizing it now. Right now I'm engaged in trying to complete the remaining 10% of code that DRE needs, finish with the config file work that will modify individual parts (i.e. converting the original config work over to the new system) and track down a possible bug where rockets explode on the pad after reversion to launch or VAB. (which I think is DRE but might have been something else...)

I looked at real world examples before settling on those numbers. Some of the examples were for rockets with much larger fairings that were both larger but lighter than the KSP examples I was looking at.

No you can't copy settings from the PF mod. The settings don't have the same names and the mod and stock fairings may not share the same TYPE of settings. If you want to modify fairing mass then look at the Module Manager patch that I posted. Use that. Adjust it to your personal taste. The value is tons per square meter of fairing.

You're right, it's not a valid test. I performed 3 tests. Three launches using a normal launch profile. (started turning ~250 altitude, 40% turn shape, turn end 60, target altitude 100 - Mech Jeb ascent profile) Pure stock fairing = 883 delta-V remaining No fairing = ~550 delta-V (ejected fairing and nose cone arrangement) My mass adjusted fairings = 1108 The craft was a little needlessly complicated as I use two fairing bases to form an interstage and a cone on top (so, not quite stock because it was the Mk7 cone scaled up) two large 3.75m tanks, the 3.75m engine cluster. Payload was a big orange tank with no fuel flow. I'm going to go back and do it without the nose cone deal but I do believe even this experiment shows there is a definite savings in my delta-V budget that may not be apparent if you're just launching straight up because you're not spending enough time where fairings matter: In the lower atmosphere. If you're just launching straight up the ballistic coefficient becomes the deciding factor as you're just doing a ballistic lob out of the atmosphere. (That is, there's a savings even with the stock fairings, so the answer to the title of the OP is: No, fairings are NOT useless. However, that said, they are too heavy by far)

KER isn't reporting correct mass for the fairing in the VAB. Neither does MJ. Because, in the VAB the fairings don't actually have mass until they get to the real world. The stock report will show the correct fairing mass. And I've been looking at numbers for real life fairings. The lightest seems to be Space X's Falcon Heavy fairings at 1.75 tons for a 5.2m x 13m fairing but those aren't representative of other fairings using heavier materials. Edit: Module Manager config fix Using this on 11m x 3.75m resulted in a fairing mass of 0.8t (down from 7.425719t) (retrieved from craft file) The original stock values had different UnitAreaMass values for each of the 3 fairing sizes instead of the flat rate below; an alternate means of correction is commented out below for UnitAreaMass stock_fairing_fix.cfg // values of 0.0069 to 0.008 will give you fairing density from Space X - Atlas/Delta @PART [*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleProceduralFairing]] { @MODULE[ModuleProceduralFairing] { @UnitAreaMass = 0.0069 //@UnitAreaMass *= 0.115 } }

Wow, and here I thought slavery was no longer a thing... certainly not in my country. I am gratified to know that is no longer the case. Blackrack, I am in dire need of some coffee, so the next time you get a chance to put down your keyboard, please bring some to me. It's been a few hours since my last cup, which is not going to fill itself!

I'll make sure engines aren't negatively impacted but that's all I'm planning for them right now Edit: BTW, the possibility does exist that you may have to jettison a shield because it has soaked up too much heat which is now conducting into the interior of your ship faster than it can convect and radiate away