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I feel the reentry heating wasn’t substantial enough in Kerbal 1. Even with the heat setting set up all’ve the way, it wasn’t uncommon for your craft to come out unscathed for the most part, only having a destroyed engine or thingamabob (especially on Kerbin). It’s more realistic to have most of if not all of your craft destroyed. Same thing for really hot engines such as the nuke engines. You could get away burning your nuclear engine for pretty long time without any heating happening. I think that adding radiators should be a must in Ksp2, especially for the larger nuclear engines. Now explosions. Explosions in both Ksps are mostly cosmetic. They don’t create any tangible shockwaves as far as I’m aware. But what if they did? Rocket explosions irl are humongous, creating shockwaves comparable to that of bombs. Representing this in Kerbal 2 would give larger rocket launches higher stakes since you wouldn’t want to destroy your colony or space station. It would also make multiplayer a lot more interesting.

Just a suggestion for when reentry heating is added. When SpaceX boosters come back from space to land they do a reentry burn that not only slows them down but also decreases the amount of heat damage done to the craft. You can see it in this video here: Being able to use your engine as a heat shield would make room for some very cool challenges and last minute saves. The plume fx adapting would also be a nice touch.

Hi all, Does anyone know how KSP computes aerodynamic heating on vehicles in the atmosphere of a body? I've found some basic relationships on aerodynamic heating in this chart package (slides 17-19), but I'd like to find out what KSP does and uses. Does anyone have any insight? Thanks!

I've been playing in a career save for a while, but recently I've started noticing that spacecraft landed with the same anmount of ablator they had at launch. I've done some testing and it turns out that nothing is destroyed on reentry at all (at least not from overheating). I have no idea what caused this. I've even tried deleting all the mods (which makes all the spacecraft in orbit incompatible, but still...). Can anyone help me out with this? The save file There is a long list of mods I'm using, but as I've said, the issue appears without them too

So I remember atmospheric heating being a bit of a joke back when it was introduced in 1.0 - even with difficulty set to max and Deadly Reentry installed, it was child's play to survive reentry. However, I'm really struggling with the current version, and most of the threads I can find are either out-dated, unclear, or actually contradictory, so I have some questions. FWIW I currently have re-entry heat set to 100% and the latest version of Deadly Re-entry installed (although I'm not clear on how much difference that makes!) and am playing in the stock Kerbol system. How exactly does your trajectory relate to re-entry heating? The 'common sense' assumption seems to be that a shallower trajectory is safer, but I've also seen people argue that it exposes you to heating for longer, therefore total re-entry heating is greater. Is it basically the case that a steep trajectory minimises heating, while a shallow trajectory minimises speed and g-forces? How is re-entry heat determined? Presumably the higher the speed and the denser the atmosphere are the key variables. How exactly do angle of attack and your vessel's aerodynamics affect heating? What about mass/weight? Does having radiators affect re-entry heating at all? How exactly do heatshields work? Is there a certain temperature threshold at which they stop increasing in temperature and start burning ablator instead? What determines the rate of ablation? Why is it that once the ablator is used up, the part seems to explode instantaneously, rather than only when it reaches its temperature limit? What's the deal with spaceplanes? If I ever get above about Mach 3.5, I start exploding. Is this a simple function of velocity vs altitude/pressure? If so, is there a guide somewhere as to what speeds are safe at which altitudes? Does angle of attack make a difference, and if so how? What about the shape of your plane? Any tips for surviving EVE reentry? Do people generally consider reentry balanced at 100% reentry heat setting with Deadly Reentry installed? Should I just give up and turn it down? Or should I uninstall Deadly Reentry? Does anyone have any recommended thermal settings?. Really appreciate any help people can give, so thanks! Have a feeling there were some other questions I've forgotten as well... EDIT: Forgot to ask, are there other decent strategies for plausible re-entry vehicles besides heatshielded capsules and shuttle-style spaceplanes?

I had a Mk2 type spaceplane in orbit and did an EVA. Immediately, the Kerbal showed signs of overheating with a bar display. It did not get any better or any worse. Did the Kerbal get residual heat from the exterior of Mk2 cockpit or is this a glitch?

This is a tale of two aircraft. The kerballed version has a flimsy mark 1 cockpit and crew cabin. Both have FAT455 airliner wings, which as you know are made of white chocolate. The kerballed version weighs 30 tons and has a lift rating of 25. This unmanned probe launcher has 10 tons less weight and the lift rating is just 2 less. I have taken screenshots during 2 different launches in the kerballed version, capturing altitude and mach numbers and the verified non exploded status of the airplane. Some data points Alt 24km Mach 4.33 Alt 25km Mach 4.52 Alt 27km Mach 4.65 Alt 30km Mach 4.82 Alt 32km Mach 5.18 Alt 36km Mach 5.71 Alt 40km Mach 5.97 Alt 43km Mach 6.28 Alt 47km Mach 6.67 The second ship, by comparison, is an absolute nightmare. I could not exceed 3.75 mach on the Rapier airbreathing without blowing up. Heat levels remained horrendous even when closed cycle. There was some weird effect where allowing the angle of attack to decrease below a critical value (18 degrees) would make kerbal engineer's critical thermal percentage increase 30% in less than 3 seconds. If i was fast enough to the S key, they'd instantly drop as soon as i nosed up , but obviously there were occasions (10 in fact) where I was not and found myself starting over. The critical part was always the wings, it must have been related to skin temperature because everything changed so quick, and obviously at 43km altitude, raising the nose from 16 to 18 degrees does not produce much of a change in speed or altitude within the space of 2 seconds. I was forced to fly a very inefficient profile with a hugely draggy AoA, massive cosine losses and could not exceed mach 5 till over 50km. Why is one set of wings so much more durable than the other? Are they being shielded by the manned aircraft's longer nose or its forward strakes? I had no idea the thermal model was that sophisticated !