The Roof is on Fire

[Kerbol Macrosystems]

So 233K is equivalent to about -40 in F or C. It seems the unit conversion is close enough.

Does this mean we need to use the Apollo style barbeque roll on our missions? The Apollo space craft used a 1 rev/hr to avoid getting hot spots on the craft from the sun. Will that work in KSP? If heat is automatically distributed to a whole part then probably not, but if parts can get hot spots then it's a viable heat management strategy.

[DDay2021]

So I've been playing with simulated re-entry on the ground and I have found that heat does indeed seem to bleed off into Kerbin's atmosphere. An even better way to avoid the heat transfer from the heat shield to the command pod during re-entry is to have command pod < decoupler < heat shield and after you get through the heating of the atmosphere, jettison the shield so the residual heat won't dump into the command pod. Hopefully I can attach this imgur album correctly with my testing, forgive me if it doesn't work.

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[mikegarrison]

So 233K is equivalent to about -40 in F or C. It seems the unit conversion is close enough.

Does this mean we need to use the Apollo style barbeque roll on our missions? The Apollo space craft used a 1 rev/hr to avoid getting hot spots on the craft from the sun. Will that work in KSP? If heat is automatically distributed to a whole part then probably not, but if parts can get hot spots then it's a viable heat management strategy.

I assume the model is 1D heat transfer, and heat in each part is treated as a single scalar value. In other words, I think that if they are modeling the radiation from the sun, all you can do is move the whole part to be in the shadow of another part.

[problemecium]

I ran into this problem over and over until I did two simple things:

- put the probe core on the bottom of the ship, or in the middle, if possible. This is easier if you happen to have an engine cluster involved.

- keep the acceleration not too much higher than 2 Gs until you've broken about 25 km - at this rate, you shouldn't exceed 800 m/s or so until you reach 30 km, after which point the atmosphere is too thin to do much of anything about your ship.

[Kerbol Macrosystems]

I assume the model is 1D heat transfer, and heat in each part is treated as a single scalar value. In other words, I think that if they are modeling the radiation from the sun, all you can do is move the whole part to be in the shadow of another part.

A little bit of yaw might save us in a pinch, but I'm guessing we'll have to run things like the Mariner program and mount our probes on a heat shield.

[Kobymaru]

This is a real engineering phenomenon: thermal soakback. I'll give an example.

...

And this is great! I love that this is modelled in KSP, and I'd love to handle this phenomenon. I just need more tools to do so. Maybe the Thermal display should not be in the debugging menu but somewhere "official" and maybe we could have some parts responsible for cooling.

So I've been playing with simulated re-entry on the ground and I have found that heat does indeed seem to bleed off into Kerbin's atmosphere. An even better way to avoid the heat transfer from the heat shield to the command pod during re-entry is to have command pod < decoupler < heat shield and after you get through the heating of the atmosphere, jettison the shield so the residual heat won't dump into the command pod. Hopefully I can attach this imgur album correctly with my testing, forgive me if it doesn't work.

http://imgur.com/a/vIK4w

Amazing work, thanks!

So I solved the problem for myself in a different way:

The capsule heating only occurs if the the capsule itself gets into the airstream, instead of the heat shield. Temperature from the heat shield is conducted only very slowly: if done correctly, a reentry could be done with the capsule going from 270K to only about 300K.

Here are the conclusions I have drawn for my designs:

1. Before reentry, check the temperature of the capsule and put in a few orbits for cooldown. This increases the margin of error.

2. All crafts on reentry must be perfectly aligned with the retrograde vector at all times

3. All reentry crafts must be aerodynamically stable. No more probe cores on top, instead the probe core goes into the bay below the capsule and above the heat shield

[Gargamel]

Really dude? The update is only like 150mb. Haven't you got 150mb data left on your plan to spare?

Not sure what you downloaded, but mine was almost 600mb... Different methods of getting the game updated...... And maybe no, he doesn't have 150mb left. Or maybe he's just got a crappy ISP that automatically throttles any large data transfer (Can you say Time warner? ATT?).

Think before you speak.