Bug? The ablator in the heat shield can get consumed by the ship's heat

[juanml82]

Basically, that. I've put an MK3 liquid fuel tank with four mk1 jet tanks radially mounted and nervs beneath them. Beneath the central MK3 tank I've put a heat shield (hopefully for reentry). After landing in the Mun (which meant I've fired the nervs for both the Trans Munar burn and the landing), the ablator is down to 85 or something from 850. I've checked as the ship cooled down and ablator was being lost.

I'm not sure this isn't intentional behaviour, but it sounds strange as I would guess the ablator (ie ceramics on one side of the heat shield?) would only be burnt by friction from the outside, not heat accumulating from the inside.

[sal_vager]

It reacts only to heat, there's not really any air simulation in KSP, and yes this is how it works.

Try not to let your engines get too hot.

[TinfoilChef]

It reacts only to heat, there's not really any air simulation in KSP, and yes this is how it works.

Try not to let your engines get too hot.

yet another very good reason heat radiator parts are needed. Fortunately there are some now http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/118189-1-0-2-Heat-Management-Heatsink-and-Radiator-parts-%280-20%29

[juanml82]

It reacts only to heat, there's not really any air simulation in KSP, and yes this is how it works.

Try not to let your engines get too hot.

Question: how about including a check so the heat shields check if they are inside an atmosphere. If they are, the ablator is consumed to fight heat. If they aren't, then it's not.

That way the heat shield isn't consumed by firing the engines and players don't get to use it to cheat the thermal simulation. Heat shields would still (I assume) be useful to soak heat from ramjets and rapiers in the atmosphere, but one potential gamey use of them gets averted.

Or, inside the atmosphere, they only consume ablator if the vertical velocity is negative - that way, they can't be used as radiators when ascending. They'll only be able to fight heat when going down in an atmosphere - their intended use.

[GusTurbo]

I would say this likely isn't an intended behavior. Heat shield ablation only makes sense in the context of entry/reentry.

[Sandworm]

I would say this likely isn't an intended behavior. Heat shield ablation only makes sense in the context of entry/reentry.

In reality, but this is KSP. I too am seeing ablator being sucked up in all manner of hot situations. It appears to be a general heat sink but I have yet to determine exactly what temperature triggers it.

[Greg310]

I have encountered this also and its very frustrating. I brought along several heatshields to aid in aerobraking on Eve, and when I got there they are already almost gone. This despite having several radiators on my ship. Four hours into my mission, the whole thing is a bust now. Sick of these stupid bugs.

[cantab]

I've had my ablator boil away on a trip to Moho and back, it wasn't even exposed to any sunlight. I'm calling it a bug - I certainly doubt that was the intended behaviour when Squad worked on the heating system.

[yorshee]

You can right-click on the heatshield an click the little green arrow on the right of the bar to change it to a cross. That means the ablative won't be melted away. Then you can re-enable it when it's needed.

[sal_vager]

yorshee, are you using any addons? There is no flow control on stock heat shields in an unmodded game.

[yorshee]

yorshee, are you using any addons? There is no flow control on stock heat shields in an unmodded game.

http://i.imgur.com/FbSh8fj.png

Oh shoot! I had no idea you couldn't do that for heatshields. I haven't had any issue with it melting away in space so I haven't bothered to look and see if I could lock the resource, I just assumed you could, like with every other resource. Sorry about that!