Reentry heating too weak?

[cicatrix]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining but simply want to sort things out.

I never played with DRE and was somewhat anxious about re-entry heating when 1.0 came out.

My re-entry trajectories became smoother. I aim for PE at about 40 km which sometimes leads to another orbital turn.

I was very afraid the first time I saw flames around my re-entry capsule since those flames were real for the first time.

But now... I feel that re-entry heating is underpowered. Really, if there ARE flames around my craft then the temperature should be already at 500-600 degrees, but the thermometer reads ~300. I watch as my heat shield is losing ablator during my descent... At touchdown it was 192/200... Really? I don't feel it's normal so either the heat shields are overpowered or re-entry heat is not hot enough.

I know that I can scale the difficulty and the heat in the settings, but in normal settings by default - isn't it TOO weak?

[Kuu Lightwing]

There's an issue - if it's noticeable and dangerous for capsules, the spaceplanes go BBQ at about 900-1000 m/s at high altitude, so SSTOing becomes quite challenging simply because of heat. Now it's okay for spaceplanes, but does nothing to capsules...

[r4pt0r]

There's an issue - if it's noticeable and dangerous for capsules, the spaceplanes go BBQ at about 900-1000 m/s at high altitude, so SSTOing becomes quite challenging simply because of heat. Now it's okay for spaceplanes, but does nothing to capsules...

and IMO the best way to balance it would be to require heat tiles be on the underside of space planes, like on real ones (the shuttle and X-37B come to mind).

I believe that was an option on porkjet's plane parts, but Squad axed it?

Edit: now I play on normal reentry heat, 100%, but I tried to overheat by coming straight in at 3.5k m/s, and lost only 30 to 40 units of ablation. bit too easy.

Edited May 8, 2015 by r4pt0r

[cicatrix]

There's an issue - if it's noticeable and dangerous for capsules, the spaceplanes go BBQ at about 900-1000 m/s at high altitude, so SSTOing becomes quite challenging simply because of heat. Now it's okay for spaceplanes, but does nothing to capsules...

Define 'high altitude'? Typically, the craft is caught in flames at ~33-35 km at 1.8-2 km/s during re-entry. The first unit of ablator burns only below 27 km at ~1.5 km/s. When I below 18-20 km, the flames go out and my speed is lower than 1 km/s.

I even made a re-entry at 3 km/s and got away with that.

When it becomes dangerous?

- - - Updated - - -

As for the space planes - what I gathered from real world articles about them they aim not for high speeds, but high altitudes. If a spaceplane can climb up to 30-40 km (on Earth) it's nearly half-way to orbit. The air density there is so thin that it can then use rocket engines without the risk of losing their performance due to atmospheric pressure. That's the idea. It's not that you can seriously hope to get 80-90% of orbital speed still in the atmosphere. In KSP though we grew used to the idea

[Kuu Lightwing]

It becomes dangerous on the way up when you accelerate on airbreathing engines which die at 20-25km altitude.

[Troubletcat]

It's a bit silly at the moment. I never use heat shields. I tend to land my entire upper stage including engine, all science bits/utilities etc. for more recovery money.

I like that I can point the engine into the airstream and have everything survive when returning on a sensible trajectory at low-orbit speeds, I think that should still be completely possible, otherwise rocket designs get a lot more limited in some ways.

But I shouldn't be able to return straight to the planet from Minmus or interplanetary without a heatshield. Might lose a few solar panels and batteries if they're exposed on the sides of the rocket, but right now nothing terrible will happen to you. And that's just silly. Plus it makes the heatshield parts pretty much pointless.

I'm pretty confident Squad is going to balance this Soonâ„¢ though, so whatever. It's not THAT big of a deal.

[rkman]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining but simply want to sort things out.

It might not be possible to sort things out in 1.02, because according to Squad a lot of balancing of aero needs yet to be done before the game is "properly complete".

[Bilfr3d]

Don't know how fats you're re-entering, but most times my heat shields actually explode upon reenty...

[r4pt0r]

Don't know how fats you're re-entering, but most times my heat shields actually explode upon reenty...

what difficulty are you playing? As I above stated, Im on normal, and I tried to explode by coming down in a straight powered descent from Minmus, hit atmosphere at 3500m/s, and came out nigh unharmed.

[cicatrix]

Don't know how fats you're re-entering, but most times my heat shields actually explode upon reenty...

I'm really amazed to hear that. That task in itself should be a challenge, I think. I stated before that even at nearly 45 degree re-entry at 3000 m/s I landed perfectly safe without losing more than 10% of ablation material.

[rockowwc]

I played with DRE on 0.9 which made re-entry fun.. Then 1.0 was pretty good as well.. But 1.0.2 heat did nothing, so I modded it back in.

Have not done anything with SSTO's yet, but will be interesting when i do..

[Bilfr3d]

It was a normal difficulty career save - I was ferrying 7 tourists on a trip to the Mun, and used a bit of an ingenious design with my early tech - I stuck small fuel tanks on the side of the main pod, and stuck pods ontop of that, with heatshields underneath that. When I re-entered, I had done about 3 high-atmosphere aero brakes before actually re-entering, at which stage I entered at 28Km at about 2400m/s... 4 out of the 5 heatshields on the pod exploded with the 5th one having only 12 Ablator left... I was quite scared, frankly xD

[Grumman]

Failure during reentry is the least fun form of failure. It should be downplayed. Failure during launch can be recovered from by aborting the launch and ejecting everything and failure during spaceflight can be recovered from by sending a rescue mission, but failure during landing means you are probably going to lose everything, including everything you achieved on the previous mission.

[Temeter]

Might become hard to sort out that issue. Problem here is that KSPs orbital velocity is very low, so planes at 3x supersonic speed get dangerously close to the reentry temperature of space capsules. Even now M3 is basicaly a hard barrier you won't get around, and, on the other hand, space capsules have very little trouble during reentry.

Mind that's only a thing regarding heat shields being a bit pointless, tho. Everything other than well proportioned capsules still just burns up during reentry.

Btw: No, heat tiles won't help here. KSPs planes are behaving as if they'd have heat tiles all around the ship, so making heating angular would only make planes more vulnerable. Furthermore, it's normal planes, straight flying planes getting into dangerous territory. For comparision, I don't think a MiG-25 was built to survive reentry and it still got up to Mach 3.2.

Failure during reentry is the least fun form of failure. It should be downplayed. Failure during launch can be recovered from by aborting the launch and ejecting everything and failure during spaceflight can be recovered from by sending a rescue mission, but failure during landing means you are probably going to lose everything, including everything you achieved on the previous mission.

This isn't really about failure, it's about heat shields being neccesary to get that 100% failure free reentry. Atm it's 100% even without shields.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Temeter

[LostOblivion]

This should be a clear sign to Squad that even a player that originally was sceptical of reentry heating find it too easy. I too cannot understand the point of reentry heating and heat shields when you don't need them at all, not even from a Mun return.

Not even with tonnes of heavy stuff added to the pods does reentry get dangerous...

[cicatrix]

I don't think a MiG-25 was built to survive reentry and it still got up to Mach 3.2.

That's because real re-entry happens at Mach ~20.

[Temeter]

That's because real re-entry happens at Mach ~20.

Yep, that's the point. KSP's reentry's are a lot slower.

This should be a clear sign to Squad that even a player that originally was sceptical of reentry heating find it too easy. I too cannot understand the point of reentry heating and heat shields when you don't need them at all, not even from a Mun return.

Not even with tonnes of heavy stuff added to the pods does reentry get dangerous...

Reentry heat was never supposed to be russian roulette. And it does have an HUGE impact on the game that cannot be understated: You can only reenter capsules (or stacks), not full spaceships anymore, you need to hold your ship stable, and can't necessarily use every available angle. Sensitive equipment needs to be shielded.

Compared, heat shields on the other hand have a tiny impact on the game: It just makes reentry-capable capsules a bit heavier. I agree that they should be necessary, for all reentries but the shallowest flight paths, but let's don't overplay their impact on the game.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Temeter

[Vaporo]

Yeah, reentry really does seem kind of weak right now.

I recently reentered at 6000+ m/s (with some heavy science, I f I remember right). My heathield survived with about .2/200 ablator left. Not much left, but it did still survive with the capsule and all of my science. I would like to see reentry ramped up a bit for the "normal" value, yes.

[TimePeriod]

If you enjoy a tougher challange, by all means reduce the amount of stuff you can do and gimp yourself.

On my own account, please don't. I'm having an excruciating amount of difficulty keeping everything working.

And no, I don't want your help.

[Joonatan1998]

I think they should just make the max value of the slider higher.

[Johnny Wishbone]

In my opinion, the best way to "fix" re-entry heating is to make G forces actually mean something to the crew. Yes, you can pretty much drop straight down on Kerbin from a Minmus return going 3000+ m/sec and not burn up in the atmosphere because you're blowing through the atmosphere so fast that you never give the parts enough time to heat up. But take a look at your G meter on the way down; I guarantee the needle is at the max the whole way. Thats the problem. Coming in that steep should subject your crew (and capsule) to such high G forces that the crew would basically be crushed and the capsule should collapse in on itself like a beer can. But they (Squad) never really modeled G forces, so you can get away with dropping a manned capsule straight down from a million KM up. One of my pet peeves with this game: why included a G meter if it doesn't do squat? And its been part of the game for so long; you'd think they would have done something with it by now.

I like to role play a bit with my Kerbals, so I always try to re-enter at an angle that has appropriate G forces for survival of the crew. Doing it that way, I usually burn through 40 - 50% of my heat shield because you end up spending much more time plowing your way through the atmosphere.

[KerikBalm]

I wonder if the people in this thread saying they have re-entry problems are still playing 1.0, and not 1.02...

The only thing I've lost on re-entry since the change are ox-stats and av-8R fins.

The SSTOs may have more trouble getting past mach 1, but there's no problems with heat.... previously, my SSTOs had a small margin between burning up in the atmosphere, or not being able to make orbit with a full payload.

Now, its just slap some more engines on the plane, and "pedal to the metal"

[Zad Fnark]

I had batteries exploding while aerobraking at Eve.

[Octa]

Does anyone know how to deplete 200 Units of ablative shielding yet? o.O

[Moss]

Isn't it possible to increase re-entry heat in the settings menu?