MK-1 Pod's integrated heatshield?

[heng]

The Mk1-Command Pod already has a rounded bottom in its model... supposedly this was standing for the integrated heatshield... now that we do have actual heatshields, shouldn't the pod get a flat bottom?

currently it looks kinda weird when you stick an additional heatshield below that - especially if you make it detachable (unnecessary, but cool to jettison when the parachute deploys) :-D

[Caelib]

The pod can sustain quite a bit of heat, but anything attached to it, such as a parachute will heat up rather quickly. But I do agree that we need a tweakable ablator on the Command pods.

[Carsogen]

Yeah it's a bit unnecessary in some situations but it would probably look a bit weird to have a perfectly flat bottom on the pod if you didn't put a shield on (The small pod can actually survive reentry from low kerbin orbit with no heatshield )

Cas.

[Sky_walker]

But I do agree that we need a tweakable ablator on the Command pods.

Or no ablator at all and force us to actually use heat shields that... you know... have a mass and volume.

[magnemoe]

Yeah it's a bit unnecessary in some situations but it would probably look a bit weird to have a perfectly flat bottom on the pod if you didn't put a shield on (The small pod can actually survive reentry from low kerbin orbit with no heatshield )

Cas.

I took an MK2 landing can back from Mun, probe with claw, 4 45 liter tanks, one in center and three around with 3 24-77 engines, parachutes on top.

Pe at around 35 Km, on return, more drag than expected so it went up to 50 km and then suborbital, parachutes + rockets on touchdown to reduce speed.

Only thing who blew up was an battery I attached with KAS on the pod to be able to orient it before using the claw.

Honestly did not expect this to work so kerbal returned with another pod.

[Hobbes Novakoff]

Or no ablator at all and force us to actually use heat shields that... you know... have a mass and volume.

They do. They fixed that 4 days after it came out, in the 1.0.1 hot fix.

EDIT: actually, after rereading your post, I think you mean that it would be unbalanced if we just had a free heatshield on all pods. However, you could just increase the pod mass.

Thing is, I think that an integrated heatshield wouldn't really work, as I'm pretty sure the stock heatshield code can't account for one face being ablative, but other faces not. I can't acces KSP right now, but we should test if heatshield work when placed backwards.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Hobbes Novakoff

[Roflcopterkklol]

To be honest heat shields are pointless, i regularly re enter kerbin at 3000+m/s without heat shields, the worst that will happen is batteries on the craft will go boom.

just slap some air brakes on.

[Hobbes Novakoff]

I agree airbrakes are OP. Reentry heat does not really affect rocket-based missions, however it's made SSTOs a bit more interesting and makes for some nice effects, especially with camera shake.

[KerikBalm]

To be honest heat shields are pointless, i regularly re enter kerbin at 3000+m/s without heat shields, the worst that will happen is batteries on the craft will go boom.

just slap some air brakes on.

Well, as I see it now, they seem to have balanced it so that coming back from a moon of Kerbin is about the limit.

I was coming back from the Mun yesterday, and if I reentered too steep (it was a SSTO spaceplane, delivering 3/4th of an orange tank worth of fuel to a mun fuel depot), the Mk2-> 1.25m adaptors at the front of the craft would blow. Those have a heat tolerance of 2,000.

So it seems likely that a pod will probably take whatever you throw at it, with its heat tolerance value of 3400.

In the end, I rentered without massively over-shooting the target by flying pointed normal to the ground at all times above 45,000 meters before pitching closer to prograde... quite a bit of drag when you present a flat wing surface.

I only had two airbrakes, and I guess I didn't have them positioned right, as the plane was nearly unstable with them deployed, so I didn't deploy them until after the worst of reentry was over.

[Bomoo]

The pod can sustain quite a bit of heat, but anything attached to it, such as a parachute will heat up rather quickly. But I do agree that we need a tweakable ablator on the Command pods.

This. On the small 1.25m at the very least, given its shape. On the Mk1-2 pod, I'd lean toward no, as it does not have a rounded bottom.

[Laie]

Or no ablator at all and force us to actually use heat shields that... you know... have a mass and volume.

I don't see why Ablator shouldn't work like monoprop: slider in tweakables, adding more will increase weight. As long as you can't transfer it between parts...

The heatshield parts are very useful if you need to design your own vessel (return tourists or whatnot). But for a pod, it would make sense to include it right away.

[Murph]

… But I do agree that we need a tweakable ablator on the Command pods.

I very strongly disagree with that.

I do not believe that it is necessary or useful to add tweakable ablator to command pods. Most pods don't even visually have a heat shield anyway, it's only the simple starter pod that has the visual shape. The current heat shields do the job just fine. I see absolutely no advantage to having an integrated shield on the starter pod, when you can just add a normal shield below it when required. Additionally, separate shields almost certainly make it much easier to deal with the physics of the heating in the simulation code.

As for the shape, it's fine as-is, I see no need to change it. It even makes sense for using it without an additional ablative heat shield, if that's Squad's intended behaviour for slower re-entry. In theory, two of the features of the rounded shape are that it's aerodynamically stable, and can actually be used to fine-tune the trajectory, if memory serves (if KSP's aero sim ever reaches the point where that would matter). There's a very interesting Apollo-era video out there, a NASA official production (I think), which is roughly "how pods work", if you want to know how you can actually "fly" a pod rather than just passively wait for it to submit to gravity.

[Sky_walker]

To be honest heat shields are pointless, i regularly re enter kerbin at 3000+m/s without heat shields, the worst that will happen is batteries on the craft will go boom.

I choose to think of it as a bug.... and I very much hope it will be tuned in future to make reentry heating actually a danger you need to account for....

I don't see why Ablator shouldn't work like monoprop: slider in tweakables, adding more will increase weight..

Well, current ablator doesn't change it's mass regardless if you choose maximum or barely anything - so I automatically assumed it'd be the same for pods, and I dislike "free perks" like that. Everything that has an advantage should also have a disadvantage. If they could implement it like you suggest - I would be perfectly cool with that

Edited May 11, 2015 by Sky_walker

[MKI]

We all have to take into account, throwing free heatshields onto some parts is already somewhat taken into account. As SSTO's and space planes don't get to utilize any heat shields what so ever. This is reflected in the fact if your not blitzing into the atmosphere at a terrible angle, most crafts won't get damaged what so ever, even ones without heat shields.

So throwing free heatshield integration would be cool, but it isn't exactly necessary. And making heat shields MANDATORY for balance isn't going to work as long as SSTO's and re-entry space planes to be anywhere near viable. I haven't used air-breaks that much so I can't say anything on how they are broken, but thats a whole nother issue.

[BoomShroom]

I think they should simply change the mk1 pods shape and make it flat, this way we aren't offsetting it into the tank it's attached to so the rocket looks better, and we don't feel silly putting a heatshield on something that looks like it has a heat shield.

[treejoe4]

heat shields are pointless now anyway so who cares