Best way to salvage this? early game return to kerbin

[Elfmaze]

I have a mission that I sent to the Mun for a low pass to gather science and take some tourists through.... BUT With my current tech tree I didn't have a really good way to get them back onto Kerbin( no large heat shield for the Hitchhiker cabin. I think my original thoughts were that I would park it back in Kerbin orbit and rescue the five crew members and science data with a follow up mission.

BUT I've been running some Mech jeb numbers and I only have 390 delta V left in the rocket And I think I need about 900 to circularize.

Current Apoapsis is 15.5 million meters periapsis is 65K

Three ideas... one I go for gold and try bring the whole mess in and hope it survives re-entry

Two, I let it Aerobrake and after a few passes (and many months it will be a more manageable orbit.

three, Raise the Pe to 250K and attempt to park higher but risk loosing the aerobraking backup.

Any ideas?

[Snark]

Lower the periapsis to about 35 km; that will aerobrake your apoapsis to something reasonable, like a couple of hundred km, in a single pass.

Then you have a couple of options. You can just coast up to apoapsis and circularize, or you could adjust periapsis to 40km or so on your second (much slower) aerobrake pass to land. Neither option requires much dV.

If you decide to aerobrake to land, turn your craft sideways to maximize drag in the upper atmosphere, so that you have less speed left when you get to the more punishing lower altitudes.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Snark

[Elfmaze]

Lower the periapsis to about 35 km; that will aerobrake your apoapsis to something reasonable, like a couple of hundred km, in a single pass.

Then you have a couple of options. You can just coast up to apoapsis and circularize, or you could adjust periapsis to 40km or so on your second (much slower) aerobrake pass to land. Neither option requires much dV.

If you decide to aerobrake to land, turn your craft sideways to maximize drag in the upper atmosphere, so that you have less speed left when you get to the more punishing lower altitudes.

Lol 35K was too low... dropped to 34k started a slight climbout of shock heating and dipped right back in from 36K to the ....... Then KSP crashed

On the reload not only is this rocket gone. But the past three missions I sent up are gone now too. It reverted my save game to three days prior Guess we will never know what would have happened... At least my rocket designs are still there...

[Snark]

Really sorry to hear that. 1.0 seems a bit crashier than before-- prior to 1.0 I hardly ever got an unmodded crash.

I'm usually in the habit of making frequent named quicksaves (a reflexive defense against getting crashes from mods I sometimes use, RemoteTech is a particularly bad offender), which also helps with situations like this.

Anyway, heartfelt sympathy for the lost game, that really sucks.

[Elfmaze]

I think the crash was KSP's fault.... But I think I may have had a second instance running buried in windows. I tried to recover my quicksave. lol, oh well. It was no Duna mission.

[Volix]

Lol 35K was too low... dropped to 34k started a slight climbout of shock heating and dipped right back in from 36K to the ....... Then KSP crashed

The heat gauges right now have a pretty severe memory leak. If there were a lot of them showing that's probably why you crashed. Until this is fixed you can press F10 to turn off the gauges, but they'll turn back on every time you switch to a new craft.

[superm18]

There's a mod called S.A.V.E. that will help you after a crash.

[Alshain]

45km from the Mun will aerobrake down in a few passes. If you can get your Ap to around 70 with your Pe above 30, you should come down safely without the need for a heat shield.

The crashing is caused by the temperature gauges. Press F10 to turn them off when ever you see them appear.

[mrklaw]

Everyone is talking about aero raking, nobody is mentioning orbit. So no issues hitting re-entry with an unshielded hitchhiker module?

[Elfmaze]

Everyone is talking about aero raking, nobody is mentioning orbit. So no issues hitting re-entry with an unshielded hitchhiker module?

Before the crash I remember thinking it was going to make it... I don't know if leaving the Lv909 and fuel tank on there would protect the hitchhiker or not. sacrificial parts?

[stibbons]

Leave the tank and engine on. They can definitely survive reentry from the Mun, as long as you're not coming straight down.

[Dilli]

You can also use the last of the fuel to slow down a bit more while in re-entering, and/or slow down before landing

[One Wheeled Panda]

Even with heating set to 120% and while trying to recover as large parts of my craft as possible I have yet to lose a craft to reentry. I have lost small fins, solar panels and nearly even a parachute but with proper orientation of a craft you can manage heat.

I've even brought extremely wobbly craft down no problem. 14 FL-T100 tanks with an engine on one and a capsule on the other end - oriented it towards normal to maximize drag - it flexed, it flipped out of control along the pitch axis, it came close to snapping in half but finally it came down in one piece - minus the small fins. This was from LKO tho.

I wouldn't (till now anyways) think twice about directly bringing anything down from Mun.

Edited May 19, 2015 by One Wheeled Panda

[mrclucks]

In my expirence, a pe at is 35km low enough to bleed off a ton of speed and right above reentry effects. If I wanted to reenter safety without a heatsheild I'd get to an orbit with a pe of 60 and while I'm at pe I'd set the ap to 70-50. High low enough for full orbit aerobraking, but high enough to not burn up too much

[TheXRuler]

From what I gather re-entry heat has been tuned down so far that it is basically non-existent. If you don't actively try to kill yourself by falling straight down at 8 km/s you should be fine. If you want slightly more realistic re-entry heating then try out the deadly re-entry mod.

[Janos1986]

Yep, I'm playing Hard Career and I still haven't felt the need to add a heat shield to my craft.

I just dive in engine-first without getting too steep, and everything goes just fine.

[MarvinKitFox]

Before the crash I remember thinking it was going to make it... I don't know if leaving the Lv909 and fuel tank on there would protect the hitchhiker or not. sacrificial parts?

a (non-firing) engine makes for an **excellent** heatshield during reentry.

An empty fuel tank is about as strong as wet toilet paper during reentry though.

Funny enough, a *full* fuel tank is quite strong.