Has something happened to the parachutes?

[THobson]

I recall doing contracts that involved testing parachutes at 1,200m/s. Now they seem to be destroyed at more than 100m/s. I hope this is a glitch and not a change. I have a lot of ships out there with no drogue chutes on them.

[Kelderek]

Parachutes only work at lower speeds now, usually < 250 m/s, drogues would be higher. If you right click on the part in flight it will tell you whether it is safe or risky to deploy.

EDIT: If you're still seeing those contracts though, then that might be a bug or oversight.

EDIT 2: They also deploy at 1000m now by default and deploy much slower so that they don't pull too many G's.

[sal_vager]

Chutes should be fine until just under mach 1, which will tear them apart, also the default opening altitude is 1000m now, so any old craft will need to have their chutes tweaked in the action menu, or risk unexpected lithobraking.

You should be alright without the droges, just don't re-enter with too low a periapsis so the atmosphere slows you down more.

[jwenting]

regular chutes are fine at about 250 m/s or less. Drogue chutes are fine at higher speeds (haven't tested what exactly, I think around 500 or so but test for yourself).

[THobson]

Chutes should be fine until just under mach 1, which will tear them apart, also the default opening altitude is 1000m now, so any old craft will need to have their chutes tweaked in the action menu, or risk unexpected lithobraking.

You should be alright without the droges, just don't re-enter with too low a periapsis so the atmosphere slows you down more.

Coming back form Minmus I had a periapsis of 45k. I ended up orbiting Kerbin five times aerobraking each time before coming in on a very flat trajectory so I expected to be perfectly safe. I was watching the Safe to deploy message and only had a second or two to deploy them before hitting the ground.

What is lithobraking?

[Sharpy]

For drogues 500 is safe. IIRC, 800 is risky.

The third step above normal chutes and drogues is Airbrakes. Safe to open at any speed/altitude and quite efficient. The part hardly ever used before 1.0 nowadays became quite essential (and mostly making Drogues obsolete; with airbrakes you'd need a very poor trajectory or a very specifically engineered craft not to slow down to the safe 250 of parachutes.

What is lithobraking?

Well, aerobraking is using the planet's atmosphere to slow down. Lithobraking is the same, except using the lithosphere a.k.a. ground. It's extremely efficient, from a 2000m/s to zero in a second or so. Too bad no craft can withstand this kind of deceleration!

If your craft is aerodynamic, then you will not be losing much speed on descent - actually you may be accelerating, or just your terminal speed will be too high for parachutes. Either make your craft *not* aerodynamic, or use airbrakes.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Sharpy

[Warzouz]

regular chutes are fine at about 250 m/s or less. Drogue chutes are fine at higher speeds (haven't tested what exactly, I think around 500 or so but test for yourself).

Dogue can be open at 600, maybe 700m/s

Please note that this is true on Kerbin.

On Duna, you can open regular chute at 700m/s, maybe more, so you don't need Drogue.

On Eve, you have to wait to lower speed.

On Laythe, I've not tested, but you could open them at a slightly higher speed.

- - - Updated - - -

Coming back form Minmus I had a periapsis of 45k. I ended up orbiting Kerbin five times aerobraking each time before coming in on a very flat trajectory so I expected to be perfectly safe. I was watching the Safe to deploy message and only had a second or two to deploy them before hitting the ground.

What is lithobraking?

From Minmus, just dive to 30km. Use Airbrakes and drogues if your ship is big.

When returning from any mission (with exceptions). I always dive to 30km, even from hyperbolic trajectory. If your speed is too high, you'll blow before around 45km. My usual return vehicle has airbrakes, no drogue but regular chutes. It's a small return vehicle for 2 kerblas. It's always an easy landing.

From intra kerbin SOI, I don't even use heat shield

From interplanetary, I use a small one (I don't event know if it's usefull)

My return vehicle is designed for a 4500m/s speed. At more than 5000m/s (Moho returns) it blows (airbrakes first - open or closes -, the rest blows later). To handle that, I burn retrograde to slowdown before entering atmo. I could try to design a specific return vechicle, but I usually ahve plenty of fuel left (the plane change safety margin)

If you don't use return vehicles but use your mission main vehicle, burn ALL your fuel and RCS in high atmo. That helps you slow down for 2 reasons.

- Your weight reduces

- You reduce your speed by thrusting retrograde

IMO, Lithobraking have 2 meaning

- Crashing into ground

- Hiting the ground hard, but surviving the crash (genealy from low speed = 30 to 50m/s, even higher with a specifically designed ship),

[Streetwind]

Contracts are procedurally generated, not handcrafted... sometimes, that means the contract system spits out something absurd.

You'll have a much better time in KSP career mode if you get used to the idea that you need to assess a contract for feasibility before accepting it. I mean, you can still test a parachute at 1200 m/s; after all, you only need to stage it, even if it gets destroyed. You can use other parachutes for landing. But is the reward you get for the effort really worth it? The same goes for satellite launches into retrograde Kerbin orbits, testing a Kickback booster on an escape trajectory, tourists that want a suborbital flight on the sun, constructing a new station in Tylo orbit around a class E asteroid, mixed land and air survey contracts on the other side of the planet, and so on and so forth.

You can do them for the challenge of doing it, but if you're in it for the money, seriously question whether you cannot find some contracts that make more sense

[Sharpy]

My return vehicle is designed for a 4500m/s speed. At more than 5000m/s (Moho returns) it blows (airbrakes first - open or closes -, the rest blows later). To handle that, I burn retrograde to slowdown before entering atmo. I could try to design a specific return vechicle, but I usually ahve plenty of fuel left (the plane change safety margin)

Even with shallow periapsis (55km)?

[wumpus]

One note, if your craft is being destroyed by parachutes being insufficiently effective (i.e. a mark1 parachute not stopping just a mark1 capsule), then tell steam (or other source of KSP) to "check file integrity". For awhile I had to manually adjust chute distance until being told by squad that I encounter a completely different bug (KSP not properly updating) than what I thought (lethal default parachute settings).