beginner problems... too fast!!!!

[Perotis]

Having trouble landing after sub-orbital flights.  Even when I pick a more ballistic trajectory, I always end up coming down too fast to deploy parachutes.

[Kerbart]

What's the angle you're reentering at? What's “more ballistic” for one, is “dude that's waaaaay too steep” for someone else. I’d aim for 45° or maybe even shallower, for starters (haven’t done them in ages so not sure what should work, but that should be a good starting point).

Also, do not add too much to your ship. The Mk I is pretty aerodynamic. Add too much weight to it and yes, you’ll be able to study a lot of high impact lithobraking.

[Guest]

It's not easy to give an answer to the problem without screenshots or craft files.
 

[PPR]

The thing to remember is that the atmosphere slows down your re-entry.  When you are going straight down you will only have 70km of atmosphere to slow down.  This means you may be travelling too fast for your parachute to deploy.  When you de-orbiting at a high surface speed, you are slowing down sideways through hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere.  This gives you more time/distance to slow down until your parachute is able to deploy.  

[MarvinKitFox]

I believe the poster's problem is that his rocket is staying above the 260m/s max speed allowed for parachutes, even when in freefall near the surface.

 

Advice:

1) land in the ocean, or at highest shore/grassland/ice regions. The altitude of any other terrain leads to too-thin air for speed reduction by drag alone.

 

2) Use a much more draggy vehicle for reentry.

A naked MK1 capsule is draggy enough. The same capsule with 17 batteries, 8 instruments and a partridge in a pear tree is simply too heavy!

If you have a lengthy vehicle, try forcing it to go sideways during the last freefall.

If you have landing gear, deploy them.

Try to induce a rapid spin/flutter in your descending vehicle. This may *look* uncomfortable, but sure induces a lot of drag!

 

3) Consider re-entry with a functional engine, and flying engine first.

The engines are almost as heat-resistant as an ablative heatshield, plus you have the ability to use thrust to brake you below that critical 260m/s limit. Also, with use of a bit of thrust AT landing, you can afford to load *way* less parachutes.

 

4) Once you get them, drogue parachutes allow deployment at much higher speed and altitudes, and Airbrakes even more so!

 

Have fun!

Edited December 25, 2015 by MarvinKitFox

[nosirrbro]

3 hours ago, Perotis said:

Having trouble landing after sub-orbital flights.  Even when I pick a more ballistic trajectory, I always end up coming down too fast to deploy parachutes.

A good rule of thumb for the early career game when you dont have the more drogues and the like, is that even if it costs more a shallower re-entry is always a good idea.

In the later game, the pros begin to be hurt by the cons where more shallow re-entry becomes much more viable, but assuming your in early career just add some extra boosters and thrust more horizontally.

[Tfin]

Go VERY shallow, until you have the stuff to go steeper. My first orbit in my current career was so shallow it was an in-atmosphere orbit. I passed over KSC twice, which might be a bit too shallow, but it worked.

[Francois424]

When you start seeing mach effect (while haze) pull down and right to give your pod/ship an angle... It will decelerate faster allowing you to pull chutes sooner.  Drag chutes if you have them helps tons.

Good luck.

 

[Snark]

Welcome to the forums!

Lots of good advice from previous posters. To reiterate, though: It would really help if you could post a screenshot.

There are many more ways to be "wrong" than to be "right", and without a screenshot, nobody knows which of the 1,000 possible problems you might be having, so you end up receiving tons of advice for many different problems, including problems you don't have.

In short: with a screenshot, you'll get much more relevant, shorter answers.

[Perotis]

From the previous answeres, I guess I just have to try a longer arc.  

[Snark]

32 minutes ago, Perotis said:

From the previous answeres, I guess I just have to try a longer arc.  

That may be the problem.  There's also a strong chance that it may not be.  Depends on ship design, thus the plea for screenshots. 

In my experience, if I do a suborbital hop that's too steep, I'm more likely to encounter burning-up problems than still-going-over-Mach-1-when-I-hit-the-ground problems.

Do you have stack decouplers yet?  If so, you can try separating your Mk1 command pod from the rest of the ship when you're coming down.  If it's just the pod by itself, it has plenty of torque to control its orientation, and you can wrench it around so that it's falling blunt-end first.  A Mk1 pod in that orientation will easily slow down enough to pop the chute before hitting the ground.

Another option, if you've got the command pod attached to a cylindrical fuel tank (for example, the 2-ton one), is to use body lift as much as possible when reentering.  That is, instead of pointing straight prograde/retrograde when descending, use the command pod's torque to fly at an angle, so that the cylindrical side of the rocket deflects the airstream downwards and generates lift.  This really helps to slow things down a lot.  I find that the sweet spot for this kind of body lift is a 2-ton tank with the Mk1 pod.  Longer than that, and the pod doesn't have enough torque to slew the angle enough to make a difference.  Shorter than that, and you don't get much body lift.

[LordKael]

My first couple sub-orbital flights always ended in a maddening suicide burn, because I managed to give myself enough fuel. 

[Sanic]

I just go straight up, and wiggle around a lot in the lower atmosphere. Spinning also helps. I

But I found that you can use a service bay right below your command pod that can work as a pretty effective airbrake.

[Kerba Fett]

Apparently too many new players were surviving suborbital flights in previous versions of the game. The 1.05 version of the game increased the heating and thinned out the lower atmosphere to address that. 

Later in the tech tree you'll get drogue parachutes and seperatrons that you can use to slow your craft. While you're waiting for those, it's easier to just stick with orbital flights with a shallow reentry. 

[strollen]

I recently started a new career game after not playing since 1.0.  Suborbitals are definitely harder than they use to be. I got a lot of tourism sub-orbital mission, so I ended up doing a lot of them.

As everyone says the most important thing to do is not fly straight up. Ideally you want to get to a 45 degree angle at launch as quickly as practical, but even a 30 degree should be enough distance to let you decelerate safely.

Second don't fly too high, you only need to get to 70,000 meters to qualify as a sub-orbital.  So adjust your fuel and accent angle to keep your altitude under 100K, the higher you go the faster you fall.  I found that a single Thumper booster ($850 one) was enough to get sub-orbital flights with most payloads, A Thumper at first stage, and Hammer 2nd stage was able to reliably and cheaply get a 3 person capsule to a suborbital for flying tourist contracts.