New player, Question about reentry

[Giygus]

Newb player warning, hope question isn't too stupid.

I managed to build my first set-up that got out of orbit, to moon, orbit moon, back to Kerbin, and then reentry.  When it hit reentry, the parachutes ripped off and the cockpit hit the ground and exploded.

Reading around, I believe the issue was with staging.  Something to do with the parachutes having 4 internal settings that start as soon as their set stage begins.  My question is, how do I set an unused stage, below the parachute one, so they do not activate until the craft is low enough for them to work right?

I was thinking maybe an unused decoupler, or maybe waiting longer to drop off the last engine/fuel tank.  But I am afraid the engine may explode or something and damage the craft.  Any ideas?

[FullMetalMachinist]

So here's the thing, and it looks like you might not know this yet.  KSP is amazing in it's ability to have lots of really cool features that make the game great, while at the same time not telling you about those features or how to use them. (Don't worry, the devs are currently working on fixing that for the 1.1 update.)

I think what you need is to simply adjust your staging sequence so that the parachutes are in their own stage. Do this by hovering over the staging list in either the VAB or while in flight. Tow buttons will pop up next to whatever stage you are hovering over, a + and a -.  The plus add a new stage at that spot, and the minus deletes a stage, but only if it's empty.  So go to the top of the list, press the plus to get a new, empty stage, and then click and drag the parachute icon into the top (empty) stage. Note that if there are more than one of anything in the staging list in symmetry (denoted by the small subscript number on the icon), you have to click once to open the group, then click and drag any one of the group to drag the whole group to another stage. 

If that's not the problem you're having, then a few screenshots would help bunches.  Ideally a few of them, one in the VAB, maybe one in space or on the launch pad, one during reentry when things get all explody on you.

Edit:  Forgot one thing.  The parachute icons can be a little tricky to interpret.  White icon in a grey background means that they are ready for staging, and that it is safe to do so. White icon in a red background means that they are ready for staging, but will be destroyed if you do.  White icon in a yellow background means they are ready for staging, and might be destroyed if you deploy them.  Cyan icon in a grey background means they have been armed (aka staged) but have not yet deployed (in this case they can be unarmed via the right click menu, placed in a new stage, and staged again later).  Yellow icon (I think, can't remember this one for sure) in a grey background means they are pre-deployed.  Green icon in a grey background means they are fully deployed.  Red icon in a (either grey or red background, again can't remember exactly) means that they have been destroyed by aerodynamic forces.  At that point, they can be repaired by an engineer of sufficient level, provided that you don't smash into the ground before that happens . Hope this helps, and if you have any other problems, let us know!

Edit 2: D'oh! How rude of me! Welcome to the forums @Giygus! 

Edited February 21, 2016 by FullMetalMachinist

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, Giygus said:

Newb player warning, hope question isn't too stupid.

I managed to build my first set-up that got out of orbit, to moon, orbit moon, back to Kerbin, and then reentry.  When it hit reentry, the parachutes ripped off and the cockpit hit the ground and exploded.

Reading around, I believe the issue was with staging.  Something to do with the parachutes having 4 internal settings that start as soon as their set stage begins.  My question is, how do I set an unused stage, below the parachute one, so they do not activate until the craft is low enough for them to work right?

I was thinking maybe an unused decoupler, or maybe waiting longer to drop off the last engine/fuel tank.  But I am afraid the engine may explode or something and damage the craft.  Any ideas?

First off, welcome to the madness that is KSP

Then, +1 to what @FullMetalMachinist said.  Have the chutes in their own, final stage that you activate when the capsule slows below 250m/s.  Never never never stage the chutes along with ditching the rocket stage that you used for the de-orbit burn.  That makes the chutes deploy enveloped in flames and, being flimsy fabric things, they don't much like that.

[Giygus]

OK, first off thanks for the helpful answers.  I did NOT have time to actually play around with another launch, but I can say that the parachutes were already in their own, last stage by themselves.

I suspect that I just hit the space bar 2x instead of once, starting the sequence when the icon was red, not realizing what it meant.

Later today I will try again, and then post screen shots if it keeps happening.

[Plusck]

1 hour ago, Giygus said:

I suspect that I just hit the space bar 2x instead of once, starting the sequence when the icon was red, not realizing what it meant.

That can easily happen.

The "real" warning sign, as the post by @FullMetalMachinist indicates, is the cyan parachute. If it ever appears, you generally have a short amount of time to right-click and disarm the parachute (or slow down massively, but this is not an option on Kerbin reentry) before atmospheric pressure is high enough for the parachutes to start to deploy.

[FullMetalMachinist]

6 hours ago, Giygus said:

I suspect that I just hit the space bar 2x instead of once

If you find that you have lots of trouble accidentally staging, you can press "Alt-L" to toggle the staging lock.  The blinking green light in the bottom left corner will turn purple, or some such color. Just don't forget to unlock it when you need to stage.

[Giygus]

I successfully splashed down after orbit with no major changes needed.  Well, I needed to learn how to use the space bar correctly, but that's hardly physics fault.

Thanks for all the help, I'm sure that I will be back soon with something or other bothering me.

[XrayLima]

Welcome Giygus!  @FullMetalMachinist has given a awesome breakdown of parachute icons, so much so I'm copying out to notepad so I can use it later.  The only thing missing from the posts above is that another 'undocumented feature' is that you can adjust both the pressure the chute starts to unfurl and the altitude it unfurls fully.  This means that you can set the chutes to activate on the same stage as separation moderately safely as long as you ship isn't super heavy and pointy (has a high ballistic coefficient).  Best place to set this, assuming you know which body the ship is going to be landing on is in the VAB as the settings apply via the symmetry.  Right click on the chute and you have two sliders.  Altitude is the height above ground it will open fully.  On Kerbin don't go any less than around 1000 to start with but you can trim this once you are really happy with the ship design.  The second is pressure.  Now this, as far as I can tell, is the fraction of sea level pressure that the chute will begin to unfurl.  This is difficult to set exactly as it needs you to guess how quickly your ship will loose speed, but basically I've found that by about 0.6 you ship will be at about 200m/s and chutes are safe.  Larger heavier ships need drogues to scrub some speed first, but these are safe at higher speeds so I set these at about 0.45 and open at 2500m, which seems to be about the same point pressure is at 0.6 and my main chutes open.  Basically, with practice and trial and error you can set things up so you  don't need to sit there waiting to stage like some kind of whack'a'mole game!