Haven't played since 1.0 came out, getting killed on chutes

[photogineer]

So, I'm back after a long hiatus and v1.0 and all that good stuff. I'm trying career mode and I am getting burned (pun intended) on the new aerodynamic and heat effects. 

 

I am trying to do a test contract for the RT-10 booster firing between 40km and 45km and a certain speed window, I did this by stacking three RT-10s with tweaked thrust limiters so the third one ignites while coasting in the target window. Contract satisfied, but then I can't get the capsule safely to splash down because the chutes keep failing. I've tried deploying them as early as possible but it seems like nothing I do will get them to open until 5km altitude and by the time my capsule + heatshield is that low, it's screaming along at nearly 1km/sec and the chutes tear right off. I'm not sure how to slow my capsule down enough to use the chutes safely without being able to deploy them earlier. Thoughts?

Thanks!

[Akaishi_]

You might want to make your trajectory more horizontal, that gives you more time to slow down, and in 1.1 you unlock drogue chutes earlier, so that will help as well.

[Phil deCube]

1 hour ago, photogineer said:

I've tried deploying them as early as possible

You need to be going at less than 250 m/s to deploy the chutes these days. The chute icons change colour. Red - don't open, Yellow - risky, Grey - ok. As Akaishi_ said, come in at an angle. If you are doing a sub-orbital flight, don't go straight up. Tilt over a bit on the way up. Otherwise you won't have enough time/air to slow you down.

[FullMetalMachinist]

As others have said, go more horizontal. The old "souposphere" is gone, so the air doesn't slow you down near as much. In order to spend more time in the thickest part of the air to slow you down, you've got to be traveling sideways. 

Also, for just a sub-orbital hop, the heat shield is completely unnecessary. All its doing now is adding weight (which increases your ballistic coefficient because you've got more mass but the same cross section area) and making you go faster than just the pod. 

When you ditch the last booster, make sure that you turn retrograde, this will provide the best braking. 

And a note about the parachute icon (this was already mentioned, but it's worth saying it again). The icon has two parts, the background and the actual icon part. I say this because each can change colors. If the icon part is white, then it's not broken, and ready to be staged. If the icon is blue/cyan that means that you've "armed" it by staging it, but it has not deployed yet. At this point you can right click it and disarm it, and stage it again later. If the icon is yellow then it has been pre-deployed, and a green icon is fully deployed. 

Now the background. If it's gray, then it's safe to deploy it (note that just because it's safe at that moment doesn't necessarily mean that it will continue to be safe. If you're falling but not yet going fast, it could be gray, and if you deploy then, it might not be enough to slow you, and you'll keep going faster until it burns up.). Yellow background means risky, so if you deploy it might work, might not. Red background means unsafe, and it will be destroyed if you deploy it. 

[wibou7]

If you insist on going straight up, another way is to generate more DRAG to slow you down.

The Mk1 capsule pod is very aerodynamic... too much for its own good .
If you add 3 (radial and symmetrically placed!) basic girders to it, it will decelerate way faster while hitting denser atmosphere. But you will also waste a bit of fuel due to drag while going up, there is no magic.

[Plusck]

I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet, but you certainly don't need those radial parachutes. The standard pod-top (Mk16?) parachute is entirely able to slow you on its own - as long as you can open it before you hit the ground. It can also support quite a bit more than just a pod (but I tend to play safe, I must admit, so I couldn't say exactly how much more than a pod you can land with a single parachute).

[ElWanderer]

How much ablator does that heat shield under the pod have? Try it with 0 (as well as going more sideways if possible). The extra mass from the ablator reduces how quickly the pod will slow down. Ditto for replacing those radial chutes with a single Mk 16.

[Wemb]

Finally, if this rocket is designed to hit an altitude, you could try and deploy the chutes at a lower air-pressure.  This is risky, because even if you can deploy it at a high altitude when you're velocity is low, by the time the air density is high enough for it to start working, you may have accelerated to too high a speed again.  If that doesn't work, one last thing you could try doing what the Soyuz does - fire a small retro rocket to slow you down before you deploy your chutes.[1] You could put a flea on the top, with reduced fuel to do this.

Wemb

[1] The Soyuz fires these before hitting the ground, after the chutes open, but you get the idea. Frankly, I don't think there's much in the Real World that's more Kerbal than this.

Edited April 1, 2016 by Wemb

[wumpus]

On 4/1/2016 at 11:51 AM, Wemb said:

Finally, if this rocket is designed to hit an altitude, you could try and deploy the chutes at a lower air-pressure.  This is risky, because even if you can deploy it at a high altitude when you're velocity is low, by the time the air density is high enough for it to start working, you may have accelerated to too high a speed again.  If that doesn't work, one last thing you could try doing what the Soyuz does - fire a small retro rocket to slow you down before you deploy your chutes.[1] You could put a flea on the top, with reduced fuel to do this.

Wemb

[1] The Soyuz fires these before hitting the ground, after the chutes open, but you get the idea. Frankly, I don't think there's much in the Real World that's more Kerbal than this.

Be careful where you put your flea.  You might need to stack multiple girders above your capsule to maintain a sufficiently aerodynamic shape to come down the right way.  This is obviously great for sepratrons (anybody done this on Duna?), but much more iffy with fleas.