In-Line Inflatable Heat Shield

[PringleMan]

Hi all,

So similar things have been requested before, but I don't think it has been requested since the new aerodynamics have been implemented. As the title says, I am looking for an in-line inflatable heat shield. Something like what was in ADEPT/OLDD, but more streamlined. My thought was that you would have a sort of two-part inflatable. First an in-line of whatever size that held the inflatable bit, much like the inflatable inline floaties that have been around, but as a heatshield. Then you would cap the bottom of it with a regular heat shield.

This arrangement would allow for a normal pod structure without having that huge inflatable heat shield on the nose or an overly tall craft unnecessarily. Attached is an *cough* artist rendering of what the system might look like.

Ignore the height of the heat shield peak in the first phase, it is just meant to get the point across.

Any thoughts? Ideas?

[Nippie1995]

Is the new inflatable heatshield that will come with 1.1 not enough?

[hoojiwana]

As @Nippie1995 says, 1.1 will come with a 2.5m in-line one that expands to 10m, here's a picture of it.

[PringleMan]

So, specifically in the second paragraph of my post I mentioned that I did not want to create unnecessarily tall craft. While the new inflatable heat shield does serve the basic purpose, it is so tall when building with it that it kinda ruins the aesthetic for me.

Basically the vertical height of the inflatable heat shield is what bothers me. I am just looking for solutions that might make it less tall. An in-line cylinder-type inflatable with a regular heat shield on the bottom might be the solution. Or maybe not.

 

edit.

In my mind, the height of my idea:

The height of the stock one:

I understand why Squad did theirs that way. I just want something smaller in height because I am picky like that

Edited April 17, 2016 by PringleMan

[magnemoe]

I would rather have one I can deflate, would be very nice for tugs, 

[Seeker89]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

I would rather have one I can deflate, would be very nice for tugs, 

You might be able to make it with some MM commands. 

 

 

PringleMan. so what you want is a shorter one, with a harder cap?

[magnemoe]

43 minutes ago, Seeker89 said:

You might be able to make it with some MM commands. 

PringleMan. so what you want is a shorter one, with a harder cap?

Think he want the cone to expand around the bottom of the ship, removing the truss section at the bottom would solve this, you could always pad the bottom if you need more spacing because you have an wider ship. 

Might look into the deflate but guess it would be an early mod. 
Doing testing with the inflatable shield now, looks good, plan on using it on an Minmus- LKO tanker, it can land on minmus and have heat shield on top, same with an planned passenger ship it has an dockable shield who let it transport medium sized cargo in front if I end using it interplanetary, 
nice to be able to land on Minmus for crew training runs. 
Problem is the tug, designed to go from LKO to Mun or Minmus orbit but primarly to push stuff up to 1km/s and return to LKO, landing is just an feature here. 
Current plan is to have it docked to the side then hauling heavy stuff then move it to front for return or then running dry. 

[PringleMan]

13 hours ago, Seeker89 said:

You might be able to make it with some MM commands. 

 

 

PringleMan. so what you want is a shorter one, with a harder cap?

Kind of. What I am trying to find is basically a disc that inflates outwards, and then you would just put a normal heat shield on the bottom. So the disk part would basically have the effect of extending the edges out from the classic heat shield at the very bottom, thus allowing you the same sort of shielding and slow-down capabilities without creating unnecessary height in the vessel. However when retracted the disk would be like any other in-line component, flush with the hull.

Currently with the stock inflatable shield you either create a ship that is about 30% longer than it needs to be by mounting it below the capsule (and then decoupler + tank + engine) or you eliminate the chance to have a docking port on the nose by mounting the inflatable heat shield on the nose. I am just looking for a less-tall solution. Hell even a size mod of the stock inflatable would be fine if you just changed the vertical height without altering how far it extended out to the side. Would look a bit weird though.

[Charlie_Zulu]

@PringleMan, you might be interested in clamped toroidal ballutes.  They're not useful for heatshielding, but they are good at helping with your ballistic coefficient, which is useful for EDL on Mars (IRL), Duna, and the like, and I think it's what you're looking for.  AFAIK, there sadly aren't any mods to provide it currently, but it is a valid concept for supersonic deceleration.  

[fourfa]

Maybe this?

[Charlie_Zulu]

21 hours ago, fourfa said:

Maybe this?

Close, but not quite the same.  The best images for what I think OP's looking for are things like this (hope that works; it's an image in a PDF), whereas the linked mod, while still providing an inline ballute, is tethered.  It does solve the same problem, though.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Charlie_Zulu
Fixed formatting

[PringleMan]

You were right on Charlie_Zulu. While I was not necessarily looking for something that had lobes like that, the basic profile is what I am talking about.

The Ballute will work fine for my purposes though, depending on it's capability to slow down.