10m Heat Shield Solution

[Xyphos]

Sorry, I apologize, I'm an Engineer, not an artist so the image below is pretty abstract and not to scale.

I've had problems in the past whilst jettisoning the inflatable heat shield and I've came up this this concept, I've only tested it once, and it worked but I didn't take screenshots, so I had to draw this image.

 

Spoiler

 

[Foxster]

There was a problem with this HS in the early 1.1 releases. It used to be "sticky" and hard to detach. It works OK now if you wait for chutes to be fully deployed before jettisoning it. I put several (up to 8) air brakes at the back of the craft and these help to maintain prograde direction. 

[StarStreak2109]

Maybe attach a few sepatrons or similar to help with separation? Also I'd make sure my centre of gravity is as close to the heat shield as possible...

[bewing]

During beta testing we had a lot of debates as to how to use this heat shield. Since it was the one major new part, we felt we had to test it.

There are quite a few issues with it. If you land on it, it explodes and often destroys some important parts of your ship. If you hold onto it too long it causes some aerodynamic problems low in the atmosphere. In the past, the jettison function did not work well. And more.

Many people propose separatrons, but those are high-tech, and there is not a really good place to attach them. It's also hard to blast the thing away from your ship, since its drag is so huge.

One thing I noticed was that in the middle atmosphere, the heatshield caused my ships to have an extreme wobble. I decided to use this "feature" in my solution for how to use the things.

I just went for a straight reentry with the thing. Then wait until you have slowed to a terminal velocity and you are wobbling a lot. Set SAS to "normal hold". This is 90 degrees to how you are moving, and causes the wobble to intensify until you are often beyond horizontal. So you wait until one of those moments and then detach the heatshield. Since the "jettison" function was iffy at that time, I was using a rockomax decoupler to get rid of the thing. But since you are beyond horizontal, the drag on the heatshield will cause it to immediately fly upwards from your craft, and you will never see it again.

It seems to be able to withstand an 8km/sec reentry, though -- so it seems like it makes a wonderful interplanetary aerobrake/aerocapture device.