Need Help please, stuck in orbit coz of no heat shield and overheated parachute

[01_pollux]

I have four tourist on board and while coming back to kerbine i found out i dont have heat shield ,  firstly the engine overheated and exploded some how everybody survived but secondly my parachute doest deploy beacuse of overheating . i do not know what to do know, i need help , please   http://imgur.com/a/YLrkV

 

Edit:

http://imgur.com/a/jxx31  Map view.     As you can see my path(v at peri is 3000m/s in this path) , if i could get my orbital speed to 1500 somehow from this path i have i could make it.

I tried circularising and my periapses speed is still at 2500m/s so i still crash and burn , somehow if i could  get my speed to 1500 or less i would survive .

I even tried to angle the normal and yeah the speed decreases but everything overheats and explodes. Sigh  

 

Edit:   My current engine is a terrier. Air braking from this engine takes a lot of time .   Sigh

Also i do have a last save where i am orbiting minus .with a lot of fuel.  Any ideas?

 

Q: Would i get a slower orbital speed if i hop from minus to mun then to kerbin?

https://mega.nz/#fm/YB4xCKDZ This is my save game file , the toorbitminus file is saved from flight from mun to minus with a manuver to orbit minus . correct the manuver to a position for efficent way back to kerbin (i didnt try hoping back to kerbin from minus to  mun) and do the science stuff in contracts as well from minus also eva for science from minus , and get back to kerbin somehow from minus .

the trying save file is flight orbiting kerbin for reentry.

have fun.!! 

Edited December 4, 2016 by 01_pollux

[Benji13]

Well, if you have KIS installed you can send up a rescue ship with a spare parachute, attach said parachute to doomed ship and deorbit the two separately. Or if you don't have KIS then you can send up a ship with a claw, grab doomed ship and deorbit together. If you choose the second option you will need enough parachutes to land the claw/rescue module and the original doomed ship. 

[diomedea]

If you're playing stock (unmodded), you don't really need a heat shield for a reentry from LKO. But your vessel shape and Center of Mass (CoM) could help or hinder.

If your vessel is thin and long, pointing it retrograde (as understand from the engine overheating first) or prograde would create little drag against the weight of the ship, so it doesn't decelerate fast enough (it would show a very high Ballistic Coefficient BC from the AeroGUI panel). Better to point it normal: the sides, even if not able to stand very high temperatures, can create enough drag and slow the vessel fast enough, so dynamic air pressure wouldn't mount so sharply (that will diminish both drag/lift and heat from attrition) and the final speed would be slow enough to let open the chutes.

The above, unless the Center of Pressure (CoP) is too distant from the CoM, because then the vessel will keep orienting with the CoM prograde of the CoP (we have no means to see the CoP in KSP, but it is generally close to the Center of Lift). In that case, once the dynamic pressure mounts enough, the rotation caused by pressure on the CoP would become too high to be kept in check by any of the attitude control systems aboard. Then, if you have means to reduce the mass of the vessel (staging the engine?) could move the CoM and reduce that rotational force, or even lower the total mass to let drag from the bottom be enough to slow to chute opening speed.

Better advice could be given if you showed your vessel (or upload the craft file).

[Kurld]

Sounds like a good time to learn how to do orbital rendezvous and send up some rescue missions.

[bewing]

It sounds unlikely that you can get the tourists back to the ground safely in their current vessel. A craft file or savegame would allow us to be certain of that.

To fix problems like this in a stock game, you need the Klaw. But that is a fairly high-tech device, so you may not have it yet. The most likely answer is that your tourists will simply have to wait in orbit until you have the Klaw, and you can go rescue them. You can use the Klaw to attach a couple wings and several more parachutes to the stranded vessel. That would add enough drag that they could certainly land safely.

 

[01_pollux]

3 hours ago, diomedea said:

If you're playing stock (unmodded), you don't really need a heat shield for a reentry from LKO. But your vessel shape and Center of Mass (CoM) could help or hinder.

If your vessel is thin and long, pointing it retrograde (as understand from the engine overheating first) or prograde would create little drag against the weight of the ship, so it doesn't decelerate fast enough (it would show a very high Ballistic Coefficient BC from the AeroGUI panel). Better to point it normal: the sides, even if not able to stand very high temperatures, can create enough drag and slow the vessel fast enough, so dynamic air pressure wouldn't mount so sharply (that will diminish both drag/lift and heat from attrition) and the final speed would be slow enough to let open the chutes.

The above, unless the Center of Pressure (CoP) is too distant from the CoM, because then the vessel will keep orienting with the CoM prograde of the CoP (we have no means to see the CoP in KSP, but it is generally close to the Center of Lift). In that case, once the dynamic pressure mounts enough, the rotation caused by pressure on the CoP would become too high to be kept in check by any of the attitude control systems aboard. Then, if you have means to reduce the mass of the vessel (staging the engine?) could move the CoM and reduce that rotational force, or even lower the total mass to let drag from the bottom be enough to slow to chute opening speed.

Better advice could be given if you showed your vessel (or upload the craft file).

Yes i am playing unmodded. I have not tried pointing to the normal reentry , hope i will succeed in it.

I do not have any means to reduce the mass of my vechile , i totally  forgot about adding a decoupler to the engine as well . Sigh

her is the pic of my ship http://imgur.com/a/YLrkV

Thank you

[sardia]

Your orbit shows you at 500,000 meters. You're overheating because you are coming in too fast. Reduce your orbit first to 70,000 and circularize it. Then gently reduce your orbit to 60,000 meters. That will reduce your speed, thus reducing overheating. If you have spare fuel, fire your engine when you're about to over heat. That should slow you down and solve it. 

[01_pollux]

1 hour ago, sardia said:

Your orbit shows you at 500,000 meters. You're overheating because you are coming in too fast. Reduce your orbit first to 70,000 and circularize it. Then gently reduce your orbit to 60,000 meters. That will reduce your speed, thus reducing overheating. If you have spare fuel, fire your engine when you're about to over heat. That should slow you down and solve it. 

I tried what you said but i dont have enough fuel to circularizee so i made it till 60k-300k still my parachute is heating and not deploying , i just crash and die.

[AeroGav]

This is why Aviation   or   Flight Control  are things I beeline in career mode.  They are both level 4 techs (science cost 45)  ie very cheap and either tech will unlock steerable fins.        If your vessel had those it would be extremely easy to recover your vessel, because you hold the body at an angle off prograde to generate lift and drag, thus be slow enough to open your chutes before hitting the ground.

Nobody ever does of course because they're building rockets right, don't need no damn "airplane stuff".

I want to have steerable fins as soon as i've graduated from Flea + Capsule.  As soon as you start doing sub orbital flights you'll realize their value.  No matter how insane the trajectory - straight up and straight back down - you can pull out of the dive and pop the chute.

Like i said, both techs give you steerable fins. 

Aviation also gives you the rest of the things you need for basic aircraft (jet engines, wheels, wings and a cockpit).

Flight control only gives you fins but does also unlock the small reaction wheel.

Reaction wheels, engine gimbal and RCS are no substitute for fins on re-entry.   As you get deeper into the atmosphere the aerodynamic forces pushing you back on to prograde get stronger and stronger,  reaction wheels, rcs , and gimbal will not be able to keep up.   Fins just get stronger with increasing air pressure.

[sal_vager]

I think you will struggle to re-enter safely with that craft, the pod can take the heat if it's re-entering blunt end first but the other parts are not as tolerant, you really needed that heat shield.

But it might be possible, first you need to get into as low an orbit as possible, with as little fuel as possible.

Luckily this is the easy part, when you're at apoapsis burn retrograde so your periapsis grazes Kerbins atmosphere, I'd not go lower than 65km, 68km would be safer, at that altitude you will gradually aerobrake without overheating, lowering your apoapsis with every orbit.

Many orbits later, you have two choices..

You can raise your periapsis out of the atmosphere so you don't re-enter, send a rescue ship and EVA the Kerbals over, don't forget the heat shield, or...

Re-enter, burning all your remaining fuel to slow yourself down, the less time you spend at high speed in the upper atmosphere the less heat you'll have to deal with, and the thicker lower atmosphere will have enough time to slow you so you can open the parachutes, don't open the parachutes early, they should be set to open when safe but if they aren't then wait for the icons to turn white.

Good luck!

[sardia]

1 hour ago, 01_pollux said:

I tried what you said but i dont have enough fuel to circularizee so i made it till 60k-300k still my parachute is heating and not deploying , i just crash and die.

Plan B. Get out and push. 

Jeb has an Eva suit that can fly around. Point your rocket as if you're trying to circularize down to 75km orbit. If you run low on Eva fuel, reenter your craft, and it will refill. Fly to the engine and for into it, hold down the EVA jets. You'll notice the orbit will shift as if you fired your engines. 

Then point retrograde to reenter. Whenever you get too hot, fire your engines. You should be able to slow down to the magic number, 250 m/s, which lets you deploy parachutes safely. 

 

Don't forget to change your parachute so that it deploys at 5000 meters instead of 1000 metres. 

 

Pro tip: quick save if your friend. 

Edited December 3, 2016 by sardia

[bewing]

There is one trick that still might save you. You definitely have enough parachutes to get to the ground safely if they will just open. To get them to open, you need to slow down more during your reentry. To slow down more during your reentry, you need more drag. To get more drag, you need to spin your ship.  I see you have solar panels, so you have an infinite amount of electricity available to make your ship spin.

The point is that your ship will naturally try to orient itself into a low-drag position as it enters the atmosphere, and you absolutely must prevent this from happening.

Do not burn any fuel that you don't have to -- set your orbit to have a Pe around 62 to 65km. . Hold down the "A" key to start your ship rotating. Keep holding the key down until you are rotating really fast. Then enter the atmosphere. The spinning will distribute the heat to help keep parts from blowing up. But part of the time while your ship is rotating, it will be pointing sideways and it will lose a lot of speed. As your ship spins, you need to watch the navball to see which direction it is moving. Then touch the proper keys to make it spin more in the direction it is already going.

There is usually a limit to this. Eventually you will get so far down into the atmosphere that your ship will stop spinning no matter what key you push. Your ship will flip to going engine first. This should happen below 15km altitude, if you did your spinning correctly. Then burn all the fuel you have remaining. This will slow you down enough that your parachutes will open.

 

[Reactordrone]

Even if you manage to avoid any heat related explosions on the way down that ship doesn't have enough drag to slow down to safe chute deployment speed and it'll just dive into the ground (forwards or backwards). You can add airbrakes near the command pod to get a usable craft but you'll have to claw on to that ship and transfer the crew to save the tourists from that ship.

[Jestersage]

Think he can do airbrake at 55k? And will that work with Mk-1 parts?

[Reactordrone]

1 hour ago, Jestersage said:

Think he can do airbrake at 55k? And will that work with Mk-1 parts?

I re-entered it from a 300-35km orbit with everything surviving while holding retrograde. The main problem comes lower down in the atmosphere where the ship just won't slow down enough so you could leave the airbrakes closed until you were below 30km

[Jestersage]

Just now, Reactordrone said:

I re-entered it from a 300-35km orbit with everything surviving while holding retrograde. The main problem comes lower down in the atmosphere where the ship just won't slow down enough so you could leave the airbrakes closed until you were below 30km

He's coming from mun right? I mean the airbraking you do when you enter Duna SoI, not the use of actual airbrake.

[Reactordrone]

1 minute ago, Jestersage said:

He's coming from mun right? I mean the airbraking you do when you enter Duna SoI, not the use of actual airbrake.

I don't think it could be landed even from a 70x70km orbit without some form of braking (airbrakes or engine) so unless he can preserve enough fuel for that by aerobraking his orbit down I don't think it'll matter.

[01_pollux]

3 hours ago, Jestersage said:

He's coming from mun right? I mean the airbraking you do when you enter Duna SoI, not the use of actual airbrake.

im coming from minus thats y my orbit is so big 

 

13 hours ago, bewing said:

There is one trick that still might save you. You definitely have enough parachutes to get to the ground safely if they will just open. To get them to open, you need to slow down more during your reentry. To slow down more during your reentry, you need more drag. To get more drag, you need to spin your ship.  I see you have solar panels, so you have an infinite amount of electricity available to make your ship spin.

The point is that your ship will naturally try to orient itself into a low-drag position as it enters the atmosphere, and you absolutely must prevent this from happening.

Do not burn any fuel that you don't have to -- set your orbit to have a Pe around 62 to 65km. . Hold down the "A" key to start your ship rotating. Keep holding the key down until you are rotating really fast. Then enter the atmosphere. The spinning will distribute the heat to help keep parts from blowing up. But part of the time while your ship is rotating, it will be pointing sideways and it will lose a lot of speed. As your ship spins, you need to watch the navball to see which direction it is moving. Then touch the proper keys to make it spin more in the direction it is already going.

There is usually a limit to this. Eventually you will get so far down into the atmosphere that your ship will stop spinning no matter what key you push. Your ship will flip to going engine first. This should happen below 15km altitude, if you did your spinning correctly. Then burn all the fuel you have remaining. This will slow you down enough that your parachutes will open.

 

firstly i got down my ship to 60 and i tried to spin normal to radial , yeah speed decreased a little bit but nope everything exploded, except my pilot surviving.

second , i tried to spin from retrograded to normal, same thing happened , ship exploded.  i cant even transfer my crew to another ship , i guess only way out is by a claw, that's gonna take ages for the science.  Sigh

 

is there a possibility that i can attach airbrakes to my ship from orbit?

 

15 hours ago, sal_vager said:

 

You can raise your periapsis out of the atmosphere so you don't re-enter, send a rescue ship and EVA the Kerbals over, don't forget the heat shield, or...

 

My tourist doesn't EVA only my pilot does and i guess you cant do a ship to ship crew transfer as well.

[Reactordrone]

You can transfer tourists through docking ports or the claw so a rescue mission should be possible as long as you have the advanced grabbing unit unlocked in the tech tree.

[bewing]

23 hours ago, 01_pollux said:

i tried to spin normal to radial , yeah speed decreased a little bit but nope everything exploded, except my pilot surviving.

Yeah, I built a replica of your ship and tried all the tricks I know. I was never able to get the ship to slow down enough to deploy the parachutes, without most of the ship exploding.

If you had put at least two little fins at the top of this ship, and replaced two of the radial parachutes with drogues, it would have worked I think.

 

[Gianni1122]

IF YOU ARE DESPERATE.. You can always cheat but thats no fun!

I highly recommend this if you're willing to get a mod:

Install KIS/KAS... With these mods you can perform a "rescue mission" by creating a "rescue craft" to bring an extra heat shield into orbit, rendezvous with stranded vessel, take an engineer on eva and attach the heat shield.

This method WILL WORK and it adds great gameplay elements to KSP. If you're wondering if it is a good mod, I'm sure any veteran here will agree that KIS and KAS are up there with the top gameplay mods available today and I believe they are the most downloaded on Curse.

P.S. I just wanted to add an "outside the box" option to save you Kerbals. You could always make a stock craft to rescue a stranded ship

Edited December 4, 2016 by Gianni1122

[Loren Pechtel]

On 12/3/2016 at 5:17 AM, Kurld said:

Sounds like a good time to learn how to do orbital rendezvous and send up some rescue missions.

Tourist on board--they won't EVA.  If there isn't a docking port on the ship you either have to KIS one on, KIS to fix it or bring it back with the claw.  In a stock game only the latter works.

[AeroGav]

could a really clever person design a "collar" that fits around the pointy end of his vessel, which provides additional drag and which drag forces might hold in place?  Something you could make with modular wing segments?

edit - something like that.   i made a replica of the OP's ship and sent it on re-entry prograde, it did provide a lot of drag but the thing flipped retrograde at 16km / 500 m/s.   Since there's nothing holding it on it would come off at this point.    We were down to 400 or so by the time it stops flipping around, but i suspect this long,  thin, streamlined and heavy craft would simply start picking up speed again once the "umbrella" has gone.

Edited December 7, 2016 by AeroGav

[bewing]

Yeah, the problem is that it naturally flies nose-first in atmosphere. So you can't thrust at the end to reduce your speed below 250 m/s.

[Sharpy]

You say you have "plenty of fuel" in Minmus orbit.

You can do it with "plenty of fuel" but you can't waste it on circularizing. You must use it to actively brake the descent.

0) Still in Minmus orbit: Set parachute 'pressure' to as low as possible, but 'open when safe' or 'when risky'. Stage it immediately, it will open when it can.

1) From Minmus orbit, enter a trajectory with ~55km periapsis. Maybe 52 or so, but no lower. Aim for as optimal burn as you can, wasting as little fuel as you can.

2) On periapsis pass, orient your craft normal, radial, antiradial, whatever except prograde or retrograde. You'll slow down some, but not much.

3) Repeat 2) - as many times as needed. If your periapsis dips below 50km, perform minuscule apoapsis burns to bring it up again.

4) Observe your apoapsis - when you see the next periapsis pass will bring it below 70km, save.

5) Eventually, your apoapsis will enter the atmosphere. Keep your craft sideways, but as the atmosphere gets thicker, it will force your craft "lengthwise". Make sure it turns it retrograde, not prograde. (that's why the save; you may need to retry a couple times).

6) Burn! Fire the engine and burn *almost* all the remaining fuel. This should slow you down to safe speeds so the engine survives.

7) Due to the craft being so long, you will have trouble turning it sideways. It will not be slowing down decently. Wobble it using the reaction wheels to lose as much speed as possible.

8) At about 10km Terrier still doesn't lose most of its thrust, and with the minuscule amount of fuel you're getting the best TWR. Fire the engine, forcing the craft sideways using the engine thrust and gimbal. Hopefully, it will slow you down enough to open the parachute.

 

Depending on situation, you may want to rotate retrograde and start burning retrograde sooner, if the engine overheats too soon after air drag forces you to turn. Also, move all the remaining fuel into rear-most tank to facilitate it turning retrograde rather than prograde.

edit: If all else fails, leave it in Minmus orbit until you develop the Klaw, then send a rescue mission armed with one.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Sharpy