Water landing and system programming.

[ilja89]

After I tried to build spaceships bigger than rocket for fireworks, I received problem, what if I'm trying to land ship on water using parachutes, ship exploding. Speed is about 6-7 m\s, landing is fully horizontal, and this strategy works well with smaller ships. What I do wrong and what?

Other question, are there mods for kps, what allows to program ships to do anything without your help and control? For example, if we use rockets, it's very useful for first and second stages, they are expensive, and if it's real to return them back and use again, it's amazing.

P.S. Excusing for mistakes, English isn't my native language.

[90VG]

Well, you need to decouple from the bigger parts and just put the lander down.  3 parachutes can land a MK1 and (1/2) person module.  You don't want to land the whole craft yet.

As far as recovery of stages, you can use "Stage Recovery Mod" I guess, I've never used it.  Google:  "stage recovery ksp mod"

If you want fancy landings, you have a few options. (That I know of)

1. MechJeb (for primary vessel)

2. KOS (Kerbal Operating System) (and your own code)

3. KRPC and your own program to control the landing.  (I use this with bigger craft to land on Kerbin, works well.)

There is lots of stuff on YouTube about this.  Check out Scott Manley or Marcus House videos.

If you are just starting the game, you won't save that much money recovering anyways as the stuff is cheap.  Do more contracts and get some $$$ maybe.  I've never bothered recovering any stages, always been pretty flush with cash in the game.  Science is another issue.

The way I have things set up, KRPC is hooked up to a program I wrote.  I descend and try to get to about where I'm going to land, then I press the trigger on the joystick.  That turns on the auto land which will slow me down and hover 10m above the ground.  From there you can steer with the joystick tophat and lower elevation by 1/2 (or double) by pressing other buttons on the joystick.  Cheating?  No, because I wrote the program.   It's just helpful for landing on a specific spot that you want, but you still have to guide it.  One of my bigger landers can't really do a retrograde entry (on Kerbin), so you have to dive down head first, hit the engines, pull up towards target then trigger landing.  It works, whatever.    It's mainly for fun, I could add parachutes.

[Gargamel]

11 hours ago, ilja89 said:

what if I'm trying to land ship on water using parachutes, ship exploding. Speed is about 6-7 m\s, landing is fully horizontal, and this strategy works well with smaller ships. What I do wrong and what?

Do you mean vertical landings with parachutes.   Or are you really coming in low and flat and popping chutes to slow down?  That's fine by the way.   But what I think might be happening is that the entire ship is only doing 6-7m/s, but the front end might be rotating downwards towards the water a bit faster than that (most parts have 8m/s tolerance, some more, some less), and that may be causing the issues.

 

Screenshots would definitely help. 

[Aeroboi]

Pictures?

As the user above me pointed out, impact tolerance values designated in meter per second determine part crashes against the surface (water = surface)

To put things in perspective: If a container ship like the Maersk Alabama travels at 30 knots and you view her in the distance along the coastline it's like it doesn't move at all. Your like, mweeh, "does it take that long to have my toys shipped across the atlantic"  
But if it is a road cyclist zipping across at the same speed 10 yards away from you you'd be like, "whaaat!? Is that peter Sagan? "I wish I would be that fast"

Same is true in KSP. Small ship at 8m/s seems relatively fast in comparison to a bigger vessel at the same speed. The hull of a ship will break at only several meter per second (usually much less especially when loaded) against a solid object whether it's a small fishing boat or the Titanic. At high vertical velocities water works like a wall.  Depending on how you'll hit the water 8-12 m/s is quite a hit actually, and it's very likely things will break on contact with water at those speeds depending on the weight and surface area of the object or vessel hitting it.
Horizontal speed matters much less assuming there are little to no waves, not at all perhaps in KSP although I do not know that for a fact.

Another thing you should take mind of is that your craft might have a very deep draft, so stacks of parts above the bottom parts will still accelerate into the water beyond their crash tolerances until the vessel settles around its floating point.
You can cut the engines when touching the water gently, but within that moment the distance of one or more parts will freefall past their crash tolerance values while on your monitor it may look like your kissing the water. 

Solutions: I don't think parachutes will help you. But if your a para freak it is obvious you want your parachutes installed on the edges of your vessel as it are the edges that will tilt once settling on the surface your trying to land on .

But the best option I would think is using VTOL engines. And when using a VTOL design only kill engine power once the vessel has settled close enough to it's floating point. Which is not when you make first contact but after it sinks slightly into the water.
The best way to minimize crash damage on parts using a floating vessel like a large ship is to use a catamaran system whereby specific stacks of parts used for floatation will hit the water first so that anything above it doesn't crash into it. I use the structural fuselage and mk3 cargo bays mostly for this purpose coupled with Vector engines tugged away in the Mk3 cargo bays to be used as VTOL assist when my vessel gets into the big vessel categories. 

The other reason is that Mk 3 cargo bays have ridiculous crash tolerances that defy normal reality. They have a impact tolerance of 50 meter per second which is close to 200 Kp/h. Because they are also big and very floaty they usually protect parts that will float above the waterline if the Mk 3 parts are used for floatation but the Mk1 structural fuselage works very well to if they are to big for the craft you'd like to use.

 

[ilja89]

Ok, thanks you all, I will try to use your advices.

Vessel screenshot: 

Edited March 27, 2018 by ilja89