[0.17] Re-entry Heat Module and Mk-1 Pod Heat Shields

[Tommygun]

What about a visible bow shock wave as a precursor to heat and flames.

That way you still get a visual cue when you hit the atmosphere of worlds that have thin air.

[Nibb31]

It should probably not work on Duna because the atmosphere is too thin (I find that any aerobraking only happens when you are at a very low altitude, which is too late to have much of an effect).

However, the effects should be pretty extreme on Eve.

[PakledHostage]

@Tommygun: MrPwner sent me a PM about the work he's been doing to create a transparent bow shock effect. It is a complex problem because he needs to develop a custom transparent texture. As far as I know, the work he's doing has never been done on any other KSP addon. He has made significant progress on it, so we should be able to add the effect soon.

@Nibb31 and Togfox: I will be flying a mission to Duna this week coming up. Probably on Wednesday when I next have some time to play the game. I have characterised Duna's orbit, built a rocket to carry my atmospheric probe there and calculated the launch window. I'll test the heat shield in Duna's atmosphere after I fly that mission.

[AncientAstronaut]

Does this work with 0.15?

Why only .15? Did you illegally download KSP? lol

--EDIT--

ADDED POST:

PH, can you make it so the flames are more surrounding the capsule than on top of it?

Edited October 7, 2012 by AncientAstronaut
Added post.

[Pingonaut]

I'm trying to make a pod that uses side-mounted parachutes and they always don't work. I deploy them between 450 and 395 m/s but they detach when they fully deploy at 500m because I'm going too fast. I use the Mk3 command pod, 3 mk16 parachutes mounted on the side and the re-entry shield. Is the shield overly heavy or something? I don't seem to have that problem without it.

Anyone know of any parachute add-ons that add stronger, side-mounted parachutes?

[PakledHostage]

I'm trying to make a pod that uses side-mounted parachutes and they always don't work. I deploy them between 450 and 395 m/s but they detach when they fully deploy at 500m because I'm going too fast. I use the Mk3 command pod, 3 mk16 parachutes mounted on the side and the re-entry shield. Is the shield overly heavy or something?

I wonder if your problem isn't actually due to the game bug that HarvestR mentions in his most recent v0.17.1 development Blog? It says there that they "Fixed a problem that could cause parachutes to despawn when travelling at high speeds."

Can you post a screenshot showing your assembly? What planet are you trying to land on? How steep is your trajectory? The MK1-2 pod heat shield has a mass of 0.25 mass units. The Mk1-1 pod heat shield has a mass of 0.05 units. Neither shield should affect the opening of your parachute if you open below Mach 2.0. The module doesn't care what speed the chutes fully deploy at. It only destroys the chutes if they initially deploy above Mach 2.0.

Edited October 9, 2012 by PakledHostage

[Kreuzung]

>PakledHostage

There's Tosh's shader replacer plugin which adds a transparent shader (cart plugin does the same for the Truck's windows) which you could use.

[PakledHostage]

Thanks. I'll have a look at those mods.

Mr Pwner is making a new heat shield part using his own transparent texture for the bow shock effect. He's making significant progress on it. Once he's got it done, I will have to revise the re-entry heat plugin module to display his model's bow shock at the correct times.

[Olsson]

Thanks. I'll have a look at those mods.

Mr Pwner is making a new heat shield part using his own transparent texture for the bow shock effect. He's making significant progress on it. Once he's got it done, I will have to revise the re-entry heat plugin module to display his model's bow shock at the correct times.

Awesome! I just have to tell you that this is my favorite mod and something that I've been hoping for since the 0.14 release which was when I started playing. What is the ETA on that part and that update?

[PakledHostage]

Awesome! I just have to tell you that this is my favorite mod and something that I've been hoping for since the 0.14 release which was when I started playing. What is the ETA on that part and that update?

Thanks for the compliment! I have been working on the next update to the module in preparation for MrPwner's contribution to the project but I don't have an ETA for its release yet.

I have also added a "hard-core" mode that will allow command pods with the heat shield attached to behave as a lifting body, like the Apollo capsules did. The mode can be enabled by setting a flag to "true" in the heat shield's part.cfg file. Doing so gives the capsule a 10-15 degree angle of attack and a lift-to-drag ratio of about 0.3 during the supersonic phase of re-entry.

I have tried a few re-entries with the "hard-core" mode's lift effect enabled and it is kind of neat. I've found that it tends to reduce re-entry g's but increases heating due to longer term exposure to high temperatures. I even managed to get a slight skip during one re-entry! That result will probably require that slightly steeper trajectories be used when the "hard-core" mode is active.

And finally, I tested the current version (v1.0.17.03) of the re-entry heat module in Duna’s atmosphere:

It worked as I expected it would but the entry was actually pretty benign… Even though I flew a hyperbolic trajectory to entry, the atmosphere relative entry velocity was only about 1500 m/s. The peak shock temperature wasn’t much to write home about as a result of Duna’s cold atmosphere and the low entry speed. As a result, I now tend to agree with Togfox that I should leave the physics model alone and not set custom constants specific to Duna’s atmosphere. I would have to set the heat transfer coefficient and gamma significantly higher before Duna atmospheric entry would even approach the severity of Kerbin atmospheric entry. I don’t think that is justified.

Edited October 15, 2012 by PakledHostage

[Subcidal]

Oh wow, Bow shock will be awesome.

[Pingonaut]

I wonder if your problem isn't actually due to the game bug that HarvestR mentions in his most recent v0.17.1 development Blog? It says there that they "Fixed a problem that could cause parachutes to despawn when travelling at high speeds."

Can you post a screenshot showing your assembly? What planet are you trying to land on? How steep is your trajectory? The MK1-2 pod heat shield has a mass of 0.25 mass units. The Mk1-1 pod heat shield has a mass of 0.05 units. Neither shield should affect the opening of your parachute if you open below Mach 2.0. The module doesn't care what speed the chutes fully deploy at. It only destroys the chutes if they initially deploy above Mach 2.0.

Temporarily gave up on the design, I'll share the .craft when I try again.

[EvilotionCR2]

What happen when i don't have heatshield?

[Crewman #6]

Excellet Mod and I use it all the time. But I did note that the heatshield on the 3man pod didn't fit exactly well.

So I changed the rescaleFactor from 2.0 to 1.9 | and node_stack_top to 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0

Again thanks for the mod.

[Subcidal]

So I made a little station with docking nodes, The re-entry capsule is mounted ontop of the main capsule, upside down with the heatshield attached upside down to it.

When I re-enter the capsule orients towards a prograde direction, instead of retrograde. Think you can make the orientation system detect which direction the heatshield is facing in the next version? My munar orbital/landing station works flawlessly besides this minor detail. Obviously it dosen't really effect anything but it looks silly as all hell.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Subcidal

[PakledHostage]

So I made a little station with docking nodes, The re-entry capsule is mounted ontop of the main capsule, upside down with the heatshield attached upside down to it.

Maybe you can explain how you mounted the shield upside down? Did you modify the config file, or is there some trick that I don't know about that allows you to mount parts upside down?

[Subcidal]

http://i.imgur.com/dCY7l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/btaQW.png

Two pics to help you understand. And I don't know if you know this yet, It might just rock your world. But if you hit wasd while a part is on you cursor in the VAB it will flip the part around. Hold shift +wasd for more precise orientation.

You can see in the second picture with the lifting stage still attached, The black command capsule (The lunar capsule from the NP pack) is the actual command pod. The white thing it seperates from in the first picture is the re-entry/orbital capsule. In the VAB it's upside down. The heatshield is mounted to the decoupler directly under (Or above) the White re-entry pod. Then a rockomax decoupler is attached to the heatshield, With the ZO2 System and folded up solar panels on it's sides attached to the rockomax decoupler. The heatshield is upside down between these two decouplers.

I tried to take the re-entry capsule off orient it right side up and build it all rightside up, then flipping it upside down again and attaching it, but it seems to make no difference.

If this didn't make sense then I'll be glad to pop open the VAB and take some more detailed pictures, But I think you should be able to get the idea.

[PakledHostage]

I tried to take the re-entry capsule off orient it right side up and build it all rightside up, then flipping it upside down again and attaching it, but it seems to make no difference.

No, I am pretty sure I know what is happening and what you describe wouldn't make a difference if I am right. I'll add it to my ToDo list for the next revision.

Thanks for pointing this out.