A silly question about part damage

[Rylant]

Hey all, 

So I am using a few high delta v landers with ISRU and refueling capabilities. If you use them over and over again in places like Duna and Laythe, does going through the atmosphere  to the point where you are seeing overheat indicators, damage the parts at all? So everything survives re-entry, but there was some overheating. Once safely on the ground, have they taken some damage and are that much closer to being destroyed on next re-entry, or if you survive the process, are the parts as good as new?

Rylant

[ShadowMC2]

I think the parts will be good as new. KSP doesn't degrade parts based on how many re-entries you've done. Maybe Deadly Re-entry does that, not sure.

[steuben]

All parts, in stock, suffer from Critical Existence Failure and silly fast Regenerating Health

As long as you don't go past the thermal or impact speed limits the parts will last until the heat death of the universe.

[pandaman]

As long as the parts survive they are not affected and arecas good as new.

[krblman]

4 hours ago, Rylant said:

Hey all, 

So I am using a few high delta v landers with ISRU and refueling capabilities. If you use them over and over again in places like Duna and Laythe, does going through the atmosphere  to the point where you are seeing overheat indicators, damage the parts at all? So everything survives re-entry, but there was some overheating. Once safely on the ground, have they taken some damage and are that much closer to being destroyed on next re-entry, or if you survive the process, are the parts as good as new?

Rylant

No. However, if you have heat shields onboard, it will damage them by depleting a fuel type known as Ablator. Once you run out of Ablator, heat shields become mostly dead weight.

 

Parts (apart from wheels as far as I am aware) can not be damaged without destroying them unless they contain fuel (such as heat shields) in the form of fuel depletion.

 

'But in terms of physical damage, your lander is good as new, just make sure it doesn't run out of Ablator.

Edited May 26, 2021 by krblman

[KerikBalm]

12 hours ago, krblman said:

No. However, if you have heat shields onboard, it will damage them by depleting a fuel type known as Ablator. Once you run out of Ablator, heat shields become mostly dead weight.

Heat shields with no ablator are not dead weight, they are just less effective. They are still blunt which helps with heating (remarkably, a boundary layer is simulted, with pointy objects heating worse than blunt ones). They also have a high heat tolerance, and thus are still useful. However, they will heat up more, and they will conduct more heat to the next item in the stack, but that doesn't make them useless. I've had some designs meant for reuse, where I simply started the shields with 0 ablator to save weight for the transfer.

12 hours ago, krblman said:

Parts (apart from wheels as far as I am aware) can not be damaged without destroying them unless they contain fuel (such as heat shields) in the form of fuel depletion.

Solar panels (fixed or extendable) can be damaged without being "destroyed". Previously, although the part would remain, there was no way to fix it. It was useless, but still on your craft. Now (I have not tried this yet though), they can be repaired with repair kits.

Extendable antennas can also be damaged without being destroyed (unsure if you can repair them with repair kits), and I think the same goes for the scanner arms.

 

[krblman]

39 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Heat shields with no ablator are not dead weight, they are just less effective. They are still blunt which helps with heating (remarkably, a boundary layer is simulted, with pointy objects heating worse than blunt ones). They also have a high heat tolerance, and thus are still useful. However, they will heat up more, and they will conduct more heat to the next item in the stack, but that doesn't make them useless. I've had some designs meant for reuse, where I simply started the shields with 0 ablator to save weight for the transfer.

Solar panels (fixed or extendable) can be damaged without being "destroyed". Previously, although the part would remain, there was no way to fix it. It was useless, but still on your craft. Now (I have not tried this yet though), they can be repaired with repair kits.

Extendable antennas can also be damaged without being destroyed (unsure if you can repair them with repair kits), and I think the same goes for the scanner arms.

 

If Solar Panels are damaged, it will display a message though.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Solar panels (fixed or extendable) can be damaged without being "destroyed". Previously, although the part would remain, there was no way to fix it. It was useless, but still on your craft. Now (I have not tried this yet though), they can be repaired with repair kits.

Extendable antennas can also be damaged without being destroyed (unsure if you can repair them with repair kits), and I think the same goes for the scanner arms.

Yes, extendables can be “broken” (“antenna has been destroyed by atmospheric forces”) say by deploying in an atmosphere or physical impact and can be fixed by L2+ engineer with repair kits (it does work).

If they heat up and blow up then they’re gone for good (game removes the part from the vessel).

Heat shields with no ablator I’m not sure. Although they may provide some heat resistance still, it would probably be insufficient in any situation you need it most I would think. A bit like using up all the friction material on your car's brake pads. Technically the metal backs would still grip the disc and provide some friction but you wouldn’t want to use them in an emergency like that.