Kerbin landings, number of parachutes, and decoupling excess parts.

[Skorpychan]

After a deadly water landing, I've discovered that I have no fricken' idea how to get back to kerbin safely, other than plenty of parachute and ditching everything but the command pod.

So, is it worth detaching the fuel tank, engines, and other paraphernalia before hitting atmosphere, or does another few tons not really matter?

Three small chutes, and about 5 tons of weight. Bad ratio?

Did I just forget to hit space again to open the things?

Also, the solar panels vanished on the way down somewhere. Was that drag's fault?

Edited July 21, 2013 by Skorpychan

[stupid_chris]

After a deadly water landing, I've discovered that I have no fricken' idea how to get back to kerbin safely, other than plenty of parachute and ditching everything but the command pod.

So, is it worth detaching the fuel tank, engines, and other paraphernalia before hitting atmosphere, or does another few tons not really matter?

Three small chutes, and about 5 tons of weight. Bad ratio?

Did I just forget to hit space again to open the things?

Also, the solar panels vanished on the way down somewhere. Was that drag's fault?

Really, if you're going back to Kerbin, I don't know why you would need anything more than the command pods and parachutes. So yes, ditching everything is a really good idea. Two radial chutes usually do the job for a command pod, it can survive a ground impact of ~10m/s, or 36km/h, that's rather fast, I wouldn't recommend faster. And if you don't see the chutes opening, then yeah, you likely didn't open them. And even at 0.01atm, I think 2km/s winds are strong enough to destroy a bunch of solar panels, those aren't made of steel (yet).

[Benie]

A picture of your craft before de-orbiting would be nice.

If it's a Command Pod, make sure that's the only thing that's de-orbiting when it comes to Kerbin.

And if you're using retractable Solar Panels, make sure they're retracted before de-orbiting. The only time I use those panels, are Space Stations/Probes/Habitation Modules.

Edited July 20, 2013 by Benie

[Skorpychan]

http://24.media.tumblr.com/569a8a00aeefffeeccc8118a2465b2a4/tumblr_mq8mc3fIiX1rsdl57o1_500.png

http://31.media.tumblr.com/bccabb9dd511dcd928cb71cacaa73367/tumblr_mq8mc3fIiX1rsdl57o2_500.png

Those are the best ones I have of it. That's basically all I de-orbited with; fuel tanks completely empty, next to no RCS left.

Do radial chutes work when attached to vertical surfaces, then?

[stupid_chris]

Radial chutes work attached to any surface. If you want to calculate the speed you'll land at, you can use those charts:

[Skorpychan]

What's a parachute mass fraction when it's at home?

More numbers I haven't paid attention to?

[Geschosskopf]

Some kind soul made a parachute-calculating web site that tells you how many of what type of chute you need to land a ship of a given mass on any planet with an atmosphere. Check it out:

http://ksp.freeiz.com/

But in general...

• A 1-man capsule by itself is fine with just the small, uncolored Mk-16 nose chute
  
• A 3-man capsule by itself is fine with just the blue-tip Mk-16XL nose chute
  
• A 909 engine and lander-sized fuel tank comb is fine with a Mk-16XL nose chute
  
• Radial chutes are equivalent to Mk-16, so anything that needs a single blue-tip needs 2 radials.
  
• The Mx25 is just a big drogue that doesn't fully open. It's not for landing by itself, it's for slowing down so the other parachutes work better in certain situations, like Duna.
  

[sojourner]

Why use parachutes? My manned craft is two stages. The first stage boosts it during launch, the second stage achieves orbit with the crew. I then just do a powered landing with the second stage and can "reuse" it. Better than Elon Musk.

And yes, I hate that KSP numbers stages in the reverse order from the conventional standard.

Edited July 20, 2013 by sojourner