No Controls during Reentry?

[Horman]

Hi there,just finished my first kerbaled flight to space.After the deorbiting burn and jettision of my last stage I recognized some vibrations of my mark I capsule (but looked more like not intended, because the complete enviroment shook too), after some moments, I couldn't control my vessel by myself anymore - but it looked like its been controlled somehow.. it was a smooth reentry - I just had to deploy the chutes...My question: Is this a bug or a feature?

Edited September 15, 2013 by Horman

[JiWint]

I find it hard to control while re-entry too.Navball just points to retrograde (sometimes prograde),and when i try to move,it just jumps back to a retrograde xO

[Jenteb07]

It seems logical to me, when an object falls in air it tends to fall in the direction with least amount of resistance=aerodynamic drag, so when you're ship is pointed in that direction it is difficult to move it out of this least resistance state.

[Skorpychan]

Too fast for aerodynamic surfaces to really work, and you probably didn't have the torque to overcome the friction.

[Temstar]

Did you have SAS on while re-entry? If you do it will fight the aerodynamic forces and result in shakes. After the SAS drains all available power in your pod you will lose all altitude control.

[Horman]

Hmm, Temstar, thats something worth to look for... I haven't opend the resources windows and I was on the night side when doing the maneuvers. I will try to do another testflight to verify this!

[stupid_chris]

You indeed probably ran out of electricity. Then aerodynamics did the job of keeping you straight, sounds normal to me

[Horman]

Okay, I got this verified.After staging my support module and leaving my capsule alone, I was quickly running out of electricity and after gone out of energy i had no more control...okay, lesson learned - i should add some batteries or jettison my final stage later... :)Thx all

[SRV Ron]

There is a problem with the SAS controller of the MK-1 capsule that results in shaking when nothing but a parachute is attached to it. If you turn off SAS in that state, it may spin wildly out of control. If you leave it on, it will quickly drain the internal battery. Solution, orient the ship for reentry and turn off SAS just before staging. The capsule will stabilize from air resistance alone.