[1.12.*] Deadly Reentry v7.9.0 The Barbie Edition, Aug 5th, 2021

[Enorats]

Huh. Well, I've no problems with G-forces at launch.. though my TWR is more like 4.0 which is ludicrously high. The engines in the realism pack are just.. wonky. No throttle control, can't restart them after killing them.. and worse I can't limit their thrust. They've also got all kinds of whacky diameters that don't match anything else which is really making things difficult.. especially since fairings are way out of reach.

My suborbital flights are about as shallow as I can make them, they entire arc is probably 20 times longer than it is tall. I'm not using any sort of engines to slow myself on reentry, I've done done anything like that on a planet with an atmosphere before. Is that something I should be doing with deadly reentry?

[Starwaster]

Huh. Well, I've no problems with G-forces at launch.. though my TWR is more like 4.0 which is ludicrously high. The engines in the realism pack are just.. wonky. No throttle control, can't restart them after killing them.. and worse I can't limit their thrust. They've also got all kinds of whacky diameters that don't match anything else which is really making things difficult.. especially since fairings are way out of reach.

My suborbital flights are about as shallow as I can make them, they entire arc is probably 20 times longer than it is tall. I'm not using any sort of engines to slow myself on reentry, I've done done anything like that on a planet with an atmosphere before. Is that something I should be doing with deadly reentry?

That's how lots of rocket engines are in real life too. On the Saturn V for instance, 'throttling' meant shutting down the center engine on the first and second stage. They did that when G forces got to be too high. More modern engines are throttleable, like the RS25 (shuttle engine)

Anyway, I thought from what I was reading that you were also having G problems towards the end of your launch while the engines were still going. Sorry.

All I can think of is to try to make it more shallow. Maybe even make the launch a little more shallow so you have a longer trajectory where you can get more aerobraking done in the higher altitudes.

[Enorats]

Well, I finally made orbit and scanned about 80% of the planet over 40 days. Now Val's attempting a 130/120 apo/per reentry. We'll see how that goes.

Yay! She made it! Oh, and I didn't leave her up there for 40 days. That was 4 days. I'm not that mean. Though.. she did land at the North Pole.. during the time of year where it's always dark. I half expected her superheated spacecraft to melt right through the ice with the realism settings, lol.

Edited October 6, 2015 by Enorats

[NathanKell]

Enorats: US suborbital flights had about a 1:5 ratio of apogee height to downrange distance, and even that led to 11Gs on reentry.

As to engines: as Starwaster says, working as designed. You're expected to use proc tanks and proc fairings for LV construction, too, since excepting replica rocket tanks, you're almost always going to want to precisely control your diameter, height, and shape.

[Northstar1989]

OK, so to be clear (because I'm seeing different things about this scattered around). Does Deadly ReEntry still adjust the rate of stock heating for Real Solar System in 1.04? I'm having trouble with craft burning through their heatshields much too quickly in RSS 64K, even on very shallow re-entry trajectories (as in, periapsis at 54 km and little more than a capsule and heatshield in the stack, and it still burns through the heatshield before 58 km and the capsule explodes by 54...)

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

More testing with Deadly ReEntry installed now, and something is *CLEARLY* not balanced correctly for Real Solar System 64K with nuFAR also installed.

I managed to drop a 1.20 meter heatshield with NOTHING behind it (not even a capsule) on a shallow sub-orbital trajectory with a PERI at 51.6 km (that's the equivalent of about a 40 km PERI in stock), and the thing burned up and EXPLODED before reaching 50 km (PERI lowered during aerobraking, of course). That's a 1.20 meter Procedural Parts heatshield with NOTHING BEHIND IT and a full Ablator load at 100% (default) ReEntry heating setting, once again. The G-forces never even climbed that high...

Actual craft are even worse- I had engines, fuel tanks, and a Mobile Lab Jr in a stack all sequentially burn up on a shallow Munar return-trajectory at just 67 km within a couple seconds of loading (after having the craft unloaded earlier in the re-entry, for testing purposes...)

Clearly, something needs to be adjusted so that craft and heatshields don't burn up so easily. In the meantime, I'm using DRE's handy little difficulty slider to turn re-entry heating down to something more realistic, which should not be something I should ever have to do at default heating (that is, the default should not be so much more difficult than real life...)

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 10, 2015 by Northstar1989

[Starwaster]

Firstly, most sub-orbital trajectories don't even have a positive periapsis so I have no idea what kind of trajectory you REALLY lobbed your test craft. What was your apoapsis? What was your velocity? Are you using Realism Overhaul and what other mods are you using? Are you updated to the very latest Deadly Reentry? (7.2.2) (If you had bothered including logs and ModuleManager.ConfigCache I "CLEARLY" wouldn't have to ask because all of this information would be available to me)

Secondly, Deadly Reentry has been tested with Stock (both with/without FAR) and Real Solar System (both with/without FAR) and is survivable with appropriate heat shielding and reentry angles.

It has not however been tested with any variants of Real Solar System (aside from 10x Kerbol). That shouldn't be a problem unless you are

• Not using appropriately scaled heat shields. (which are provided by either using Realism Overhaul or DRE's fallback RSS shield)
  
• Your RSS mod is using a folder/plugin naming scheme that prevents Deadly Reentry from realising that Real Solar System is installed. (necessary for the fallback RSS heat shield configuration)
  
• I can't test with every RSS variant out there. There's not enough time in my day. Sooner or later the authors of each individual set of scaled up planets will have to give consideration to heat shield scaling themselves.
  

Thirdly, (FYI) Deadly Reentry does not have a difficulty slider. That is the stock reentry heating difficulty slider.

Fourthly, you should install Real Heat if you're going to be playing with scaled up solar systems or you should expect to have a bad day.

Edited October 11, 2015 by Starwaster

[allenby]

More testing with Deadly ReEntry installed now, and something is *CLEARLY* not balanced correctly for Real Solar System 64K with nuFAR also installed.

I managed to drop a 1.20 meter heatshield with NOTHING behind it (not even a capsule) on a shallow sub-orbital trajectory with a PERI at 51.6 km (that's the equivalent of about a 40 km PERI in stock), and the thing burned up and EXPLODED before reaching 50 km (PERI lowered during aerobraking, of course). That's a 1.20 meter Procedural Parts heatshield with NOTHING BEHIND IT and a full Ablator load at 100% (default) ReEntry heating setting, once again. The G-forces never even climbed that high...

Actual craft are even worse- I had engines, fuel tanks, and a Mobile Lab Jr in a stack all sequentially burn up on a shallow Munar return-trajectory at just 67 km within a couple seconds of loading (after having the craft unloaded earlier in the re-entry, for testing purposes...)

Clearly, something needs to be adjusted so that craft and heatshields don't burn up so easily. In the meantime, I'm using DRE's handy little difficulty slider to turn re-entry heating down to something more realistic, which should not be something I should ever have to do at default heating (that is, the default should not be so much more difficult than real life...)

Regards,

Northstar

Just FYI the Procedural Parts heat shield seems to be bugged. There are reports in the main thread from other users having experiencing similar problems while the other heat shields work fine. In my own experience, skin temp will cap at a really odd value (like 4 Kelvin) during re-entry and the part explodes very quickly. Noticed this yesterday and haven't had a chance to get more observations.

Edited October 13, 2015 by allenby

[Starwaster]

Just FYI the Procedural Parts heat shield seems to be bugged. There are reports in the main thread from other users having experiencing similar problems while the other heat shields work fine. In my own experience, skin temp will cap at a really odd value (like 4 Kelvin) during re-entry and the part explodes very quickly. Noticed this yesterday and haven't had a chance to get more observations.

That's a symptom of issues with excessively low thermal mass. What's actually happening is that temperature is getting very hot at the start of the frame but then radiating away so quickly (before the end of the frame) that it ends up at 4K, which is the bare minimum possible. (i.e. you can't get to Absolute Zero because background ambient is never lower than 4K)

Other causes are theoretically possible with the end result being the same: High initial temperature with almost all of it radiated away and you only see the final result of all computations at the end of frame. So the part is actually getting much hotter (at times) than you think it is and fluctuations in calculations could be causing it to explode when it spikes too high. I'm not sure how though since radiation happens before the gauge is updated or before part destruction is checked for. But that's what happens.

[PDelta41]

Whatever happened to the expanding heat shield? I've got a few ships that it would work great for.

[Starwaster]

Whatever happened to the expanding heat shield? I've got a few ships that it would work great for.

Look on the first post for links to third party shields. Download the OLDD ADEPT shield. (The original inflatable you refer to was removed due to game breaking issues)

[Nansuchao]

Hello, it seems that DRE doesn't cooperate well with Interstellar Extended.

In one of my ship I had an engine that refused to produce thrust. Looking in the Output log, I found a lot of Null Reference Exception from DRE on that ship (in orbit).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kcstdu0jhh7ry92/output_log.txt?dl=0

[Starwaster]

Hello, it seems that DRE doesn't cooperate well with Interstellar Extended.

In one of my ship I had an engine that refused to produce thrust. Looking in the Output log, I found a lot of Null Reference Exception from DRE on that ship (in orbit).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kcstdu0jhh7ry92/output_log.txt?dl=0

Looks like whatever heatshield you're using isn't properly configured. What shield is it and where did it come from?

[Sokar408]

Starwaster reentry effects seem to be in full effect at 68 km altitude. Is this on purpose, and if so, how can I change it? I'm not arguing its not realistic, but I just feels wrong to be "on fire" before I start to slowdown at all

[Nansuchao]

Looks like whatever heatshield you're using isn't properly configured. What shield is it and where did it come from?

No heatshield at all on that probe, it just need to reach some of the atmosphereless Joolian moons, a one way trip.

[Starwaster]

Starwaster reentry effects seem to be in full effect at 68 km altitude. Is this on purpose, and if so, how can I change it? I'm not arguing its not realistic, but I just feels wrong to be "on fire" before I start to slowdown at all

No, it's not deliberate and by default Deadly Reentry doesn't set it for full effect. I tried to make it start gradual. The only actual aero FX setting that DRE changes is aeroFXDensityExponent.

Open your ModuleManager.ConfigCache and find these lines:

aeroFXScalar = 1

aeroFXDensityExponent = 0.53

aeroFXStartThermalFX = 2

aeroFXFullThermalFX = 3.5

aeroFXExponent = 3.0

If yours have different values then something else is changing them.

No heatshield at all on that probe, it just need to reach some of the atmosphereless Joolian moons, a one way trip.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

at DeadlyReentry.ModuleHeatShield.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

(Filename: Line: -1)

If it uses ModuleHeatShield in the part then it is a heat shield as far as I'm concerned, regardless of what the part says it is in-game.

Something in your flight scene has that module and is throwing those exceptions.

[Nansuchao]

Fairings probably, the stock ones...

[Sokar408]

If yours have different values then something else is changing them.

.

That is the exact values I'm seeing. I wonder why then, when I remove DRE, the effects tend to start at 52 KM, and with DRE at 68 KM.

Edited October 26, 2015 by Sokar408

[Starwaster]

That is the exact values I'm seeing. I wonder why then, when I remove DRE, the effects tend to start at 45 KM, and with DRE at 68 KM.

An error like that is caused by not having resource assigned to the heat shield, and as far as I know, only DRE tries to add heat shielding to the fairings so it wouldn't be that.

I need to see your

output_log.txt file (player.log if Mac/Linux)

ModuleManager.ConfigCache (from GameData folder)

- - - Updated - - -

That is the exact values I'm seeing. I wonder why then, when I remove DRE, the effects tend to start at 45 KM, and with DRE at 68 KM.

What version of KSP & Deadly Reentry are you using? And how fast are you going when you hit 68km?

[Nansuchao]

Here you have: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3t0g9ingtzvqad8/ModuleManager.ConfigCache?dl=0

The output log is from the post above.

[Sokar408]

An error like that is caused by not having resource assigned to the heat shield, and as far as I know, only DRE tries to add heat shielding to the fairings so it wouldn't be that.

I need to see your

output_log.txt file (player.log if Mac/Linux)

ModuleManager.ConfigCache (from GameData folder)

- - - Updated - - -

What version of KSP & Deadly Reentry are you using? And how fast are you going when you hit 68km?

This happening on a simple vessel, with a conic heat shield putting the right away, and ablator working as intended, so I don't think thats right.

I'm using 1.0.4 KSP, and 7.2.2 DRE.

I will add the effect starts at 52 KM, not at 48 KM without DRE. The effect does however start at 68 KM (Just rechecked). I'm going about 3.2 KM/sec when reentrying.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I have been searching for 15 mins now for some file server to host the files for you, and I can't find one that doesn't look shady as ..... Mega doesn't work, Uploaded won't let me make an account. You got a place where I can upload it to?

[Starwaster]

Here you have: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3t0g9ingtzvqad8/ModuleManager.ConfigCache?dl=0

Ok, the fairings don't even have ModuleHeatShield nor any resources assigned... either because the config files are from a mismatched DRE version or because other config files from other mods have modified those parts. I'm unaware of any other mod that would remove the heat shield from those parts.

I also notice that the plugin itself shows signs of having been tampered with.

Finally, I see that several B9 parts are using outdated configurations for ModuleHeatShield.

Either of these last two items are possible causes for for the problem you're experiencing so I'm going to have to decline to provide further support on this

(the heat shield configuration issue because other mods are providing those configs and the plugin issue because I can't support a modified version of the plugin. Sorry)

The output log is from the post above.

Oops that's right, I was just looking at it. Sorry about that.

[Sokar408]

Ok, the fairings don't even have ModuleHeatShield nor any resources assigned... either because the config files are from a mismatched DRE version or because other config files from other mods have modified those parts. I'm unaware of any other mod that would remove the heat shield from those parts.

I also notice that the plugin itself shows signs of having been tampered with.

Finally, I see that several B9 parts are using outdated configurations for ModuleHeatShield.

Either of these last two items are possible causes for for the problem you're experiencing so I'm going to have to decline to provide further support on this

(the heat shield configuration issue because other mods are providing those configs and the plugin issue because I can't support a modified version of the plugin. Sorry)

Oops that's right, I was just looking at it. Sorry about that.

Alright as always it seems I'm incapable of dealing with DRE. Effects aside, aerobraking seems pretty much impossible. I made a small reentry craft, hyperedited it into Jool high orbit, dropped into the atmosphere, and was instantly destroyed at 190 km (that is 10 km into atmosphere). To make my brain stop bleeding, and to actually get to play instead of all this pretesting. Can I delete parts of DRE, and only get the G-force modifications?

[Nansuchao]

snip

Thanks for the help anyway.

[Starwaster]

Alright as always it seems I'm incapable of dealing with DRE. Effects aside, aerobraking seems pretty much impossible. I made a small reentry craft, hyperedited it into Jool high orbit, dropped into the atmosphere, and was instantly destroyed at 190 km (that is 10 km into atmosphere). To make my brain stop bleeding, and to actually get to play instead of all this pretesting. Can I delete parts of DRE, and only get the G-force modifications?

Ok, first, there's two different conversations going on here and you're replying to something I directed at Nansuchao and I think there's some wires getting crossed here.

Regarding file hosting, I use Dropbox, as do many others on the forums, either for sharing log files or even hosting small mods. You get several gigs free.

Now, about using only parts of Deadly Reentry, I can't make that promise but I think that you can probably get away with removing the config files which is where most of the thermal modifications happen. However, Jool is going to be problematic for you with or without Deadly Reentry. That's been a known issue since KSP 1.0 came out and the problem is mainly due to the fact its atmospheric density is the same as Kerbin's and coupled with high speeds and high pressure (if you make it in to any appreciable depth) ensures that you're going to have a very bad day.

That's something that (I think) is getting fixed in 1.0.5 along with the other thermodynamics. You can also fix it by installing Real Heat, which makes Jool more like Jupiter, Duna more like Mars and Eve more like Venus. (though not nearly as much pressure)