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

[NathanKell]

It's in the part if it's a heat shield part from DRE, or in DeadlyReentry.cfg if it's applied to an existing part.

(or DR_B9 or DR_HOME if it's applied to an existing part in one of those mods)

If you lower or raise loss rate, be warned: actual heat dissipation = dissipation rate * kgs of ablative lost, so if you lower the loss rate, you lower how much heat you dissipate. So you might need to change dissipation too.

[Synthesis]

Hey, Nathan, I had a bit of a breakthrough: taking your suggestion, I removed the VetTech file and simply made all the files tech assigned (Specialized Construction, I'm not that creative). And they seem to all appear! Hurrah!

If you put your own tech assignments in the next release, I imagine they'll work.

[p1t1o]

I found a multiplier of 15 to be good.

Stuff that isn't shielded will blow up in shallow entries.

semi-shielded stuff seems to be able to survive if your craft has enough lift (think of spaceplanes).

Steep entries will kill crew due to G forces about as fast as dying to heat if shielded.

The only thing missing here is the ablative shielding being used up if the entries are too shallow.

would it be possible (for us?) to change the rate at which the ablative shielding goes woosh?

Is this realistic?

IRL, speed is preferably bled off at high altitude, where the heat impulse will be lower. If you use up all of your heat shield at high altitude and still burn up, then a steeper entry should kill you quicker and you need a thicker heatshield.

Unless I'm missing something?

Possibility of adding Module[ModularFuelTank] to heatshields so that you can tailor the amount of ablative shielding (with a weight penalty of course)?

[Frederf]

The ablative shield resource has a mass per unit so the mass penalty is automatic if it gets a MFS-style edit option.

I've found the 1.25m heatshield aerodynamics (FAR) very suspect. The part by itself or attached shows a very strong stability toward the blunt end uncharacteristic of a disk. Also there is a tremendous spinning tendency on reentry that I cannot explain. I remember the old DRE Mk1 pod had a small cone of stability blunt-forward and a large one pointy-forward which was quite nice/right.

[Visari]

I actually have not one single idea of the whats and hows of re-entry in real life.

I'm basing my experience on the earliest version of DRE, where the entries that were too steep killed you with G forces, while entries too shallow killed you by burning ablative shielding.

for gameplay's sake, I love this way of having to angle entries and orient the craft to produce lift to skip-entry or stay in atmo higher and longer.

whether it's realistic, I don't know :/

[sidfu]

me i want some inflatable heatsheilds that dont flip my ship. i been using the closing irus sheild for bigger ships

[NathanKell]

To the extent of my knowledge, the total heat load of reentry is more or less constant; the question is how fast it is applied, and how fast it dissipates (for now putting aside the question of a detached shockwave). A shallow approach means the heat is applied over time but doesn't dissipate quickly because there's little air to dissipate it into. So it continues to build in the craft. In a steep approach, there's little heating in the upper atmosphere because you aren't in it long; by the time the massive heating starts in the lower atmosphere, you build up the same heat load, but quickly, and it dissipates quickly because you're in thick atmosphere.

Usually the latter is easier for materials to handle...except that rapid deceleration at the end leads to crushing G force.

The MFS idea...sounds good. I'll add a module for that in the next version. I think I can make it not interfere if you don't have MFS.

Frederf, I've noticed stability problems too. I'll ask again in the FAR thread regarding stability.

[jpinard]

I found a multiplier of 15 to be good.

Stuff that isn't shielded will blow up in shallow entries.

semi-shielded stuff seems to be able to survive if your craft has enough lift (think of spaceplanes).

Steep entries will kill crew due to G forces about as fast as dying to heat if shielded.

The only thing missing here is the ablative shielding being used up if the entries are too shallow.

would it be possible (for us?) to change the rate at which the ablative shielding goes woosh?

I'm going to use this too. Thanks for the in-depth analysis.

[Lucchese]

Nathan I finally was able to record a weird bug im occasionally having where vessels wil explode on load.

I found out I can reproduce it by just "launching" a MK1 pod.

When the movie is done uploading i'll link it here to show you why I think its DR that is causing it.

Here goes:

Edited October 27, 2013 by Lucchese

[p1t1o]

I actually had an idea for a mod involving the ablative resource, I went so far as to approach the author of this mod for his permission to modify his code (no response).

I havn't got very far as I am learning from scratch, here was the idea:

The above plugin simulates a micrometeorite impact every so often, at the moment all it does is display an effect and nudge your ship slightly.

My idea was to modify it to remove some small amount of ablative shielding on impact (and if you try the plugin, my intention was first to reduce the frequency ALOT. ALOTALOT. And put in a minimum altitude...).

The second part I don't know if it is possible, but I wanted a part that could be stored on the ship somewhere, picked up by a kerbal in EVA and attached to the heatshield - the part would contain ablative resource and could transfer it over to the shield to "repair it". (The hard part, as far as I can tell is making it so that you HAVE to attach the part to the heatshield first)

How would folks react to that?

Boiled down its basically random damage to your heatshield - its not going to mission-kill you at any time, as long as you either have the part on board a manned ship or the ability to rendezvous ships in space. The most its going to do is temporarily halt you at LKO.

PS: if anyone knows how to do any of this easily, pointers are welcome. Or even if you want to have a bash yourself, my permission (whatever its worth) is given to take this idea without notice - its going very slowly for me.

[NathanKell]

Lucchese: tarnation, thought I'd fixed that. But I got it too, so...

[velusip]

Hello,

The default module manager config does not nerf all stock parts. For those who want to extend on the MM cfg file, here are the parts missing an @PART definition:

adapterSmallMiniShort
NoseCone
batteryBankMini
liquidEngineMini
MaterialBay
adapterSmallMiniTall
RCStankMini
Mk1-2Pod
xenonTankRadial
fuelTankSmallFlat
MK1FuselageStructural
RCStankRadialLong
StackDecoupler
RCS block
winglet2
LandingLeg1-2
batteryBankLarge
GooExperiment
linearRCS
advancedCanard
fuelTank_long
ksp_r_largeBatteryPack
adapterLargeSmallBi
stackQuadCoupler
adapterLargeSmallQuad
liquidEngine1
LandingLeg
Ailerons
radialEngineMini
parachute_single
probeCoreHex
adapterLargeSmallTri
RTG
mediumDishAntenna
airplaneTail

[nismobg]

Sometimes i have a weird issue with 1000+ ton rockets, while the G is still in green poor Kerbals die from excessive Gforce. And it between 3-10km altitude, multiple times. Did you change the sensitivity with the latest patch or is it possible to be from the custom cockpits and the position they are placed on the rocket?

[NathanKell]

velusip: thanks!

Where are you trawling that from, because for instance the Mk1-2Pod doesn't exist; it's called Mark1-2Pod. The rest are stuff that was new in .21 and .22. I'll add those parts.

Note that DRE as of the old version 2.3 does have an automatic detection for parts with too-high maxtemps and will automatically rescale them (normally by cutting maxtemp in half). So they are nerfed, just not perfectly-customizedly nerfed.

nismobg: Weird! Press ALT+D+R to bring up the debugging interface, and then right click on your pod and leave the menu open during ascent. What does the G-Force in that right-click menu show? Does it spike very high?

Also note the Cumulative G line. Does it keep increasing?

Note that KSP has...issues...with tracking G-force; I've had five RT-10s launching a single Mk1 pod, and all it said I had was 1.2Gs acceleration.

Anyway, recall that there are now TWO limits for G force. 1 is what your parts can stand (most can take approx 12Gs with no problem), and the other is what Kerbals can take--they can only take a minute or so at 10Gs, and only less than a second at 30+. Further, even 6Gs will cause problems if you keep them at 6Gs for over 8 minutes with no break.

[nismobg]

It might be the LLL cockpit I am using , but the G never went over the green or spiked. Rocket was crazy strong lol, rover felt from 70 000m and hit the KSC at 90m/s and the only dmg it had was 3 flat tires .....

[NathanKell]

Right, what I'm saying is don't trust the KSP gauge. Do what I suggest above and then report the highest the "G force" value in that right-click menu went to, and whether (and when) the entry "Cumulative G" went up.

[JoCRaM]

To the extent of my knowledge, the total heat load of reentry is more or less constant; the question is how fast it is applied, and how fast it dissipates (for now putting aside the question of a detached shockwave). A shallow approach means the heat is applied over time but doesn't dissipate quickly because there's little air to dissipate it into.

An ablative heatsheald also removes heat in four additional ways - melting (latent heat of fusion), boiling (latent heat of fission) taking that heat away as the vapourised heatsheild then leaves your craft (ablating), and finally creating a cusion of thicker atmosphere to push the shockwave further away.

A non-ablative heatshield (ceramic tile?) won't have these benefits, but will have very low thermal conductivity, and high temperature tolerance and high heat capacity.

once you've sorted the detached shockwave, you then need to model the plasma being electorstatically attracted to points and sharp edges, and then FAR needs to model the exciting effects of plasma/frozen air (good luck with that)

Edited October 28, 2013 by JoCRaM

[Kalista]

I'm having the exact same problem out of the blue not long after take off my camera is shifting backwards like theres a center of mass change plane gets wobbly for no reason then shortly thereafter my crews killed by G forces for no apparent reason. I'm encoding the video now with the menus open and will link it here soon as its done and uploaded.

Video no longer needed since DRE was not the cause of it

Edited October 29, 2013 by Kalista
cause of bug identified

[NathanKell]

JoCRam: yup. There is actually support for non-ablative heatshields; the plane parts have non-ablative heatshields on the bottom of the fuselage.

Kalista: that's...really weird. What other mods are you using besides B9? How much pitch were you applying at the time (G comes from angular as well as linear accel....). But yeah, KSP G forces are...glitchy, I'll see what I can do.

[Kalista]

JoCRam: yup. There is actually support for non-ablative heatshields; the plane parts have non-ablative heatshields on the bottom of the fuselage.

Kalista: that's...really weird. What other mods are you using besides B9? How much pitch were you applying at the time (G comes from angular as well as linear accel....). But yeah, KSP G forces are...glitchy, I'll see what I can do.

B9 aerospace
Kw Rocketry
KSPX
Aviation Lights
DRE ( obviously)
Enchanced Nav Ball
editor extensions
FAR
hull camera vds
ioncross crew support
kas
Kerbal Joint Reinforcement
kOS
procedural Fairings
launch countdown
L Tech Science
kdex ( Kerbal dust science experiment)
mechjeb2
Tal radial experiment storage
module fuel tanks v2
mumech sample collector
docking port alignment
notes v2
PAPI plugin
chatterer
Romfarer Lazor mods
mk 2 and mk 3 internals
tac fuel balancer
telemachus
kerbal alarm clock
TV PP
F Science
steam gauges

Before anyone asks no I'm not riding the 4gb limit and this isn't even close to the most mods I have for a single game ( I have one game from the late 90s that size and hardware wise put a bigger strain on my system than brand new games do due to mods)

I also remember it doing that camera shift on one of my probe launches to and I forget what I did to get it to cut it out tho this was before i relized it was DRE applying G forces.

Also to answer your question no I had no control input. I put it in that 30 degree climb took my hands off and left it to do its thing. The control inputs your seeing is SAS going crazy just after the G forces jumped for no reason.

Edited October 28, 2013 by Kalista

[BubbaWilkins]

just watching the numbers, I think it's Ioncross compounding the g calculations. if it was a DRE or FAR related thing, parts of the craft would be getting all explody. Try disabling that one mod and running the launch again.

[Kalista]

thing is I've been running ioncross for awhile now and with no updates on either mod this problem suddenly happend. This save alone I've launched a good 50 launches and only this one and one unmanned probe had issues. I can remove the ioncross parts from that plane and export it to sandbox to see if it has the same issues but the previous design of that same plane ( just smaller and 2 rockets) had no G issues.

also was getting an unknown sound error before that popped up and this is my old design that till that attempt ran fine with all those mods ( save note v2 which is a new one)

Edited October 28, 2013 by Kalista

[jpinard]

I had a Kerbal killed (but he was still available for missions) by just hopping out of the capsule on the ground when I was going to do an EVA in the mountainous regions of Kerbin. It only happened once and I didn't think much of it until I read Kalista's report.

The mods I use are:

Protractor

Chatterer

Aviation Lights

Achievements

Lazor Docking

RCS Sounds

[Kalista]

I'm 100% sure this bug isn't DRE fault or at the least isn't entirely. I've now ran the same aircraft ( mind you its ran with alot of these mods on previously without issue) without DRE,Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and ioncross off and I still get the derpy camera moving like my center of mass has moved for no reason and after the camera moves the second time control input becomes almost non existant ( I can pull full back or forward and it acts like I tapped the key once) . Heck I even reinstalled my version with G forces gone from before nathan took over the project and got the same results minus pilot death. Going to keep stripping mods out till I get to the cause of this and report it to their forum.

EDIT: Telemachus was the culprit soon as I removed it ( along with my modding of putting the telemachus stuff on the stock antennas) the problem went away. For whatever reason it was causing a CoM Shift about 30 secs-1 min into the flight which was causing both FAR and DRE to completely freak out. Anyways thanks for the help nathan and sorry for any worrying I may have caused both this and module fuel tanks are absolute must haves for me.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Kalista

[NathanKell]

Huh! Good to know! Thanks for tracking this down!