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

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

Yep, it's suborbital. I have made the burn partially radial, but I'm concerned that a fully radial burn won't lower the rocket's velocity enough, and it will be destroyed by heating.

A craft file wouldn't work too well, since I have a custom RealFuels engine config, but I'll send pics and see if I can identify any oscillations (can't make promises about when since this is my Finals week).

Jiggling back and forth does sound plausible, since my framerates are fairly bad when reentry or mach effects are being rendered.

UPDATE: here are some pictures.

flight log. Note that in one test I got the peak deceleration just under 8 Gs, and the failure still occurred.

Just after vehicle breakup.

In the VAB. The big blue tank is the one that fails.

I didn't see any evidence of the craft shaking or jiggling.

[NathanKell]

And no wonder: looks like you have a serious size mismatch between the blue tank and the thing above it. Whether the jiggling is perceptible or not, I'm betting it's occurring.

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

And no wonder: looks like you have a serious size mismatch between the blue tank and the thing above it. Whether the jiggling is perceptible or not, I'm betting it's occurring.

You mean the battery and ASAS unit? So would adding some kind of adapter fix the problem?

[NathanKell]

small, light parts between large, heavy parts = BAD.

You don't need ASAS; all probes and pods have it. You don't need reaction wheels; you have gimballing engines and RCS. Just put a procedural interstage between those two stages (or is the top tank just payload?)

[KolourBlynD]

Hey Nathan, since it's been officially disclaimed that ModuleManager 2.1.0 might break some save files, is your ModuleManager you have currently working? It's recommended to hold off upgrading if you use old saves.

[NathanKell]

2.1.2 fixes all that; update to the latest. Next DRE will have it, obviously.

[camlost]

There might be a issue with DRE+AJE, the temperature of engine keeps increasing from 1600 to 3600 then back to 1600 and all again

[NathanKell]

How does AJE modify temperature? DRE will add (some of) the delta between shockwave temperature and the part's temperature to the part, each tick.

[RocketBlam]

OK, I like the idea of this mod, don't get me wrong. That's why I was disappointed when I was able to re-enter with an engine and fuel tank attached below my heat shield. I just wanted to test it to see what happened. Well, nothing happened, it worked like it usually does. I would have thought it would have exploded.

ETA: So I tried it with just the landing pod, no heat shield, and with the periapsis below the surface of Kerbol, and it still survived. Is my install not working? Or does this mod just not do anything?

Edited May 15, 2014 by RocketBlam

[phoenix_ca]

Engines have very high temperature tolerances. But you probably won't be able to get away with that if you were going much faster (like say, aerobraking to land on Kerbin from interplanetary speeds).

[RocketBlam]

Further tests: With a Mk1 lander can and no heat shield, it survived re-entry, although everything on the outside did blow off (including the chutes), from an apoapsis of 630 km and a periapsis of < 0.

[MartGonzo]

OK, I like the idea of this mod, don't get me wrong. That's why I was disappointed when I was able to re-enter with an engine and fuel tank attached below my heat shield. I just wanted to test it to see what happened. Well, nothing happened, it worked like it usually does. I would have thought it would have exploded.

ETA: So I tried it with just the landing pod, no heat shield, and with the periapsis below the surface of Kerbol, and it still survived. Is my install not working? Or does this mod just not do anything?

If you are seeing ablative shield as part of your resources panel then it's working (as far as I know)

I think you can tweak the heating effects by changing the 'temperatureExponent =' setting in the DeadlyReentry.cfg file.

[phoenix_ca]

Further tests: With a Mk1 lander can and no heat shield, it survived re-entry, although everything on the outside did blow off (including the chutes), from an apoapsis of 630 km and a periapsis of < 0.

You are seeing the temperature of the can rise in its right-click window, yes?

As noted above, you could always just make it...more deadly.

[taniwha]

The Mk1 pod has a heat-shield built in. It will survive reentry from interplanetary if you do it right, and even certain values of wrong.

For very wrong (over 10km/s returning from a sun-skimming orbit)... better have your will in order.

[Starstrider42]

I think you can tweak the heating effects by changing the 'temperatureExponent =' setting in the DeadlyReentry.cfg file.

If you don't want to do the tweaking yourself, try http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54954?p=820787#post820787. It WILL kill you if you do things wrong.

[Quiana]

Hi, I've got a small config question. I'd like to take a pod and apply a space-shuttle like shielding to it using DRE so I can turn it into an emergency drop pod. I've taken a look at the config, and while I understand the basics of how it applies ablative shields I can't quite wrap my noodle around how it's applying heat shield protection to shuttle/plane parts. Can anyone point me to the specific area where that is applied so I can mimic it for the pod? Or is it merely just how it handles heat tolerance to parts that is doing this effect?

EDIT: It looks like it might be reflective, if I'm guessing right?

Edited May 15, 2014 by Quiana

[JewelShisen]

How would i go about making a new heat shield for your mod?

[Starwaster]

Hi, I've got a small config question. I'd like to take a pod and apply a space-shuttle like shielding to it using DRE so I can turn it into an emergency drop pod. I've taken a look at the config, and while I understand the basics of how it applies ablative shields I can't quite wrap my noodle around how it's applying heat shield protection to shuttle/plane parts. Can anyone point me to the specific area where that is applied so I can mimic it for the pod? Or is it merely just how it handles heat tolerance to parts that is doing this effect?

EDIT: It looks like it might be reflective, if I'm guessing right?

ablative shields generally have a reflective value of 5%, specify a resource that will ablate away to reduce unreflected heat and resource ablation and heat dissipation curve data.

non-ablative uses a higher reflective rating of 25%. I am of the opinion that space plane / orbiters should have their direction value set to something that rewards a 45 degree entry vector instead of the 90 degree that pretty much all space plane parts use (I think that would be direction = 0, 1, 1 ?)

How would i go about making a new heat shield for your mod?

that's a little too broad. Are you just asking for how to configure it? do you at least have a model and know how to import that into KSP?

Edited May 19, 2014 by Starwaster

[NathanKell]

JewelShisen: do you mean graphically or cfg-wise?

Graphically, it's just a standard part. You can use an animation if you like if you want an inflatable shield.

CFG-wise, you can copy the code from an existing shield. Due to how KSP handles heat (it stores and adds/removes temperature, not heat) the loss rate should scale linearly with the amount of shielding (which should scale at roughly the square of the diameter), and dissipation should scale inversely with loss rate (so loss * dissipation = a constant).

Starwaster: that sounds like the right vector, yeah. IIRC the Mk1 cockpit has that direction.

[Starstrider42]

I am of the opinion that space plane / orbiters should have their direction value set to something that rewards a 45 degree entry vector instead of the 90 degree that pretty much all space plane parts use (I think that would be direction = 0, 1, -1 ?)

Doesn't the direction value represent which side of a part has shielding? A 45-degree angle on, say, a fuselage section would just be confusing.

[Starwaster]

Doesn't the direction value represent which side of a part has shielding? A 45-degree angle on, say, a fuselage section would just be confusing.

Direction controls which way your craft has to face to get full benefit from its shield. most shuttle space plane designs require an entry angle of 35-55 degrees or you run the risk of losing control. let's take 45 degrees orientation as an example (heading is irrelevant in this regard as a consequence of 0,0,1) your shield is only 50% effective for a reflection of 12.5! face directly into or away from your velocity vector or any pitch value of 0 relative to your velocity vector and you have 0 shielding. only a pitch of 90 degrees gives you your full rating of 25%. that's not only unrealistic, it makes things unrealistically difficult. That's why you see people frequently complain about their landing gear burning up. they're trying to fly their shuttle like it was a shuttle.

to put it another way, 0,0,1 means you must face the belly of your shuttle directly into your velocity vector for full shields. as though it were an apollo capsule instead of a space shuttle.

if you know any math and/or programming and look at the DREC code the reasons become obvious. Reflection = reflection * Mathf.Dot(direction, velocityVector)

(pseudocode to boil it down. actual code has more to it but that's basically it)

Edited May 19, 2014 by Starwaster

[Whirligig Girl]

holding down ALT+D+R doesn't work. I've tried it in Space Center and VAB, but no.

[Einarr]

Ugh...not gonna update to latest version due to MM 2.1.0 requirement. I'm still using 1.5.6 because I don't feel like updating all the MM configs I have to the new format...

[Kalista]

Just had an interesting bug happen when I shot a sub orbital probe where on reentry the probe core was acting like it was shielded by the antennae which should have been burnt off. Will post this on FARs page as a bug there as well if Nathan thinks its partly to blame ( since I know DRE uses some of FARs calculations on what it does).

Video (quality might suck since I was testing another mod and edited out its bits since I do not know if the author wants those out)

http://youtu.be/HhEg_qtZEKA

output log

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwYzqg0314S0aHJMTl9Qb21SN00/edit?usp=sharing

craft file just incase

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwYzqg0314S0ckJSbUtLTWZUQlU/edit?usp=sharing

[Taki117]

Ugh...not gonna update to latest version due to MM 2.1.0 requirement. I'm still using 1.5.6 because I don't feel like updating all the MM configs I have to the new format...

You shouldn't need to upgrade to the new format at all.