I’m trying to re-enter from orbit after ferrying 4 tourists. My general strategy has been to burn retrograde from my periapsis (which is at ~71 km) until the new periapsis is about 35 km. But no matter how I steer, I haven’t been able to get it low enough to even deploy drogue chutes

I also tried a strategy where I put antennae on both of the tourist pods, and separate parachutes on each, and decouplers between the two of them and before the command pod, with the intention of all 3 landing down separately. A week ago, this worked for me on a flight where the tourists only wanted to enter space. But right now, coming down from orbit, every time I try this they seem to crash…but only if I’m not observing them. They come down at a safe speed and the parachutes clearly do deploy, but then upon touching down…they’re not available to collect, and the mission is failed. I even tried switching to one of them, and then the command pod disappeared instead.

I suppose there are two questions in this: (1) how can I slow down a 3 tonne vehicle enough with fairly early tech to safely deploy the parachutes? (2) What do I need to do to make sure I can properly track separate craft after they land down?

Screenshot of KSP showing 9 techs researched, all in the first 4 tiers.

  • Mandarbmax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    Some small wings and control surfaces might help you slow down, belly flop into the atmosphere instead of pencil diving. Maybe glide a bit if you really have to to burn off speed.

    • ZagorathOPEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      I tried adding some wings but they caused the craft to repeatedly flip during take-off.

      I actually had already tried belly flopping into the atmosphere with just the craft as shown in the OP. I stayed that way until eventually aerodynamics took over and I was physically unable to do anything but pencil dive for the last stretch.

      edit:

      That’s how I had the fins configured, fwiw

      • Mandarbmax@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        You will be able to prevent flipping during launch if you either put the top stage in a fairing to cover the wings or if you put bigger wings on the bottom. maybe experiment without wings that are upside down but idk if that is a problem or not.

        Let me know how things go!

        • ZagorathOPEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          I don’t think I have any fairings unlocked yet unfortunately.

          I didn’t see this comment until now, but I did just manage to get it to work after adding radial radiator panels, which I think acted similarly to the wings to add just enough drag to let me deploy the drogue chutes.