Mk12-R Radial-Mount Drogue Chute
| Mk12-R Radial-Mount Drogue Chute | ||
 | ||
| Parachute by Found lying by the side of the road | ||
| Radial size | Radial mounted | |
| Cost | (total) | 150.00 
|
| Mass | (total) | 0.075 t |
| Drag | 0.1 | |
| Max. Temp. | 2500 K | |
| Impact Tolerance | 12 m/s | |
| Research |  Survivability
| |
| Unlock cost | 600
| |
| Since version | 1.0 | |
| Part configuration | parachuteMk12-R.cfg | |
| Semi-Deployed Drag | 2 | |
| Semi Deploy Min Pressure | 0.02 atm | |
| Fully-Deployed Drag | 100 | |
| Full Deployment Altitude | 2500 m AGL | |
| Max. Temp. | 1100 K | |
| Testing Environments | ||
| On the surface | No | |
| In the ocean | No | |
| On the launchpad | No | |
| In the atmosphere | Yes | |
| Sub-orbital | No | |
| In an orbit | No | |
| On an escape | No | |
| Docked | No | |
| Test by staging | Yes | |
| Manually testable | No | |
| Packed volume | 12 l | |
| Stacking capacity | 4 units | |
The Mk12-R Radial-Mount Drogue Chute is a parachute introduced in version 1.0.
Usage
Drogue chutes such as the Mk12-R exist to slow a craft down enough to safely open a standard parachute. They can be partially deployed at a much higher altitude and speed without breaking apart from aero forces and generate more drag during partial deployment than standard parachutes. However, their fully-deployed drag is much lower than that of a standard parachute, often not enough to prevent a craft from crashing on the surface. That means that in addition to this parachute, a second method of braking is almost always required. Two of these parachutes are equivalent to an Mk25 Parachute.
All parachutes currently have four activation stages: unactivated, activated, partial deployment, and fully deployed. A parachute becomes activated when it is staged, or when the "deploy" button is clicked and the craft is in flight, or it is triggered through an action group - the parachute's icon will turn green, but nothing else will happen at that point. Parachutes can be activated only on a craft that has some kind of command unit, so it is sometimes important to activate them before they get decoupled from the main craft.
A parachute will automatically go into partial deployment mode if it is activated and then descends below the atmospheric pressure set in its tweakable values. It will automatically go into full deployment if it is already partially deployed, and reaches an altitude above the terrain that is set in the tweakable values.
Right-clicking on the parachute (or looking at the parachute's icon) will give you information on whether the parachute is likely to survive being partially or fully deployed at the craft's current speed. On Kerbin, this parachute can always safely fully deploy at a speed of around 500 meters per second. Safe partial deployment speeds are quite a bit higher, and depend on atmospheric pressure.
In reality, any drogue chute should fully deploy before a regular parachute even tries to partially deploy. However, the maximum full deployment altitude for the drogue chute is currently 5000 meters, which is probably below the point where you want to partially deploy your regular parachutes.
Usage Details
In the current version attempting to activate parachutes and a decoupler on the same stage seems to be dangerous. Sometimes the decoupler activates first and then the parachutes do not activate at all.
It is almost always useful to tweak the tweakable values on these parachutes.
Pressure
The default .02 partial deployment pressure corresponds to an altitude of around 21000 meters on Kerbin. However, this will not be a suitable value for all craft - testing may be required to determine whether the craft will have slowed to a safe speed (500-600 meters per second) by this point. If the craft does not slow to a safe speed until a lower altitude, the pressure value should be increased accordingly.
Altitude
The default full deployment altitude value for this parachute is 2500 meters. However, this altitude may be too low for many purposes. It is generally recommended to increase it the maximum (5000 meters) to allow the craft to slow down as much as possible before main chute deployment.
Product description
| “ | The Mk12-R is a half sized radial mount version of the Mk25. This "Drogue" parachute is small, deploys high up, and certainly not enough to stop you smashing into the ground on its own, but useful for slowing craft down before the deployment of your main chutes. | ” |
Changes
- Initial release
