Heating

A space station burning up while re-entering the atmosphere of the Earth.

I no longer exist.

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Heating occurs when a part's temperature increases, usually caused by the effects of re-entry or engine heat. If a part heats up too much, it will explode. Most parts can be heated up to 400°C (degrees Celsius) before melting, while Heat Shields can be heated up to 6000°C before it melts.

Causes of heating

There are two reasons parts are heating up:

Traveling at high speed in a planet's atmosphere

This is the most common cause of heating. Any parts exposed to the airflow will heat up, where the speed of heating depends on how thick the atmosphere the rocket is in (higher altitude means thinner atmosphere) and how fast the rocket is moving. The thicker the atmosphere and the higher the velocity, the faster exposed parts heat up.

Consider placing Heat Shields on the area that will be exposed, and make the shielding wider than the widest part of the rocket, just in case the rocket tilts.

Exposure to engine Plumes

Parts exposed to most engine flames will rapidly heat up. The speed of heating depends on the engine type, the throttle it was at, and how close it was to the engine flame.

Engine	Height (m)*	Width (m)	Area (m2)
Kolibri Engine	3	2	6
Valiant Engine	4	2	8
Rocketdyne A-7 Engine	4	2	8
Solid Rocket Booster	6–8	2	12–16
Rocketdyne XLR-105-5 Engine	8	2	16
Rocketdyne XLR-89-5 Engine	8	2	16
Peregrine Engine	8	2	16
Hawk Engine	11	2	22
Frontier Engine	10	2	20
Titan Engine	27	3	81

*data is evaluated at 100% throttle.

Trivia

• Any parts within the heating area of engines will heat up, even if parts are blocking it.
• If No Heat Damage cheat is on or a setting in the blueprint files called heat_on_for_creative_use is set to false, then parts will still heat up if at least one of the above apply, but they will not melt when they reach their maximum temperature.
• Actually, parts melt when the temperature exceeds 103% of their melting point. That means that the actual melting point of most parts is at 411°C, and the melting point of heat shields is at 6180°C.
• In the game code, there is also an unused mid-temperature melting point, set at 800 degrees Celsius.