How to deal with EVE atmosphere

[doc.sunshine]

Hi everyone,

Im about to deploy a Surface outpost on Eve. the 3 newly recruited Kerbals already signed the contract and understand that this is a suicide mission with no return. Their Life support will be good enough for a couple of years.

Now to my real question. ive done some testing for the eve descent and it turns out that all my probes burn down as soon as they hit the upper edge of the atmosphere. even with a 5m heatshield attached to the rear of the probe. it seems like its almost impossible to get through the atmosphere without exploding. even the parts right behind the shield seem to heat up and explode.

now, the only thing i can think of to make this possible is by attaching radial heatshields to the vessel. i have no experience with them since they never been necessary. Do you guys have some design ideas for your eve landers? im very curious to see how you did it.

[Operation40]

how far are you dipping into the atmo?

to be safe, I start areobraking at 90km is a good start, and use like 10 orbits to slow down. be really careful about dipping below 85k until you've got a low orbit circularized <100km

[AlexMBrennan]

I used a 3.75m heatshield and fairing for my 2.5m base, which ended up looking a bit like this:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=645839170

I tried to lower the orbit as much as possible before entering the atmosphere, and was reasonably successful with a 60km apoapsis.

The fairing did end up heating up quite a bit so I think it probably saved my solar panels from burning up, and I did end up losing my ladders and one landing leg, and it is crucial that you keep the craft pointed exactly at retrograde.

The only real problem I had is the heat shield blocking the engine (using a decoupler will cause debries to collide with the engine, not using a decoupler will destroy the fairing and cause the heat shield to collide with the engine so radial engines might be a better idea)

[doc.sunshine]

i started my descent from about 120km orbit but since im trying to land at a specific spot i have to go down quite steep. maybe that was my problem. although it doesnt really matter because my vessel starts overheating the moment i hit the atmo at about 85km, could be 80 though.


edit: Alex , fairings are a great idea. i havent thought about that. will try it with fairings next time!

[Daniel]

I used 1.25 m heat shield for everything.....even for jools atmosphere

[BOT Kotori]

My eve roundway mission used a 3.75m shield and 4 2.5m shields for covering a landing vehicle of 70T, which mines and converts fuel to fill its empty tank.
I'd say you have to go really shallow into the atmosphere. you can try those airbrakes, sometimes they can function as a sideway heat shield. For easier testing, you can launch your landing stage and send it to Mun orbit and do a deep atmospherical return to kerbin, if it can survive, then you are good to decend to eve surface from Low EVE orbit.