Highest Velocity Atmospheric Reentry and Landing

[Spiz102]

Right, now that we have time acceleration, Ive been able to finally run some ultra high impact velocity tests on the atmosphere with a view to discovering just how fast we can succsefully enter the atmosphere and land, this is ofcourse without any heat loading or g loading restrictions.

I use a conventional rocket and ion engine rig to obtain orbit and then use the ion engine to burn out to above escape velocity and use time acceleration to reach a ridiculous distance from the planet, then burn all the way back in a half Brastrichrone trajectory to impact, tweeking as I go to remain on target (which is quite hard).

I have succesfully reentered to a soft landing at roughly 25kps, although as I was on approach in empty space my crew died randomly:

However I then decided to try again with an even longer run up and an impact velocity of 38kps.

However, due to my rather steeper entry angle and far higher velocity, at atmospheric interface my parachute and engine were ripped off so the pod hit the deck at roughly 200m/s, which is depressingly sufficiently slow that parachute deployment would have been possible if it had remained attached to the craft.

So how can you do?

The challenge is to hit the atmosphere at the highest possible velocity and reach the ground safely with the pod intact, I will take images of the pod swinging sedately under the chute.

Allowable parts are:

Stock, Wobbly Rockets, a wierd triple chute I picked up somewhere and the MMI Ion Engine.

[Spiz102]

Noone fancy taking up the challenge of calculating a precision shallow approach?

[illectro]

Prior to the redesign of the atmosphere model I verified that the highest possible re-entry speed was somewhere between 23 and 25km/sec - beyond that the chute would get ripped off (and rockets would get ripped off at even lower speeds)

[Spiz102]

Indeed, I did similar tests myself using an ion drive when I ran the computer for like 48 hours with no time acceleration,

But with our new atmospheric model a shallower approach can survive reentry at higher velocities as the initial deceleration will not be as great.