What kind of heat shield do i need for Eve?

[GreenLight]

So i just was on kerbal space program and i was going to eve and once i started burning up i inflated my heat shield and my heat shield after a few seconds blew up...

[The Aziz]

Too steep descent?

Heat shield turned wrong way down?

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

As @The Aziz said, you're probably coming in too steep. A direct dive to the surface (especially from a high altitude), usually means disaster. If you look at the thread a little lower on this page "questions about Eve", you might find some helpful info. If this is a manned mission, it's going to take a lot of planning and testing. The inflatable heatshield is great but, if it's a large ship, you'll need something up high for drag (to keep you from flipping and burning up). You'll also need a way to dump the shield (if you have Kerbals; a probe can simply land on it), because they're tough to get rid of on Eve if you play stock. A quick pic to give you an idea:

 

 

Good luck to you, sir. Eve is a blast, but she does not give up her secrets easy.

[Geschosskopf]

On 11/1/2017 at 11:12 PM, GreenLight said:

So i just was on kerbal space program and i was going to eve and once i started burning up i inflated my heat shield and my heat shield after a few seconds blew up...

If you start from a low orbit only 10-20km above the atmosphere, and do your de-orbit burn so you'll come down about 1/4 of the way around the planet from where you do the burn, then all the stock heatshields will work and the choice depends on the diameter of what you're trying to protect and how much mass it has.

At Eve, it's always a good idea to make the heat shield 1 size larger than the actual payload, so a 2.5m shield on a 1.25m stack, etc.  This is so if you're not pointed directly retrograde, the sides of the stack above the shield will still be protected.

The amount of ablator depends on the mass.  The more mass you have, the more momentum, so the deeper into the atmosphere you carry your high orbital speed, which means you burn more and thus need more ablator.  For a very light 1.25m probe lander, you can reduce a 2.5m shield's ablator down to about 180 and be completely safe, provided you land on the trajectory described above.