Heat shield exploding before ablating

[Warzouz]

I don't use any heat shield for Mun and Minmus return.

[nekogod]

To be fair you're doing almost 2km/s at 15k meters, even if your heatshield was fine, you're about 8 seconds from ploughing into the ground at a several hundred mph

[Kelderek]

To be fair you're doing almost 2km/s at 15k meters, even if your heatshield was fine, you're about 8 seconds from ploughing into the ground at a several hundred mph

I haven't tried it, but I would guess that if the re-entry heat is turned off you would still slow down in the atmosphere enough to have safe parachute use before hitting the ground. I had already slowed down quite a bit before this point. Heat is the only real issue here. I just didn't understand how it could explode from overheating without using up more of the ablator first.