Have the "brick-wall" atmospheres been fixed?

[VincentThacker]

So my probe finally reached its destination, Jool. It came in on a regular intercept path, and I aimed for a very shallow aerobrake in Jool's atmosphere at around 8500 m/s, with periapsis at 195 km. Around 10 seconds after entering the atmosphere, the entire probe exploded.

There were no flames/re-entry effects, and certainly no red overheat bars seen during a regular re-entry (such as from Minmus). Everything (except the MechJeb module) just instantly exploded.

I'm suspecting this is what happened. Does this problem still exist? If it does, is there a workaround (other than Tylo gravity assist)?

I'm playing on KSP 1.4.3, with only MechJeb and other visual mods.

Edited May 19, 2018 by 100055

[OhioBob]

The atmospheres were fixed a long time ago.  Jool was a particular problem right after v1.0 was released, but that was fixed promptly with one of the subsequent releases (v1.0.5 as I recall).  Changes were also made to Eve's atmosphere.

You should be able to aerobrake at Jool, but the safe corridor is pretty narrow.  The margin of error is small.  And, of course, you'll need ample heat shields.

The periapsis that you'll need will vary depending on (1) the entry velocity, and (2) the ballistic coefficient of the vessel.  You'll likely need to determine the correct periapsis experimentally.  I did a bunch of tests on this a couple years ago and determined that the median periapsis was about 155 km, though it varied.  Since then, however, Squad changed the drag coefficients of some parts (pointy parts less draggy and blunt parts more draggy), so I can't guarantee that number is still good.

[VincentThacker]

8 minutes ago, OhioBob said:

The atmospheres were fixed a long time ago.  Jool was a particular problem right after v1.0 was released, but that was fixed promptly with one of the subsequent releases (v1.0.5 as I recall).  Changes were also made to Eve's atmosphere.

You should be able to aerobrake at Jool, but the safe corridor is pretty narrow.  The margin of error is small.  And, of course, you'll need ample heat shields.

The periapsis that you'll need will vary depending on (1) the entry velocity, and (2) the ballistic coefficient of the vessel.  You'll likely need to determine the correct periapsis experimentally.  I did a bunch of tests on this a couple years ago and determined that the median periapsis was about 155 km, though it varied.  Since then, however, Squad changed the drag coefficients of some parts (pointy parts less draggy and blunt parts more draggy), so I can't guarantee that number is still good.

Oh. Looks like the absence of heat shields was the problem. Thanks for your reply!

Edited May 19, 2018 by 100055