Aeroshells in Eve Entry

[Zosma Procyon]

Will an aeroshell protect a vehicle during entry to Eve's atmosphere?

Edited April 24, 2019 by Zosma Procyon

[Foxster]

24 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

Will an aeroshell protect a vehicle during entry to Eve's atmosphere?

Too many variables to say. Mass, speed, size, Pe, layout of parts inside...

Generally heatshields work well and produce a lot of drag so the craft slows quickly.  

[Aeroboi]

Besides craft aesthetics my experiments (based on heat tolerance values and use) The most heat resistant part is a inflatable heatshield, also a deflated heatshield. If your stack is 1.25 , 1.875m or 2.5m it can rest behind the deflated heatshield. It isn't as aerodynamic as a fairing but not bad and should help your incentive to aerobrake. While it looks ugly I once managed to clip a fairing under the heatshield by dragging the heatshield out, build the fairing within tight margins and then lower to see if it's build right and then repeat. There's a slight threshold at which the point of the fairing goes to far to the top where it will suffer heating damage. That's probably directly under the node when the heatshield is inflated.

Another method I found is that you can place empty 2.5m ablator heatshield within a 2.5m stack to redirect the bow shock if heat cripples away with the checkerboard shrouds.

Besides that the best use are the ablator heatshields and ultimately the fairings. If using a winged craft to aerobrake enough wings and good attitude hold of 90 degrees should be good enough on 2400K parts if aerobraking and a fairing is capable of 2700K. The biggest issue is earo capture which involves interplanetary encounter speeds and is done with heatshields often. Fairings being able to withstand more heat should work better but have a lot of drag that goes with it so you need a wing or rear fairing design or anything else that drags to counteract otherwise your craft will tumble I expect.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Aeroboi

[Laie]

5 hours ago, Zosma Procyon said:

Will an aeroshell protect a vehicle during entry to Eve's atmosphere?

A fairing alone will usually not be enough. Except perhaps when the vessel is really lightweight. Entry heat is a function of airspeed and atmospheric pressure -- if you're so draggy that you already slow down in the thin upper atmosphere, you may not experience much heat overall.

It can protect low-heat parts if your entry vehicle isn't too stable, sways a lot, and tends to expose parts that can't stand much heat and will go poof in an instant. In that case, wrapping said parts in a fairing offers at least some degree of protection. That's pretty marginal, though, and I'd first give the vessel a good sharp look and try to replace the parts in question with something more heat-resistant, or move them to a safer position.