Atmospheric Heating and Mining Drills

[BenKerman]

Hi,

Thanks to those who helped me with landing on Eve.  Today I finally landed my big Eve Ascent Vehicle on the surface.  yay!  It's the biggest and most complicated thing I've ever landed on Eve (which is the last body I have yet to land and return a Kerbal from).  

Unfortunately, during the atmospheric entry phase, the mining drills that I was going to use to refuel my ship on the surface were destroyed.  They overheated.  This is the second time this has happened.  So far I've tried placing the drills closer to the body of my ship (on the first failed attempt they were closer to the rim of the 10m inflatable heat shield) and I added some small radiators (which were turned on during entry, of course).

Would larger radiators make any difference?  Is there any way to protect those drills?  I see people talking about mining stations and fuel rovers, but I don't have any mod that will allow me to pinpoint landings.  Also, I've never landed a rover on another body, only rockets.

I might just try to land a fully-fueled variant of my Eve Ascent Vehicle.  however, I'm concerned about the center of mass, as well as the extra stress on the landing gear (half of the landing gear was destroyed on this attempt, although otherwise the ship was fine.  just resting on some engine bells now).

I wanted to include a screenshot but for some reason my Xbox didn't send the screenshot to my computer.

Of course, ISRU is kind of a pain, so maybe landing a fully fueled variant wouldn't be that bad, relatively.

 

Thanks,

Ben

[jimmymcgoochie]

Radiators do absolutely nothing against re-entry heating, they’re only useful for dissipating the heat that your ISRU equipment generates. If you want to shield your drills more effectively, put them inside service bays which should protect them as long as you keep it closed, or inside fairings.

[Curveball Anders]

16 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Radiators do absolutely nothing against re-entry heating

Remember radiators can only dissipate heat if the environment is cooler than the radiator.

Otherwise it becomes a heater ...