How close to Kerbol can you get?

[Nerbal The Second]

I want to do a mission where I flyby Jool and use its gravity to get me close to the sun how close can I get before I start to overheat?

[king of nowhere]

there's no definite answer because it depends a lot on the ship. It's certainly possible to get within 1000 km, which is enough to get the "space low" condition for science.. Not sure you can go below 100 km without exploding.

[Lt_Duckweed]

22 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

there's no definite answer because it depends a lot on the ship. It's certainly possible to get within 1000 km, which is enough to get the "space low" condition for science.. Not sure you can go below 100 km without exploding.

Kerbol space low is actually at 1 million km, not one thousand.

With perfectly ordinary heatshields and radiators, you can get to about 200,000 km.

You can go progressively lower with more and more esoteric heating exploits and get as close as the edge of the atmosphere itself (600km)

[18Watt]

I'm actually trying to get something into Kerbol's atmosphere (600 km).  My first few attempts did not get that deep.  Here's what I am seeing with a marginally protected vessel:

• Unprotected fuel tanks started to overheat below 190,000 km.
• Solar panels were not deployable below 150,000 km.  Overheat too fast.
• Marginally protected fuel tanks started to explode at 85,000 km.
• The Nuke engine blew up at about 80,000 km.
• My heat shield blew up at about 75,000 km, and the rest of the ship blew up about a second later.

I'm sure it's possible to get deeper.  As @Lt_Duckweed mentioned, you can get space low science at 1,000,000 km (one million kilometers).  At that altitude you should still be safe from overheating, especially if you have some radiators helping out.

 

[imcute]

would part-clipped service modules work?idk

anyways,the doors of cargo bays are immune to anything so maybe u can clip a ton of service modules and open them(+additional depolyable heatsheild at both ends!)