My Eve Ascent Vehicle tips over & explodes when descending.

[fulgur]

I've never been to Eve, so I designed this thing and cheated it into low Eve orbit.

It's got about 7.7kms-1 which should do it... but I can't even get to the surface!

it starts out fine doing this...

but at around 60km it does this

and then it explodes. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[JadeOfMaar]

@fulgur Your vessel tips over because your CoM is pretty high up from the shield and the shield is super draggy. By sheer principle, the center of drag will insist on being behind the CoM with respect to your movement direction so your ship will insist on flipping over so the shield can do its actual job of being a super-sized chute. Design your ship with a second giant heatshield on the top and further from your CoM than the bottom shield is.

[Vanamonde]

As JadeOfMaar says, almost all of us  who have flown large ships on aerobraking passes find that additional heat shields toward the back of the craft are necessary to prevent drag from turning the craft to undesirable attitudes. 

[king of nowhere]

here's an example. the backwards heat shields act as parachutes and prevent the craft from flipping. there is also a giant tail fin (barely visible as it's night and i had yet to learn to increase brightness) to keep the lander steered in the right direction. eve's atmosphere is hard, you really need an aerodinamically stable vessel.

[fulgur]

Thanks a lot! Very helpful, I don't make rockets very often.

Now to get it back up to orbit...