Aerobrake at Eve

[Spaceisbeautifulul]

Just a short question, what is the proper altitude to aerobrake at Eve. Preferably I'd like it to be around Gilly's altitude.

And please don't answer "Oh, well use mechjeb, or this other mod...".

Thanks in advance.

[Jod]

I aerobraked with my periapsis at 75 000m, was enough to keep me in Eve SOI. After that a couple of passes at 78 000m helped reduce the orbit.

The wiki says 72 500m, so I guess around 73 000m will be good enough.

Edited June 9, 2013 by Jod

[PPR]

While I haven't done much aerobraking around Eve, I've done a lot of experimenting around Kerbin. The atmosphere there tops off around 70km and the sweet spot for aerobraking seems to be about 40-45km. Since Eve has a denser atmosphere and tops off around 96km, you'll have to be higher up. Projecting the numbers from Kerbin would give you an altitude of 55km-62km.

[Teirusu]

You could also take a look at the KSP Aerobraking Calculator.

http://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc/

[Johnno]

Keep in mind that aerobreaking depends on your entry velocity, I've aerobreaked at just over 72km on Eve and gone straight through and would've left the SOI had I not done a burn. Same thing for Kerbin, aerobreaked fine once at 31km (into a 157km apoapsis), yet my last time returning from Duna I thought I'd try to experiment with even lower, went straight through at a bit over 30km and had to do a long burn to stay in SOI.

I haven't looked more into it yet but that aerobreaking calculator will likely come in handy. I suspect that the Wiki numbers are for 'optimal' trips where you wait for the perfect launch window.

[Spaceisbeautifulul]

Ok, thank you all for helping.

It seems like the sweet spot was around 70 km.

I got near Gilly's orbit and then it took me only about 300 m/s to get an encounter. (Because of my bad inclination).

Now my GillyTwo mission is all set up and ready to go.

Thanks

[Boex]

It really depends on the efficiency of your transfer. Ideally, you'd hit Eve Periapsis just as you hit your Sun Periapsis, so no fuel was wasted. This means your relative speed will be at it's lowest, so aerocapture is it's least violent.

If you did a terrible transfer when the transfer window was way out, you're likely to be travelling a lot faster than for a perfect transfer, so you need to go deeper into the atmosphere.

Trial and Error is the way of KSP. Try experimenting! F5 (Quicksave) is always useful for trying out new strategies.

[TMS]

For future reference for all atmospheric bodies: http://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc/

[Pugspaceprogram]

It depends on your velocity, if you are stupid and think its funny to crash into jool and then visit other planets at 8.27x lightspeed, i think that 7 km is good for you

[Atanar]

Yeah, you can't really give a finite number. I had to go in well below 70km ( I think it was even less than the screenshot shows) with my big ship at 4,8km/s:

Edited June 9, 2013 by Atanar