Do I need a heat shield for Duna

[rpayne88]

Title is self explanatory. I'm trying to land ships on Duna with DRE. But designing them with heat shields and still landing them is a pain. If I do need a heat shield, can I just use a fairing from Proc fairings instead of the ablatives? I want to land a few of my ships on their sides, so I need to protect the landing gear.

[Captain Sierra]

I have found that landing o Duna from a low orbit (50-75km up) results in little to no re-entry effects (stock, dunno about DRE). I think you can get away with no heat shield. Also, fairings, I believe, do not have higher heat tolerances than anything else (only the ablatives do). Their effectiveness (aside from attractiveness) is only with FAR.

[plainawesome]

If you can slow yourself down well enough before or while you re-enter, you might make it, but this is DRE we are talking about so you could quicksave and then YOLO it.

[Specialist290]

I've done a few Duna landings with DRE before, and I can confirm that if you're coming in from a decently low orbit, you don't really even need a heat shield at all unless you plan on doing some aerobraking as part of your initial orbital capture.