Maximum G-force a Kerbal can withstand?

[eataTREE]

Hi there. Newb here, just picked this game up less than a week ago and I LOVE it... actually it would be more accurate to say that I am obsessed to a degree that makes me fear for my sanity, but I digress. Anyway, let me present the background for my question: I sent Thoemone the Kerbal to Minimus for Science, which mission went pretty well. I had plenty of delta-V left after ascent from Minimus, and so put Thoemone Kerman into an elliptical orbit with periapsis around 20km. So far, so good.

Then... I got impatient. And I had seriously overdesigned my Minimus rocket, so I had a ton of fuel remaining. And so at about 200km out I decided, hey, let's use this fuel before I separate the last stage, turned retrograde, and burned it off. Yes, that's right, I did a suicide burn, and accomplished the exact opposite of slowing down. Oops, well, I have no fuel left, nothing to be done about it now. Into the atmosphere we go at 2.5km/s straight down. And over the course of the next 20 seconds or so the atmosphere slows me from 2.5km/s to 250m/s, during which time I see the "g-force" meter pin itself in the red at over 20G's. But slow down I did, so I fired my chutes, and splashed down apparently intact.

But... when I hit "Recover Vessel", I didn't get most of my mission rewards -- just the science experiments that remained attached to the lander. And in the astronaut roster, Thoemone is no longer visible. It would appear that he was subjected to fatal deceleration!

So, now I know why they call it a "suicide burn". My question is simple: how many G's can a Kerbal endure? It sucks to send them millions of miles through space, only to have them turn into red goo on the capsule floor upon re-entry -- what's the limit here?

Ruefully,

Tree.

[UmbralRaptor]

In stock, a Kerbal can sustain unlimited g-forces. Mods like Deadly REentry change that. I don't suppose you have any pics of the mission?

[Heimdall5008]

Have you started your mission before 0.24?

I had exactly the same problem. During the update a had a vessel orbiting Duna. It landed on Kerbin and when ever I hit "Recover" I did not get the science for the surface sample, my Kerbals were listed as MIA in the astronaut complex and the lander was gone in the tracking station.

My workaround was to land, save in a new save game, quit to main menu, load again go via tracking station to the landed ship and recover it. After that it worked.