Lin545: This is for Kerbin, this also assumes parachutes are fired out when you instruct them to do so.

Regular parachutes have two opening stages. Preopen and full open. The preopen should not happen behind certain speed or "atmosphere and heat" will destroy it. You can register these maximum speeds doing simple climb and fall tests.

When re-entrying, your total speed depends upon "total vehicle mass" (fuel weights!) divided by "vehicle friction" (based upon any surfaces the vehicle possesses) times "total orbit size" (orbit=speed x body gravity factor, bodies with stronger gravity require more energy/speed to achieve speed of same diameter).

Empty vehicle with large wings will have much better atmosphere breaking than big rocket full of fuel.
Empty vehicle with large wing area landing from 80km/80km, doing "cobra dive" is very easy to re-enter (provided, the weight distribution within vehicle is correct!! or it will flip), than large rockets full of fuel, that enter from Kerbol directly into Kerbin at perpendicular angle.

You should plan your descending trajectory to Kerbin. your descending speed/orbit based upon vehicle, move fuel around to balance (heaviest part tips down), your descending angle and technique (burning the engines at nose pointing retrograde/antiradial, or "cobra" nose pointing prograde/antiradial,or perpendicular rotation or parallel rotation). Rotation helps immensely to slow the vehicle down by increasing drag and to cool all parts equally. However it also leads to shortening of trajectory!

More dense atmosphere means more heat is produced with same re-entry speed. You get more dense atmosphere the closer you are to the ground, which means the more perpendicular trajectory to Kerbin are more suicidal.

Neverless, staying too long in the upper atmosphere layers at high speeds will cause overheating due to atmosphere plasma and lack of sufficient amount of atmosphere for any cooling.

So, given the breaking technique strongly depends upon vehicle mass and drag, the most safe landing is achieved via gliding, perpendicular descending trajectory.

Under observation of everything above, you should reach speeds below 250m/s already as high as 5Km. For very heavy vehicles without much surface area, one can use drogue chutes and A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S to help. Drogue are much more efficient, but have netherless the risk of burning down. AIRBRAKES dont.

tinyE: I never had to worry about all this shit before.

As far as reentry, all it is is my capsule. Something has changed here.

Lin545: Capsule? And what is your reentry orbit total diameter? You can attach photo, if you wish. You sure not have attached heatshield, which adds an extra 1.5 t?

I had all this shit suddenly in my face when I started to experiment at some point, all in 1.0.5. Suddenly whole bucket-o-shit revealed, which I summed up above.

Parachutes will always fail at 300m/s. You should be 260m/s and you should be no way under 2000meters when you deploy them, or they will not have enough time to deaccelerate. Why are you at these speeds ... I have given whole layout above.

If you think this does not apply, then I hope someone else can come assist here.

tinyE: I found a small side shoot, which you may have mentioned above (I'm not good with names) that opens in high heat and allows me to slow down enough to get my main open. It actually looks really cool when my ship comes down with both of them open together. :P

tinyE: I'm on science mode, only had a few launches, and I have drogues. Of course I cheat on points by walking around the launch pad taking soils samples. :P A water samples is like +20. Using the Goo on the pad is +10. :D

As for challenge, in the year or so I've had this I've only ever managed a Mun orbit so just getting off the ground is a challenge.

tinyE: I never had to worry about all this shit before.

As far as reentry, all it is is my capsule. Something has changed here.

immi101: the part about the proper descent path is equally import early in career/science mode when you're just doing sub-orbital flights( ie. not reaching a stable orbit ).
Don't just launch your rocket up vertically and let it fall down. You want to turn the nose of your rocket sideways rather early during ascent. Slow, but steady. So that you produce a wide and shallow flight curve.
That gives the rocket more time to slow down during the descent.immi101: yes, they changed that. They finally listened to the players and made the reentry more realistic and challenging ;)

Lin545: Its time to learn and understand logic behind descending

tinyE: I've been doing that my whole life. :P