Will water be "nicer to crafts" in 1.0?

[Fel]

Why should it be? Hitting water from more than about 70 feet up is about the same as hitting concrete, but has no trouble swallowing up large spacecraft.

Mythbusters tested this, and as I recall it is far from the same as hitting concrete.

Yeah... thing about Mythbusters is that they often don't give the "myths" the benefit of the doubt. The statement taken literally is, of course, idiotic... any action that makes water more "concrete-like" takes away more energy than something that is already "concrete-like"; so hitting concrete at the same height would always hurt more. The point was that water isn't going to save you from a high fall.

I "think" their glossed over conclusion was falling on water at some height where water wasn't "lethal" but concrete was, would leave you with broken ribs, internal bleeding, and would likely need to be rushed to the ER... provided of course someone jumped in to save you because you'd almost certainly be drowning..... but you could survive!

In the Devnotes…

Great to hear

[Vallius]

Mythbusters tested this, and as I recall it is far from the same as hitting concrete.

So what was the real distance before you're pretty much screwed?

Of course, as it is now, in KSP 0.90, it's actually safer to smash into concrete.

[Lukaszenko]

So what was the real distance before you're pretty much screwed?

Of course, as it is now, in KSP 0.90, it's actually safer to smash into concrete.

I'm not saying you're not screwed, and I'm not saying I know the real distance. I just remember that they used a big ass crane to drop a dude onto concrete or water, and measured the accelerations involved. Water was always softer by a large factor. I recall the accelerations being in the hundreds of gs (so you're screwed either way), but concrete was always much harder, even going off the scale for the higher falls.

[magnemoe]

Yeah... thing about Mythbusters is that they often don't give the "myths" the benefit of the doubt. The statement taken literally is, of course, idiotic... any action that makes water more "concrete-like" takes away more energy than something that is already "concrete-like"; so hitting concrete at the same height would always hurt more. The point was that water isn't going to save you from a high fall.

I "think" their glossed over conclusion was falling on water at some height where water wasn't "lethal" but concrete was, would leave you with broken ribs, internal bleeding, and would likely need to be rushed to the ER... provided of course someone jumped in to save you because you'd almost certainly be drowning..... but you could survive!

IF you hit water nude this is true. Weaving protective clorhing changes this, plenty of people people who has jumped from +20 meters in survival suits. if you sit inn a pod or similar you are even better of as long as it lands correctly. Us water landings don't need braking rockets like Russian pods need.

The base problem in KSP is that an 10m/s landing might destroy your engine if your legs is weak, in water it will destroy anyting with impact tolerance less than 10m/s