Kerbal Fall Damage Question

[MajorGosnell]

So this Happened, https://youtu.be/blYrFnT3qbIMizzie fell 70000m at a considerable speed.How did she survive,any ideas

[Guest]

Kerbals have a considerably high destruction speed. They also have a high bounciness in the rigid body. If you don't know what that means, it sets a bounciness which has an effect on speed deflection and resistance to terrain.

[Retread]

And yet I had a Kerbal fall off a spaceplane - on the gorund - and die in a puff of smoke.

[Renegrade]

And yet I had a Kerbal fall off a spaceplane - on the gorund - and die in a puff of smoke.

Yeah - I had one die from a tiny Mun lander - the slope of the mk1 pod accelerated him downwards at a violent speed, and poof, gone. The fall was all of maybe three meters in Munar gravity. Poor Jeb.

[Retread]

And yet I feel responsible for poor Lexie Kerman's death. It was my greed, more than anything, that did her in. It was supposed to be a simple mission; three kerbonauts and two tourists on a flag planting, experience gathering jaunt to Minmus, the first to use completely reusable equipment. All went well until the spaceplane from Kerblab returning them home had already touched down, when I noticed I had never collected science while flying low over the SPH. Out the hatch goes Lexie, only to fall off the ladder and -splat-. Gone. Sigh.

[bzimac]

Height probably didn't make any difference for landing. Kerbals have quite low terminal speed compared to other objects.

But she was really lucky she didn't overheat and went poof, like that guy at the end.

[peachoftree]

In my experience, their heads are almost invincible, if you land on it the kerbal loses a ton of velocity and ragdolls, landing elegantly in one peice.

[RyanRising]

I don't think I've had a Kerbal pop when landing on their head since around 0.24. That being said, if they land on their feet at a considerably slower speed than I'll subject them to on their helmets, they'll pop nearly every time. I don't know how Mizie managed that.

[Charley575]

I've never had a Kerbal go poof. They just go ragdoll and become uncontrollable forever. What am I missing?

[CrazyJebGuy]

I had the mother of all kerbal fall ...?!?!s. I was making a Sabre replica, and it kept pitching up uncontrollably. So I decided to jump my Kerbal out to see it crash, and at low speed he fell off the barely moving along the runway aircraft, then a wierd sort of Hell Kraken happened. I saw the Saber's nose spinning wildly in some unknown place and blow up, I think one of Jools moons. It seems to like glitching there, because parts of another failed plane I made ended up on sub-orbital trajectories there.

Then it went dark except for the HUD, and nono of the instraments displayed anything. The altitude said: "-------". The Navball simply had "+".

I could remarkably use the ESC keys and change to the KSC "screen" same thing there. Closed the game with Alt+Control+Delete wearing a bomb suit. (Fine, I wasn't wearing it.)

Restarted KSP and it just would not load. Not at all. The loading proggress bar had no file names and just stayed about halfway full untill I gave up, restarted my PC and all was fine, except that Jeb and his Sabre's reamins are spread who knos where, maybe Eeloo or Bop?

[RA3236]

I reentered the atmosphere after plummeting 80 Mm and did not burn up or die at a speed of 1kms landing. Jeb seemed to have a small headache afterwards.

This may be a intended feature, indistructable heads, as it has been around since 18.0 I believe and it has not been removed.

[MajorGosnell]

Is there a way to use thejetpack to slow your descent thopugh.

[Coyote27]

In my experience, their heads are almost invincible, if you land on it the kerbal loses a ton of velocity and ragdolls, landing elegantly in one peice.

After centuries of constantly banging their oversized heads on low overhangs, Kerbals have developed extremely effective helmet technology.

[magnemoe]

Yeah - I had one die from a tiny Mun lander - the slope of the mk1 pod accelerated him downwards at a violent speed, and poof, gone. The fall was all of maybe three meters in Munar gravity. Poor Jeb.

Sometimes its glitch out the wrong way.

Had an kerbal hitting the side of the lander in 30 m/s then tumble slowly to ground and poof.

Sideway movement is far less dangerous, this is realistic, you can survive falling off an motorcycle in 200 km/h if you don't hit anything.

This can be exploited on Mun if low on eva fuel. get airborne, acclrate to 20 m/s or something and just bounce over ground until you stop, repeat this. Takes far less fuel than an balistic trajectory.

- - - Updated - - -

Is there a way to use thejetpack to slow your descent thopugh.

Yes, just burn upward and you will slow down. you can use the altimeter to judge vertical speed. 10 m change each second is 10 m/s.

[Joonatan1998]

Before they added reentry heat it was possible to "safely" land with an EVA kerbal from orbit.

[The_Rocketeer]

This would make a really good Baumgartner Challenge.

[Warzouz]

And yet I had a Kerbal fall off a spaceplane - on the gorund - and die in a puff of smoke.

Same for a Kerbal simply running on Eve surface (not even jumping).

[lost_in_space]

I've never had a Kerbal go poof. They just go ragdoll and become uncontrollable forever. What am I missing?

Try falling down a mountain on Kerbin. They die of carpet burn.

[Snark]

Kerbals can fall out of orbit and land on Kerbin with no trouble.

Fun Kerbal trick for the day: You have a kerbal standing on the surface of Minmus. Go home without a ship!

Turns out it's actually pretty easy. The Kerbal EVA pack is ridiculously overpowered and has plenty of dV for the job. As long as you set your reentry periapsis on Kerbin pretty high (higher than you would for a ship)-- say, up in the 45-50 km range-- reentry heat is no problem, kerbal doesn't even generate any reentry f/x. Reenter, fall out of the sky, land with no problem. Works fine on either land or sea.

[Two]

If you use KIS don't forget that the inventory of a Kerbal adds to its weight. This can significantly change the effect of falling.

[xiej]

I've been able to survive jumping out of spaceplanes at 30,000 feet with the EVA pack, if I manage the fuel right....

[Alastronaut]

I had the same bug when I killed all of my velocity relative to the sun, weird.