Are Kerbals invincible?

[Giacomo]

I went EVA on one of my rocets at 3000 metres. The Kerbal hit the ground at over 250 m/s, and survived. How?!

[EditorRUS]

Their spacesuits are making them nigh invincible. If they are capable of surviving millions of G, they are capable of surviving falling even from Mun too.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I had one smash into the ground the other day, EVA'd before my chutes fully deployed and PAF into a cloud of dust. It was not an orange suited one however....

[Goomblah]

I accidentally EVA'd Jeb during re-entry once - he fell from 10km and survived the landing. Later that day, Bill stood up underneath an aircraft, hit his head, and was turned into a fine mist.

I actually now attempt to land Kerbals on EVA if I forget parachutes for some reason XD
It's actually saved several kerbals, with no fatalities thus far.

[Overland]

[quote name='Goomblah']I accidentally EVA'd Jeb during re-entry once - he fell from 10km and survived the landing. Later that day, Bill stood up underneath an aircraft, hit his head, and was turned into a fine mist.

I actually now attempt to land Kerbals on EVA if I forget parachutes for some reason XD
It's actually saved several kerbals, with no fatalities thus far.[/QUOTE]

This :) Ive had same... Was repairing a wheel on a 40 class loco.. Something clipped the kerbal and it was like the loco hit the sanders.. Alas it wasnt.. Poor train was left idling without a crew in the middle of nowhere..

But reentry..falling from space.. Nope no problem there :)

[Floker]

I remember entering the atmosphere without harvesting the precious mystery goo. So I thought "whatever there's still time for a quick EVA". To make it quick: He smashed into the water and was pulverized.
It was a quite moderate trajectory from 100 x 100 km orbit though.

But this happened in 1.0.4. Maybe the new buoyancy changed something about that. Should try it "by accident" again.

[ZooNamedGames]

Kerbals are different for some odd reasons. Kerbals have always been able to bounce, seen by firing down with the EVA pack, but now they seem to decelerate faster with it... and they can "bounce" off water like an intake at x4 warp for some reason.

[oriramikad]

Why not run experiments on this? Shouldn't be too hard.

[Aethon]

It used to be the best way to emergency land was helmet first. Haven't needed to try it for a while.

[Bill Phil]

[quote name='EditorRUS']Their spacesuits are making them nigh invincible. If they are capable of surviving millions of G, they are capable of surviving falling even from Mun too.[/QUOTE]

Which makes them more powerful than Master Chief?

Actually, I did make Jeb fall from the Mun, and he did survive. Career mode, too. I think I got so much rep that there were no problems.

[jros83]

I have not played in a very long time, before 1.0, but as I recall, there was a time landing head first from any altitude would save your Kerbal.

[Jeice]

Can confirm. I just dropped Bob from an upper-atmosphere jet going 800m/s at 20km. Jetpack brought him down to 42m/s at the ground and he happily bounced down a mountainside after a feet-first landing.

Still didn't manage to store that sweet, sweet upper atmo science though. Dammit, if Tom Cruise can do it, my original 4 should be able to conduct complex tasks while hanging onto the side of a plane!

[Robotengineer]

In my experience, having the MMU active is enough to survive just about any collision.

[A35K]

To me it seems that their impact tolerance is pretty much random. Sometimes they fall off a landing spacecraft or rover at 100m/s and survive, sometimes they fall a few meters and explode...

[MrOsterman]

So in my career game I've got 3 Kerbals stuck on the mun. I landed a mun base for them to at least work in (and can now probably send a rocket to bring them back now that I've updated my launch pad). But the base was 30km away from their pod so they had to EVA across the mun to it.

What I found was they were good for a single bounce at any speed. After that, it seemed their impact tolerance dropped seriously. My first kerbonaut sailed into the ground at my base at upwards of 200m/s and slide a few KM along the surface without a scratch. She got up, turned around and did another jump back only to turn into a dust on impact the second time. Ditto for another later that bounced but stayed up right enough for me to fire some more RCS boosts. Dust when he hit the second time.

[problemecium]

It's not invincibility, it's the "BadS" trait.
No seriously!
"BadS", when set to "true" in a Kerbal's stats, provides a chance that it will survive any given fall that would kill a "regular" Kerbal.

Also, I've been told, and seem to have confirmed through experimentation, that Kerbals have much better survival rates when landing on their helmets. To make this happen, turn on the EVA pack and then left-click and drag to rotate the Kerbal until it is upside-down.