1.4.5 is something wonky with crashing into water?

[Loren Pechtel]

New game, getting some money from suborbital tourists.

I've always had a problem bringing suborbital rockets in smoothly as they don't have the horizontal velocity of orbital ones and thus don't tend to slow enough.  I decided to try a new approach--go straight up and use the engine to shed my velocity on the way down with the fuel that normally would have built horizontal velocity.

The mission is going as expected but I seem to have lit the booster a bit late, I'm coming down a bit fast.  I blow the booster and trigger my drogue chute.  I acted quickly and didn't shut off the engine first--it flies up into the sky beside me.

I get down, recover my rocket and it's tourists and then notice something in the water--most of the fuel tanks of the booster!  It must have come down at terminal velocity, how did anything survive?

 

Stranger and stranger--while I'm waiting for the internet to come back up so I can post this I find another smaller chunk from another flight of the same rocket bobbing in the ocean and I find a lone decoupler on the ground.

[RocketBlam]

I'm not sure what the solution to your impact problem is, but you're doing the opposite of what you should be doing when you come in. If you can't shed enough speed before you impact, you need to make your approach shallower. That leaves you in the air for longer, so the friction can slow you down.

If you still aren't slowing down enough, you can burn retrograde to get rid of some speed. It uses fuel, but not as much fuel as the way you're doing it now. In fact burning longer during the launch, to get that trajectory more shallow, would probably be even more efficient. There's a point at which the air will do it all by itself, unless you have a very streamlined ship (like, with a pointed nose, facing prograde.)

[Loren Pechtel]

1 hour ago, RocketBlam said:

I'm not sure what the solution to your impact problem is, but you're doing the opposite of what you should be doing when you come in. If you can't shed enough speed before you impact, you need to make your approach shallower. That leaves you in the air for longer, so the friction can slow you down.

If you still aren't slowing down enough, you can burn retrograde to get rid of some speed. It uses fuel, but not as much fuel as the way you're doing it now. In fact burning longer during the launch, to get that trajectory more shallow, would probably be even more efficient. There's a point at which the air will do it all by itself, unless you have a very streamlined ship (like, with a pointed nose, facing prograde.)

You misunderstand--I'm landing fine.  While my approach isn't the conventional one it works and costs no more.  What I am not understanding is why I'm sometimes getting back part of the discarded booster.  It should be going **splat**!

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Not sure what your issue is?

Water tends to "cushion" a parts landing, absorbing some of the force; it's not unheard of for discarded parts to survive impact. Not to mention the first parts hitting the water absorbing most of the force and making it more likely for parts behind them to survive. I see it all the time; ram a plane into the water at top speed, and you'll see some parts float up most likely after the explosion. Finally; physics engines aren't perfect; sometimes things are happening too fast during a crash and parts just get "ignored" or left out.

Also, as @RocketBlam said, a shallower trajectory would be the better solution, play however you want though!

[pincushionman]

Somethimes the game forgets to make the whole spent stage go all ‘spodey when it should. I’ve found mostly-intact Mun ascent stages on the ground after I’ve ditched them and left their physics bubble before they hit.

[Gargamel]

11 hours ago, Loren Pechtel said:

It should be going **splat**!

Your attempts at applying real world physics will not work here!

[Loren Pechtel]

9 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Not sure what your issue is?

Water tends to "cushion" a parts landing, absorbing some of the force; it's not unheard of for discarded parts to survive impact. Not to mention the first parts hitting the water absorbing most of the force and making it more likely for parts behind them to survive. I see it all the time; ram a plane into the water at top speed, and you'll see some parts float up most likely after the explosion. Finally; physics engines aren't perfect; sometimes things are happening too fast during a crash and parts just get "ignored" or left out.

Also, as @RocketBlam said, a shallower trajectory would be the better solution, play however you want though!

This is the first I've seen parts survive impact at terminal velocity.

I do agree that in the normal case you want to come in shallow.  However, for sub-orbital tourist contracts it's actually cheaper to go straight up and down, slowing on your rocket takes less fuel than building up enough horizontal velocity for a safe entry of a longer rocket (to haul several tourists per flight.)

[Loren Pechtel]

I just got a look at what might have happened.  Bigger rocket but with the same general flight profile.  I dropped the booster at 1000m and pulled the chutes.  As I was passing about 500m a fuel tank came flying up--it went higher than my contraption.