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EAS-1 External Command Seat: safest item ever?


Klapaucius

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I've been doing a lot of testing of my new hinged craft. I've done a lot of crashing--especially trying to get this 30 segment long monstrosity to fly.  Did you ever notice that Kerbals in external command seats rarely die, even if they hit the ground headfirst at 50 mph in a smoking fireball?  The entire craft can disintegrate, but the Kerbal survives.  And those spacesuit helmets obviously have some impact protection unknown to humans.  Maybe the inner foam is made out of goo.

 

If I ever build a racecar, it will have one of those seats in it. I could get away with anything.

 

 

 

 

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It's not the command chair, it's the helmet.  Kerbal helmets have long been known to be indestructible.  You don't need a parachute if you can rotate the Kerbal to land head-first when falling from great heights.  When in a chair, only the Kerbal's helmet is able to contact the ground so he usually survives.  To kill the Kerbal, first you need to destroy the chair to expose the squishy bits.  Then the Kerbal still needs enough velocity to splat when said squishy bits later impact the surface.

 

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On 6/13/2019 at 12:02 AM, Geschosskopf said:

It's not the command chair, it's the helmet.  Kerbal helmets have long been known to be indestructible.  You don't need a parachute if you can rotate the Kerbal to land head-first when falling from great heights.  When in a chair, only the Kerbal's helmet is able to contact the ground so he usually survives.  To kill the Kerbal, first you need to destroy the chair to expose the squishy bits.  Then the Kerbal still needs enough velocity to splat when said squishy bits later impact the surface.

 

I need to build my ships out of the same material as those Kerbal helmets :)

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On 6/12/2019 at 3:21 PM, TheFlyingKerman said:

Yes. For this reason I only use command seats for rovers.

Seats on rovers has multiple benefits. 
First is the seat benefit who OP found out. An capsule will destroy kerbal inside, the seat will eject him. Granted many of the cockpits are pretty well protected but an seat will eject the kerbal making it much safer during an plane style crash with high horizontal speed as long as the vertical speed is pretty low, this is double true for rovers who rarely has much vertical speed :)

The second is that light rovers has an way higher survival chance because their low weight. With an very lightweight build you can do crazy stuff like hunting for airtime doing crater jumping on Mun, here an lightweight frame will survive stuff who would shatter an heavy rover. This is double true on Kerbin because of drag / weight would give an low terminal velocity. Use an wing segment for body and you could probably air drop it :) 
 

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Tested and yes this works well. 
ex9FxE1h.png
Hit ground below 40 m/s and can just drive away. Main issue is stability in air as it like to tilt in any direction as air resistance is lower, you can however "fly" rover.  Try this with something heavier. 

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20 hours ago, aleis said:

So if you mount command chairs upside down on the bottom of an airplane, can you use the Kerbols' heads as landing gear skids? 

No as they will get kicked out of the seat, this is part of the safety features of the seats. 
Now it was one SR-71 who got serious engine problems at mach 3, how serious: the plane disintegrated. Both pilots was falling free in their ejection seats who had not been ejected. One pilot managed but the other broke his neck during the breakup or deceleration 

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I play on xbox, and I flipped a rover at 45M/s with the command seat as the highest point off the ground, and when it hit, the Kerbal died, but the chair survived, or on another occasion, same craft, same speed, it also exploded. Bug, Glitch, or Xbox, which do you think?

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