Why no Switching to Other stuff in Atmoshpere?

[kerbalk]

Why can you not switch to other craft in an Atmospere? Not like Hot-keying to other craft in range, but midflight, from the map. Is it to stop some sort of exploit? Or to stop accidental switching somehow? Anyone know why?

[Dman979]

Probably a physics limitation, but I don't know for certain.

[Gamera Obscura]

My guess:

If something is in atmosphere, it's inevitably going to reach the surface at some point. Depending on its Ap and Pe, it could take days...or just a few minutes. Maybe they were just trying to protect us from switching away from it and forgetting about it until it was too late.

[SpaceFace545]

I think its because the interaction between the atmosphere and parts is kind of complicated, almost every part in the game counts as a lift surface and they all generate drag aswell, that's a lot of physics processing. 

[KerikBalm]

7 hours ago, Gamera Obscura said:

My guess:

If something is in atmosphere, it's inevitably going to reach the surface at some point. Depending on its Ap and Pe, it could take days...or just a few minutes. Maybe they were just trying to protect us from switching away from it and forgetting about it until it was too late.

That's basically my guess too.

When you switch from a vessel, it gets put "on rails".  When a vessel "on rails" gets too low in the atmosphere (I think at a pressure corresponding to 23km or something like that), it is simply deleted. Thus switching from a vessel below that altitude would simply be deleting the craft. However, when the vessel is above that altitude and heading up on a suborbital trajectory, there are situations where one may want to switch immediately, but must wait until it clears the atmosphere. I find this to be an annoying limitation.