Fix Hydrodynamics

[Darthsaber]

We all know as KSP players that landing on the ground is significantly safer than landing at sea. For example, forgetting to put a parachute on a lander will prove fatal if you are landing at sea, but there is a chance that you're command pod will survive if you are landing on land. I think this should be fixed so that water is safer to land on than land, like in real life, and landing on the ground should be more dangerous. Thanks

[rkman]

Also, no parts should bounce eternally on water.

[steve_v]

Yeah, non-crazy water should be stock. In the mean time, Ferram4 has you covered

[Murph]

We all know as KSP players that landing on the ground is significantly safer than landing at sea. For example, forgetting to put a parachute on a lander will prove fatal if you are landing at sea, but there is a chance that you're command pod will survive if you are landing on land. I think this should be fixed so that water is safer to land on than land, like in real life, and landing on the ground should be more dangerous. Thanks

Landing on water at significant speed is just about the same as landing on solid concrete. The surface tension created by the water molecules mean that it behaves far more like a solid in high speed impact, than as a liquid. It is only "soft" at very slow speed. A 50m fall onto salt water results in catastrophic damage to the human body, breaking pretty much every bone, in some cases causing near decapitation (in the real example I'm thinking of, complete separation of the skull from the spine is quite common).

I'm not saying that the current ocean physics are good or perfect, just that it's highly realistic that a high speed impact with water is catastrophically destructive. Fast water landing should never be significantly safer than fast ground landing.

[steve_v]

True, but RL aircraft can 'ditch' in relative safety provided they get down to a reasonable speed and most of that is horizontal... Try it in KSP and the water sure doesn't behave like water.

That's fine if all you do is vertical splashdowns, but what if you want to make a speedboat or a floatplane?

[Rath]

Its simple too. change the ocean to be a much thicker layer of atmosphere, write some bouancy code.

[Murph]

True, but RL aircraft can 'ditch' in relative safety provided they get down to a reasonable speed and most of that is horizontal... Try it in KSP and the water sure doesn't behave like water.

That's fine if all you do is vertical splashdowns, but what if you want to make a speedboat or a floatplane?

Ok, sure, I'd go for improving the characteristics to be less severe for cases where the vertical component of the velocity is very small. Water is much softer in that situation, or to be more accurate the surface tension causes it to act like a lubricated solid surface with a little give, and you hydroplane over the surface until the speed drops low enough to fully penetrate the surface. I've personally landed on water with about 15–20m/s horizontal speed and negligible vertical, after parting company with a boat at speed, without much protection, and it was very wet but not otherwise unpleasant, but I did skip over the surface for quite a distance before going under. In those types of cases, the surface tension actually helps you, as it delays the point where you decelerate rapidly due to breaking the surface and having to push the water aside.

Vertical speed is the main problem for landing on water. Horizontal speed has the problem of abrasiveness, and can be catastrophic if you get something like a wing digging in and causing the craft to cartwheel, but it is quite survivable if those problems don't lead to consequences. I'm not sure I'd call it "relative safety", as there's really a fairly big element of luck involved (and pilot skill), but it's certainly not guaranteed death and destruction. In many cases, ditching has been catastrophic, as there's very little error margin.