immortality of kerbals

[Clear Air Turbulence]

Sorry if this is a n00b question. (I am one ). Searched the forum but did not find an answer.

How come my Kerbals don't die?

I had Valentina Kerbal in an abortive spaceplane mission. The thing ran out of liquid fuel but luckily periapsis was below 70 000. After a few orbits velocity was low enough to ensure we would stay in the atmosphere, but I ran out of electricy. Plane was tumbling end over end at several times the speed of sound for a very long time. Eventually I decided to go EVA with Valentina just as an experiment. The whole thing was a disaster anyway. V stepped out of the plane 7 km up and basically fell into the sea.

But when I did an attempted recovery, there she was, ready for more punishment.

Does anything actually kill a Kerbal, this side of lithobraking at 1000 metres per second?

[nigelvn]

Of course could Kerbals actually die, however due to Kerbins athmosphere the terminal velocity of a falling Kerbal is not enough to vaporize him.

If you'd like you could try the same thing at Tylo with probably a deadly ending

[regex]

Kerbals don't ever die for real unless you set permadeath in a new game's settings.

[Vallius]

I still remember how shocked I was when I killed Bill on the Mun, and he somehow got back to KSC within a day.

[Xeldrak]

This is jeb explaining how it works:

[Kaos]

With reentry heat turned off, you can survive a complete reentry to Kerbin. Using the jetpack makes them even more robust. I tested this a while ago.

[Superfluous J]

Thank you for not posing this question: "Is killing your kerbals and allowing them to respawn cheating?"

[regex]

Is killing your kerbals and allowing them to respawn cheating?

It is. No cheating allowed.

[Goddess Bhavani]

Told my colleagues at work "hold my beer and watch this!", EVA from 10,000ft intending to walk on the floats/airfoils, slipped off, fell 10,000ft and survived.

Kerbals don't need parachutes.

[FlipNascar]

You can kill them through overheating. Either by directly applying heat, or as I found out, if the craft is really really really really really hot and then you EVA and tell the Kerbal to grab the ship... Last time I paid attention I recall Kerbals start to explode at around 800 degrees.

[Jett_Quasar]

I'm not sure if it's still the case in V1.0 but if your Kerbal lands on their head they will always survive. I saw a video (I'll see if I can look it up) where a Kerbal reentered from orbit and survived by landing on his head - but that was in V0.90, I don't think they would survive the reentry heating now.

JR