Feature or bug?

[BloodDusk]

10 hours ago, Hotaru said:

Don't forget that speeds in meters per second are a little deceptive. 120 mi/hr is the usual figure for a (human) skydiver's terminal velocity, and that's equal to about 54 m/s, which is in the same ballpark as terminal velocity for a falling Kerbal. Even diving headfirst to go as fast as possible, a human skydiver can't get much over 150 m/s except by starting at extremely high altitude (e. g. Kittinger, Baumgartner, etc.). So I'd say stock aerodynamics are just about right on, and if FAR is increasing terminal velocity much more than that, then FAR is getting it wrong.

That said, 120 miles per hour is still really fast. I guess a human might survive an impact that hard by a fluke one time in a million (there are recorded instances of people surviving extremely long falls from airplanes), but on the whole it really should be fatal 99.9% of the time. How this applies to Kerbals is a matter of opinion, obviously, but personally I don't see why they should be much different. My strong preference would be to see Kerbal impact tolerance reduced (possibly to something like 20-30 m/s, still a lot but more reasonable than 60+) and then give them stock parachutes. Bailing out of a rapidly disintegrating rocket and parachuting to safety seems like exactly the sort of thing Kerbals would do. 

 

FAR will happily make your Kerbal terminal speed +200 m/s. In my tests, falling from about 4 Km high, they reached 285 m/s.

Edited January 29, 2016 by BloodDusk

[nobodyhasthis2]

On 1/28/2016 at 10:43 PM, sal_vager said:

Kerbals are very, very light for their size, at 1 metre tall (plus helmet) they mass a tiny 0.09 tons, also, their EVA propellant has no mass at all.

Kerbals are draggy, they are a complex shape and their drag value reflects this.

Kerbals have a high impact tolerance, this is deliberate so they can be thrown around a lot and survive.

@sal_vager Thanks for the confirmation. I thought it was working exactly as it should. That massive Kerbal head can reduce terminal velocity to below lethal impact speed 

I am also pretty sure there was a tiny glitch in the ragdoll model that was deemed too funny to fix. Where a Kerbal can sometimes bounce if they impact head first. This was also recorded in the official wiki.  So that pretty much answers the question. It is a feature of dropping Kerbals under perfect conditions. 

On 1/28/2016 at 10:43 PM, sal_vager said:

don't rely on it as while 9 times out of 10 it will work, when you need it it'll be the time it doesn't.

Yes indeed. There is even less chance of it working if horizontal speed is higher. This not something players can expect to always work under normal playing conditions. So they should always pack a chute. Occasionally this will work and saves Kerbals at the last second when all hope is lost. Which is fun 

On 1/29/2016 at 2:26 AM, BloodDusk said:

FAR makes the Kerbals behave more like they should be, but increases the terminal velocity drastically, to the point that you can see aerodynamic effects on the Kerbal. How the Kerbal land doesn't make a difference on FAR. They die both ways.

Which shows the exact final terminal velocity is entirely down to aerodynamics. Change the aerodynamics and the terminal velocity changes. Once again this to be expected. Some extra numbers are in play under FAR. I defer to @ferram4 to give us the juicy details.  

For those those that like to dig deeper into terminal velocity. See NASA explanation

 

Edited January 30, 2016 by nobodyhasthis2

[BloodDusk]

8 hours ago, nobodyhasthis2 said:

@sal_vager Thanks for the confirmation. I thought it was working exactly as it should. That massive Kerbal head can reduce terminal velocity to below lethal impact speed 

I am also pretty sure there was a tiny glitch in the ragdoll model that was deemed too funny to fix. Where a Kerbal can sometimes bounce if they impact head first. This was also recorded in the official wiki.  So that pretty much answers the question. It is a feature of dropping Kerbals under perfect conditions. 

In my tests, the Kerbals have to land on their feet, then they bounce every single time, up to about as high as you can make them. In theory, they could survive a drop from an orbit if they reenter slow enough, but I have no idea how you'd rig a vessel to test that.

[nobodyhasthis2]

15 hours ago, BloodDusk said:

In my tests, the Kerbals have to land on their feet, then they bounce every single time, up to about as high as you can make them. In theory, they could survive a drop from an orbit if they reenter slow enough, but I have no idea how you'd rig a vessel to test that.

They can survive getting dropped from orbital height. A very steep entry does not matter. So long as they don't hit he upper atmosphere too fast. They slow down all too well. As far as doing from orbit speed goes. I don't know.

Edited January 31, 2016 by nobodyhasthis2