Climb your flag!?!

[SpacedCowboy]

Okay, you're in early career, land on the Mun, plant a flag and it gives you the option of "climbing it",,,?

Is there any benefit to be derived here?  Why would Jeb want to scale this little (what, 2 Meter stick) into the Mun dirt?

[Mako]

I don't recall which update it was specifically, but sometime at or after 1.0 Kerbals gained the ability to clamber and climb. The idea was to facilitate movement around the exterior of landed vessels in conjunction with ladders while on EVA.

Without firing up KSP to test this myself, I'm assuming that what you're seeing is the Press F Key to Climb message when you're near a planted flag. The message is triggering since the flag has a collider mesh just like any of the buildable vessel parts.

I don't think there is any benefit; it's just a harmless side effect of an unrelated system.

[steve_v]

FWIW, Kerbals can also climb other kerbals... dunno why you's want to (I feel a tower-of-kerbal coming on), but you can.

[Sharpy]

The option to climb is available whenever the kerbal is facing *anything* with an upper surface a certain height above the kerbal. It's auto-calculated by the game and absolutely not specific to any parts or objects, just to the current geometry of the world ahead of the Kerbal.

The flag just happens to be the right height to trigger that option. There is no specific reason why you'd need to do this, though it might come in handy if you forgot a ladder on Tylo or something like that.

A more interesting option is "Take down" in the flag's rightclick menu. That way you can remove a flag, you can have a kerbal carry more than one flag, you can set upright a flag that fell over, or move one - and you can avoid cluttering the Tracking Station after your school trip to Minmus is ready to depart.

[LordFerret]

12 hours ago, Sharpy said:

... it might come in handy if you forgot a ladder on Tylo or something like that.

! Never thought of that. Handy. Added to the list of 'stuff'.

[Firemetal]

Yeah you can climb anything. Ladders aren't an exception.

Fire

[DoctorDavinci]

13 hours ago, steve_v said:

FWIW, Kerbals can also climb other kerbals... dunno why you's want to (I feel a tower-of-kerbal coming on), but you can.

Hmmm .... sounds like an interesting challenge 

[Mako]

Today I learned...

Thanks @Sharpy.

I always appreciate insight into the inner workings of systems, Kerbal or otherwise.