How do floating and collisions work?

[Trekkin]

So I've had a bad idea, and like I do with my bad ideas, I'm probably going to run with it. My logic goes like this.

1. we can deal with Kerbin's atmosphere because it has a runway and we can do spaceplane stuff.

2. Laythe has an atmosphere suitable for jet operations, but no runway.

3. The most runway-like part is a wing, and it's relatively easy to crash big spaceplanes gently with hoverjets.

I'm seriously tempted to try to either mod-dock runway portions together after moving them to Laythe, creating some unholy fusion of a pontoon bridge and an aircraft carrier, or just let them float next to each other, overlapping boards to ensure all gaps are ramps up rather than gaps down. Since waves aren't implemented, they ought not to drift too terribly in the 1x time between local reassembly and spaceplane landing, yes?

So, assuming this is not inherently impossible to hold together (ha!), how well would a bunch of strutted-together wing-shaped boards take a spaceplane landing? Do different physics apply to part-part collisions than to part-ground collisions? And how is floating implemented?

[Whatshtisthis]

Alternatively, you can spend the time getting to land.

[Trekkin]

Alternatively, you can spend the time getting to land.

This is possible, yes, but not ideal; there aren't any really good landmasses that I can see that are in a good position for equatorial flights out that work well with where Jool is. Just not a solution I'd prefer, if the above immensely complicated multicraft setup works.

[EndlessWaves]

Yes, floating runways are possible, although landing with stock VTOLs is not as the boards do get destroyed by the hot exhaust so you'd need a aeroplane capable of a sufficiently short landing (b key for brakes and pack a parachute) or modded hoverjets with cold exhaust.

While getting large objects constructed from boards into space isn't too difficult (even 200 boards weighs just 10 tons) I've never tried to land one in an atmosphere so that may be the difficult part. You could dock as you suggested though.