Pontoons

[LethalDose]

Currently, we have lander legs to land on the ground, but what happens on water? I haven't tried taking off after a splashdown, so it may not be an issue, but I'm pretty sure immersion in water and high humidity voids the warranties on Rockomax engines.

Adding pontoons or some other floatation device would allow non-terminal splashdowns and lift-offs in wet environments.

Although, now after writing this, I want to try making a bottom-heavy lander with empty fuel tanks and rocket engines high up... Crap, my R&D crew had enough on their plates already.

Edited November 15, 2013 by LethalDose

[Tex_NL]

Try the Firespitter mod. It has pontoons allowing you to build seaplanes.

[LethalDose]

Thanks for the response, but this was directed to the devs for "stock" development.

It's my understanding that there's a specific sub-forum for mod requests.

[Febin]

I would recommend the structural fuselage or the structural panels. If you want a lighter version, radial intake air and structural connectors can make for lightweight pontoons.

[LethalDose]

I would recommend the structural fuselage or the structural panels. If you want a lighter version, radial intake air and structural connectors can make for lightweight pontoons.

OOOOOOOOOH I like the structural fuselage idea!

[Kruleworld]

fyi, The correct floatation device that NASA used

[Kasuha]

Structural fuselage looks fine but has insufficient crash resistance. I recommend girders (they look funny but float well) and radial intakes (when set up properly they even look good).

[Justin Kerbice]

AS crazy as it sounds first, fuel tank also can be useful, and they have enough buoyancy to float ! (it seems that fuel/oxydizer density < water)

It might float better if both are empty (they are full on this pic)

[Dunbaratu]

This is unrealistic, but pretty much every single stock part in the game floats. A metal girder floats. A full fuel tank floats. An engine floats, etc.

What makes them appear to "sink" is that when they drop below a certain distance below the surface they get deleted, so the bottom parts of a tall craft never survive splashdown just from the fact that they get pushed under the surface too far before they would have bobbed back up again had they not been deleted. So pretty much anything works as a pontoon provided you build the craft wide and shallow enough that parts aren't driven under the surface by the weight of the parts above them.

Totally unrealistic, but it works.

I'd rather see parts that sink, and having to build pontoons to counteract that.

[Kasuha]

This is unrealistic, but pretty much every single stock part in the game floats. A metal girder floats. A full fuel tank floats. An engine floats, etc.

Jumbo tanks don't float.

What makes them appear to "sink" is that when they drop below a certain distance below the surface they get deleted, so the bottom parts of a tall craft never survive splashdown just from the fact that they get pushed under the surface too far before they would have bobbed back up again had they not been deleted.

That does not correspond to my experience. For example, somebody already built a submarine (using Jumbo tanks as balast to stay underwater) and nothing got deleted from that ship. Also when a badly hyperedited floating platform bugged out to ocean floor (-600 m) in some challenge I was doing, it surfaced after five or so minutes, jumped into the air and crashed down and only by that time things started disappearing. It's the crash resistance and impact speed that make things disappear in water.

[Dunbaratu]

Jumbo tanks don't float.

You may have found one exception that most people will never encounter (because who the heck lands a thing with a jumbo tank into the water? By the time you're landing the craft is usually smaller than that.) But that still doesn't change the fact that the majority of parts do float when they shouldn't. A metal girder shouldn't float.

Until that problem is fixed there's no point in designing pontoons. All they do is make things float that.... already float anyway.

[vger]

Aye, and it'd be much more interesting if we could get things to NOT float, but also not vanish when they sink, and then we could start building submersibles.

[Camacha]

I took quite a bit of fiddling, but I made an aircraft that could pretty reliably land on and take off from water with the use of structural panels.

[Maelstrom Vortex]

I have used fuel tanks for Pontoons.. and even launched from the water. Structurally reinforce them.

[Javster]

Radial intakes are good for this: they float very well.