How wide is the 'death ray' from engine exhaust?

[kahlzun]

We are all familiar with the idea that the exhaust coming from the engine is hot, and will damage components.

I have seen some tech-0 designs prevaricated around that fact.

In the sandbox, I am trying to build a mothership which uses the LV-N engines arranges tri-laterally. The lander that I use has bi-fold symmetry, and the engines get close to its balloons.

My question is: how close is too close? Is this safe, or is the engine 'plume' an accurate representation?

(For the sake of duh: the girders are just there to show how close the exhaust gets, normally the engines would be left uncovered.)

[KvickFlygarn87]

That set up SHOULD be fine. You could just test it to see if it isn't.

[Geschosskopf]

In KSP, the "death ray", at least for most engines, APPEARS to be just a narrow laser beam at the center of the exhaust plume graphics. You can have flame graphics touching parts provided the exact centerline of the exhaust stream doesn't impinge. NOTE: test this before flying it; it's not always the case.

NOTE: In real life, heat transfers by 3 processes: conduction, convention, and radiation. Radiation is the primary means of heating up the surrounding area--it's why standing next to a campfire warms you up. KSP, however, only models conduction, so the only things to feel heat in KSP are those parts directly attached to the heat source. Thus, in real life, close-in radial engines would radiate beaucoup heat into the adjacent tank wall, but you don't have to worry about this in KSP.