Crash Tolerance

[StrandedonEarth]

I note that impact tolerance in the tooltips has been changed to crash tolerance, with units of m/s. While that certainly helps with knowing just how fast you can crash, er, land, the laws of momentum (mass x velocity=impulse x time) imply there should be more to it than that. A 50 ton ship landing at 10m/s (500tm/s) is going to put a lot more stress on the landing gear than a 1 ton ship landing at 20m/s (20tm/s). The part itself may be able to with stand a crash/landing/impact at the rated speed, but not when you stack a 3-kerbal can with the required snacks on top of it!

Granted, this gets a lot trickier to calculate depending on whether your 20m long craft is hitting on its side (all parts should survive) or on its 2.5m diameter (accordion from the bottom up) at 10m/s.

Crumple zones FTW!

[Pds314]

Yes, if you look at the .part files, they have other tolerances for torque and acceleration as well, that is just saying what speed is required to blow it up of its own accord in a 90-degree collision with a surface.

In other words, yes, the value is correct, but no, it is not the whole story.