Why is water more unforgiving than land?

[Marksius]

I had a nightmare where Danny4246 took over my Joolian probe that I had spent 3 days on.

It's Danny2462, you ignorant fool

[Geschosskopf]

Especially since *EVERY* part in KSP floats, no matter what it is. A metal girder shouldn't float. In KSP it does.

An I-beam can easily float in any fluid more dense than steel. Hell, in my native Texas, we won't drink coffee unless a horseshoe will float on it .

Seriously, the easiest way out of the frustration you're feeling is to just accept the fact that the fluid in Kerbin's oceans is not water. All experimental data conducted on this fluid prove conclusively that it can't possibly be water because all its physical properties are radically different from water's. Remember, Kerbin is only like 1/11 the size of Earth yet has the same gravity, so is obviously made of incredibly dense materials.

[Xarian]

There's one simple reason that water is worse than land.

Jellyfish. The oceans of Kerbin are infested.

[DannySwish]

I can't tell you how many times I've come to a perfectly gentle water landing, only to have my often *****-shaped rockets fall over and having only the most important part, the crew capsule, explode. ;~;

[Dunbaratu]

An I-beam can easily float in any fluid more dense than steel. Hell, in my native Texas, we won't drink coffee unless a horseshoe will float on it .

Seriously, the easiest way out of the frustration you're feeling is to just accept the fact that the fluid in Kerbin's oceans is not water. All experimental data conducted on this fluid prove conclusively that it can't possibly be water because all its physical properties are radically different from water's. Remember, Kerbin is only like 1/11 the size of Earth yet has the same gravity, so is obviously made of incredibly dense materials.

That explanation still doesn't make it make sense. Remember, it has to be harder than concrete to make what happens in KSP make sense. Smashing a capsule down onto the runway is more forgiving than landing on water in KSP. Even a really thick liquid, while harder than water, still wouldn't be harder than concrete.

[kellven]

I know this is slightly old now, but the reason water is so hard to land on is that:

- KSP is built on top of the Unity game engine.

- Unity doesn't have proper physics data/collision processing for material surfaces.

- Unity "water" is designed to make small things appear to float, not function as a rocket landing medium.

- Squad just plain doesn't do hard, time consuming code stuff like dump the POS physics sim Unity uses and write their own. Remember that Squad started from a marketing stunt company, they do big flashy graphic things quite well; don't expect well tuned performance and coherent engineering under the hood.

[Kerbart]

Parts hit the ground on land and effectively bounce off.

Parts hit the ground on water and effectively dig in.

Once parts are dug in they get ripped off. This is why landing low-wing propeller aircraft on water (assuming it's not equipped with pontoons) is safer than a high-wing one, as the wings skid the water and allow you to slow down, where with a high-wing configuration the fusealage digs in. For passenger jets it's a different story as the wing-mounted engines will dig in. Sully did a fantastic job with his landing on the Hudson.

[Kasuha]

Once parts are dug in they get ripped off. This is why landing low-wing propeller aircraft on water (assuming it's not equipped with pontoons) is safer than a high-wing one, as the wings skid the water and allow you to slow down, where with a high-wing configuration the fusealage digs in. For passenger jets it's a different story as the wing-mounted engines will dig in. Sully did a fantastic job with his landing on the Hudson.

I understand you're talking about real-life physics.

KSP is not really like that.

[MarvinKitFox]

Water IS more unforgiving than normal ground, to high-speed impacts by hard objects.

Consider a typical rocket that hits the ground nose-first. The nose is completely obliterated by contact, but everything behind it hits NOT the ground, but the explosion of the first bit to impact. This means that the majority of the vessel is subjected to lesser G's, due to the "cushy" landing on the remains of its predecessors. Armor piercing rounds use this!

Water doesnt compress. It doesn't move out of the way, not in the sort of timescales that a heavy impact need to consider. And it reaches *everywhere*. No part is shielded from the water impact by the parts in front of it.

Look at aviation disasters for supporting facts.. In near-vertical ground impact, the front 'black box' is very often destroyed by 500+g, while the rear is merely stomped by 35 or so g.

For a comparable water impact, both front and rear recorders undergo about 150g, enough to turn aircraft fuselage into penny-sized confetti. Only lighter, larger panels not in the main line of impact get torn off reasonably intact, in a water crash.

In KSP, of course, I'm quite sure none of this is considered. They have a simple variable that declares that stuff falls apart in water! Personally, I think it acts as an override on joint strengths. The explosions are not due to impact, but normal boom-my-ship-is-breaking-apart explosions.

[Kasuha]

everything behind it hits NOT the ground, but the explosion of the first bit to impact.

Rocket jumps don't work in real life. Explosion is a shock wave but does not have any more dampening effect than thin air.

Parts of the craft collide either with ground/water, or with parts ahead of them.

Also explosions in aircraft crashes often happen only when the crash is already over and fuel had enough time to mix with air.

Water doesnt compress. It doesn't move out of the way, not in the sort of timescales that a heavy impact need to consider. And it reaches *everywhere*. No part is shielded from the water impact by the parts in front of it.

So doesn't ground. Water moves out of the way more than ground, always making the impact more gradual. The main point is that the energy of the impact is so big that this spread actually means fatal damage is spread over more of the craft.

In near-vertical ground impact, the front 'black box' is very often destroyed by 500+g, while the rear is merely stomped by 35 or so g.

For a comparable water impact, both front and rear recorders undergo about 150g,

I'd be interested in getting more info about that, do you have any references?

[sdj64]

If you land on land, your legs or feet or girders or whatever will hit the ground and stop. If you land on water, you won't slow down much when your legs hit, and the much less impact-resistant parts will hit the water afterward and break. So to land in water, you have to have very tall impact resistant legs to slow you down enough before your less resistant middle parts hit the water.

Or the Kerbals' ships are held together with water-soluble glue that instantly dissolves when you hit water.

[Capt. Hunt]

the obvious solution is to transfer all your science into your command pod before reentry.