Surviving high speed impact with water?

[power5000]

please delete those thread.

Edited August 19, 2014 by power5000

[Dkmdlb]

Change the cfg file for the necessary parts. The line is crashTolerance and the number corresponds roughly to the maximum speed (in m/s) the part will survive hitting something. Water might behave differently, but I'm not sure.

[Laie]

Due to a challenge, I recently performed a few high-speed impacts and found that the Mk2 Cockpit will survive every splashdown, as long as you're not so fast that you hit the ocean floor.

[power5000]

by the MK 2 cockpit you mean the cylindrical one with no IVA? and if I couldn't get an impact of more than a couple meters (15-19) I'll try the config edit tonight.

[AngelLestat]

why this is in science section?

[power5000]

very valid point I guess this is a little bit out of context >.<

[magnemoe]

very valid point I guess this is a little bit out of context >.<

True, in real world water landings are softer than ground landings, they can be made even softer if the craft is shaped to dive into the water on impact.

real life escape pod.

However very high speed run into serious problems, it might be solvable to some degree with a retro rocket who create a bobble or cavity in the water and reduce the crash then you hit water.

In KSP water landings are plain bad as then you land a rocket on land the legs, engine, tanks but also decoplers reaction wheels and other stuff in the stack act as crumble zone. This is realistic but you would get dangerous fire and explosions in real world as you do in plane crashes.

The result is that you cal walk away from a SSTO unpowered landing at least as long as you are in a strong pod and not a can.

However if you land in water each part who hit water is checked for impact and destroyed if too weak, unlike a ground landing this does not slow the rocket down so you get no crumble zone effect, in short the entire rocket stack fall apart and you hit water with the landing speed.

Worse even if you do a mechjeb assisted 1 m/s powered landing the rocket will tip on landing and this will destroy the top parts.