Vernor Engines and weightlessness abuse!

[Norpo]

Vernor engines (and the place-anywhere RCS port) have a 50 m/s crash resistance. AND they're weightless to boot, so I figured... Could they be a smaller, weightless alternative to landing gear?

YES. With this plane, as long as you don't land at speeds exceeding 50 m/s, it lands perfectly, but you really have to take care to land horizontally, otherwise the physics engine might accidentally clip into the small struts.

A while back, I also ran a similar test, and using symmetry I put a giant pillar of Vernors to a command pod, and crashed it into the Mun at 200 m/s or so. It survived. (No screenshots, I think I forgot to take some, sorry, but if you run the same test it should work)

[Guest]

Could they be a smaller, weightless alternative to landing gear?

Landing gear are already weightless, what's the point?

It's also a little cheaty as IRL, friction would completely obliterate the vernor by heat and small impacts, except if it's made of some sort of slightly soft ceramic.

But I agree that they're better parts for structure building than octagonal struts and structural point since they have 0 drag..

Edited January 31, 2015 by RevanCorana

[Norpo]

Landing gear are already weightless, what's the point?

They changed that in 0.90, landing gear now have a mass of 0.005 and I checked the config to make sure PhysicsSignificance wasn't set, (admittedly, 0.005 isn't that much mass, but it's there), also sometimes for very small vehicles they are far too large. I use this as an alternative when making small aircraft (like in the picture)

It's also a little cheaty as IRL, friction would completely obliterate the vernor by heat and small impacts, except if it's made of slightly soft ceramic.

Oh yes, it's immensely cheaty, but that's the point, it's great as lithobraking cannon fodder if you're willing to cheat to do so. (In career, I think vernor engines are kind of expensive, so there's also that..) I think SQUAD should really nerf the impact resistance, due to things like this. (or at least give it a bit of weight)

If you really wanted to I believe you could opt out of parachutes entirely for landing on Kerbin and just use Vernors for lithobraking. Weighs nothing, but it's a killer on part count/cost and nothing is really certain. Of course, you'd have to land on land, if your trajectory hit water you'd be doomed