Whenever I play KSP I always try a splash down in the ocean vs a crash down when I come back to Kerbin.
You don’t want to risk it after a long journey somewhere and back. Just splash down in the water.
Boing boing

We also um… the shuttles?
Uhuh, tell that to the cosmanauts.
Just show this dumbass how landings happen for Russians on land. There’s a reason why no one does it multiple times.
Flat earth-ism started as very elaborate satirical performance art. Now thanks to 50 years of Republicans cheapening public education, a plurality of Americans actually believe this shit and want it taught in the schools.
It’s not just Americanas. Many prominent flat Earthers come out of England.
I have had the displeasure of knowing several people like this. In the post-truth landscape we find ourselves, there are really people out there who will call your denial of their alternative facts “unscientific” because they think that science is just about questioning everything, and they know their perspective is the right one.
Therefore, when their high school science teacher (who obviously hated them in particular for their good Christian beliefs) insists on ideas like the Earth being round, or the existence of climate change or—heavens forbid—evolution, she’s obviously just trying to brainwash her students to believe her liberal agenda.
To be fair the Soviet cosmonauts did land in the Kazakh steppe. I mean sure the landings were probably hard but they didn’t die.
Well, the Russians had a sea, but they emptied it. So land it is.
This was because they had rockets that fired precipitously close to the ground which cushioned the landing to something like 20 mph IIRC. If those rockets failed for any reason there would be a very big splat.
At an altitude of eight meters, the “Posadka” (landing) signal lights up on the cosmonauts’ console and at an altitude between 1.1 and 0.8 meters from Earth, the Kaktus altimeter issues a command for the firing of the braking solid motors, DMP. The spectacular firing takes place around 0.7 meters above the surface, reducing the descent speed of the capsule to between 0 and 3 meters per second. A speed of 2 or 1.5 meters per second is considered average at the touchdown point. The structural loads on the capsule at the moment of DMP firing was quoted as 0.1 kilograms. These loads were reported to be the main reason for ruling out the reuse of the Descent Module.
In case of landing under a spare parachute, the descent speed could reach as high as 9.5 or even 10.5 meters per second, but it is still considered to be survivable by the crew.
Some additional cushioning at touchdown is provided by individual crew seats, known as Kazbek (Kazbek-UM on Soyuz TMA) equipped with custom-fitted liners for each crew member. As a last resort, the bottom of the capsule also designed to absorb the shock of a particularly bad impact. https://russianspaceweb.com/soyuz-landing.html
In Russia, people have always been expendable.
That reminds me about Vladimir_Komarov on Soyuz_1.
He went up there knowing he was likely going to die because of the build problems with the early Soyuz capsules.
The module crashed into the ground at terminal velocity, killing Komarov, at 6.24 a.m. … Soyuz 1 engineers reported 203 design faults to party leaders, but their concerns “were overruled by political pressures for a series of space feats to mark the anniversary of Lenin’s birthday”.
This is why I 100% believe in the “lost cosmonaut” theories.
Even stuff like probes for Venus they kept absolutely secret if they failed - and those didn’t kill people!
They did have to give them a special gun so they weren’t killed by bears though.
space bears?
Bears that realize once you crack that Soyuz shell there’s a creamy cosmonaut middle.
Crunchy on the outside, creamy on the inside. And still hot, probably.
why have we not been arming nasa astronauts against these devious space bears or did they only learn about creamy delicious cosmonaut from soyuz capsules?
Why do people always do cannonballs into pools, lakes, and oceans, and never from windows and overpasses into the concrete?
You made me burst out laughing.
I mean, people do that occasionally, but for completely different reasons.
Several capsules are designed to effectively and safely land on land.
Including the soyuz which to this day routinely lands on land
But the landing needs active thrusters to soften the blow. This introduces more complexity and also adds more danger as there needs to be extra fuel on board.
And extra weight I imagine, making it more expensive to launch.
Correct. It’s not that they can’t, they save tens of millions by landing in the water on fuel alone. Not only to land but to leave. The extra fuel increases the weight which increases the overall fuel cost on launch.
Just add more boosters. Problem solved.
You might need to add more struts too.
it’s not quite that simple.
you also have to make sure mechjeb is installed and nasa has “too much pride”
I figured village was making a kerbel joke. Everyone who’s played knows that design that happens early on when you are struggling to get out of earths gravity into orbit and all the studden you just have umpteen boosters and struts precariously attaching everything so they don’t go flying off. I think they made it now so you cant even get RCS that early in the campaign type mode.
Might as well send 2 rockets. One to leave and one to come back.
And the space shuttle which did it for decades
I spent so much time playing Kerbal Space Program in the early days that my asshole still puckers when I see a return vehicle heading toward the water
Water is as hard as concrete from a large height.
They splash down in water because there is less chance of hitting something.
They have parachutes to slow decent, so its not just a hard drop from space to ocean surfacw
You are talking about surface tension. The importance parameter is speed not height and “like concrete” is a drastic simplification as both behave very differently on impact.
Notably whereas high divers have reached speeds of 60 mph the Artemis II splashed down at around 1/4 that speed a speed you too can obtain by jumping from about 10 feet up.
Due to its low density and viscosity, water cushions the spacecraft enough that there is no need for a braking rocket to slow the final descent
So does a low iq mean if you notice something, anything, you think it is clever, like a little child?
Children can have high IQ
Water = inside bones
Land = outside bones
…ok, but what is the post getting at?
Like what conspiracy is this supporting?
That they are more easily faked on water?
Yes, because the area gets a no-fly zone and navy ships go to get the capsule, it makes it “easy” to fake because the government controls the situation. Yes, this ignores a lot of other independently verifiable data, because that doesn’t confirm biases. Yes, it ignores all the Soyuz landings over land. Yes, it ignores the facts that the Soviets and Russians do and did the same thing, as if a highly-planned re-entry might just happen in anyone’s rye field. Yes, it’s stupid. Yes, it’s on purpose.
gagarin just parachuted out of a plane and told that farmer he went to space
Why would that be any different over land? Wouldn’t they land in government-controlled land? The conspiracy isn’t unique to water… or am I missing something?
The purpose of these questions people ask conspiratorially is not to get answers. It’s to foment doubt. They don’t want answers; if they did they could look it up and find an answer. They just want people to start questioning the official story, then they sell their own conspiracy to them. It’s an old playbook, and people like Alex Jones have been using it for decades.
The only thing you’re missing is brain damage.
It makes no sense and is predicated on not caring about actual real information.
You have dozens more IQ points than needed to understand this
What HeroicBillyBishop said :)
Thank you for the smile this comment brought to my face
They never land back on land? Really? Tell that to Russia, they always land the Soyuz back on land.













