KSP Quickie with Bob: Skids and Floats
0The Wright Brothers didn't have your fancy rims when they first broke the powered flight barrier. Your soft rubber landing wheels were not how the Bicycle Bros rolled. The Wright Flyer landed on SKIDS.
When the Nazis invented the first rocket fighter, the Me 163 Komet, IT landed on skids. It actually took off on wheels, which it then dropped to save weight. The Me 163 was a piece of work: one test pilot actually got DISSOLVED in his cockpit because of a leak of the corrosive fuels. Oberleutnant Josef Pohs, horribly dissolved to death by his own airplane.
Nobody gave a F because they were Nazis. They just kept on making them.
Generally, you land on skids if you are 1.) saving the very last possible ounce of weight, skids generally weighing less than wheels, or 2.) landing on snow, or 3.) landing on water using floats with skids, or 4.) piloting a glider, generally for reason number 1. Some glider landing skids were kind of single-use since they were intended for such things as the Normandy Invasion. Using wheels would have been wasteful and more expensive.
Or 5.) you are Nazis and have no regard for human life. "You vant wheels go F yourself pansy. You vill take landing skids and like it."
We also want to test using floats, which might be hard since there are no stock seaplane floats in the game.