Kerbal Space Program

It was a great surprise to me to realize that safe deployment speeds on Duna are lower than on Kerbin - particularly they are around 400 m/s for drogues, and 200 m/s on main chutes. Intuitively I would expect these speeds to be higher thanks to much thinner atmosphere on Duna.

After some study I found that it is probably justified as rather than atmosphere density, speed of sound seems to be the important measure for parachute deployment. And for example on Mars, speed of sound is lower than on Earth.

http://davidaroffman.com/rich_text_7.html

Assuming the game actually uses mach number or something close to it to determine safety of parachute deployment, it would be probably nice to provide that information to the player:

- add "ASL Mach 1 speed" parameter to the planetary info list available in map mode and in tracking station (or add two values, "ASL Mach 1" and "Mach 1 at 0.02 atm" for measure)
- add "safe deployment mach number" parameter instead of "max safe deploy speed at home" parameter to the chute info box in VAB/SPH