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Your earlier comment was:
A lot of karatekas are hobbyists with office jobs who don't want to risk turning up to work with a damaged face so full contact with head punches isn't their thing.
I'm saying the space helmets are an obvious solution to this problem. You're right that they don't prevent brain damage, but they do prevent cuts, black eyes, broken jaws, broken noses, cracked orbitals, etc. It would be a way to introduce face punching in a manner that would alleviate the concerns for people who don't want to deal with all of the above.
I am assuming here that a lot of KK fighters are interested in seeing a competition format that allows punches to the head, but aren't interested in having their face rearranged.
There are plenty of competition formats with head punches out there be it from Karate organisations or Kickboxing, but the majority or Kyokushin Karatekas are happy with Knockdown and don't necessarily look for something else. Only on forums like Sherdog people complain that Kyokushin "doesn't do face punches". For Kyokushin Karatekas who want to fight with head punches there is Kickboxing, Semi-contact stuff like clicker, or MMA.
On top of the "space helmets" not preventing brain trauma, it also gives the fighter a false sense of security and kind of remove the fear of walking into punches - that's not really a good thing to fight like a brawler not being afraid of headshots because you have that helmet to protect you, be it for your brain or for the risk of developing bad habits.
I have to agree, especially when you take into account that while knockdown does not allow face punching, it DOES allow face KICKING. And this it not something you wanna risk happening to you when you have a day job.
I may be wrong but I think the space helmet would protect from at least some of the impact.
In Knockdown tournaments, kicks rarely damage the face as they mostly land to the side or top of the head, apart from some front kicks to the face which are pretty rare. Even knees tend to land under the jaw instead of the face as clinching and grabbing the head isn't allowed. I mean there are plenty of Knockdown fighters who don't even wear a mouth guard in competition (that's crazy to me though, even in point-scoring Shotokan I used to wear a mouth guard).
As @shadow_priest_x wrote, The Kudo type helmets do protect from cuts, bruises and broken face bones, however they don't really reduce the impact or amount of brain trauma and I really don't think they're needed for Knockdown rules at all. If you want to wear those and have head punches allowed you might as well do Kudo.
I have an acquaintance who ended up in the hospital after getting hit in a Shotokan tournament by a guy who didn't fully control his punch. His face was all fucked up and the doctors said if the broken bones had moved around differently under his skin then it potentially could've endangered his life. That happened in a SHOTOKAN tournament of all things. Just think about the possible results in a bout where someone is actually trying to punch you as hard as they can.
The fucked up thing is that was actually the second time he got badly hurt in a karate tournament, both times for the same reason, guys just not throwing with control. Just shows you what a jack hammer to the face can actually do to you.
There is nothing worse than getting hit full force to the face while it's against the rules and therefore you're not expecting it, especially with those thin point-scoring gloves. I've also seen plenty of serious face/head injuries in Shotokan point scoring tournaments because of some idiots who would not control the power behind their strikes, but also sometimes it happens that the fighter getting injured sort of "ran into" the strike.
At least when you fight in a full contact format there's no surprise that the other fighter is trying to hit you full force in the face, and you'll most likely have prepared for that with appropriate training to defend against head strikes with blocking and dodging.
Existence of Shotokan no-control morons confirmed.
Edited for you.