Gravity

[AndyWeller]

Ok, here's a couple of things I've noted.

1. what happened to the planet gravitational influence on ships as I seem to remember it trying to sling shot me as I zoomed past? I miss this because it made me smile at the realism of ED.

2. Stations rotate to create internal gravity for the occupants but why does it have no affect on the ships? landing would be more fun / challenging if we had to manage our vertical thrusters to compensate for this.

I tried landing with Auto rotation turned off today and it made landing a real challenge.

 

[PenguinActual]

(On 1) If my knowledge is correct... Your FSD expands Space-time behind while compressing it in front of you and slows down your velocity as you close in on a gravitational body (E.G. a star)

(On 2) A ship (even a sidewinder) is probably too large to be influenced by the centripetal force of the station imparting its spin. Your vessel has Rotation Correction for a reason.

 

[Commander Dave]

1. what happened to the planet gravitational influence on ships as I seem to remember it trying to sling shot me as I zoomed past? I miss this because it made me smile at the realism of ED.

Proper gravity is not yet included in the game.
The FSD is sensitive to the local gravitational field but there's no slingshotting or similar yet.

2. Stations rotate to create internal gravity for the occupants but why does it have no affect on the ships? landing would be more fun / challenging if we had to manage our vertical thrusters to compensate for this.
I tried landing with Auto rotation turned off today and it made landing a real challenge.

Remember that the station is not creating a gravitational field inside. It's just rotating. I you were floating in there and you dropped a ball it would not fall to the deck. It would just stay by your hand.
If you are not coupled to the rotating frame of reference then you will feel none of the associated forces.
For example, I could teleport an object inside the station 1 foot above the deck and that object would stay still in space whilst the rotating deck whizzed off underneath it. It would look like the object was moving, but instead the station is rotating relative to the object.

To allow us to dock a little more easily the station computers take over a measure of thruster control of our ships to allow them to compensate for exactly this sort of thing. When we move inside the station our control inputs are added or subtracted from the automatic control inputs that the computer is making. Fly by wire the same way modern drones do it. The computer flies the ship to keep it stable and whatever you input goes towards moving it from that stable position.
If you turn that system off then you're in a more realistic Newtonian mode and it's a lot more difficult to dock on your pad because you have to stabilise in three dimensions manually.

 

[Chevy66]

You are coupled to the rotating frame of reference to a certain extent, because there is atmosphere inside. You find this out when you fly in with a busted cockpit. The atmosphere would be rotating and would be exerting forces on your ship

 

[Aldaris]

You are coupled to the rotating frame of reference to a certain extent, because there is atmosphere inside. You find this out when you fly in with a busted cockpit. The atmosphere would be rotating and would be exerting forces on your ship

The atmosphere isn't tethered to the rotating station however, so no centrifugal force is applied to the atmosphere. I suspect it would be rotating to a limited degree due to drag caused by the station's surface however.

 

[Llewelyn]

I would think that the atmosphere must have some sort of movement, otherwise it would be extremely windy standing on the rotating surface. But that does raise a question about how much of a cyclone is being generated along the stations rotational axis?

 

[Chevy66]

The atmosphere would gradually come up to the speed of rotation of the station, the drag from the walls would do this over time and there's nothing to stop it once it is rotating, kind of like the way liquid will move to the sides of a blender. probably would be a bit windy in there

 

[vonvonbraun]

Yes you can slingshot planets, i do it all the time for great landings

 

[bitstorm]

Heh you know I've thought about these two things, gravity on stations and slingshots and I can't wrap my head round either of them.

For example artificial gravity on stations...

A spaceship floating inside would not automatically get pulled outwards, how could it? There's no mechanism in place to cause that to happen. And when a ship touches down it would not automatically "stick" either. So how can artificial gravity possibly it work?

The only way I can think is if friction is high enough to pull the ship/person/whatever long the line of rotation momentarily which would increase their effective weight and increase the resistance and so on.

Or alternatively some sort of clamping mechanism to hold the ship/person against the surface, which would in turn create a gravity-like effect for the rest of the attached body, although assuming a ship, people inside the ship would not then suddenly be pulled 'downwards'.

As I say it all seems a bit wavy hand science to me.


And slingshots...

Well clearly this works, since we use it to accelerate stuff in space, but how can it? Surely any energy you put into the system when travelling towards a planet is lost when leaving the other side?!

 

[vonvonbraun]

Heh you know I've thought about these two things, gravity on stations and slingshots and I can't wrap my head round either of them.

For example artificial gravity on stations...

A spaceship floating inside would not automatically get pulled outwards, how could it? There's no mechanism in place to cause that to happen. And when a ship touches down it would not automatically "stick" either. So how can artificial gravity possibly it work?

The only way I can think is if friction is high enough to pull the ship/person/whatever long the line of rotation momentarily which would increase their effective weight and increase the resistance and so on.

Or alternatively some sort of clamping mechanism to hold the ship/person against the surface, which would in turn create a gravity-like effect for the rest of the attached body, although assuming a ship, people inside the ship would not then suddenly be pulled 'downwards'.

As I say it all seems a bit wavy hand science to me.


And slingshots...

Well clearly this works, since we use it to accelerate stuff in space, but how can it? Surely any energy you put into the system when travelling towards a planet is lost when leaving the other side?!

the pads say low gravity, not no gravity
the
y could make it so proper gravity is in the man inhabited part of the station and that the belly has low gravity to let people fly in ships. And the little cars you see could have a system to keep them on the road. Maybe a magnet

and the docking could be magnet based too

ta-da!

 

[CMDR Byr Goefin]

With superluminal speeds, why would I care about slingshotting? Getting near a gravity well SLOWS me down, it does not provide a speed boost.

Not the way it works with relativistic speeds, but we don't fly that slow most of the time.