No atmospheric flight on the horizon

How about allowing any ship of any size to attempt a landing - make the danger and risk of ship destruction for large ships increase dependent on the specific conditions of the planet.

Lol,
Input details: Gravity, atmosphere, thrust capacity, ship type, mass
Computer says No.....cough.
 
Fer-de-lance and Adders please report to the Atmospheric landing conversation.


Everyone else,

just keep reving your downward thrusters!


Let's face it, those Adders had a cup holder for a reason, gravitational well, tea drinking
 
Am getting a little confused honestly, what is actually preventing ships from taking off 'slowly' from a planet? Other then impractical with our current technology? Given the power in the space ships, what prevents them from taking off/landing on planet in any way they want? even a planet with an atmosphere, as long as there is enough thrust to overcome gravity? and landing what prevents the ship from just slowing down match the planets rotation and then slowly descend? By my understanding, any speed can bring you off a planet, as long as you kan keep that speed up, as long as the ships are strong enough to beat gravity / resistance initially they can continue to rise upwards at whatever speed they want?

The reason we can't do that ourselves is limits of technology, not because physics don't allow it?
 
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For every gravitational source, there is a velocity above which you will accelerate away from it. At that speed exactly you will maintain distance, below it you will fall towards the planet. (this velocity will drop the higher the distance, and in case of a planet it will be highest on the surface). So no, not any thrust is sufficient, but if you have enough to overcome gravity at the surface, even by a fraction, that will eventually get you to space. Of course, I'm simplifying by leaving orbital mechanics out of it, as well as atmospheres that complicate things a little by adding drag - the faster you go the higher the friction between hull and atmosphere, causing you to lose energy to that as well.
 
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Am getting a little confused honestly, what is actually preventing ships from taking off 'slowly' from a planet? Other then impractical with our current technology? Given the power in the space ships, what prevents them from taking off/landing on planet in any way they want? even a planet with an atmosphere, as long as there is enough thrust to overcome gravity? and landing what prevents the ship from just slowing down match the planets rotation and then slowly descend? By my understanding, any speed can bring you off a planet, as long as you kan keep that speed up, as long as the ships are strong enough to beat gravity / resistance initially they can continue to rise upwards at whatever speed they want?

The reason we can't do that ourselves is limits of technology, not because physics don't allow it?

The question seems to be whether they have the power to take off in the first place. The t9 for instance has awful thrusters and due to its mass may not be able to take off in a 4g environment, being unable to generate enough thrust to counter gravity, or wind resistance perhaps in the case of atmosphere.
 
The question seems to be whether they have the power to take off in the first place. The t9 for instance has awful thrusters and due to its mass may not be able to take off in a 4g environment, being unable to generate enough thrust to counter gravity, or wind resistance perhaps in the case of atmosphere.

You can always Jayne Cobb it and dump your co-pilot to reduce weight :)
 
I really hope all ships have upper limits for gravity, atmospheric pressure (soon :)), and temperature. So for some places, we might really be pushing the limits of the ship's capabilities. E.g. in a high-G world, you might have to put all power to engines to get lift-off with that heavy artefact, but that could mean the system overheating all the way up or the shields buckling under pressure. Different equipment would change the limits allowed.
 
Big ships not being able to take off might add very interesting gameplay, please Mike consider this. It would add rescue gameplay, etc. all kind of interesting things.

For me it is similar to exploration - you don't go to explore with Sidewinder or Eagle. You get ship specially fitted for this.
 
Am getting a little confused honestly, what is actually preventing ships from taking off 'slowly' from a planet? Other then impractical with our current technology? Given the power in the space ships, what prevents them from taking off/landing on planet in any way they want? even a planet with an atmosphere, as long as there is enough thrust to overcome gravity? and landing what prevents the ship from just slowing down match the planets rotation and then slowly descend? By my understanding, any speed can bring you off a planet, as long as you kan keep that speed up, as long as the ships are strong enough to beat gravity / resistance initially they can continue to rise upwards at whatever speed they want?

The reason we can't do that ourselves is limits of technology, not because physics don't allow it?


Hello

I did not read all pages, so maybe someone else already gave you an answer.
Also my english is bad, so I hope this does make some sense.

Nowadays we can not do that because of "energy", or in other words:

The Space Shuttle has an enormous Fuel-Tank attached to it when it takes off.
Even that enormous Fuel-Tank will only last a very short amount of time.
So we need to do things in a way that will conserve as much "energy" as possible.

In the (ED) Future we do have Hydrogen based Fusion Reactors (like the Sun does its Fusion) and this will give us an tremendous amount of energy.
We don't simply "burn" the Hydrogen, we use it for Fusion.

Fusion.jpg
 
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@Mike,

I am assuming this vertical thrust (directed downwards to compensate at the expense of other movement) will work automatically - In a similar way that the thrusters compensate for the Coriolis effect inside of stations works automatically and inside of an thin atmosphere of the stations, I might add (op).

That being said; There is a toggle to turn on and off the Coriolis compensating thrusters, that no right minded Commander should mess with.

Might there be such a similar toggle to turn off the gravitational compensating thrusters, that no right minded Commanded should mess with?

I mean, really? let's hide such features, right :)
 
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You don't. The engines on the ships have a ridiculous t/w ratio and large amount of delta-v.

MrSanders is correct, and OP is incorrect. And also, there can't really be a debate about this. You can't debate physical facts. Otherwise we wouldn't have rockets. Unless OP wants to imply that the little guidance fins are producing lift ;)

/thread.
 
Almost all ships are able to accelerate at multiple G's in all axes. Only the largest (think type 9) would have issues on anything higher than 1g worlds. The rest could easily compensate against gravity, so much so we're actually trying to justify gimping their ability to compensate to add some additional finesse to flying in a strong gravity well for Horizons.

The biggest problem I can see you having is the speed and planet scale issues. For example, if your earth atmosphere is 200km thick and you can only travel at ~300m/s its going to take around ten 10 minutes before you are clear of the atmosphere.

Does this mean you will need a cut between a landing mode and a space mode? Or will we be able to travel faster nearer the planets to account for scale?
 
Almost all ships are able to accelerate at multiple G's in all axes. Only the largest (think type 9) would have issues on anything higher than 1g worlds. The rest could easily compensate against gravity, so much so we're actually trying to justify gimping their ability to compensate to add some additional finesse to flying in a strong gravity well for Horizons.
Obviously for EDH there's no atmosphere which gives two things 1) No lifting-body effect, and 2) no issues with thruster performance.

However when you expand to worlds with atmospheres you may gain lifting-body and other aerodynamic effects but you would also be justified in reducing the thruster output to some degree. Real rockets have to cope with this, being less efficient in thicker atmosphere because their exhaust has to push against it, which also pushes back and causes not all of the gas expansion to go into useful thrust (some will push the wrong way instead). Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_engine#Back_pressure_and_optimal_expansion
 
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