Landing on Earth

Good work. I did not know that the planetary landings are already available. Me who am awaiting of the beta for learning to take off

:p
 
Here's a related question. How close to earth, for example, would the Frame Shift Drive get us?

Say low earth orbit, something like the ISS at 400km.

Okay so at 220m/s that will take half an hour at full speed to reach the surface.

Even from Kármán line at 100km it'd be 8 minutes.

That is probably too long for fun.

Not sure how FD would solve that one. Certainly I'd never expect them to cutscene it, but I can't think of a way around it immediately. Also I don't expect they'd be happy with it being so long.

Shrink the atmosphere?

What's the terminal velocity of a falling sidewinder?
 
Not sure how FD would solve that one. Certainly I'd never expect them to cutscene it, but I can't think of a way around it immediately. Also I don't expect they'd be happy with it being so long.

They could do what happens in Evochron Mercenary, which is that the flight model changes when you get in an atmosphere.

Let's not forget that the restrictions in space flight modelling are to facilitate dogfighting and gameplay, but down in the atmosphere they can just go with a 'Spitfires and Messerschmitts' flight model and up the maximum speed to whatever is necessary to make planetary landing enjoyable. It's easily explained in lore too with some handy sci-fi b*llsh*t; you switch over to a normally aspirated jet engine when you enter an atmosphere, and this provides more efficient thrust than a rocket thruster.
 
Excellent Video !!

Here's a related question. How close to earth, for example, would the Frame Shift Drive get us?

Say low earth orbit, something like the ISS at 400km.

Okay so at 220m/s that will take half an hour at full speed to reach the surface.

Even from Kármán line at 100km it'd be 8 minutes.

That is probably too long for fun.

Not sure how FD would solve that one. Certainly I'd never expect them to cutscene it, but I can't think of a way around it immediately. Also I don't expect they'd be happy with it being so long.

Shrink the atmosphere?

What's the terminal velocity of a falling sidewinder?

Very Good Point as we can't speed time up in this version of Elite !

I think 8mins will be too long. Perhaps 1-2mins ?

Anyway I think we'll see Planet landings perhaps early Fall 2015 so F:D have time to work this all out ;)
 
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