Why atmospheric landings?

[-VR- Max Factor]

So you're on the FDev team then? Sounds like you're making that claim as fact...

Just using real world physics (apart from the reconfiguring shields). None of the ships would build up heat in an atmosphere as they don't go fast enough.

Don't see how that would be feasible unless they keep the existing flight model and use purely cosmetic atmospheric effects. Because if the heaviest ships were permissible with an updated atmospheric flight model, it would be very challenging trying to land something the size of an Anaconda or Type 10 on a high G Jupiter type planet. Nevermind trying to land a behemoth capital ship class vehicle the likes of a FC based on pilot skill. The crazy mortality rate for experienced Cmnders during the 2017 Distant Worlds 2 expedition is a lesson to be learned IMO

Because you and others keep looking at reentry like shuttle used to and other re-entry vehicles if today. They are travelling at around 20,000mph and when they hit the atmosphere, they generate a huge amount of heat. If we fly down from the upper atmosphere at a sedate 800mph, which will still get us to the surface in good time (minutes) there will be minimal heat buildup which all the ships should be able to manage. The only thing there will be is turbulence.

As to landing on a Jupiter type gas giant. That wouldn't be possible. The pressure would crush you before you got anything resembling a "surface".

It would be technically more difficult to land on a planet without an atmosphere due to a lack of terminal velocity and as our ships can already do that, an atmosphere should be pretty simple.

As for liftoff, there is no need for escape velocity with the thrusters our ships already have.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Well that's no fun at all!

Depends what you call fun I suppose. I don't see the need to make it stupidly complicated and hard just for the sake of it.

 

[Layne Vakarian]

Depends what you call fun I suppose. I don't see the need to make it stupidly complicated and hard just for the sake of it.

Couldn't agree more. That said I don't think every CMDR is going to be quite as far-sighted as you and in the absence of a mechanism which forces players to slow down to a sedate 800mph or so I can see them barrelling in at ludicrous speed. Mind you, 800mph through a gelatinous atmosphere like Venus', say, will probably still seriously ruin your ship's extremities.

 

[askavir]

Anywone who expects landing on an atmospheric planet to be a long process can forget about it now.

There are still people today who avoid planets because of the extra minute or 2 it takes over a space station, so I don't see FD making atmospheric planets take 15 minutes to get down there...

I personally don't mind the current extra minute or 2, in fact if I could I'd use only planetary ports, I wish there were a lot more planet to planet missions, or even intra-planet missions, flying in space is boring. But if it takes far too long, most people will get sick of it very fast. In fact, we already had this very same discussion when Horizons were announced, there were people saying that setting down on a planet should take 10 to 15 minutes, and probably today are among the ones who avoid planets because of the extra couple minutes.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Couldn't agree more. That said I don't think every CMDR is going to be quite as far-sighted as you and in the absence of a mechanism which forces players to slow down to a sedate 800mph or so I can see them barrelling in at ludicrous speed. Mind you, 800mph through a gelatinous atmosphere like Venus', say, will probably still seriously ruin your ship's extremities.

Even at 2500kph which is the glide speed (I think it is, I haven't paid attention to it recently), the heat buildup will still be minimal. The most heat will be our ships thrusters keeping us safe which will be easier in an atmosphere as there will be something called terminal velocity.

 

[Layne Vakarian]

Yeah, but terminal velocity isn't a speed limit though, other than as atmospheric drag versus gravitational acceleration, so your average hotshot pilot is still going to be having his hands full. Especially when the Venusian atmosphere starts pulling bits off his ship.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Yeah, but terminal velocity isn't a speed limit though, other than as atmospheric drag versus gravitational acceleration, so your average hotshot pilot is still going to be having his hands full. Especially when the Venusian atmosphere starts pulling bits off his ship.

Yeah, I know.

That depends on how strong your ship is. Don't base it on a 747 of today. We are talking about seriously advanced materials. It probably won't be an issue.

 

[Stealthie]

We wouldn't need to have heat buildup. Ships can fly down to the planet surface pretty slowly without any heat buildup. The reason why the shuttle and other reentry craft have a huge amount of heat buildup is because they are traveling around 20,000mph and heat up during reentry.

Travelling at 800mph which will build minimal heat even in the most un-aerodynamic vehicle will get us to the planet surface in no time at all. Heat won't be an issue, leaving won't be an issue with the thrusters we have either.

I think people expect reentry to be like it is today. It won't be and doesn't need to be.

indeed.

That's a reasonable compromise but that's why I'd like to see a system where the HUD provides us with a glide-slope to follow.

The glide-slope would consider your ship's integrity, aero' and thermal characteristics and plot an "ideal" rate of descent based on those factors.
You'd have the option of trying to be a hero and diving below the glide-slope - which'd generate more stress and heat and make your ship harder to fly - in order to reach the surface more quickly (possibly useful to avoid pirates or sys-sec ships if your were smuggling) or you could pull up above the glide-slope in order to relieve structural and thermal stress and make your ship easier to manoeuvre, which might come in handy if your ship was sluggish or if it was overheating/overstressed and you needed to recover to avoid damage but it'd mean it'd take longer to reach the surface.

Also, I do appreciate that the current glide mechanic gets you down to the surface quickly, which means you're not wasting game-time completing something which is a bit of a non-event.

I'd like to see that idea retained for atmo' landings if possible.
Basically, that'd involve you dropping out of SC in low orbit but, instead of immediately slowing to normal speed, you'd arrive in the upper-atmosphere travelling at a trans-orbital speed of, say, 2000m/sec and that speed would bleed away as you follow the glide-slope down to the surface.

Ideally, of course, the trans-orbital speed could be calculated properly, based on the size and gravity of a planet so, for example, if you arrived at Earth you'd drop out of SC doing about 7,800m/sec.
Not sure if it'd be wise to implement that in ED, though, in case there were planets that had wacky sizes, atmospheres or gravities which'd either make it impossible to get to the surface without destroying your ship or, at the other extreme, would take hours to get down to the surface.

Again, that's really the sort of stuff that only FDev can decide, by looking at the range of planets the Stellar Forge can create and coming up with a system that's compatible with all of them.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

OK... you might want to grab a beer for the time its going to take to read this reply. BTW @Max Factor I am if it seems like I'm picking on you, I'm not, its just you have put in most of the recent content of this thread, and your maths and units are all over the place, and being a slightly autistic engineer so I'm going to correct your numbers/harmonize your units and explain why you are wrong when you stated that:

We wouldn't need to have heat buildup.

While you could say that in a game with Faster Than Light travel, that pyhsics can be damned, however you know as well as I do there is only so much handwavium FDev are willing to apply to bend the laws of physics for gameplay reasons.

Ships can fly down to the planet surface pretty slowly without any heat buildup. The reason why the shuttle and other reentry craft have a huge amount of heat buildup is because they are traveling around 20,000mph and heat up during reentry.

Travelling at 800mph which will build minimal heat even in the most un-aerodynamic vehicle will get us to the planet surface in no time at all. Heat won't be an issue, leaving won't be an issue with the thrusters we have either.

I think people expect reentry to be like it is today. It won't be and doesn't need to be.

It would be hell of a slow descent, and I genuinely don't think you appreciate how slow it would have to be to avoid heat build up, this supposition is supported by the fact you keep mixing up your units in subsequent posts with huge ramifications for the maths underpinning the illustration you are trying to present.

For example, that 800mph you mention is around 357m/s - you are aware that ships speeds are measured in metres per second (m/s) in this game?

So assuming you start to "De-Orbit" or Enter the atmosphere at say the orbit of the international space station you are looking at ~400,000 metres altitude, and an orbital speed of 7,660m/s, about 17,000miles per hour. So lets handwavium the orbital speed requirement and say you do the re-entry at the current airless moons approach "glide mode" speed, 2,500m/s, you are hitting an atmosphere at mach 7.35, 2.23 times faster than the SR71 blackbird. Remember the SR71 had to be seriously high to achieve those speeds, in the words of one of the SR71 pilots:

You know the part in ‘High Flight’—where it talks about putting out your hand to touch the face of God?” Well,” I added, “when we’re at speed and altitude in the SR, we have to slow down and descend in order to do that.”

Yeah that was a bit anecdotal as in context the pilot was lording it up in the officers club with a rake of fighter jocks, but we do know that at mach3 at altitude where the atmosphere is thinner

Fuselage panels were manufactured to fit only loosely with the aircraft on the ground. Proper alignment was achieved as the airframe heated up and expanded several inches.[31] Because of this, and the lack of a fuel-sealing system that could handle the airframe's expansion at extreme temperatures, the aircraft leaked JP-7 fuel on the ground prior to takeoff.[32]

The outer windscreen of the cockpit was made of quartz and was fused ultrasonically to the titanium frame.[33] The temperature of the exterior of the windscreen reached 600 °F (316 °C) during a mission.[34] Cooling was carried out by cycling fuel behind the titanium surfaces in the chines. On landing, the canopy temperature was over 300 °C (572 °F).[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#cite_note-johnson_bio-33

I knw the SR71 is 60's/70's cold war tech, but the physics is still the same. Skimming along the atmosphere at even 2,500m/s "glide mode" is 2.23 times those extrodrinary thermal loadings.

Even at 2500kph which is the glide speed (I think it is, I haven't paid attention to it recently), the heat buildup will still be minimal. The most heat will be our ships thrusters keeping us safe which will be easier in an atmosphere as there will be something called terminal velocity.

As I mentioned its 2,500 Metres Per Second, 9million metres per hour or 9,000kph,3.6 times as fast as you are currently thinking it would be. Remember all that jazz about the SR71 pulling mach 3 at stratospheric altitudes, and remember the current glide mechanic brings you to about ten km from the surface, where the atmosphereis going to be way thicker offering more drag and thus thermal loads, and you come in at mach 7.35.

At the 85,000ft, I'm sorry for mixing my units but american, 25,908m, atmospheric pressure is roughly 0.02bar, its 0.24bar. Twelve times the aerodrag at 2.3 times the speed = 27.6 times the thermal loading. Remember that the SR71 was designed for and thus optimally shaped for such speeds but could only do them in 0.02bar atmosphere and even then its titanium skin grew so hot it expanded the plane in every dimension, Hows a type 9 going to fair at 27.6 times the aero loading of a SR71?

As to landing on a Jupiter type gas giant. That wouldn't be possible. The pressure would crush you before you got anything resembling a "surface".

It would be technically more difficult to land on a planet without an atmosphere due to a lack of terminal velocity and as our ships can already do that, an atmosphere should be pretty simple.

As for liftoff, there is no need for escape velocity with the thrusters our ships already have.

The first part of this post pertaining to gas giants, I totally agree with, the descent into a gasgiant would be more akin to playing submarines where there is a definite crush strength. Knowing frontier they will probably put a crush depth exclusion zone in place, like they have for stars and black holes etc, whereas I'd really like to see hapless CMDR's getting crushed.

The aerodrag Vt thing, as you can see from the workings above, those numbers will need somewhat adjusted.

Your final point, no Escape Velocity requirements with the propulsion we have, totally agree, if we can clear a 6g airless moon with those thrusters, we can clear a 6g atmospheric planet with those thursters, however it would be done a lot more slowly.

As I say bud, I'm not meaning to pick on you, but you had posted wuite a lot of content that was wrong, and I didn't want others to be misled by it, so I've taken quite a lot of time to go through this with you as I figure it is something you are obviously very interested in, just slightly misinformed about.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Going back to the glide slope, the glide window for a space shuttle re entry was about 20-22°, take that as roughly 4:1 ratio, as in you have to travel 4 times the altitude in horizontal distance. We know the typical effects of atmospheric drag are initially felt at a little under 400km, so to approach an earthlike world without special shielding / handwavium, you are looking at travelling 1.6MegaMetres / 1,600km, Even travelling at the current glide speed of 2,500m/s that is still going to take 10 minutes and forty seconds. And thats assuming the space ship can handle bulldozing its way through an atmosphere at 7.35 times the speed of sound.

indeed.

That's a reasonable compromise but that's why I'd like to see a system where the HUD provides us with a glide-slope to follow.

The glide-slope would consider your ship's integrity, aero' and thermal characteristics and plot an "ideal" rate of descent based on those factors.
You'd have the option of trying to be a hero and diving below the glide-slope - which'd generate more stress and heat and make your ship harder to fly - in order to reach the surface more quickly (possibly useful to avoid pirates or sys-sec ships if your were smuggling) or you could pull up above the glide-slope in order to relieve structural and thermal stress and make your ship easier to manoeuvre, which might come in handy if your ship was sluggish or if it was overheating/overstressed and you needed to recover to avoid damage but it'd mean it'd take longer to reach the surface.

Also, I do appreciate that the current glide mechanic gets you down to the surface quickly, which means you're not wasting game-time completing something which is a bit of a non-event.

I'd like to see that idea retained for atmo' landings if possible.
Basically, that'd involve you dropping out of SC in low orbit but, instead of immediately slowing to normal speed, you'd arrive in the upper-atmosphere travelling at a trans-orbital speed of, say, 2000m/sec and that speed would bleed away as you follow the glide-slope down to the surface.

Ideally, of course, the trans-orbital speed could be calculated properly, based on the size and gravity of a planet so, for example, if you arrived at Earth you'd drop out of SC doing about 7,800m/sec.
Not sure if it'd be wise to implement that in ED, though, in case there were planets that had wacky sizes, atmospheres or gravities which'd either make it impossible to get to the surface without destroying your ship or, at the other extreme, would take hours to get down to the surface.

Again, that's really the sort of stuff that only FDev can decide, by looking at the range of planets the Stellar Forge can create and coming up with a system that's compatible with all of them.

The part I've put in orange text is "correct", a in compatible with real world physics, would you mind rethinking the rest of that post to take into consideration th physics I've outlined in the post before this post, and balance that with gameplay as 10m:40s glide isn't fun, but even that "quick" a re-entry is headbutting the laws of physics by travelling at mach 7.35. Bare in mind that 7,800ms is like mach 22.9.

I'm not meaning to say atmospheric landings are impossible, just that it will need some serious game mechanic tweaks laced with some serious handwavium to make it work. I'm thinking along the lines of a special supplemental shield generator that would in lore atleast create a teardropped kinetic forcefield shield bubble around the ship to deflect the atmosphere? Current shields cannot do that as well, limpets pass through them as if they arent there, and certain weapons passs right through them.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

OK... you might want to grab a beer for the time its going to take to read this reply. BTW @Max Factor I am if it seems like I'm picking on you, I'm not, its just you have put in most of the recent content of this thread, and your maths and units are all over the place, and being a slightly autistic engineer so I'm going to correct your numbers/harmonize your units and explain why you are wrong when you stated that:



While you could say that in a game with Faster Than Light travel, that pyhsics can be damned, however you know as well as I do there is only so much handwavium FDev are willing to apply to bend the laws of physics for gameplay reasons.


It would be hell of a slow descent, and I genuinely don't think you appreciate how slow it would have to be to avoid heat build up, this supposition is supported by the fact you keep mixing up your units in subsequent posts with huge ramifications for the maths underpinning the illustration you are trying to present.

For example, that 800mph you mention is around 357m/s - you are aware that ships speeds are measured in metres per second (m/s) in this game?
View attachment 162477

So assuming you start to "De-Orbit" or Enter the atmosphere at say the orbit of the international space station you are looking at ~400,000 metres altitude, and an orbital speed of 7,660m/s, about 17,000miles per hour. So lets handwavium the orbital speed requirement and say you do the re-entry at the current airless moons approach "glide mode" speed, 2,500m/s, you are hitting an atmosphere at mach 7.35, 2.23 times faster than the SR71 blackbird. Remember the SR71 had to be seriously high to achieve those speeds, in the words of one of the SR71 pilots:


Yeah that was a bit anecdotal as in context the pilot was lording it up in the officers club with a rake of fighter jocks, but we do know that at mach3 at altitude where the atmosphere is thinner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#cite_note-johnson_bio-33

I knw the SR71 is 60's/70's cold war tech, but the physics is still the same. Skimming along the atmosphere at even 2,500m/s "glide mode" is 2.23 times those extrodrinary thermal loadings.


As I mentioned its 2,500 Metres Per Second, 9million metres per hour or 9,000kph,3.6 times as fast as you are currently thinking it would be. Remember all that jazz about the SR71 pulling mach 3 at stratospheric altitudes, and remember the current glide mechanic brings you to about ten km from the surface, where the atmosphereis going to be way thicker offering more drag and thus thermal loads, and you come in at mach 7.35.

At the 85,000ft, I'm sorry for mixing my units but american, 25,908m, atmospheric pressure is roughly 0.02bar, its 0.24bar. Twelve times the aerodrag at 2.3 times the speed = 27.6 times the thermal loading. Remember that the SR71 was designed for and thus optimally shaped for such speeds but could only do them in 0.02bar atmosphere and even then its titanium skin grew so hot it expanded the plane in every dimension, Hows a type 9 going to fair at 27.6 times the aero loading of a SR71?



The first part of this post pertaining to gas giants, I totally agree with, the descent into a gasgiant would be more akin to playing submarines where there is a definite crush strength. Knowing frontier they will probably put a crush depth exclusion zone in place, like they have for stars and black holes etc, whereas I'd really like to see hapless CMDR's getting crushed.

The aerodrag Vt thing, as you can see from the workings above, those numbers will need somewhat adjusted.

Your final point, no Escape Velocity requirements with the propulsion we have, totally agree, if we can clear a 6g airless moon with those thrusters, we can clear a 6g atmospheric planet with those thursters, however it would be done a lot more slowly.

As I say bud, I'm not meaning to pick on you, but you had posted wuite a lot of content that was wrong, and I didn't want others to be misled by it, so I've taken quite a lot of time to go through this with you as I figure it is something you are obviously very interested in, just slightly misinformed about.

Even so, that heat would still be nothing compared to when we go around a star fuel scooping it. I didn't say there would be no heat, just insignificant for what our ships from the far future with far more advanced materials, with force fields etc should be able to take.

Our ships fly through solar magnetic arches.

 

[Stealthie]

[stuff]

I wish I could give rep' for each separate point you make in this thread.

On the face of it, our ship's cruising speed should make for a relatively brief descent, even from significant altitude but neither reality or gameplay really bears that out.
500m/sec = ~1000mph therefore 100 miles descent = 6 minutes, right?

Thing is, if you can do that, you're pretty-much binning all consideration of stuff like drag and atmo' density anyway so you might as well just go with the current "glide" mechanic and have it just take a few seconds (rather than 6 minutes) to get down to the surface.

Personally, as I've said, I'd much rather they impemented a dumbed-down version of reality where you'd start your de-orbit at a realistic speed (several thousand m/sec) and then speed bled-off as you descend through the atmosphere.
Basically, it'd be similar to the current "glide" but it'd be more interactive because adjusting your rate of descent would allow you to control things like heat and stress.

Regarding the SR71, I recall being extremely disappointed when I tried to "fly" an SR71 in FSX, only to find that I could barely get it to mach 1.... until I realised that I needed to get to 80,000ft before I could really get it moving.

Again, I'd suggest that one of the easiest ways people could gain more insight into this stuff is to tinker with supersonic planes in KSP.
Build something like an SR71, notice how it struggles to break mach 1 at sea-level, take it up into the stratosphere and marvel at it's supersonic speed and then descend back to sea-level (still at supersonic speed) and watch as your plane starts to burn up and then disintegrates.

Not saying that we should all be in constant fear of losing out ships during an atmospheric landing in ED but I'd like to see the possibility of doing damage (and the possibility of ship loss) if we're overly ham-fisted with our descents.
Which, of course, is also what'd provide the entertainment, and retain our attention, during the time it would take to complete a quasi-realistic atmospheric landing.

 

[Stealthie]

The part I've put in orange text is "correct", a in compatible with real world physics, would you mind rethinking the rest of that post to take into consideration th physics I've outlined in the post before this post, and balance that with gameplay as 10m:40s glide isn't fun, but even that "quick" a re-entry is headbutting the laws of physics by travelling at mach 7.35. Bare in mind that 7,800ms is like mach 22.9.

I'm not meaning to say atmospheric landings are impossible, just that it will need some serious game mechanic tweaks laced with some serious handwavium to make it work. I'm thinking along the lines of a special supplemental shield generator that would in lore atleast create a teardropped kinetic forcefield shield bubble around the ship to deflect the atmosphere? Current shields cannot do that as well, limpets pass through them as if they arent there, and certain weapons passs right through them.

Honestly, I'd like to say that you've answered your own question. The shield did it.

Course, we're then going to get people in un-shielded ships landing on planets and then there will be wailing about poorly thought out explanations.

I dunno.
Maybe ED ships can ionise their hulls to create nano-vortices which help negate drag?
Handwavium FTW.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Even so, that heat would still be nothing compared to when we go around a star fuel scooping it. I didn't say there would be no heat, just insignificant for what our ships from the far future with far more advanced materials, with force fields etc should be able to take.

Our ships fly through solar magnetic arches.

Really sharp debating move there, +1 like from me.

But... with FTL and top speed is space, and the inherent drag in vacum that slows us down even with flight assist off after boosting, space flight i already handwavium'ed to heck. Even with the handwavium our ships can only really sustain scooping at a distance lest they take thermal damage. Thing that annoys me is when you drop out if you get too close to the star, even though in Supercruise you'd be taking massive thermal damage, you can site there in "slow space" inside the corona indefinitely, yet try that in a neutron star and it wont end so well?

I'm one of the first to admit that there is a lot of handwavium, even so, I think you are massively underestimating the thermal load a fast re-entry would create. Remember drag squares with speed, so going 2.3 times as fast as an SR71 creates 5.29 times the drag. 5.29 times the drag in 12 times the atmospheric pressure = 63.48 times the air resistance.

[EDIT: Forgot to ad this bit] Our suns photosphere, as in where we scoop from, is about 10,000°C, SR71 was about 238°C at
around mach 3 in 0.02bar stratosphere, times that by the 63.48 from above for doing 2500m/s in 0.24bar armosphere, and the resultant temperature would be... wait for it.... drumroll... 15,108.24°C, better have asbestos gloves in the hands that wave over that issue.

When they do atmospheres it will be a handwavium bonanza, most likely something along the lines of what I described as QD-Atmospherics in a post on the previous page of this thread, but its still nice to know how much handwavium there is at play. If nothing else, quantifying the challenges now will give players the opportunity to consider how realistic or handwavium they want their atmospheric experience to be.

I wish I could give rep' for each separate point you make in this thread.

On the face of it, our ship's cruising speed should make for a relatively brief descent, even from significant altitude but neither reality or gameplay really bears that out.
500m/sec = ~1000mph therefore 100 miles descent = 6 minutes, right?
Those numbers are, in need of tweaking, 500m/s = 1148mph, atmosphere is roughly 400km, vertical descent at 500m/s through 400km = 800seconds = 15minutes.
Thing is, if you can do that, you're pretty-much binning all consideration of stuff like drag and atmo' density anyway so you might as well just go with the current "glide" mechanic and have it just take a few seconds (rather than 6 minutes) to get down to the surface.
Factor in a glide slope, like the shuttles ~20° 4:1 glide slope and you are looking at an hour of descent time. that becomes about an hour, so for gameplay reasons it needs to be faster, hence me suggesting glide speed of 2500m/s, but thats still 12 minutes, at mach 7.35
Personally, as I've said, I'd much rather they impemented a dumbed-down version of reality where you'd start your de-orbit at a realistic speed (several thousand m/sec) and then speed bled-off as you descend through the atmosphere.
Basically, it'd be similar to the current "glide" but it'd be more interactive because adjusting your rate of descent would allow you to control things like heat and stress.
I'm going to quote a previous post I put in this thread for your consideration.
Regarding the SR71, I recall being extremely disappointed when I tried to "fly" an SR71 in FSX, only to find that I could barely get it to mach 1.... until I realised that I needed to get to 80,000ft before I could really get it moving.

Again, I'd suggest that one of the easiest ways people could gain more insight into this stuff is to tinker with supersonic planes in KSP.
Build something like an SR71, notice how it struggles to break mach 1 at sea-level, take it up into the stratosphere and marvel at it's supersonic speed and then descend back to sea-level (still at supersonic speed) and watch as your plane starts to burn up and then disintegrates.
Never played with a blackbird in any games, but I will most likely end up playing with KSP at some point.
Not saying that we should all be in constant fear of losing out ships during an atmospheric landing in ED but I'd like to see the possibility of doing damage (and the possibility of ship loss) if we're overly ham-fisted with our descents.
Which, of course, is also what'd provide the entertainment, and retain our attention, during the time it would take to complete a quasi-realistic atmospheric landing.

Honestly, I'd like to say that you've answered your own question. The shield did it.

Course, we're then going to get people in un-shielded ships landing on planets and then there will be wailing about poorly thought out explanations.

I dunno.
Maybe ED ships can ionise their hulls to create nano-vortices which help negate drag?
Handwavium FTW.

Thanks, it was just my suggestion on how it could be plausibly done regarding lore and implementation. Heres that quote about QD-Atomspheres so called QD as its a Quick and Dirty solution to doing atmospheres:

Why atmospheric landings?

Would make it even more interesting if they restricted ships by mass from atmospheric flight completely. That would greatly simplify a lot of the physics modeling/design. That shouldn't really happen because, fundamentally, gravity is the only thing that dictates whether or not our ships can...

forums.frontier.co.uk

they could roll out a QD-Atmospherics in about a year after they stopped whack-a-moling the inevitable new era bugs and exploits. They could do this by using all the turbulence algorithims I mentioned, a rehasehd interdiciton mini game with flames instead of cerenkov radiation, and as you lost the "re entry minigame" more flames and ship heat and damage occuring, for the atmosphere entry procedure. When the player was in the atmosphere, assuming they survived the re entry to get that far and not to reuy screen, they would find themselves in an atmosphere which would require FAon* to be on, see other comments about fighterjets and aerodynamic instability, and use the simplist shading for the skybox and volumetric effects for the clouds you suggest.

*Reason for FAon being obligatory in QDA implementaiton of atmospheres is essentially they would be just reskinned verisons of airless moons we currently go to, so there would be no aerodyminac models or effects on our ships flight models, so the first FAoff manouvere on a planet would unmask what a smoke and mirrors job masking the massive botch that QDAtmospheres really was.

Which would at a stroke handwavium the reentry issues we've crunched numbers on today and actually be pretty easy to implement with things already in the cobra engine.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Really sharp debating move there, +1 like from me.

But... with FTL and top speed is space, and the inherent drag in vacum that slows us down even with flight assist off after boosting, space flight i already handwavium'ed to heck. Even with the handwavium our ships can only really sustain scooping at a distance lest they take thermal damage. Thing that annoys me is when you drop out if you get too close to the star, even though in Supercruise you'd be taking massive thermal damage, you can site there in "slow space" inside the corona indefinitely, yet try that in a neutron star and it wont end so well?

I'm one of the first to admit that there is a lot of handwavium, even so, I think you are massively underestimating the thermal load a fast re-entry would create. Remember drag squares with speed, so going 2.3 times as fast as an SR71 creates 5.29 times the drag. 5.29 times the drag in 12 times the atmospheric pressure = 63.48 times the air resistance.

[EDIT: Forgot to ad this bit] Our suns photosphere, as in where we scoop from, is about 10,000°C, SR71 was about 238°C at
around mach 3 in 0.02bar stratosphere, times that by the 63.48 from above for doing 2500m/s in 0.24bar armosphere, and the resultant temperature would be... wait for it.... drumroll... 15,108.24°C, better have asbestos gloves in the hands that wave over that issue.

When they do atmospheres it will be a handwavium bonanza, most likely something along the lines of what I described as QD-Atmospherics in a post on the previous page of this thread, but its still nice to know how much handwavium there is at play. If nothing else, quantifying the challenges now will give players the opportunity to consider how realistic or handwavium they want their atmospheric experience to be.





Thanks, it was just my suggestion on how it could be plausibly done regarding lore and implementation. Heres that quote about QD-Atomspheres so called QD as its a Quick and Dirty solution to doing atmospheres:

Why atmospheric landings?

Would make it even more interesting if they restricted ships by mass from atmospheric flight completely. That would greatly simplify a lot of the physics modeling/design. That shouldn't really happen because, fundamentally, gravity is the only thing that dictates whether or not our ships can...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Which would at a stroke handwavium the reentry issues we've crunched numbers on today and actually be pretty easy to implement with things already in the cobra engine.

The shuttle re-entry only gets to 1650 Deg centigrade. Why would our own reentry which is much slower then the shuttle be so much hotter?

Our reentry speed at 9000kph (glide) when the space shuttle is coming in at 29000kph. That's a whole 20,000kph more.

Something tells me your maths may be off somewhere.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

The shuttle re-entry only gets to 1650 Deg centigrade. Why would our own reentry which is much slower then the shuttle be so much hotter?

Our reentry speed at 9000kph (glide) when the space shuttle is coming in at 29000kph. That's a whole 20,000kph more.

Something tells me your maths may be off somewhere.

The shuttle enters the very top layers of our atmosphere at those speeds, but we are talking like 0.002bar atmosphere at those speeds, as it descends it slows down because as it burns in its initial 29000kph approach, it bleeds off massive ammounts of speed due to drag. By the time it is in atmosphere it is flying like an aeroplane at much more sensible speeds, "The orbiter's main landing gear touches down on the runway at 214 to 226 miles per hour, followed by the nose gear."

As I understand it, from deorbit burn to touchdown it was roughly about an hour and a half for a shuttle returning, but for game play reasons we calculated it out based on maintaining 2500m/s constant speed, without any aero braking, all the way down to ~10km altitude as current planetary glide does, then decelerate from 10km altitude at 2,500m/s, downwards to ships normal speed at probably 7KM altitude. Reason I calculated it this way was one to prove the point about the ammount of energy invovled in reentry, and to keep the speed up as an attempt to try and keep the ammount of time an Elite Re-entry would take the.

If you wanted to get really persnickety you could crunch the following factors in a spreadsheet, 29,000kph = 8055.55m/s @ 400,000 metres altitude, as one data point, 220mph = 98.35m/s @ sea level. Assuming simple linear deceleration you could put those two datapoints on a graph, then overlay another series on the chart with datapoints you'd generate by plugging altitudes into this caculator: http://www.endmemo.com/physics/pressurealtitude.php

To give you a graph with two lines on it one denoting altitude vs pressure, other denoting speed vs altitude, and you'd see by the time it hits any kind of worth while pressure, the 2,500m/s constant velocity ship in my mathematical model above is ging way faster than a shuttle is, and thats why my model's ship is a lot hotter than the shuttle was on re entry.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Yes the above is a simplistic way of calculating it and it wouldn't be remotely accurate as the decelleration of the craft would not be linear like that, it would be much more complicated to calculate out incorporating factors such as its Cd, angle of attack, speed, altitude and thus atmospheric pressure. As such the notional speed from those charts above would be out of whack, but it would let you see that at no point would the shuttle be doing mach 7.35 in an atmosphere.

I'm sorry bro, but I'm not going to put together something with that level of detail for a debate on this forum.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The shuttle enters the very top layers of our atmosphere at those speeds, but we are talking like 0.002bar atmosphere at those speeds, as it descends it slows down because as it burns in its initial 29000kph approach, it bleeds off massive ammounts of speed due to drag. By the time it is in atmosphere it is flying like an aeroplane at much more sensible speeds, "The orbiter's main landing gear touches down on the runway at 214 to 226 miles per hour, followed by the nose gear."

As I understand it, from deorbit burn to touchdown it was roughly about an hour and a half for a shuttle returning, but for game play reasons we calculated it out based on maintaining 2500m/s constant speed, without any aero braking, all the way down to ~10km altitude as current planetary glide does, then decelerate from 10km altitude at 2,500m/s, downwards to ships normal speed at probably 7KM altitude. Reason I calculated it this way was one to prove the point about the ammount of energy invovled in reentry, and to keep the speed up as an attempt to try and keep the ammount of time an Elite Re-entry would take the.

If you wanted to get really persnickety you could crunch the following factors in a spreadsheet, 29,000kph = 8055.55m/s @ 400,000 metres altitude, as one data point, 220mph = 98.35m/s @ sea level. Assuming simple linear deceleration you could put those two datapoints on a graph, then overlay another series on the chart with datapoints you'd generate by plugging altitudes into this caculator: http://www.endmemo.com/physics/pressurealtitude.php
View attachment 162499

To give you a graph with two lines on it one denoting altitude vs pressure, other denoting speed vs altitude, and you'd see by the time it hits any kind of worth while pressure, the 2,500m/s constant velocity ship in my mathematical model above is ging way faster than a shuttle is, and thats why my model's ship is a lot hotter than the shuttle was on re entry.

I wouldn't expect the reentry to be exactly the same anyway. I think glide would finish differently depending on the composition of the atmosphere. The thicker it is the higher you fall out of glide. The thinner, the longer into glide you can go. I still don't think heat is a major issue but I get what you are saying. All it needs is a handwavian atmospheric re-entry shield that streamlines any ship and moves the heat away from the ship. Anything can be done and it needs to be accessible.

I don't want anything too complicated as it becomes un-fun, but not too easy as it becomes boring. Glad I'm not making it.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

You might find this insightful,

Re-entry, the final most dangerous hour

A space shuttle is both lifeboat and death trap. Every launch is a potential explosion, every orbit a flight through a shooting gallery. But the real hazard has always been on the way down.

www.theguardian.com

Around 3,000 miles west of the runway, it should enter the atmosphere at 400,000 feet, and 22 times the speed of sound, tilting its nose by 40 degrees, so that the thermal tiles on its underbelly will serve as a heat shield, and the hull of the spacecraft will act as an air brake. In effect, the vehicle is being hit by a 1,700mph wind. The orbiter and its crew must rely on the strength of a decades-old engineering design and a set of replaceable foam tiles to take the heat. At this point, all communication is cut off. The temperature of more than 1500C ionises the air around the spacecraft, it strips electrons from the atoms in the surrounding atmosphere.

This creates a zone of electromagnetic disturbance that no radio waves can penetrate. For 17 or more minutes, the shuttle is out of contact. It loses three feet in height for every 15 feet it covers. This is a descent far steeper than made by any powered aircraft.

At around 170,000 feet - about 30 miles - the craft's navigational equipment should pick up beacon signals from its landing strip, and begin to slalom in a series of wide swings to slow its speed further. At 40,000 feet, while still travelling at one and a half times the speed of sound, it executes a 180 degree turn and takes a bearing on its runway. At 13,000 feet, its speed begins to drop to 400 mph; its landing gear drops 11 seconds before touchdown and it hits the runway at more than 200 mph. All this time, it is at the mercy of sudden gusts of wind. There is no margin for error, no second chance and no hope of baling out.

But yeah, I'm onside, its a narrow tightline between unplayable hard, and dumbed down to the point of disinteresting, hence my suggestion of the handwavium plated atmospheric reentry shield generator, and reusing glide mechanics as is with flames instead of the blue lights that looks like cerenkov radiation. I think there needs to be some more buffeting to make the pilot have to work hard to keep his ship in the glideslope, kind of like interdiction minigame?

What I'm calling QDA, Quick and Dirty Atmospheres, is very likely to bare a strong resemblence to how atmospheres end up getting implemented. Not necessarily a bad thing, as by virtue of not having to rewrite the game to dovetail it in it means we will expereince that content sooner. I'd still like atmosphere reentry to be a skilled process requiring player agency, but gamified to the point it takes five to ten minutes of concentration, not an hour from orbit to landing pad like a shuttle used to take. I also want it to have potential consequences of getting it wrong, including damage to and even potential loss of the ship.

Just had an image in my head, a noob-aconda goofing its planetary reentry so badly it explodes like that airburst meteor over chelyabinsk.

 

[Stealthie]

It's probably also worth bearing in mind speed vs rate of descent too.

It won't make a big difference to heat but it will make a big difference to the time to landing.

When we're assuming an ED ship speed of 500m/sec in regard to time to land, that'd mean diving vertically toward the surface.
Obviously, that isn't a realistic situation.

The shuttle used to take roughly an hour to de-orbit, falling through the upper atmosphere (at stupid speeds and rates of descent) and then began a proper "glide" - once the atmosphere gets thick enough that it had something to glide with - until it was, ultimately (for the last 10 minutes of the flight) gliding at a speed of around 150m/sec with a rate of descent of around 50m/sec.
Obviously, it didn't land at that rate of descent.
It'd flare and then land at a rate of around 10m/sec.
Incidentally, this was a "poop or bust" manoeuvre since the flare would, effectively, stall the shuttle and it lost all chance of remaining airborne.
Once you'd pulled back on the stick you were going to be reunited with the ground within a few seconds, one way or another.

Once again, the big question, here, is how detailed FDev want to get with ED.

I mean, the shuttle could only follow this procedure on Earth, cos Earth's got it's Oxygen/Nitrogen atmosphere.
If it tried to do the same thing on a planet with a helium atmosphere, it'd crater into the ground.
Conversely, if it tried to do it on a planet with a Radon atmosphere, it'd be like trying to glide through syrup.

Do we expect that ED will recognise what gasses are present in an atmosphere and force our ships to respond realistically to them?

Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible to create any spaceship that could operate within both the thickest and thinnest atmospheres you might find on a planet's surface, never mind the wacky sci-fi ships we have in ED.

Far more likely that FDev will be forced to take some liberties with realism and, at best, give us something that approximates the principles of an atmospheric landing rather than realistically abides by the laws of physics.