Will there be atmospheric landings this year?
Horizons Atmospheric landings?
- Thread starter ZeGamingCuber
- Start date
How do you "land" on the atmosphere?
He means landing on planetoids with atmospheres. That should be a hoot give the configuration of many of the ships. Seems like they look good but probably fly like bricks when in some kind of air. Not a lifting body among them.
That is why the ships have thrusters. If you can lift off a planet with more then 1g gravity. You will be able to fly in the atmosphere.
To the TC. It was not announced during the expo for what Beyond contains, so I highly doubt it. It will probably be in the next season. I'd rather them do the QOL updates with beyond before adding something like atmos landing and adding new bugs into the mix.
You need to do some research on aerodynamics, atmospheric drag, etc. The presence of an atmosphere significantly changes a moving object's response to gravity and acceleration, which is why the Space Shuttle never flew around like a fighter jet, and basically used a controlled brick-fall for its landing. So while thrusters may be able to lift you off a planet, doing any real maneuvering would require a whole new set of skills. Forget the near-vertical "Escape Vector" take-offs, they'd be near-impossible if the flight physics are realistic. Heavy-lift rockets are shaped the way they are to reduce drag and they still need a horrendous amount of thrust to launch. Instead, an angled approach to the atmosphere/space interface would be needed. Same for atmospheric entries and landings -- try the kind of landing we can do now and you'd burn up from the friction.
I agree there needs to be some design implentation for atmo landings, but we have FSD to compliment it also.
Also we would burn up from the friction. Like we completely burn up fuel scooping from a star which is hotter then atmospheric reentry. Im sure the ships have shielding considering if they didnt we would be irradiated hot messes flying system to system scooping stars.
I don't want to get into the details of solar atmospheres and corona physics, but the heat from an uncontrolled or too-steep atmospheric re-entry can easily exceed that of the surface of many main-sequence-type stars, and while the corona is much hotter, it is also so thin as to be a near-vacuum, so the overall heat-density is much lower. Fuel-scooping is somewhat unrealistic in that I think it would take much longer than it does to collect tons of material, but in terms of heat resistance, it's not all that outlandish.
There's nothing I would want more than this, but it simply doesn't look like it'll happen anytime soon. Frontier would clearly like to do it, but it doesn't sound like they've even begun development yet. If that's the case: 2019, maybe.
carefully
I think you are forgetting one salient point. The heat of the stars corona is as irrelevant as the heat of the planet's atmosphere, the reason being we're scooping at up to .33 light speed, and I don't care how thin it is, if you are travelling at a third of the speed of light friction is going to be the main source of heat when you are travelling through any sort of gas, the gas temperature is totally irrelevant. Sure if you are scooping at 30kps it may be relevant, but then you can also enter a planets atmosphere perfectly safely at that speed.
As I see it, a ship's shields deflect particles (gas) during supercruise, but not radiant energy (heat), making friction a non-issue. There is also the question of whether the frame-shift drive is actually providing superluminal velocity, as it folds space rather than creating massive acceleration. The effective travel time is the same, just without all that "mucking around in hyperspace."
30kps = 108,000kph = 64,800 mph, which is by no means a "safe" velocity to enter an atmosphere, unless you are planning on self-immolation. It would require extremely precise calculation and execution of the angle of approach and descent, not the kind of seat-of-the-pants stick jockeying ED provides, which is fun but not useful in all situations.
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As I see it, a ship's shields deflect particles (gas) during supercruise, but not radiant energy (heat), making friction a non-issue. There is also the question of whether the frame-shift drive is actually providing superluminal velocity, as it folds space rather than creating massive acceleration. The effective travel time is the same, just without all that "mucking around in hyperspace."
30kps = 108,000kph = 64,800 mph, which is by no means a "safe" velocity to enter an atmosphere, unless you are planning on self-immolation. It would require extremely precise calculation and execution of the angle of approach and descent, not the kind of seat-of-the-pants stick jockeying ED provides, which is fun but not useful in all situations.
I know what you mean, but that's where it becomes tricky, we are still in SC when we enter the atmosphere, it's only when we enter glide mode we exit SC, which in some cases with small bodies is around 20km up. Even with large bodies we are still only 50km up, and traveling at only 2.5kps when we exit SC . There's some handwavium at work all over the place because if we are in a warp bubble in SC how can we scoop fuel? The overheating from stars is not actually friction, it's internal heat building up because we can't vent it, which is why heat sinks work in that situation. So we are in SC until we drop to 2.5kps and enter glide mode, then your atmospheric effects take over, and no overheating because we are now traveling slow enough, and besides we can use a heat sink if we have a problem.
So now your story is friction is not relevant when traveling near a star, it's "internal heat builldup"? Nope. Systems don't run hotter near a star, the ship is simply soaking up radiant energy from the star that can overcome the system's ability to disperse it, which may require a heat sink. This is reinforced by salvage missions in burning stations, where the friction is nil, systems are at base functioning level (no increased internal heat buildup), and the temperature is relatively low (the color of the station interior suggests less than 2500 deg Kelvin), yet the heat becomes critical in tens of seconds. Shields eventually break down under undue stress (ever been in combat?), and entry @ any SC level into a dense atmosphere definitely presents undue stress from friction heating, plus there is the physical barrier even a moderately thin atmo presents -- hit it at too steep an angle and the shock as well as friction can be enormous, too shallow an angle and you can skip off like a stone on a pond. Apollo 13 faced this danger and managed to survive it (as did all those returning from the Moon, but Apollo 13 required stick-jockeying sans computer), but I assume most ED players are not trained astronauts and/or test pilots. Tragically, one of the shuttles lost enough of its heat shielding to make their re-entry deadly, and shuttles were sleekly aerodynamic compared to some of the ED ship designs. In any case, atmo landings would require a generous dose of, as you call it, handwavium (great term ) and some serious stick and rudder skills, perhaps presenting more obstacles than it's worth.
) and some serious stick and rudder skills, perhaps presenting more obstacles than it's worth.
It sounds like FDev would have to make the approach to an atmospheric planet a bit different than non-atmospheric? For example, maybe the transitional layers where the ship drops into orbital cruise and then glide would be moved further out and have added conditional requirements like approach angle and heat management. Maybe you would have to keep an eye on the shield strength, as I would assume it would help compensate for poor ship aerodynamics and heat dissipation.
No one knows for sure. Fdev may not know for sure either. They may have devs working on the idea, with the hope for a pleasant surprise for the game which they like to do, but are not sure whether it can be done right, with all the technical challenges of a game of ED's unparalleled working astronomical scope, by the end of the year (or any successive year). I prefer it this way. No need to extra pressure the devs like certain other game companies and their feature creep hooplah marketing. If you really want to know the state of atmos dev, I would think you need to be working at Frontier, or a major shareholder.
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We'll be lucky if they manage to fix all the broken bits of the game in a year let alone get onto anything as complex as aerodynamics, they can't even put plausible engine pod animations on the new Chieftain let alone get the ships to fly right in an atmosphere.
They've mentioned several times that work on atmospherics has been ongoing for years now. There's the old kickstarter video with the rudimentary cloud tech. There's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCQXXNCawF4 video of more advanced gas giant tech from 2014. They've definitely been working towards it for quite some time.
What Frontier has done well and right so far with ED far outweighs the nitpicks. The game is the most successful for its type of depth and realistic space simulation. The devs are fans themselves of the genre, the game and its future where the hope for further developments has been fervent in this new year.
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There is paid for premium content coming out this year. It may or may not be atmospheric planets.