is atmospheric landing even possible with either of the 38 playable ships???

Tell that to NASA then. No wings on their rockets, they apparently are doing it wrong.

In the end the whole thing boils down to this: you enter a planets atmosphere. With our present day technology you need to rely on some way to reduce speed. Every space agency for obvious reasons relies on aerobraking: you convert position energy into heat to slow the vehicle down to manageable speeds. The last meters you have to rely on something else. On the SpaceShuttle they resorted to wings for a glide aproach. Anybody else relies on parachutes to slow the speed down enough to land savely.

The pure reason behind that is the tyrany of fuel (Or Tyranny of the Rocket Equation). Look it up, it's an acutal term. It basically means that for every pound of fuel you bring along with you, you need to spend extra fuel in earlier stages. The costs rise exponentially. (Depending on which fuel you use, the fuel makes up between 83% and 96% of a rockets mass. ) So in the theoretical scenario that you want to slow down your spaceship not by aerobreaking but by using thrusters, you'd need to bring a full sized V5 rocket into space. Which means you'd need many of them to carry the one into space. (More exact: considering the best case scenario you'd need to use up 6 of them to carry one into space, which then could use its fuel to slow down when returning. ) Which gets a bit expensive.

In contrast, within the world of ED, every spaceship has a fusion reactor. It means it has an almost unlimited power supply. Fuel in ED is cheap and light. If you have so much energy available, basically for free, there's no reason not to use it for breaking down and controling your ship by thrusters. In the end, that's exactly what we already do on non-atmospheric planets. I mean, what else but our thrusters would slow the ships down?

The only difference for atmospheric planets actually is: depending on your speed, you still have to handle things like compression heat, turbulences, the sonic shockwave, etc. And yes, those can differ strongly depending on each ships shape. But the answer also was already given in this thread: we have shields. A shield strong enough to keep my ship alive when ramming a planets surface at over 500 m/s and a ship able to collect fuel by entering a suns corona should also be able to handle some compression heat, turbulences and a bit of sonic shockwaves.
This.
I'm no aerospace engineer, but as a previous military pilot for 2 years and owner of my own 4 seat Cessna for 40 years. Without wings there is no lift. One needs lift either ascending or descending. Without lift, one can't get off the ground, and if so, would fall back like a rock. Thus most of ED ships if using anything close to actual physics; Would crash!

The shuttle doesn't depend on lift to go up, but without the wings in its design, it would not be able to glide back to Earth in any kind of controlled flight.
This not.
Why do I bother to reply?

If the iconic and culturally accepted Millennium Falcon is an atmosphere capable ship, similar will be accepted in ED.

Fundamentaly ED is a sci-fi game, grounded in ideas of the genre. If certain ideas are accepted within the overall genre they will be generally accepted in ED. And don't go all hyperbolic with this. The story tellers can choose whatever elements they wish to include. You can argue all day about the physics of FTL travel, the science behind lasers, and dozens of other common sci-fi elements. Its part of the genre.

Frontier will make the choice, but obviously within the gaming genre if the Falcon can fly in atmosphere a Krait can too.
What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon?
Haha thrusters go phwoosh
This also...
 
Ships in ED and the space shuttle during launch get lift from their rockets. There is no, or marginal, aerodynamic lift, bit that is not the only source of lift.
One can utilize any of the multiple meanings involved in the word, lift.

And rockets don't have wings, they have stabilizer's.
 
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In FE2 and FFE (Elite 2 and 3) you had to fit atmospheric shields to enter an atmosphere in addition to standard shields.
My guess would be that either:
  1. You don't need any shields (see comment above about fuel scooping)
  2. You require at minimum atmospheric shields
 
If Drew Wagar's book are canon, then even Anacondas can plough through the skies.

They always could in previous games (FE2 and FFE), even the Panther Clipper, so no reason in Lore not to be able to land. The way atmospheric entry occurred in ED was discussed by the writers with Devs/Designers in the private writers forum (alas, long since deleted) so we could get the details right in in our novels based on the thinking at the time.

Cheers,

Drew.
 
Of course they can! ANY ship in this game can land on any planet. It's a video game and it's just a matter of coding it that way.

we're talking about space ships. in space. that for some reason look like airplanes and large boats and have speed limits and even slow down in space. I think we'll be ok.

sadly... we'll not get the experience of bsg type atmospheric play with some ships excluded, some ships included. And some ships awesome enough not be able to land but to withstand jumping into the atmo long enough to launch fighters and restart the jump sequence and bounce out before falling to the surface. Like a boss.
 
Tbh none of these ships incl Cobra has a suitable airfoil to provide a good lift-drag ratio at all, let alone the microscopic wings won‘t help a lot, lol. Power. Need power.
 
You are doing creative marketing coomunication:

You have taken something that is science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale just until Type III civilization, and you are trying to state that something that isn't science yet, that is one of its proposed extension, that is Type V civilization, has the same soundness and proofness, worse even ... ...sorry dude, but your behaviour isn't scientifically acceptable.

It is science, although theoretical. If you'd have read that Wikipedia article, you could've read that Kardashev didn't believe that a Type IV civilization was possible and I'm sure you are aware of differences between knowledge and beliefs. You could've also read that other theoretical physicists like Michio Kaku extended the scale beyond III, because that's what scientists usually do: change, extend and deepen our knowledge (one funeral at the time). Are you trying to tell me that theoretical physics isn't science? And please discuss science and its methods and don't discuss my behavior.

I'm still waiting for your proof that a Type V civilization is impossible.

Anyway you have missed my precedent examples let me quote them here:


let me add just another example: that having such a quite infinite thrust/weight ratio is working just when you have to take off from any G planet, but when you are flying in normal space your ship RCS is instead is heavily influenced in some ways from its mass... ...such a strange science fact, don't you think something is wrong if the same thrusters when you have to take off from high G planet have some performances, but when you need ship RCS they has such low performaces?... ...this is breaking its same rules, so these thrusters when have to take off your ship from a high G planet is a deus-ex machina, that is: magic, pure fantasy. And it's just an example, there are more...
I didn't miss it. I've chosen not to discuss it at all, because ED is a work of art. Apropos, there's nothing magical and fantastic in our thrusters when we take off if they're using a fusion reactor.
 
About lifting bodies in Earth atmosphere without wings - ED ships do this similarly to bodies on videos below (especially with 30th centure tech). Physics education is much more helpful with understanding this however, than pilots license, heh:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMCC0iigRWI

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNztSsjmLYU

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7687ld6TE

^ This is the answer to the OP. This is the only answer to the OP. ^

This, and a bit of the fiction in science fiction, is all you need.

Six pages later... this forum... :LOL:
 
^ This is the answer to the OP. This is the only answer to the OP. ^

This, and a bit of the fiction in science fiction, is all you need.

Six pages later... this forum... :LOL:

No, fdev gave the only answer to the op when they made ships magically able to escape planetary surfaces with any thrusters regardless of mass of the ship and planet gravity.
Middle Finger tattooed with the word "Gameplay" up it.

It's the same one atmospheric flight would get too. Pretending like atmospheric flight will ever be implemented.
 
If you can make a KFC bucket fly, you can make anything fly.

1589914194117.png


Just imagine KFC powers everything and problems just vanish.
 
Perhaps instead of a fighter bay you will be able to equip a shuttle bay. Then you could leave your ship in orbit and shuttle down in a little bus. If its good enough for Star Trek.....shuttle.png

Cheers, GD
 
I rather think that in movies the ships land because the narrative affords them too. It also affords Star Destroyers to hang around in atmosphere because it looks great on the screen. Video games are a different medium and function differently too, when it comes down to believable "lore", "tech" or setting. How much space magic ED will field is not determined yet, I'd say. At least not officially.

True. Now let's see, what are the options:
1. FD fully calculates each ships surface, looks into aerodynamics, models how turbulence, sonic shock wave and other things affect your ships, etc.
2. FD simply gives the ships something similar to the old Frontier games, a shield for atmospheric landing and can call it a day after that.

Which of the two you consider more likely to happen is up to you.

Perhaps instead of a fighter bay you will be able to equip a shuttle bay. Then you could leave your ship in orbit and shuttle down in a little bus. If its good enough for Star Trek....

Cheers, GD

But then we also need giants who try to smash it with huge rocks... :D
 
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considering that supercruise means you can enter atmosphere without caring about friction since you're not actually moving at the relative speed you're travelling, until the magic supercruise engine drops sc in favor of "glide" mode ... i dont think any elite ships need to worry about re-entry friction etc.

They wouldn't need to worry about aerodynamics either since we already know our thrusters can keep us aloft and they're always on when around gravity wells.

You would just have drag /wind as an added factor of flight when in an atmo planet. Unless they also implement weather.

That would just be a coefficient to normal flight behavior.

Most ships would probably do very little actual atmo flight since speed would be drastically reduced due to drag. Just supercruise in, drop over a area you need to land ...lift off when done and supercruise/jump out.

In the end, it would be rather boring like our current planetary landings. Unless of course, atmo planets had sprawling cities and activity. But i somehow doubt that.

I'd also wonder about how they'd deal with large bodies of water. Seems unlike Fdev to let us die by getting crushed by water pressure or water causing the engines to malfunction and not be able to liftoff etc. I'm imagining dry ...featureless atmo bodies that are exactly like barren worlds we have now but with drag coefficient and maybe less visibility.
 
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I'm no aerospace engineer, but as a previous military pilot for 2 years and owner of my own 4 seat Cessna for 40 years. Without wings there is no lift. One needs lift either ascending or descending. Without lift, one can't get off the ground, and if so, would fall back like a rock. Thus most of ED ships if using anything close to actual physics; Would crash!

The shuttle doesn't depend on lift to go up, but without the wings in its design, it would not be able to glide back to Earth in any kind of controlled flight.
I say old chap, those clever boffins at the Ministry of Supply disproved your statement back in the 1950's
 
You can't scientifically prove that a Type V civilization can't exist.

You can't test it via the scientific method either and if a theory not falsifiable, as far as mainstream science is concerned, it's not science. A theory requires proof, whether experimental or mathematical, and is ultimately judged on how well it agrees with empirical observations. In the case of a 'Type V civilization' this would require we be able to observe beyond the visible universe and have a way of interpreting such observations. This relegates it to the speculative, for now.

There's nothing magical and fantastic in our thrusters when we take off if they're using a fusion reactor.

4ndr34 is right about there being blatantly fantastic elements here, he's just not pointing out the correct ones.

A fusion reactor may be a real thing, and one that could produce a net positive power is foreseeable enough to be hard science fiction, but saying what our ships can do isn't fantasy because someone stuck the 'fusion reactor' label on it ignores a whole lot of physical laws.

A planetary landing suite that increases ventral thrust as a piloting aid is entirely plausible...having it increase acceleration by ~10g without any corresponding increase in fuel or power consumption is not, nor is ~10g of continuous thrust applied to a ~1000 ton ship with only ~200 grams per second of reaction mass.

For our ships' thrusters to do what they can be observed to do with the reaction mass on hand, they would need to produce an exhaust velocity of several percent the speed of light...which would require vastly more energy than the listed output of these reactors, would require more heat be dissipated than would be plausible given available radiator area (unless we have materials that can get to millions of degrees without melting), and result in far more dramatic effects any time that exhaust came into contact with anything. The performance depicted in some of these areas is multiple orders of magnitude beyond what's physically possible within the contraints depicted in game.
 
I'd say atmospheres or atmospheric heating are going to be minimal nuisance to thing that CAN relatively safely get shower in active neutron stars ejection cone. Or bask in star's corona. And when it comes to flying, well ships have such amount of thrust that even brick will fly nice enough.
 
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I am by no mean an aerospace engineer but after reading NASA's articles on their space shuttle , in particular the STS-120, I learned that it was built like a spaceplane.
What that means is, it can orbit Earth like a spaceship but when entering the Earth atmosphere, it glides down using its wings , taking advantage of basic aerodynamics.

Now, looking at some of the 38 playable ships we have today, some of them are literally a flying brick , (type 9, python, anaconda etc etc) , how on Earth are they going to land on an Earth like planet with a gravitational force of -9.41g and having no WINGS whatsoever?? the moment they enter an Earth-like planet atmosphere they will fall down like a bird high on cocaine.
Now I know this is year 3036 or whatever and technology is far more advanced but think about it, even today, when you try to land on a low gravity planet , you can feel the ship being pulled down so an Earth like planet with super high gravity AND atmosphere - there is no way those behemoths can safely land. Unless Frontier is cooking up some new guardian technology that upon entering an atmosphere, a set of wings come out and you can glide down like an airplane. I just hope it's not going to be as fake as No Man's Sky with like zero realism...

if there are any real aerospace engineers or real-life pilots here, feel free to comment. I am really curious what options they have in terms of allowing those monster ships to land on an Earth like planet and yet keep the game as realistic as possible.

cheers
First and foremost, "atmospheric planets" does not mean "earth-likes".
Earth-likes are only one type of atmospheric planets and a very rare one as well. Actually this means, our ships will have to be able to enter all types of atmospheres from very thin ones like on Mars to very thick ones like on Venus.
In the end you could always say our shields are protecting us, and when I look at the heat our ships can take without melting, entry should be fine...
Concerning flight in atmosphere, we don't really need wings because we have thrusters all around our ships keeping us in the air and correcting our trajectory. In cases like Venus, where the atmosphere is almost fluid and also highly corrosive, I'm not sure if those would work at all, but well...

And yes, I'd love to have more scientific approaches to a lot of things in Elite.
 
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