In your games what is the largest ship that can land on a planet.
- Thread starter infojunky
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Enoki
SOC-14 1K
Well in terms of real-world aircraft, the heaviest right now that is flying runs about 250 tons. There have been design projects for aircraft up to about 2,500 tons. If you consider TL advances, something like 10,000 tons should be possible, maybe more...
Anything the ground wouldn't support could be designed to land on water (if available) and float like a ship. Grav systems would also help. But even landing systems, assuming the ship can hover (back to those grav systems), should be able to produce low enough ground pressure to allow a landing.
Anything the ground wouldn't support could be designed to land on water (if available) and float like a ship. Grav systems would also help. But even landing systems, assuming the ship can hover (back to those grav systems), should be able to produce low enough ground pressure to allow a landing.
Well MYU I let anything land ....once. If you mean land without damage then take off again and reach orbit, then that depends on the planetary conditions and the configuration equippage and overal density of the ship. >14mt/DT and they do not float. Mass times local g exceeds thrust then non-streamlined and streamlined cannot hover and are in the once catagory, and this is loaded, not empty. Then there are the airframe ships, they can land if the atmosphere is dense enough to support aerodynamic flight at thier density. If you are light enough to fly in the atmosphere, then you can land. You can take off if thrust is good enough. Have to make a chart for planet size and density, atmospheric density ship density, and the thrust/time needed to reach orbit. That guy loading a shuttle with 80 DT of osimum ingots at 308 mt/DT is going to bomb the spaceport with it, not "land". (265mt/DT)
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Taking off, though ...
Marcatlas
SOC-12
if you can land you can take off.
The US space shuttle can land. The US space shuttle needs a saturn V booster or a modified 747 to take off, and only the saturn V booster gets it back to orbit.
Marcatlas
SOC-12
So? What has that got to do with a trav ship with M-drives???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
As long as you have a functioning gravitational based manoeuvre drive, you can safely make an atmospheric reentry.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Then you can install hull heat shielding.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Nope.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Starship plus booster is currently 5000 metric tons.
Elon has plans for bigger things to come
Marcatlas
SOC-12
exactly. Even with non-grav M-drives as long as you can maintain thrust long enough to land. In other words no matter the drive type if you have sufficient Delta-V it is a total non-issue.
I tend to assume that what really matters to see if a ship can 'land' planetside is the capability of the local infrastructure to handle it.
Big heavy starships will need pads or runways capable of handling their weight, both mobile and stationary. They're also going to need more specialised equipment for fueling, loading/unloading and passenger transfer. While a 1000dton ship might get away with packed earth landing pad and a top off into the purifiers from the local water supply a 10,000dton ship isn't going to have a good time at any port not capable of handling a ship of that size.
Big heavy starships will need pads or runways capable of handling their weight, both mobile and stationary. They're also going to need more specialised equipment for fueling, loading/unloading and passenger transfer. While a 1000dton ship might get away with packed earth landing pad and a top off into the purifiers from the local water supply a 10,000dton ship isn't going to have a good time at any port not capable of handling a ship of that size.
Marcatlas
SOC-12
Exactly. One simply hovers over the geographic spot you want to land at and drop slowly down from low orbit altitude. A cube shaped ship would have zero problem
Marcatlas
SOC-12
Or, just need broad enough landing feet to distribute the weight
