Re-Entry for Traveller Vehicles

[endwarde]

The most recent shuttle tragedy has made me think, amoung other things, about the re-entry for Traveller ships.

Now, because of their anti-grav properties, can a ship simply just lower itself slowly from orbit so there is no re-entry heat up?

Re-entry is dangerous now because you have to be going a certain speed to be able to work with the earth's gravity and leave orbit and decend to the surface, and once you hit atmosphere at the orbital speed you have massive heatup until you slow down. So if you are ignoring gravity, can you just execute a controlled decent to the surface?

If that is the case, could you just have a group of folks in a sealed (or unsealed with vac-suits) grav-sled leave the ship in orbit and decend to the surface like an away boat?

Perhaps this has been dealt with somewhere, but I haven't seen any writeup about it.

 

[RabidVargr]

Originally posted by Eric Anderson:
The most recent shuttle tragedy has made me think, amoung other things, about the re-entry for Traveller ships.

Now, because of their anti-grav properties, can a ship simply just lower itself slowly from orbit so there is no re-entry heat up?

If that is the case, could you just have a group of folks in a sealed (or unsealed with vac-suits) grav-sled leave the ship in orbit and decend to the surface like an away boat?

IMTU we did use the air raft as a ground to space vehicle, usually after our ship wound up damaged. We'd go down, get the parts, come back up. (If they didn't have a highport). Also, for those low tech worlds you don't want a fireball roaring across the sky proclaiming your presence, yes, you can go down as slow as you want, depending on the heat signature you wanna put out.

RV

 

[graden1]

Originally posted by Eric Anderson:
The most recent shuttle tragedy has made me think, amoung other things, about the re-entry for Traveller ships.

Now, because of their anti-grav properties, can a ship simply just lower itself slowly from orbit so there is no re-entry heat up?

Re-entry is dangerous now because you have to be going a certain speed to be able to work with the earth's gravity and leave orbit and decend to the surface, and once you hit atmosphere at the orbital speed you have massive heatup until you slow down. So if you are ignoring gravity, can you just execute a controlled decent to the surface?

If that is the case, could you just have a group of folks in a sealed (or unsealed with vac-suits) grav-sled leave the ship in orbit and decend to the surface like an away boat?

Perhaps this has been dealt with somewhere, but I haven't seen any writeup about it.

As I understand it, Traveller ships with gravitic maneuver drives have enough delta-v to land without "aerobraking". The shuttle's de-orbit burn only eliminates enough velocity to take the ship out of orbit, then relies on air friction to do the rest.

On the other hand, a free trader could brake at 1g for 12 minutes, then descend into the atmosphere at a safe speed. Of course, the ship would have to steer clear of anything that's still in orbit, which would still be moving at about 25000 kph!

Life is full of these little trade-offs. See the last line on this page:
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design

thanx heaps,

DGv2.0

 

[Shadowdancer]

I remember reading somewhere, maybe under the description for the air-raft, that it can in fact be used to travel from planet surface to orbit. The number of hours corresponds to the planet's size-code number from the UWP.

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Paraquat Johnson:
I remember reading somewhere, maybe under the description for the air-raft, that it can in fact be used to travel from planet surface to orbit. The number of hours corresponds to the planet's size-code number from the UWP.

This is correct. See the air/raft write up on page 301 of the THB.

Hunter

 

[GJD]

IIRC, GURPS Traveller: Starports described the process as moving into the geostationary arrivals corridor at the edge of a starport and then just dropping straight down. Departures worked the same way: taxi to the departure pad and go straight up until you are handed over to orbital traffic control, who clears you on a course to 100d, or the gas giant or whatever. You maintain a spacing between ships comming in and out, and you can have a variety of arrival and departure corridors. The pads at the bottom act like modern runways, so ships are moved from there to holding berths.

 

[Shadowdancer]

In GURPS: Starports, it also depends on the size of the starport and the amount of traffic, IIRC. The landing and takeoff procedures are much different for, say, a Class A starport on a main route, and a Class C or Class D in a backwater system. Of course, GURPS uses a different coding system for its starport sizes.