Solomani Fleet Courier (type SX)

[Scarecrow]

That might be the best way to do it. Imagine that in the picture, we're looking at the top of it. The cockpit and the launch dispute that but they could both be rotated either permanently in the design or mechanically at landing time.

Of course, there's no reason the cockpit glass couldn't be just to one side. Is it a cockpit? (Yes, probably. But) Could it be a black cover for sensor equipment?
Could the launch be the Jump Drive?

The short wings would fold in to the body(like the B-Wing) to allow it to land close to the ground.

Crow

 

[Andrew Boulton]

That's an interesting idea. It would work, but it's not how it looks in the pictures.

 

[Scarecrow]

Agreed. I am rather scraping the idea barrel =)

Crow

 

[Pickles]

From the pictures and the fact that it's a fleet courier (i.e., it carries messages between fleets or elements thereof, which are most likely to be in space), I'd have to go with the view that it's not designed for landing. Landing capability would also make the launch an unecessary luxury on such a small ship.

In fact, being a navy ship, I doubt if it would even do much fuel skimming, especially as its job is to get from A to B in the fastest time possible. Ok, now I'm starting to wonder why a fleet courier would be streamlined at all - unless it's just a marketing gimmick to appeal to those navy buyers ...

 

[Maladominus]

How about the possibility that the Solomani Confederation has DOWNPORTS with specialized landing cradles that can dock these ships?

I choose this middle ground. In my Solomani Rim campaign, I'd go with the pragmatic route that certain Class A and B Solomani downports have built the proper facilities to dock these ships.

You guys must be forgetting that these ships are not only important to SolSec, but they are also important to the Solomani Party, and these ships are COMMON mustering out benefits to Solomani Party bigshots. Hence, you better believe it that the Confederation will allocate money to make sure that Confederation Starports A and B will have proper facilities to dock with these ships that are vital to 1) the Confederation Navy and 2) SolSec and 3) the Solomani Party.

 

[far-trader]

Certainly with the right setup (artificial gravity, repulsor/tractor bays) a DownPort landing bay could be easily and instantly configured to handle any type of craft with no need for dedicated landing gear on the craft or cradle on the ground. Of course that'd only be Class A and B StarPorts probably and it'd be a bad day if the DownPort lost power or the computers went down.

Seems to me the easiest and most sensible idea yet is that it doesn't land which is why it has the launch. As noted it's a bit expensive to add a launch if it's not really needed. That might even be the primary means of transfer in space.

And of course you could always land any craft, even one without any provision for landing, once

 

[fredofmars]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
I don't think tail landing would work. You need the decks to be perpendicular to the direction of travel, which it doesn't look like they are.

1. There are no visible viewports in the pictures I have seen aside from the "cockpit" and "launch" (assuming that is what they are rather than equipment covers or such). Perhaps the rest of the ship is setup for tail landing and just those two areas have a different orientation for some specialized purpose.

2. With Traveller level artificial gravity, the orientation of the ground with respect to the ship need not have any particular relationship to the orientation of internal decks. The only point at which this would matter is the main airlock opening at "ground level".

A. Another objection to tail landing has been that the landing gear extending from the ends of the wings would need to be quite long. My response is that we have only seen this ship from a single orientation in the three main pictures of it, so perhaps this is an optical effect of the picture orientation and the ends of the wings actually come fairly near the ground in a tail sitting situation.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"Seems to me the easiest and most sensible idea yet is that it doesn't land which is why it has the launch."

Spoilsport

You're probably right, though.