Lifters: The Other Landing Gear?

[MarcusIII]

If there is an atmosphere, you'd need a pilot on duty constantly. Probably have to decrease the hours of each watch duration, because that kind of fiddly adjustments wears on a person quickly.

Current autopilots found on private pleasure boats would suffice for station keeping.

 

[Arkathan]

Current autopilots found on private pleasure boats would suffice for station keeping.

Until they don't.

 

[Condottiere]

Anchored cables.

Or, just an anchor.

 

[rinku]

Edit: You can already use doppler radar to detect wind speed (using dust etc suspended in the air) so stellar TL tech will have no problem knowing that in two tenths of a second the wind will suffer an additional 920 newtons of force from a given direction due to a slight change in wind direction and strength.

Fair point, but the issue still hinges on how much thrust the ship can apply at the required vector, and how rapidly. As I noted, Thrust 1 is usually only thust 0.1 in the forwards direction, and strong winds can easily be exerting more than that. The solution would be to spin the ship, but that isn't instant, and in a gusty environment may be quite tricky.

The aerodynamics of the hull also play a big part... typically a ship's largest areas are dorsal and ventral (ESPECIALLY so in something like the Animal Class Safari ship), so a big sudden downdraft coming from a direction where you only have 20-30% thrust could be quite tricky. That could actually be more dangerous than headwinds, since most streamlined ships are streamlined to fore and any with control surfaces are dealing with winds they're designed to cope with.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Fair point, but the issue still hinges on how much thrust the ship can apply at the required vector, and how rapidly. As I noted, Thrust 1 is usually only thust 0.1 in the forwards direction, and strong winds can easily be exerting more than that. The solution would be to spin the ship, but that isn't instant, and in a gusty environment may be quite tricky.

The aerodynamics of the hull also play a big part... typically a ship's largest areas are dorsal and ventral (ESPECIALLY so in something like the Animal Class Safari ship), so a big sudden downdraft coming from a direction where you only have 20-30% thrust could be quite tricky. That could actually be more dangerous than headwinds, since most streamlined ships are streamlined to fore and any with control surfaces are dealing with winds they're designed to cope with.

The Starship Operator’s Manual says this, so maybe that is a more direct number than .1 thrust?

 

[rinku]

Well, I'd expect lifters would suffice for light breezes. Above that, it's time to fire up the M-Drive, or run out the stays to moor the boat.

 

[Sigtrygg]

CRB2024 - lifters - zero uses
HG2022 - lifters - zero uses

 

[Vormaerin]

Lifters are the tech in the SOM, but they are invisible in any ship design. Apparently "free" or a side effect of a gravitized hull?

Personally, I don't like them. They are the thing that makes the streamlining rules for ships pretty nonsensical. If you can just lift straight up and down and don't really need to worry about aerodynamics except maybe in extreme weather, there really isn't any reason your boxy ship can't land on a planet. And with the discussions in this thread, you don't even need the different types of landing gear.

Besides that, I just think they are boring.

 

[Condottiere]

Well, they haven't been given physical form.

Or, cross purposes with vectored thrust.