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Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey-CHAPTER 22 pg 2: Yet >another< narrative device!


Mister Dilsby

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Well, whatever happens to Enterprise, my theory on capital ships is that they don't really ever land again on Kerbin. Intrepid is certainly not designed to: that's why she has boats, and that's why there are Gliidos.

Now, could a ship that's not designed to land on Kerbin land on Kerbin? I wouldn't ever rule anything out. But if Sarge were aboard such a ship I think we'd definitely see him ask permission to "speak freely". 

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1 hour ago, Kuzzter said:

Well, whatever happens to Enterprise, my theory on capital ships is that they don't really ever land again on Kerbin. Intrepid is certainly not designed to: that's why she has boats, and that's why there are Gliidos.

Now, could a ship that's not designed to land on Kerbin land on Kerbin? I wouldn't ever rule anything out. But if Sarge were aboard such a ship I think we'd definitely see him ask permission to "speak freely". 

If she's indeed airtight for space flight, depending on weight distribution, she should be able to withstand a water landing as long as the descent is controlled and impact with the water is not very forceful.

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If you can get a vessel to orbit without staging off any boosters, then you should be able to land it if you can refuel it.

If you have enough thrust and d-v to get the fully fueled vessel off the surface and into orbit, you should have ample thrust and d-v to get out of orbit and down to a soft landing.

On the way up, drag is a hindrance and on the way down it is an aid.  If you were slow enough to not burn up on ascent, you should be able to slow down from orbital velocity to whatever velocity you were at when you left the atmosphere by the time you reenter.  

The only SSTO that might not be able to manage this is a space plane that has barely enough LFO to circularize when it's tanks are empty after relying on LF for most of the thrust.

 

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35 minutes ago, Terwin said:

If you can get a vessel to orbit without staging off any boosters, then you should be able to land it if you can refuel it.

If you have enough thrust and d-v to get the fully fueled vessel off the surface and into orbit, you should have ample thrust and d-v to get out of orbit and down to a soft landing.

On the way up, drag is a hindrance and on the way down it is an aid.  If you were slow enough to not burn up on ascent, you should be able to slow down from orbital velocity to whatever velocity you were at when you left the atmosphere by the time you reenter.  

The only SSTO that might not be able to manage this is a space plane that has barely enough LFO to circularize when it's tanks are empty after relying on LF for most of the thrust.

 

Consider, however, the quandrary of a tail-sitter. Its CoL is far behind its CoM, which points its nose into the airstream. On the way up, this is good. However, if you want to do a powered landing, this is a Very Bad Thing. Your nose will be pointing directly at the ground, and you will lithobrake, unless you have a lot of reaction wheels or RCS, or nose thrusters with a full TWR, in which case you have a nose-sitter. And that's really hard to justify, in engineering terms.

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3 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Well, whatever happens to Enterprise, my theory on capital ships is that they don't really ever land again on Kerbin.

And to do it but keep up with the tropes, it would require a replacement crew, too:

Alan Kerman:  This landing is gonna get pretty interesting.

Nathan Kerman:  Define 'interesting'.

Alan Kerman:  [Deadpan] Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die?

Nathan Kerman:  Just get us on the ground!

Alan Kerman:  That part'll happen pretty definitely.

Nathan Kerman:  ...

Nathan Kerman:  [On the ship's intercom]  This is the captain.  We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then--explode.

 

In all seriousness, I expect that you have great and glorious--and possibly not totally fatal--plans for the Enterprise, but I think the fact that it isn't going to land again is telling.  I don't expect the Enterprise crew to survive in the same way that I expect the Intrepid crew to return home.  On the other hand, I did notice that the Enterprise crew hasn't switched to all-red duty uniforms.  I'd say that you were doing a good job of keeping everyone in suspense--but then I remembered that in orbit, it's technically free fall.

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21 hours ago, Just Jim said:

Even Star Trek canon gets a little... fuzzy... on the subject of landing the Enterprise. I don't think she was supposed to be able to land originally, and most often appeared like she would burn up in any decent atmosphere. But later down the road, especially in the "Into Darkness" movie, not only was she landed, she was hiding underwater... and took off again into orbit like it was no problem.

Spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness...

Spoiler

In the first scene of Star Trek: Into Darkness the Enterprise is landed on a habitable planet, under the ocean no less. In the climactic space battle, it stabilizes itself in atmosphere by powering up its thrusters, causing a ring of tiny engines around the saucer to emit what looks like rocket fire and hold it in place. I guess exploration vessels are equipped with chemical or hybrid nuclear/chemical engines capable of generating several G in atmosphere, and the armor and shields are able to survive aerobraking. Starships only burn up in the atmosphere when they make an uncontrolled, unpowered reentry, with no thrusters to slow them down and no energy shields to function as a heat shield. This includes the near-crash of the Enterprise in Into Darkness and the crash of the Enterprise in Beyond.

 

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26 minutes ago, greenTurtle1134 said:

Spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness...

  Hide contents

In the first scene of Star Trek: Into Darkness the Enterprise is landed on a habitable planet, under the ocean no less. In the climactic space battle, it stabilizes itself in atmosphere by powering up its thrusters, causing a ring of tiny engines around the saucer to emit what looks like rocket fire and hold it in place. I guess exploration vessels are equipped with chemical or hybrid nuclear/chemical engines capable of generating several G in atmosphere, and the armor and shields are able to survive aerobraking. Starships only burn up in the atmosphere when they make an uncontrolled, unpowered reentry, with no thrusters to slow them down and no energy shields to function as a heat shield. This includes the near-crash of the Enterprise in Into Darkness and the crash of the Enterprise in Beyond.

 

That was always the assumption.  But if the thing has "Impulse Drives" that can hit 0.5c, I don't see why it couldn't kill horizontal velocity, and drop down tail first.  Or it could raise shields using that as an aeroshell.  Those shields can defend against matter/anti-matter explosions from Photon Torpedoes, so a little atmospheric shock heating shouldn't be a big deal.  Essentially the only thing stopping it from landing was a lack of landing legs.  Should be fine in the water, not taking into account center of buoyancy (is that a thing?)

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But one of the big differences between Star Trek and Kerbfleet is that Star Trek has things that can damp inertia, and also fine gravity control.  KSP has 'Hack Gravity'.

However, considering the fact that @Kuzzter blasted his Enterprise as some kind of penance (so he says) after the row people raised for his use of 'Infinite Fuel', using 'Hack Gravity' may require him to delete Kerbin from the system and declare the Kerbulans the victors.

@Soda Popinski:  There is such a thing as a centre of buoyancy, but it coincides with the centre of mass of the fluid that has been displaced.

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55 minutes ago, Soda Popinski said:

That was always the assumption.  But if the thing has "Impulse Drives" that can hit 0.5c, I don't see why it couldn't kill horizontal velocity, and drop down tail first.  Or it could raise shields using that as an aeroshell.  Those shields can defend against matter/anti-matter explosions from Photon Torpedoes, so a little atmospheric shock heating shouldn't be a big deal.  Essentially the only thing stopping it from landing was a lack of landing legs.  Should be fine in the water, not taking into account center of buoyancy (is that a thing?)

The Star Trek prime universe gives a lot more definitive information on this.

Both the original Enterprise (ST:TOS) and the NX Enterprise (from ST: Enterprise) flew in atmosphere without difficulty.  The NX Enterprise even got into a battle in atmo.

The Enterprise-D (ST:TNG) was designed to be able to land its saucer in an emergency (as shown in ST Generations), though it was expected to need major repairs to be spaceworthy again.

Voyager (ST: Voyager), on the other hand, was able to land and take off with relative ease, and had landing legs built into her engineering hull.  They used that capability multiple times over the show's run.

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28 minutes ago, RobFalcon said:

Both the original Enterprise (ST:TOS) and the NX Enterprise (from ST: Enterprise) flew in atmosphere without difficulty.  The NX Enterprise even got into a battle in atmo.

I had to really wrack my brains, but you're right... there was one TOS episode, "Tomorrow is Yesterday", where the Enterprise was flung back in time, and deep inside Earths atmosphere, and while she was banged up bad, it was from the time slingshot effect... and not the atmo. And the ones I was thinking of she was burning up in the atmo because she lost power from one reason or another and going in too fast..

My bad... :rolleyes:

OK, so that pretty much confirms the Trek Enterprise(s) can survive a landing.... the only real question now is how well she would survive? And that just depends on the episode and/or movie...

And again, more importantly, is @Kuzzter even following trek canon??? There's no reason he has to... 

 

Edited by Just Jim
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1 hour ago, Just Jim said:

I had to really wrack my brains, but you're right... there was one TOS episode, "Tomorrow is Yesterday", where the Enterprise was flung back in time, and deep inside Earths atmosphere, and while she was banged up bad, it was from the time slingshot effect... and not the atmo. And the ones I was thinking of she was burning up in the atmo because she lost power from one reason or another and going in too fast..

My bad... :rolleyes:

OK, so that pretty much confirms the Trek Enterprise(s) can survive a landing.... the only real question now is how well she would survive? And that just depends on the episode and/or movie...

And again, more importantly, is @Kuzzter even following trek canon??? There's no reason he has to... 

 

In the Star Trek reboot, in the second movie: Into The Darkness, the Enterprise is not only on a planet, but submerged under an ocean.

In Star Trek III, The Search for Spock, the Enterprise enters the atmosphere... and we all know the rest of that one...

scotty-kirk-bones-genesis-star-iii-searc  KIsMLXm.png

In Star Trek Voyager, the Voyager even has retractable landing gear and is designed to be able to land on a planet...

But then again, this is @Kuzzter's tale... and of course, HyperEdit can cover a multitude of sins... :D

 

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