I mean I’m willing to bet (nothing, and for fun and curiosity) that designing structures to absorb impacts and explosions, produces different structures to designing for permanent deep gravity well and propulsion (esp if high speed and high ship mass/surface area).
It’s probably not at all a simple list of interdependent elements, to evaluate and sum up the net result to compare between the two. I’m admitting I have no idea either way.
edit- a tank would be different if it were the size of a capital ship. Barring some really different materials to today. Where e.g. the armor of a tank is spread over so much larger areas. Where the load bearing structure, the skeleton, is dealing with gravity.
Man… I’m totally just guessing here so I don’t think I can push this argument any further.
What I’m saying is that we’re not talking about a vehicle the size of a mere MBT. But something hundreds or thousands of meters long. With way, way more than what little equipment (ballast effectively) a tank carries. That’s really totally different. I just don’t expect it leads to effectively negligible differences.
Upsidedown, sure, you’re going to crush the tower and rails and such, but it’s not going to ruin the superstructure even though it’s made to float in the ocean.
Yes, I was about to suggest that as another way to look at it. I don’t think something like a current day carrier vessel would be able to fly itself up if you only added thrusters.
It needs much more informed evaluation/analysis, and I’m not able to do it. Remember, what I was suggesting originally wasn’t whether the IB capitals could survive landing, but whether they could propel themselves to land on their own. Whether the design envelope for space flight would inherently overlap enough of or outright include that required to reliably come down to surface; and if not, whether dedicated “tug” ships could fill that very specific performance gap.
If a nimitz had thrusters, it would certainly be able to fly upsidedown even though its superstructure is made to be rightside-up and in the water.
If it were that weak, it would just collapse on itself in a dry dock
We don’t know what it takes to sink a Nimitz because afaik we’ve never sunk one for testing, and although modern torpedos are so insanely strong they lift smaller ships out of the water from one small point and create a pocket of air that they break their keel on, I doubt a single one of those torpedos is enough to break the Nimitz keel. Otherwise we built a bunch of super expensive ships with 5000 sailors that a single torpedo can take out.
I imagine it’s so strong that it stays afloat even with holes in its keel.
Unless it’s falling some distance to hit on a point, I don’t think it’s getting any appreciable amount of damage or else it’d be serviceable in a dry dock…
No… most tanks would not be fine. In fact, the tops of turrets have much less surface area and are way thinner than any other part. They are not meant to hold tens of tons, only itself and maybe a ton of extra stuff. The suspension is supposed to hold all that. So maybe capital ships can generate 1g of acceleration, but it doesn’t mean it’s one monolithic block. Just like the tank, there are parts that might break, if it’s not optimized for the atmosphere.
Avoiding misunderstanding - superstructure is what’s built on top of the core structure.
Picking one thing to argue -
It’s not the same thing to mount a finite number of thrusters to a waterborne ship, than it is to spread that ship’s opposition to gravity over basically an infinite number of points (water’s interface with ship’s hull surface).
It’s also not the same thing to prop up a ship in dry dock, as it would be to have it thrust around at military/emergency power in 6DOF using a finite number of thrusters.
And materials/metallurgy again: that turret surely has some bend to it. As cars need realignment after crashes, especially if it’s meant to be a precise tool (racing) and not just people mover (grandma’s prius). Then you take those load bearing structures and increase their size to hundreds of meters… And without some significant handwaving/timetravel materials-wise, you will have even less negligible metal bending/fatigue/etc.
Force doesn’t scale with height… F=ma the a in that equation is gravity. The force of gravity it feels is still the same regardless of height(assuming that you aren’t millions of km away from the surface).
Superstructure is what I meant, though. You roll these tanks over and their superstructure is largely fine. The armor doesn’t pop off. They’re likely still driveable though the turret could be messed up.
I mean, I don’t know, maybe someone’s wrecked a tank before and knows better. I know the US Military would probably not recommision them even if they are fixable.
Frame damage would be even worse.
I mean 1 g as in roughly 9.8 m/s/s
I guess. Compared to like an Arleigh Burke, its unloaded weight is about 1/4th that per cubic meter. There’s way more empty space. But that doesn’t really say much because it’s a carrier and designed to have lots of empty space while an Arleigh Burke is densely packed.
But it’s strong enough to hold that 1/3rd its weight in aircraft and ordinance inside it
Are these carriers in Infinity so weak that when a shell hits their armor, they buckle in and suddenly the elevators and rails for carriages and such no longer work, and they can no longer service ships? That’s awful design.
Also, Nimitz was made before CAD was a big thing. The Gerald R Ford I’m sure can take a lot more damage especially with its updated way of servicing aircraft.
And so likewise in IB? It’s less about catastrophic damage and more a large enough handicap/failure margin that I:B capitals would not be able to come down to surface at zero cost.
I actually don’t have a stake either way. Just trying to hash out the pros and cons with you (or anyone) for our game crafting benefit.
No, that’s beyond what I think anyone here was meaning. More like the structures of e.g. a current day seaborne ship could not last if you gave it ridiculously high thrust engines (like I:B engines) and flogged it like crazy as in I:B. Again, see the original argument:
And there too we see another con: it’s not just 1G that a navy in I:B would design for, but possibly much higher gravities. Earth is ostensibly not the golden standard in I:B universe.
I read what Gene said. I just think it’s rather nonsense even after reading it all.
Handling atmospheric flight is NOTHING and something that’s just going to come naturally without any extra effort compared to the other things they are designed to withstand.
Landing though? Okay that’s a bit of another thing. A soft touch down on a planet shouldn’t be any more traumatic than a Nimitz sitting in a dry dock, right?.. Besides crushing the bottom turrets that they have.
I see no reason why that’s not how it should be.
Touching down with more than single digit m/s of velocity should cause exponentially more damage, even to the point that it crashes. The larger the ship, the lower the crash tolerence, given the way force increases so greatly with mass, but still.
There are lots of reasonable downsides I listed to why you might not want to take a capital ship in atmosphere.
There’s also a bunch I didn’t list because I thought I listed enough, like that missile explosions are a lot weaker in atmosphere so a cap ship will subject itself to deadlier missiles in planets/moons atmosphere.
But there is no silly magic “capital ship explodes when it take a few bars of pressure” or “the engines can’t operate near gravity” magic nonsense needed to bar them from doing so.
I’d imagine their maneuvering engines aren’t more than like 1-3 TWR at Earth’s sea level to begin with, so you’re going to have to point nose up when gravity is strong anyway. There’d be lots of down sides just being reasonable and sensible with how a future space capital ship would act without having to make up nonsense about not having the engineering and materials to handle a few bars of pressure and a few gs of force.
Well yeah, I totally agree. These ships are going to be regularly taking more than a g of force, so it makes no sense that they can’t touch down on a planet and lift off.
They’re a heck of a lot stronger than a modern day carrier, and made to take for from all directions, but moreso forward.
I think I’m starting to agree. Really makes me want to try and roughly poke at the problem in FEA. (Dunno why I said CFD earlier, I meant FEA)
You did mean that explosions are weaker in vacuum, right?
Totally agreed there.
Continuing on the more gameplay based reasons for capitals avoiding atmo/low altitudes:
Maybe the fact that they can dodge fire, unlike ground based installations, could be an inherent/emergent balance. Viz. the way it works in classic Missile Command.
Energy/resource available to ground side could be one of the AAAs’ major counter-advantages.
The force you’re going to have when aerobreaking from orbit reaches a maximum of about 4-5gs, right?
5gs is the force you take when falling from 3 feet off the ground.
So are you telling me that if a crew member makes a high jump, he’s going to fall through the floor of the ship because it’s THAT weak?
It’s such a ridiculously low amount of force compare to the things these things need to take in order to launch and service ships, hold itself together, deflect attacks, etc.
We also supposedly have inertia dampeners, IIRC?
The pressure from entering the atmosphere could be maybe 25-50 bar.
I get that figure from extropolating the peak pressure Apollo endured of 9 bar, figuring that these ships are a lot heavier.
Of course it could be much higher if they are entering at greater speeds, but I’m figuring that it should at least be able to enter capital ships at a trajectory similar to a modern day capsule and speeds even if you can’t warp close to the surface.
25-50 bar…
C4’s explosion pressure is 310,000 bar.
Okay again, VERY LOW forces.
Yes, there is friction too, but that’s also nothing for these scifi materials.
Telling me these capital ships can’t fly in a planet’s/moon’s atmosphere is not only something I think will make the gameplay worse, but it’s nonsense.
