Re: Strange Idea FT2

On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Binhan Lin wrote:

> > here is a rough 0.526874547589634% formed Idea. For troop transports

> > instead of using Landing craft why don't you just land the whole
ship 
> > on the planet. Instant base, and alot of extra mass for the troops!
I 
> > would just hate to try to attack a mass 500 fully streamlind thrust
8 
> > troop transport with 50 mass of MILTARY weapons and 200 mass for 
> > troops. Mind you it would be EXPENSIVE but hey it would be difrent! 
> > 
> The only physical question is - where would you land??  With that much
> concentrated mass, you would sink a few meters into most terrain, with
the
> exception of spaceports, or if the displacement were high enough,
float in
> water. THis would severely limit the usefulness of the transport...

You could assume some sort of low-energy anti-grav technology.	Perhaps
some sort of anti-grav matter the landing platforms could be made of. 
If
you don't want to go for the easy fix, maybe standard planetary assault
practice is to do a combat drop and aerospace strafing fire to take the
spaceport so the main troop transports can land.  Should make for some
really interesting urban battles for DS2.

A temporally displaced		Bill Nitsche (bnitsche@u.washington.edu)
	hobbit			Oceanography, University of Washington