Re: (SG2] Orbital Insertion (an alternative approach to calculat

Los wrote:

> Has anyone seen the intro to Quake2? It's pretty good and I think the
> way they do their orbital drop is the best. The whole side of the drop
> ship is launch tubes. All are spit out at once. (Remember, how high up
> the ship is even if it travels 300 meters at 50 miles up that could
> translate to	 kilometers of dispersion on the ground.) Anyway, each
guy
> is in a coffin sized drop capsule with stubby wings. All the capsule
of
> a given unit are ejected at once and down they go together. The
capsules
> ahve stubby wings and hopefully anticollision control. I imagibne this
> is similar to what Tom's talking about. Once they land the thing pops
> open and there's the guy!

I am actually from a Traveller background, so my obital insertions look
like this:

Ship has a LOT of capsules it spits out.  Some are troopers, some are
cargo, some are PAD Supression Missles (radar-homing, etc), and some are
nothing but decoy dispensers.  This capsules enter the atmosphere, then
at a certain level spit out our Friendly Neighborhood Drop Trooper. 
Plus a half-dozen pieces of shell each of which are supposed to have the
same radar/IR/other sensor signature as the FNDT[tm].  Now, FNDT is of
course wearing powered armor.  He's also got a wee little Contra-gravity
generator on him which nullifies 99% of his weight.  This leaves him
light enough to be driven by two battery-operated ducted propellors. 
And he just sorta propells himself to the DZ.  Of course, he's also got
a backup physical parachute.  

> I still think parachute assault is a viable alternative. Except that
in

For non-PA troopers.  Of course, mass drops aren't possible in a modern
ADA environment (ducks flying bricks from various Airborne).  It's a
little bit silly to think that a formation of 200 C-130s is going to
survive in modern air combat, especially if you don't assume that the
good guys will always have 100% air supremacy.	So you'd see them for
SOF operations (where you can send one or two MC-130s with all the
gee-whiz neato ECM equipment and NOE stuff) or 'gunboat diplomacy'
operations against low-tech trash troops (Hey, let's invade Haiti!  They
don't have a working anti-aircraft gun on the island, much less a SAM!).

> time for malfunctions. In that case it would be LANO (Low altitude No
> Opening).

Also spelled "OOPS".

John "Leg for life, deal with it" Atkinson