Re: [GZG] [FT] ?? on Streamlining as of FB1

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doc Agren wrote (in a horribly formatted post that took me a while to get 
into a readable format):

> Okay, Now that Streamlining cost Mass have the requirements of Thrust 4 
> for Full and Thrust 6 for Partial, been dropped that in More Thrust?  Or 
> do you still need the engine thrust?   Thanks for imput on this

This has been discussed several times on this list in the past (an archive 
search for "streamlining" should find most those threads), but IIRC it 
pretty much comes down to how much accel you consider "1 thrust point" to be.

If "1 thrust point" = 1G (a common but by no means universal assumption 
among FT players), then even a thrust-1, non-streamlined ship would 
theoretically be capable of landing safely on Earth (safely for the ship 
itself that is, not necessarily for the rest of the planet) - it'd take 
quite a while, and it probably wouldn't be able to take off again without 
some external help (it'd need slightly *more* than 1G of thrust for that), 
but it *would* be able to "float" down to the ground slowly enough to avoid 
getting burned up by the friction. With thrust points this big I'd expect 
the main effect of spaceship streamlining to be a limit on how fast a ship 
can move and still safely enter an atmosphere - un-streamlined ships would 
have to move *very* slowly and rely on raw engine power to lower themselves 
essentially vertically, while streamlined ships could enter the atmosphere 
at an angle, "skip-brake" and glide down to the surface much like today's 
space shuttles do.

I'm afraid that this answer didn't help you very much, did it...

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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