Re-entry: was FT: Carriers

You have to remember to take into account the direction of re-entry. 
Shuttles re-enter west to east to match the rotation of the Earth. 
Re-entry the other way would mean you would have to add 24,000 MPH
relative to the ground.

This poses interesting questions for ground based detection - would
assault forces always be required to enter in the same direction as the
planet orbited?  Would it make placement of defenses easier if you knew
they always had to come in (taking the US on Earth for example) over the
West Coast first? Or would they re-enter on the far side of the planet
and transit in atmosphere to the target site?

This might be a reason for building large squadrons of atmospheric
interceptors.

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger Burton West [mailto:roger@firedrake.org]
> Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 4:03 PM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Re: FT: Carriers
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 02:47:15PM -0800, Brian Bilderback wrote:
> >Roger Burton West wrote:
> >>If they're going to be re-entering, and your ship's in 
> orbit, you want
> >>to fire them downwards and backwards more than anything else.
> >Which should be downwards and backwards?  Do you mean the 
> fighters?  If so, 
> >why?  Reentry heat?	What about shielded underfuselages?
> 
> Delta-V. The fighter needs to change its velocity vector from 
> "forwards
> round the orbit" to some approximation of "down"; almost 
> certainly it'll
> want to reenter at less than orbital speed, because of 
> heating concerns.
> Firing it backwards along the orbit pushes it in the appropriate
> direction.
> 
> >This is the image I had:  Large ships orbiting on station, 
> noses pointed 
> >"Down", allowing their fighters/small craft to do a 
> "Controlled fall" 
> >towards the surface.  In the Renegade Legion universe, this 
> is how Grav 
> >tanks do hot drops during invasions.
> 
> I can see two approaches:
> 
> (1) environment is safe enough to ship to hover on its tail; fighters
> will be moving backwards relative to the ship in order to get to the
> planet.
> 
> (2) ship is orbiting; fighteres need to decelerate relative to ship.
> 
> So I'd expect to see carriers optimised for planetary assault with
> rear-firing fighter launch tubes.
> 
> Roger