1. Most of the Minmatar ships don't look sturdy enough to survive a re-entry, however Caldari, Gallente, and Amarr ships all seem to have stable enough hull shapes, and possibly have thermal protection plates similar to a NASA space shuttle. (Though we could assume that all ships have that based on the ingame armor resists.) As for the larger ships, they definitely would not be able to land unless there were entire sections of planets that acted as giant parking lots, though I think anything up to a destroyer would be able to land on a planetary surface relatively easily, assuming there is a sort of "anti-grav landing dock" somewhere on the planet.
Possibly, yeah; it seems a stretch, though. Last time I was discussing this, we ended up reaching the issue that smaller ships would be alright to land and so on, in theory, but get so damaged by re-entry (if not outright destroyed) that such couldn't happen, whereas the larger ships might be durable enough to survive that, but on account of designs meant for vacuum, end up more or less hurtling into the ground, which is pretty bad for -- neither can pull it off, but the reasoning for each group is inverted.
2. I don't know if it would really be that difficult, judging by how launch vehicles go into orbit on Earth. To quote wiki: "The horizontal speed necessary to achieve low earth orbit is around 7,800 metres per second (26,000 ft/s)," and assuming that each planet in EVE has slightly different gravity due to the size of the planets, you probably wouldn't need 7800 m/s to launch into orbit. Also with the use of disposable staged rocket systems like what we use on real space craft, it's very possible to reach that speed even with just the use of an MWD because once the first stage rockets got you up to speed, say 2500-5000 m/s, the momentum of that thrust even after they have detached from the hull would apply to the thrust of the MWD for a short while before you could get away from the planet's gravitational pull.
I poked at some numbers very briefly, and it looks like it's battleships and the larger cruisers that encounter issues; a Moa, say, would be capable of getting itself off the ground, whereas an Abaddon's main thrusters directed straight down wouldn't lift that thing up. (Both examples being on a planet with acceleration due to gravity 1
g, for argument's sake; on a lower gravity world the Abaddon might do fine, and on a higher one the Moa might run into similar problems).
Even if the ships aren't aerodynamically designed, we could probably assume that each ship is fitted with some sort of electro-magnetic hovering system (like what is witnessed when the ships are docked in a station) or possibly even a dark energy generator, which is the force that seems to be expanding the universe (essentially: anti-gravity, the 5th fundamental force of the universe). I don't think the weight or friction of smaller ships like frigs and destroyers would have enough impact in an atmosphere for it to be an issue for space entry.
ARGHLBLARGRFEERDFNEDKASE. This isn't the right place to debate cosmology, but the physicist in me weeps. >> In short, it's hypothesised to be a highly homogeneous, low-density flavour of energy that doesn't interact with the fundamental forces barring gravity, dreamed up to solve the problem of the universe expanding at an accelerating rate. It has a negative pressure so that it
can accelerate expansion, but that's it; it doesn't affect gravitational interaction between other objects. The idea of a generator for it's a little whacked, anyway, what with it only interacting gravitationally (hence 'dark' energy), but :EVEscience:.
3. I'm not sure if the anti-matter charges in EVE are built to realistic standards, but 1 gram of anti-matter can cause an explosion the size of the Hiroshima atom bomb. Based off what I've seen in EVE, I'd assume the rounds have maybe 1 molecule of anti-matter sprinkled on the tip of the round. Even if you hauled a lot of anti-matter rounds onto the planet, you'd maybe have an explosion the size of a gasoline bomb or an IED.
Again, possible; it's hard to get a sense of scale for these things. Point remains that you've a ship that fires small family cars or obscenely high-power lasers, though; not sure that anyone would want them landing with someone as fickle (read: batshit insane) as a capsuleer.
FWIW, I've been considering this all from a relatively 'tame' stance, not poking too much at the various fictional technologies; normally, I love to play around with them and see what can be figured out, but for this particular problem I always found it easier to look at it as close to realistically as the (not so realistic
) universe allows -- if only because this leads me to the same old question of "why
bother taking a ship to a planet?". Hauling is handled just fine by customs offices and so on, and what is there to gain in pulling off a perfect landing with an Abaddon or whatever?
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Topic: Tritanium and Atmospheric Capable Spacecraft (Read 3413 times)