Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Caliber
A
As in real life, starship designers would not use vectored thrusters, unless the craft being designed has a specific function that would require the use of a vectored thruster.
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That function is belly-landing rather than tail-sitting. If a ship can land like an airplane it'll be much easier to load and unload than if it's a streamlined shape sitting on it's rear end.
I was reading a sort of add-on to the classic Solar Queen stories by Andre Norton.
Back in the 50's when Ms. Norton knew no more about spaceships than she ould have learned from looking at a picture of a V-2 the archetypal Free
Trader ship Solar Queen looked like a V-2 with pointy nose, tail fins and everything in between.
It even landed on those tail fins. A V-2 does sit on its' fins before launching but it isn't designed to land except by going nose first and exploding.
In this story from the 90s the Queen had not only sprouted landing legs it shot out 4 anchors from its' nose to set guy wires to keep it from getting blown over.
So if Traveller ships are going to look like the Millenium Falcon and land on their bellies (which does have its' practical benefits) they're going to need vectored thrust.
Very large ships that never land probably don't have vectored thrust.