[Spaceships] Winged Spaceships

[scc]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Realistically, wings tend to reduce speed, not increase it. They're meant to provide lift and/or hardpoint mounts.

For example, look at the swing-wing feature on the F-14 Tomcat. It uses its wings in full extension during takeoff and landing, but when it shifts to supersonic flight it pulls its wings in closer to the body. The first situation gives more lift and greater drag due to having more of the wing edge exposed to the oncoming air. The second reduces drag and wing edge; the plane cuts through the air faster. If it tried to go supersonic with the wings extended, the wings would get pulled off from the air pressures at those velocities.

Indeed, some of the fastest fighter planes ever flown have almost no wing, but they also tended to have a very wide turning radius, making the slower but more maneuverable planes better at dogfighting.

For a smaller example, look at the speeds of dogfighting missiles compared to those of cruise missiles. Dogfighting missiles that have almost no wing (maneuvering flaps at best) have speeds of Mach 3+, while cruise missiles with a long wing are subsonic.

Clear as mud?

Clear (as soup). But given that I'm looking for altitude before lighting of my rockets, does the extra lift wings provide help? Enough to be noticeable?

And are there rules for things like ram and scram jets in something somewhere for Spaceships? Or any other high altitude propulsion systems?

(And who decided that ram rocket Nuclear Thermal Rockets would work without super-science?)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by scc

Clear (as soup). But given that I'm looking for altitude before lighting of my rockets, does the extra lift wings provide help? Enough to be noticeable?

And are there rules for things like ram and scram jets in something somewhere for Spaceships? Or any other high altitude propulsion systems?

(And who decided that ram rocket Nuclear Thermal Rockets would work without super-science?)

Check out Getting into Space on SS1:37 and Atmospheric Landings on SS1:40.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by scc

And are there rules for things like ram and scram jets in something somewhere for Spaceships? Or any other high altitude propulsion systems?

Spaceships doesn't go into very much detail on the specifics of its propulsion systems. The basic Jet Engines are actually turbo ramjets or scramjets, functioning in a minimum of 0.1 atmos with no limit on top speed.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by scc

Clear (as soup). But given that I'm looking for altitude before lighting of my rockets, does the extra lift wings provide help? Enough to be noticeable?

Altitude is totally overlooked by Spaceships, and even realistically isn't that important. The main challenge of getting to orbit is getting orbital velocity up. An airbreathing engine lets you get some of that at very favorable rates for the fuel mass. Wings do help there in that they allow your vessel to fly if it doesn't have thrust exceeding gravity.

Wings are most useful for landing, though. They impose no weight penalty unlike a Soft-Landing System (in the rules, not reality) and allow you to use aerodynamic landing (easier and requiring no fuel) rather than having to pull off a vertical powered landing.

Originally Posted by scc

And are there rules for things like ram and scram jets in something somewhere for Spaceships? Or any other high altitude propulsion systems?

As vierasmarius notes, the basic jets are those. ("turbo ramjet or scramjet", from the book.) Spaceships 7 has a 'turbofan' alternative that isn't capable of arbitrarily high speed.

Originally Posted by scc

(And who decided that ram rocket Nuclear Thermal Rockets would work without super-science?)

Uh. Tons of people? Like, Project Pluto plus a huge number of old-time futurist types talking about nuclear-powered airplanes and such. Why would you say they can't?