Spaceship Design: What makes sense, and what's nonsense?

[FF_Ninja]

Originally Posted by Frost

You make a good point aircraft style belly landing would actually be more convenient for managing cargo amongst other things.

But I think it would make more sense to put the main engine in the 'belly' so that gravity and main engine thrust were on the same axis rather than placing the main engine in the 'tail' and having build everything to handle loads in two directions and to reconfigure the ship every time you land or take off.

So, Firefly's Serenity did handle this issue fairly well. It had a massive rear engine, but it also had two sizable engines (one on either side) that could be rotated downward to provide downward thrust for landing/take-off or rearward to provide additional forward thrust. Or, I guess, rotated forward to provide rearward thrust.

It mimicked VTOL craft that we have in real life, such as the V-22 Osprey that the marines use. Multi-vector thrust makes sense even when you hit higher TLs.