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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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 Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:37 am Post subject: |
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[quote="S-Foil"] | Matthias777 wrote: |
This doesn't explain how air speeders can work though. They don't have large enough aerodynamic surfaces nor do they travel fast enough to maintain aerodynamic flight (as shown in the movies). They also don't seem to travel fast enough for ballistic flight.
An airspeeder's ion engines might propel them forward but I really don't see them also providing lift. This discussion is why I like to just say "there's flying cars, they just work". |
I always figured that airspeeders had a large "cone" of repulsion which distributed their weight over a vast area, reducing their downward force to harmless levels. Barring that, they could just be using vectored thrust with the ion drives.
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Matthias777
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Joined: 08 Aug 2007
Posts: 1835
Location: North Carolina, USA
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| Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 9:17 am Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | S-Foil wrote: | This doesn't explain how air speeders can work though. They don't have large enough aerodynamic surfaces nor do they travel fast enough to maintain aerodynamic flight (as shown in the movies). They also don't seem to travel fast enough for ballistic flight.
An airspeeder's ion engines might propel them forward but I really don't see them also providing lift. This discussion is why I like to just say "there's flying cars, they just work". |
I always figured that airspeeders had a large "cone" of repulsion which distributed their weight over a vast area, reducing their downward force to harmless levels. Barring that, they could just be using vectored thrust with the ion drives. |
The cone thing was basically what I figured too; the further you get away from it (vertically), the less force is "pushing" down on the same size area. But even considering that, without vectored ion drives, airspeeders would still run into problems. Even with vectored ion drives, I think you'd run into some problems. So I think there would be subsets of repulsorlift coils at different angles (think pointing down and forward, primarily) to help keep the nose up at high altitudes. Even with all of this, there are probably major issues with the physics of it that I'm not aware of, so...flying cars just work, yeah? 
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S-Foil
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Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Posts: 70
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| Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Player wrote: | | So what makes airspeeders work? |
| GM wrote: | | This block of text in the rulebook here. |
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