Oolite Bulletins

What about a ship shaped like a spider? Two legs in front - laser and missile holds. Two legs left & right - wings. Two legs in the back - engine plumes and scoop.
I can't draw for the life of me, unfortunately...

What, like this you mean?

Yay for Shadow ships!

The closest thing I can thing of that matches your description are Simon B's arachnid ships. Not quite what you're describing, but 'tis similar...

about the picture: Close. Veery close. The front two legs would go in straghtforward but the rest are fine!

It sprang to mind immediately I read your post! As Mauiby de Fug spotted it's one of the Shadow ships from Babylon 5, the greatest TV sci-fi ever.

Thargoid wrote:

The thing that conceptually always got in the way is why would a space-ship have wings?

To look sexy?

Thargoid wrote:

The thing that conceptually always got in the way is why would a space-ship have wings?

Basic heat radiators need surface area to radiate as much heat as possible into space. Some shield types might also need complex surfaces to maximize yield/area, like a capacitor also needs massive surface area.

Wing type structures could also be of use for ships that may need to routinely make a planetfall. Since this is a game, we can kind of conveniently forget that trying to land something like an Anaconda or a Boa would be very challenging compared to something at least nominally wing-like such as a Cobra.

Yeah, planetfall isn't a part of the strict game or the original Elite. But logically it happens and some sort of ship does it, whether that ship is available to players or not, and it would most likely have some species of a wing structure to it. Glide landings are a lot more fuel efficient on bodies with atmosphere than trying to land a rocket or something tail first with careful use of thrusters.

Although the Orbital Shuttle, which fills this planet-station-planet role in Oolite is as aerodynamic as a brick, and certainly doesn't have any wings.

Smivs wrote:

Although the Orbital Shuttle, which fills this planet-station-planet role in Oolite is as aerodynamic as a brick, and certainly doesn't have any wings.

It has no wings, but to compensate for that, it has 4 thrusters.

And when the AI works correct, it should make a 180 deg. turn before landing on its back. (actually it just disappears after its turn as flying backwards is not possible)

As demonstrated by one of the 1995 Darwin Awards, flight may be accomplished with or without wings.

http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html

It would be the desirable "controlled landing you can walk away from" that wings could help with.

The Orbital Shuttle in Oolite is a fictional ship and that it has no wings does not negate that there could be a certain logic to why some spaceships might have them. Not impossible to make a planetfall by landing on the tail with thrusters, Russian manned rockets did it often enough instead of a splashdown. But it'll take more fuel than a controlled glide re-entry would.

Point of semantics.. Would it still be called a re-entry on a planet you've never been to before?


EDIT: Yes, the account is urban legend (though amusing), but the principle is still true that an object with enough thrust can become airborn whether it has wings or not.

Ganelon wrote:

1995 Darwin Awards

Personally, I like this version of the whole thing.

Funny, but is it any more true than the "original" urban legend?