Can Voyager-A land?

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Voyager landed what, 8 times on the show? I believe both the Prometheus and the Equinox had landing gear, on the MSD's, and little landing gear doors on the CGI models. Prometheus was about Voyager's size, and Equinox was smaller. On Prodigy, the title ship landed several times across the show's run. In Season 2, we have Voyager-A, and I was hoping we would get to see it land just for the fun of it. I remember it looked like the ship had landed in the final episode, or maybe it was just hovering?

Any Trek-sperts here who can confirm this one or the other?

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

It seems like only ships of Voyager's size or smaller are given landing gear, and landing is very rare. I imagine every Starfleet ship can enter a planet's atmosphere if it wants to, Voyager-A certainly had no trouble with it, but they wouldn't look very dignified after setting down.

 

[F. King Daniel]

No landing legs on the MSD, for whatever that is worth

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

It seems like only ships of Voyager's size or smaller are given landing gear, and landing is very rare. I imagine every Starfleet ship can enter a planet's atmosphere if it wants to, Voyager-A certainly had no trouble with it, but they wouldn't look very dignified after setting down.

Do you think it's a size thing or a "designed to land" thing? I feel like it's the latter one.
Even the NX-01 had no trouble flying over NYC with a compromised hull.

 

[mithril]

we know it can hover in atmosphere, so it being able to land isn't much of a stretch.

with the NX-01 in "storm front pt2" and NCC-1701 in "tomorrow is yesterday" the ships were continually in motion, and thus you could argue they were flying by way of thrust from impulse engines and thrusters. hovering though, especially the effortless hovering the Voyager-A does, suggests ship scale anti-grav, and that's only something a ship able to land would bother with.

 

[HotRod]

we know it can hover in atmosphere, so it being able to land isn't much of a stretch.

with the NX-01 in "storm front pt2" and NCC-1701 in "tomorrow is yesterday" the ships were continually in motion, and thus you could argue they were flying by way of thrust from impulse engines and thrusters. hovering though, especially the effortless hovering the Voyager-A does, suggests ship scale anti-grav, and that's only something a ship able to land would bother with.

The Enterprise was able to hover in atmosphere, as seen in the first episode of SNW.

 

[somebuddyX]

"Sure, just add the word "crash" first, though."

 

[Macintosh]

I'm reminded of Rick Sternbach once saying in response to someone questioning how a starship could land that they routinely handle hundreds if not thousands of g, so dealing with only one shouldn't be much of an issue. Interestingly Sternbach also believes that Voyager was really resting on antigravity fields and inertial dampers when it landed; the legs were really more like anchors designed to keep it in one place, hence the official label on the MSD of "ground hover footpad".

Beyond this it would seem that impulse engines that operate in atmospheres are different from normal ones and feature atmospheric intakes – the Intrepid-class and the Danube-class seem to have these, for example. If a starship lacked antigravity fields or atmospheric impulse engines, then while it can survive in a planet's atmosphere or gravity well, it's going to have a hard time flying well or getting back into orbit. We might assume for example that the saucer of a Galaxy-class doesn't have these systems and is relying on its lifting body shape and limited thruster capability alone to glide in to a landing. Maybe something could be done with the space/time driver coils in its impulse engines if they were operational at the time, maybe not.

 

[Macintosh]

The Enterprise was able to hover in atmosphere, as seen in the first episode of SNW.

We even see this is TOS, in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

 

[Richard S. Ta]

We even see this is TOS, in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

Is it hovering? I always thought it was in motion and the fighter jet just matched speed with it?

 

[Macintosh]

Is it hovering? I always thought it was in motion and the fighter jet just matched speed with it?

It must be powered flight of some kind.