Landing capability in massive starships?

[Angry Fanboy]

Other than it admittedly looking cool and giving the USS Voyager something 'different' when the series premiered, do you think these million tonne Federation starships really NEED to be designed with landing capability in mind?

Surely that's a backward step when the whole point seemed to be they could stay in orbit and use transporters in lieu of landing a colossal spacecraft on a planet.

The extra infrastructure of landing struts, atmospheric thrusters etc seems a bit redundant to be suddenly brought back in the 2370s?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

For smaller vessels around USS Voyager size and smaller, I can see some value in it, but vessels larger than that, I don't really see the point, just stay in high orbit and be done with it.

The Saucer section of the Galaxy Class should have had some landing inflatables / struts / something. There was no reason that the Saucer section should've been lost. If it had a more powerful Anti-Grav system / Impulse, it should've been able to figure out a way to land safely and be recovered, even after being thrusted by the explosion from the StarDrive section.

They should've figured a way to adjust the vector with it's impulse drive to sling shot the saucer around the planet until it got out of it's gravity well and made stable orbit.

 

[Timo]

I doubt there is actually any additional designing involved. Starships are robust pieces of machinery, capable of not just performing and sustaining high accelerations (which makes it trivial for them to hover above Earth, or above a black hole for that matter), but also withstanding the stresses involved (which makes it trivial for them to fly through mountains, as sometimes seen).

Whether a starship needs special gear to steer in an atmosphere is debatable. Why wouldn't the usual steering gear suffice? Yet DS9 "The Siege" has Kira suggesting that impulse-capable spacecraft are at a disadvantage in an atmospheric fight against her own "sub-impulse" craft, or at least are no longer at an advantage. Perhaps some things don't work well in an atmosphere? This might include cooling systems and the like, too. The Delta Flyer needed special configuring in order to be a practical submarine in "30 Days". And Scotty did think there would be long term disadvantages to staying underwater in ST:ID...

We never heard of an era of Star Trek where starships would have been incapable of landing. Kirk's old ship was quite at home within an atmosphere; Archer's even older one, likewise. Picard's ship had to be deliberately abused in "Arsenal of Freedom" to create problems in atmospheric flight, and Janeway's only narrowly lost to Ransom's in a similar quest in "Equinox". Any one of those could have landed belly first if need be. Or, considering that there's no up or down for a starship that has internal artificial gravity, they could have landed upside down, or on the tip of one nacelle.

Several times we also had ships belly-land somewhat against their users' wishes - the Franklin in ST:B, the Defiant in "Children of Time". Getting back to space was a triviality, no harm having resulted from the belly landing.

Starships landing is a bit like aircraft rolling across the street from the factory to the runway in Seattle. If they can cross the Atlantic and the Pacific, they sure can cross the street, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Since StarFleet StarShips use a combination of Anti-Grav systems & Impulse Thrusters for propulsion, even in Atmosphere, flying around in atmosphere isn't a big issue.

Landing seems to be the big issue.

Voyager & almost all Shuttle Craft were designed to land on a planet.

But larger vessels don't seem to include landing systems for various practical reasons.

 

[Timo]

What is a "landing system", though? Landing isn't all that distinct an operation. At its simplest, it's just flying real slow and real low. Why would special systems be required for that?

Landing pads surely aren't required for "cushioning the impact" for ships that can ram through mountains. Or if it's the tarmac of the landing site that you're worried about, then just park carefully: the ships are capable of great precision when maneuvering. And it doesn't appear plausible that the ship would collapse under her own weight if she doesn't collapse under the thrust of her impulse engines!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

starships, as shown in many an episode, are capable of atmospheric flight, now the landing part.. thats different..
the infrastructure for landing pads/legs that would ideally be attached to major structural members/keel that would take the weight, possibly without structural integrity fields active.. so would have to be structurally sound to support everything.
now I know weight is a non issue, its just the extra stuff one would have to add to accomplish this. a ship like voyager that is small then yeah, but I read that a Vesta class in the books had landing gear.. and that ship is 700 meters long! thats a bit much, and honestly not needed for starships.. there built in space, live in space, and the only reason to land is if there crashing!

 

[Go-Captain]

Do they need to be designed specifically to land? I think not. Given what we've seen of Trek ships, they should be able to hover indefinitely. If they have to touch down, their hulls are so strong the starships could probably belly land like a shuttle. They could land in water and maybe float. For atmospheric entry they could just shape their forcefield, although we never saw that with Voyager nor the Enterprise saucer.

The exception, as with the Enterprise saucer, is emergency landing. It makes good sense using the whole ship as a life boat, since it gives the best accommodations and best resource base. A ship like Voyager might want to be naturally aerodynamic if that's a design goal, but all the other systems are so strong I find it doubtful it needs anything special.

Do they need landing? I say no. Without massive roll on/roll off capability or a setup like an amphibious landing boat there is no real advantage to setting down. All of the work on Voyager's nacelle rebuild was done by shuttle. Voyager has plenty of space suits. More resources should be found on an asteroid than on a planet. Transporters should be plenty fast for all volumes of cargo given they can move hundreds of people in one shot in TNG and VOY.

I think the only sensible landing starship is one of the NX-01 concepts I read about. It's command section is a blended wing atmospheric shuttle, and attached to it is a warp drive engine system. Any time they want to visit a planet's surface they land half the ship instead of using shuttles.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I think Voyager Sized Vessels and smaller can benefit from having landing struts.

But larger vessels could benefit from rapid inflatable landing bags for landing on a relatively flat surface like a Hover Craft.

Because once the Saucer Section of a Galaxy Class or equivalent vessel regains control and needs to land on a planet, they can deploy a whole bunch of inflatable landing bags from ports on the bottom of the saucer.

Similar in concept to the inflatable Heat shield, but used for landing purposes.

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With Future material science and basic Nitrogen tanks, you can easily inflate those bags very quickly if the Saucer section needed to park on the surface.

And they can be quickly deflated as needed and re-packed automaticaly when leaving.

Lift Bags are already used to lift very heavy things, so applying them as a large surface area landing foot is a very basic fundamental concept for spreading the weight of a Saucer section across a vast surface.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

There's no real reason for a starship to ever land on a planet, given they have transporters and shuttlecraft.

 

[NCC-73515]

Landing pads surely aren't required for "cushioning the impact" for ships that can ram through mountains. Or if it's the tarmac of the landing site that you're worried about, then just park carefully: the ships are capable of great precision when maneuvering.

Since they all have a curved bottom hull, the struts are probably just there to keep it horizontal XD

They could land in water and maybe float.

The Kelvinprise sank

 

[Timo]

Since they all have a curved bottom hull, the struts are probably just there to keep it horizontal XD

...But what for? It's not as if the crew would notice if the helm landed them upside down.

The Kelvinprise sank

Perhaps with some help from her propulsive systems?

At the fan-favorite 170,000 tons, Kirk's TOS ship would be likely to float. At Scotty's canon nearly a million (gross) tons, in line with Janeway's canon 700,000 (not so gross) tons for her similarly sized ride, she would sink. And in any case, much of the mass no doubt is in the nacelles, so the natural orientation in water might look unnatural to us and call for those putative struts or stabilizers anyway.

Hiding seems a good reason to bring a starship down to the surface of a planet, and preferably below it. In realistic space warfare, it might be impossible to hide the emissions of a large spacecraft from her peers in empty space, except through extreme distance; protective clutter might only ever be found near, on or in planets. Although this is not the case in Trek at all, we do have no fewer than three canon examples of planetside hiding of starships, and never mind the myriad cases of hiding in asteroid belts or the like.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NCC-73515]

...But what for? It's not as if the crew would notice if the helm landed them upside down.

To get in and out easily?

 

[Timo]

That would presuppose a doorway of some sort. And a really long ladder, in the best of cases.

We never quite learned how our Voyager heroes disembarked from their landed vessel when they didn't use the transporter. But it's not easy to see why they wouldn't have used that very technology every time.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NCC-73515]

http://fsd.trekships.org/art/images/dv-11.jpg

 

[Timo]

...Sort of the least plausible option by far. What would be the point of climbing down (let alone up!) that many steps if you can use the transporter, or some sort of an elevator, or even start a shuttle and fly that down for the missing meters? Or, in an emergency landing, slide down an inflatable chute?

The Voyager landing doesn't provide the crew with enhanced ground access as far as we can tell. Not with the putative ladder, not without. So this probably isn't the point of the maneuver to start with.

However, it would be pretty simple to bury the ship into the ground down to her waist, by first phasering a suitable pit. This would have many uses: the ship would become a well-fortified ground combat stronghold, with miles of bedrock now adding to her side armor, and with her phasers ideally positioned for enfilading the entire battlefield. And direct ground access via the shuttlebay "lip" would be simple, allowing egress by all sorts of wheeled or tracked or low-hovering vehicles if the ship carried those.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Go-Captain]

http://fsd.trekships.org/art/images/dv-11.jpg

I'm glad we didn't see that in the episode, because it lets us imagine an elevator.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

There's no real reason for a starship to ever land on a planet, given they have transporters and shuttlecraft.

In an emergency situation like when the Enterprise-D Saucer was being forced down from the explosion of it's StarDrive section. Assuming they had a better pilot (Deanna, I'm looking at you) and enough power from it's fusion drives, they could've done something to stabilize it's trajectory and found a way to safely land on the surface of Veridian III.

I'm glad we didn't see that in the episode, because it lets us imagine an elevator.

I'd prefer a slide for the exit and use the ladders on the struts to get back in if you don't have access to the Transporters for whatever reason.

 

[Sgt_G]

do you think these million tonne Federation starships really NEED to be designed with landing capability in mind?

The real question is "Should Federation starships be designed with take-off capability in mind?"

Any ship can LAND on a planet. What shape it'll be in is another matter. {BIG GRIN}

 

[NCC-73515]

...Sort of the least plausible option by far. What would be the point of climbing down (let alone up!) that many steps if you can use the transporter, or some sort of an elevator, or even start a shuttle and fly that down for the missing meters? Or, in an emergency landing, slide down an inflatable chute?

The Voyager landing doesn't provide the crew with enhanced ground access as far as we can tell. Not with the putative ladder, not without. So this probably isn't the point of the maneuver to start with.

However, it would be pretty simple to bury the ship into the ground down to her waist, by first phasering a suitable pit. This would have many uses: the ship would become a well-fortified ground combat stronghold, with miles of bedrock now adding to her side armor, and with her phasers ideally positioned for enfilading the entire battlefield. And direct ground access via the shuttlebay "lip" would be simple, allowing egress by all sorts of wheeled or tracked or low-hovering vehicles if the ship carried those.

Timo Saloniemi

You know how transporters always work, especially in a crisis when you need them...
The ladder is probably for such a crisis with no power to even operate elevators. Escalators would be funny XD

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

In an emergency situation like when the Enterprise-D Saucer was being forced down from the explosion of it's StarDrive section. Assuming they had a better pilot (Deanna, I'm looking at you) and enough power from it's fusion drives, they could've done something to stabilize it's trajectory and found a way to safely land on the surface of Veridian III.

Escape pods would've worked just as effectively to get the crew off the ship and away from danger, probably a lot faster as they wouldn't need to wait for the poor crewmen on deck 42 to get all the way up to the saucer.