How To Land on Other Planets (Realistically)

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Spacedock delves into realistic means of landing on other planets.
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[@Spacedock]

Get the Fanhome Millennium Falcon collection here! an7b.short.gy/SpaceDock_Falcon

[@PhoenixTalon]

I love your videos, but $1400 is too much for a die-cast Falcon, and some magazines. 🤣 That sponsor of yours is really something else. Keep up the good work on your amazing videos!

[@lewiswells6763]

These collector magazines are always awful, they always make it hard to work out how much you'll be paying in the end. And then you don't want to cancel because you've already invested cash. Think about your sponsors next time.

[@Inferryu]

This looks a lot like the DeAgostini model, as in like, exactly the same.

[@nathanegnew1923]

From what can be seen on the link, there's a minimum of 17 packages at 11GBP each. Over $2000 and almost 2 years before you have the finished product. Just so people understand what's on offer.

[@ventusvindictus]

​@@nathanegnew1923Thank you kindly! I think I'll just drop some buckos on Spacedock merch.

[@mitwhitgaming7722]

One thing I would like to see more sci-fi use is reentry plating on the hull. It would be neat to have a hero ship whose smooth belly is just scorched from repeated re-entries.

[@Lordrocky24]

They actually did that for the Enterprise-D in the Picard series. Still had the scars from (re?)entry.

[@TheAkashicTraveller]

That just doesn't seem realistic to me, it's just too much of a maintenance requirement for a reusable craft. Propulsive re-entry is really the only option.

[@carlosquintana590]

The Retribution, tigris and most of the ships in CoD IW have ceramic tiles for reentry

[@KatamuroTheFirst]

@@carlosquintana590 unfortunately it doesn't look like there will be a sequel

[@pennyforyourthots]

​@@TheAkashicTravellerit probably depends on the type of vessel. I imagine that there are some vessels that are just too strange in shape, large, etc for propulsive reentry to be efficient or reasonable. It's probably a case-by-case basis kind of thing.

[@kevingriffith6011]

There's also the consideration of if the ship can even land *at all*. To quote Futurama: Fry: "How many atmospheres (of pressure) can this ship withstand?" Farnsworth: "Well it's a spaceship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one." Some ships just don't have the structural integrity to support their own weight in planetary gravity, or the thrust to escape a planet's gravity well should they get caught in it beyond a certain point... as anyone with sufficient time in Space Engineers would understand too well.

[@CMTechnica]

Built too many ships in SE that we’re capable of working solid in 0g but sank like a rock the moment they touched gravity with no way to recover

[@solsystem1342]

​@@CMTechnicaside note on this particular problem. Space engineers uses some simplifications to make the game work. In reality you would never accidentally end up on a planet. You have to shed a huge amount of orbital momentum (speed basically) to so much as reach the atmosphere.

[@kevingriffith6011]

@@solsystem1342 It's mostly the in-game speed limit. It causes a lot of problems, but at the same time the game kinda falls apart at speeds higher than that in a lot of cases

[@nologin5375]

​@@solsystem1342 I wish planets had realistic gravity by default, their current linear gravity model just kinda sucks

[@MonkeyJedi99]

In our current space-based TTRPG, the main ship with trans-light capability 'could' enter an atmosphere as it has sufficient drives to make a friction-negligible trip. But it cannot self-support in any kind of landing, and flying it at any appreciable speed in an atmosphere requires nearly heroic piloting skills to avoid a complex and possibly fatal multi-axis spin. They do have an aerodynamic landing shuttle that also has sufficient drives for a friction negligible entry, but could also opt for a high-speed, high-temp entry. It also has landing gear and an assault/cargo ramp (depending on which character you're asking).

[@yodaslovetoy]

Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing

[@ehtresih9540]

What if you cant walk in the first place?

[@moteroargentino7944]

And any landing where you can take off again is a great landing.

[@henryward5457]

Civ 6 is the only reason I know the quote

[@jimmyryan5880]

- Ryanair

[@reizinhodojogo3956]

what about it arriving

[@Vipus2501]

Nostromo landing in Alien gotta be one of the best landing scenes ever. Sure, It may not show them decelerating but the process of landing takes a significant amount of time from the opening and is shown to be extremely complex. Plus, the effects look so great for the time. I also love that, despite doing everything right, they still end up landing over an unstable surface, which ultimately damages the ship.

[@Ebalosus]

It’s also wild to think that a movie from the 70s put a lot more thought into it than a lot of films and TV shows today do, despite us having far more knowledge on both extraterrestrial bodies and the requirements to land thereon.

[@cass7448]

Absolutely, I love how elaborate the landing sequence in Alien is. Seeing all the crew working together like that is a delight. From a filmmaking point of view, it also helped build anticipation for the inevitable encounter. That slow, deliberate pacing is what makes Alien great.

[@CptJistuce]

​@@EbalosusAnd just more ACCESS to information. In the 70s it took actual EFFORT to research how to land a spaceship. Now so much of human knowledge is just... available to you wherever you happen to be.

[@LarixusSnydes]

​@@CptJistuceThis is true to an extent, however online information sources can vary wildly in quality, so it's best to be picky about your sources; NASA/ESA/JAXA and technical universities would rate a bit higher than "How I built my functional space rocket out of washing powder cartons". It's not always easy to get to the information you want by searching, especially if the nonsensical source is popular.

[@shorewall]

@@LarixusSnydes And a lot of academic grade sources paywall themselves, or otherwise restrict access.

[@Comicsluvr]

As a writer, I LOVE these 'practical' videos. They talk about the stuff that the detail-oriented readers (like me) scoff at when we see a movie or TV show do it wrong. Helps to keep my writing honest and grounded.

[@DeathBYDesign666]

It is highly dependent on the type of technology used for re-entry, if they have antigravity or gravity modification for instance that already solves heaps of issues with re-entry. You can slow down without the need for a secondary propulsion system. Being too grounded in our current understanding of physics and technology is a limiting factor for story telling, our perception of what's possible and what isn't changes based on that understanding. In the original Star Trek the technology seemed advanced compared to the time it was made but after a few decades it now looks primitive to us. We can speculate on what the future might bring but we can't just go back to the original vision when even our own technology has surpassed the vision at the time.

[@xavierleggett4117]

@@DeathBYDesign666 I want to make certain that I'm understanding your argument correctly, before I haul off and write something stupid. You wrote: "In the original Star Trek the technology seemed advanced compared to the time it was made but after a few decades it now looks primitive to us." Only in appearance. Mostly due to the fact that the show was made during the 1960's with cheap looking sets, props and costumes. However, the technical aspects are still a marvel in 2023. We do not have any space craft that produce speeds at 1% of FTL. . . not to mention Photon torpedoes, deflector screens, tractor beams, etc., etc. . . That Star Trek tech from the 1960's,while looking cheap and funky, still outstrips anything we have today. If, I'm understanding the foundation of your observation correctly.

[@TrixterTheFemboy]

@@xavierleggett4117 My guess is they meant the blocky screens and such, but you're right that just about everything else is still way, way beyond our current times.

[@aquarius5719]

Only Apollo had reentry. Space Shuttle had entry interface. Reentry is when you bounce against atmosphere like a rock in a pond to finally sink. Space shuttle aimed for a hotter but shorter entry because that would not allow enough heat to reach the internal aluminium hull. A slower entry would allow more heat to flow inside and melt the internal hull. Illiterate journalists call entry as reentry.

[@Inferryu]

@@xavierleggett4117 At a risk, I'd say is about our general understanding of how said tech SHOULD work, and how much advanced it seems to be, given the amount of time a particular universe had to developed it. Take Alien, the tech there is undoubtedly more advanced than what we have today and yet it looks out dated, not because of the way it works or what it can do, but because some of the small components that make it are outdated already, like the use of CRT screens in the year 2122. And the aesthetics of it certainly don't help.

[@resurgam_b7]

I love landing/disembarkation scenes because they can give a much better sense of scale to the vehicles. Its all well and good to know that the Roci is about 40 meters tall? long? deep? but that number can seem kind of meaningless when the ship is only shown in comparison to the vastness of space and other, nebulously sized vessels. When you see the crew walking around on the hull, or walking away from the ship on a planet, it shows how big (or small depending on how you pictured it) the ship actually is.

[@generalcodsworth4417]

I would say that the longest dimension of the Rocinante is its height. That's the orientation of the crew during basically any activity other than EVA and the orientation which it is in when it lands on any surface with gravity. It's a tower with an impossibly efficient rocket engine in place of a foundation, as are most of the ships in the expanse. And I suppose that would make it not really have a front or back. And if you said the pointed tip facing opposite the engine was the front, then there's no real top or bottom. I suppose the airlock(s) and other docking surfaces for humans to embark the ship through would be the only real reference points to try and determine where the front is

[@CptJistuce]

Absolutely. Establishing scale on these things is very hard to do without some very intentional cinematography.

[@LarixusSnydes]

( Mild spoilers ahead! ) When the racer craft joins Holden's "fleet" it is described as having space for only two passengers, which makes it relatively easy to gauge it's size, which can ultimately be used to estimate the dimensions of the Roci in comparison to the racer.

[@barklet6110]

@@LarixusSnydesthe razorback might have physical space for more passengers but it doesn't have the chairs with magic fluid that are needed to survive high g maneuvers

[@RCAvhstape]

There is a scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture where after landing on/in V'Ger the landing party emerges on top of Enterprise's saucer section and walks over the hull. As far as I can remember, that was the first time we ever got an external shot of people standing outside the ship, giving us a sense of scale finally. (Sort of, earlier there was the space dock scene which showed guys in suits outside the ship, as well as Spock in a suit trying to mind meld with V'ger.)

[@WhyNotAParadox]

A+ for including Phineas and Ferb's hilarious examples in a serious scientific breakdown. Love it.

[@cauchyhorizon5983]

8:27 I'm fairly certain the Roci's landing gear in the show is able to adjust somewhat to different heights. So they find a cliff that roughly matches the height of the main hatch to within a few meters, and adjust the landing legs up or down to make it match up perfectly. The drawback, as we saw in the episode, was that their "perfect" landing site was pretty far from the base camp, and they had to walk a long distance on foot.

[@mihan2d]

That's only tangential to landing but what ticked me off the most about Expanse is how Rocinante was basically floating over Ganymede only seldom engaging its thrusters, when in reality in 1/6 g a ship with a mass at least 300-400 tonnes gonna need solid 50-60 tons of constant lift to levitate which means those little thrusters would have to fire INTENSELY. But then again the entire Ganymede sequence was a dumpster fire in terms of realism, at least by the very high standards this show sets

[@CMTechnica]

@@mihan2dthe entire arc with Ganymede was a dumpster fire. None of the VFX artists liked working on it and the screenwriters gave up by the time of the infamous slingshot scene.

[@Ebalosus]

@@CMTechnicathis. The book did it much better than the show. None of this "let’s float around in wrecked habitats and look for the monster" nonsense. Alex just lands the Roci on its side (which is pointed out) to pick up everyone, and then just blasts off after reorienting.

[@Tank50us]

To be fair to the Roci here... landing a distance from the camp was the right call to make. As stated in the video here, you can have a lot of kick-up from a landing, and while not talked about in the Expanse, or in here, there's the radiation risk to consider. Sure, it would become harmless after only a minute or so, but irl, that radiation would be absolutely lethal to anyone who's near the LZ without proper protection.

[@DarthBiomech]

I've never understood why the show decided to go with a ramp, if a retractible elevator would made a lot more sense and practicality, with basically zero need to change the script.

[@cyqry]

I love The Expanse for its hard-scifi take, but now that you've mentioned it I don't think I can unsee the perfect cliff height they had on Ilus. I suppose though the ramp *could* theoretically angle itself a small amount to compensate, kind of like what we see with some docking clamps on stations.

[@L8ugh1ngm8n1]

The rumour floating about at the time was the Roci landing was meant to be a homage to Blue Origin with the show having just been saved by Amazon. Not sure how true it is but the books having the Roci belly land was significantly more plausiable.

[@TheAndroidNextDoor]

That footage from Voyager's opening and the "really small bodies" comment is a level of inside joke I didn't expect lmao.

[@knickohr01]

2:49 I just love the annotations. "From NASA" "From NASA" "From associated press" "From Scott Manley". It just shows how much of an impact some guy on KZbin can have when it comes to educating an entire generation about airospace engineering.

[@irystocrattakodachithatmooms]

The landing of a ship is something I love in Starfield. I really enjoy watching the landing gear fire their engines slow down and then watching as it touches down. I also really like the attention to detail with the shock absorbers and seeing them take in the shock of the landing. I never get tired of watching a ship land or take off given how both are done. It truly makes for a more realistic feel to the game.

[@Spinobreaker]

Fun fact, while it is hard to see in 720p, the 1080p version of Stargate Atlantis clearly shows the BC304 landing in the water in between the peers of the city.

[@DeathBYDesign666]

The question is why would they land it in the first place? It's main use is as a defensive platform against the wraith and that makes it almost useless in a surprise attack. To me it was more about the visual than anything practical.

[@rakaydosdraj8405]

@@DeathBYDesign666 Depends on the episode, but being able to stand down the daedelus for maintenance while under the city shields is a benifit if there's no immediate threat.

[@Soeck]

Me: no that's totally bs, that's what the Peers are for! Totally nonsense! Also me: looks up episodes where it happens. Surprised pikachu face Wtf

[@Tank50us]

@@rakaydosdraj8405 The Siege part 3 shows this exactly. Caldwel even states it "Until repairs are complete Daedalus needs Atlanis's shield just as much as you do" Her shields took a battering, and much of her internals were out of whack due to bleed-through, so the choice was either land, recharge and repair, or stay in orbit and be a mild annoyance for the fleet of a dozen hives plus escorts and darts.

[@PGGraham]

"Piers"

[@PotentiallyAndy]

I love how you said “really small bodies” over the voyager tiny planet scene :)

[@mirochlebovec6586]

One thing to remember about realistic landings is that if you use something like a fusion drive you need separate landing/takeoff trhrusters so you don’t melt the landing zone. Besides using separate thrusters for landing/takeoff you could also have the spacehip change the ratio between actual fusion fuel and remass. When near ground you could decrease the amount of fusion and dump lots of water into the engine to keep the exhaust cool enough for landing while maintaining thrust. This would of course mean that the spaceship could only do a few landings/takeoffs before running out of remass.

[@davidpiksi]

That's why in The Expanse you see the Rocinante using it's thrusters to land instead of the main fusion drive.

[@MrQuantumInc]

I was just thinking about how unrealistic it is that many ships have a main engine that points rearward but also landing thrusters that point downward, but this gives a second reason why you might need two sets of thrusters besides them being at 90 degrees.

[@Hyperious_in_the_air]

@@davidpiksi in the books the the landing thrusters are actually steam-based, using heat from the internal power reactor to generate the steam power.

[@solsystem1342]

Tldr: just turn down your engines instead and if you really must avoid damage to a temporary pad (for truly gigantuan craft) spray water below the rocket not through the engine. Real rocket landing pads already spray water to keep themselves from being damaged. It makes more sense to have equipment on the ground than on the spaceship because then you don't have to carry it around. Also, your particular idea would have the water break up into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen and oxygen would burn forming water again outside the spaceship. Also, Oxygen is extremely corrosive at fusion temperatures and would quickly begin eating away at the engine. Also, also fusion rates are strongly based on temperature so adding any significant amount of water will effectively turn off your engines.

[@stevenclark2188]

It looks like with the ISV's that's a feature, not a bug.

[@Dogbertious]

One type of reentry I enjoyed from Gundam was the use of what they called 'ballute system', which took the form of an inflatable worn on a mobile suit's back or a fitted warship's aft. When the suit/ship enters the atmosphere, the inflatable deploys to shield the suit/ship from the heat of re-entry and to slow it down when coupled with supplementary thrusters which are used once the craft has cleared the whole "Will melt/explode" stage and the inflatable is jettisoned.

[@alexhajnal107]

As seen in the film _2010_ (minus the landing bit).

[@simongeard4824]

A "ballute" is a real thing... kind of a hybrid balloon/parachute used for aerobraking.

[@RCAvhstape]

@@simongeard4824 They've tried testing ballutes a couple of times at least, not sure they've gotten any to work in Earth atmo yet.

[@joelmulder]

Very good attention to detail saying “entry” and “atmospheric entry” instead of the often misused “re-entry”.

[@filanfyretracker]

the biggest element in scifi landing of course is that scifi ships have unlimited propellent mass. So unlike say the Falcon 9, there is no worry about having enough to also land.

[@dominicmcg2368]

Love how many different scifi shows, movies, games, etc... were used for reference in this one, above and beyond even your normal videos! (I was keeping an eye out and was surprised not to see any Cowboy Bebop or Futurama though, Cowboy Bebop in particular has some great landing on water sequences!)

[@rileyernst9086]

What I really liked about the exspanse books is that the Roci docks vertically, but she belly lands. You could imagine there would an interesting distinction between multi purpose vessels like the Roci that can enter atmosphere and land, and larger vessels that may never be intended to land at anything other than a dock let alone enter atmosphere.

[@Mannchini]

I really liked the idea from the books of the Roci landing on it’s belly. Except I suspect that would have caused some filing nightmares

[@Ebalosus]

That at least made sense, since in the second book it was the only way Alex could pick the others up without needing another craft.

[@momerathe]

one thing that gets me are the thrust levels involved in propulsive landing. The Overlord dropship from Battletech weighs 9,700 tons and can accelerate at 2.5G. It may not use all of that thrust in atmosphere, but i it did it would be nearly 7 Saturn V's worth. The noise alone would be absolutely shattering for miles around.

[@iDEATH]

Always nice to meet another Battletech and GitS fan!

[@chrisanderson7820]

That's where most scifi ships fall down. Even if you ignore the actual tech behind the engine unless its some form of weightless/inertia-less grav drive then the thrust involved in these massive space ships is crazy. Like the ship in Prometheus, it's 10x the size of the shuttle but flies like a plane on thrusters. If you want to use thrusters a writer should consider a dual drive like in Starfield, a grav drive that negates gravity and then your thrusters are there just for dealing with momentum.

[@Its-Just-Zip]

On the topic of finding yourself a perfect clif to land with the top at door height, you could use your engines to dig yourself a landing pad

[@chriss2031]

If you have the fuel and reaction mass to spare for that, sure. Expensive way to dig a hole if you're not on antimatter.

[@Its-Just-Zip]

@@chriss2031 oh absolutely, but presumably if you have a ship capable of interstellar travel and planetary landing, you probably have a way of both replenishing reaction mass and an engine with enough delta v that it probably doesn't matter. At least we're sci-fi is concerned

[@absalomdraconis]

​​@@chriss2031 : Both SpaceX's Starship and some Soviet experiments back in the day demonstrated that it actually _isn't_ particularly inefficient (the Soviet experiments claimed it was _more_ efficient than other ways of digging a hole). The things that it isn't are: 1) common, and 2) OSHA compliant. There are reasons not to do it, but those involve flying debris and fire hazards.

[@capslfern2555]

I have a few ships that use z-pinch fusion engines for rcs (and main propulsion) that have extra powerful engines of the bottom to be able to land, the problem is these are usually fusion engines and do a lot of damage on landing, some have the extra downwards thrust replaced with air breathing fusion turbines that use a fusion reactor to heat the air going through instead of burning fuel

[@ZearthGJL]

The Frontline Series by Marko Kloos will always be my favourite way of landing. Literally entering an orbital window to counter burn and then decelerating enough to not burn up during descent.

[@45eugenia52]

Thank you for making a landing video exactly when I needed it. I don't know how, but y'all keep making these videos right as I begin working on scenes that require it. Honestly, if it weren't for these videos, almost all the stuff I've worked on in recent months wouldn't even exist.

[@CantankerousDave]

Gundam is also big on ballutes (balloon + parachutes), inflatable, one-time use reentry shields. One was used by the Leonov in the movie 2010 for their aerobraking maneuver around Jupiter.

[@vic5015]

I remember playing an old DOS lunar lander game. I developed a *lot* of respect for Neil Armstrong's piloting skills after *numerous* crashes. As the game showed, we humans are squishy bags that don't tolerate high g forces or high-speed impacts well.

[@alexhajnal107]

Versions of that game date back to DEC's 1973 _Moonlander_ for the PDP-10 and PDP-11 equipped with their then-new GT40 graphics terminal. In 1979 Atari released their own arcade version as _Lunar Lander_ ; this is the best known version of the game. There were also text-only, turn based versions. The earliest of these was 1969's _Rocket_ a.k.a. _Apollo_ for the DEC PDP-8 (released a few months after the first crewed lunar landing). There were numerous adaptations of it for the various mini- and microcomputer BASICs of the '70s and early '80s under a variety of names.

[@vic5015]

​@@alexhajnal107i have no idea how accurate that game was, but it was *hard* .

[@alexhajnal107]

@@vic5015 The physics is accurate (albeit 2D) but it's kind of hard to mess that up. The terrain though is not so realistic. As for fuel, if you recall the audio from the Apollo 11 landing the "30 seconds" callout is the amount of fuel remaining before they'd have to abort. The "Contact light" callout 9 seconds later is when the lander first touched the surface. All in all, the actual first landing took 4 minutes from the "GO for landing" call (at 3000 feet, ~900 meters) to engine shutdown. Edit: One bit of physics that's inaccurate is that when one fires the RCS thrusters (rotates) there's no inertia.

[@alexhajnal107]

_(OK, twice smitten. The KZbin gods _*_really_*_ don't like this comment.)_ There's a browser-based version called _moonlander_ created by someone named Seb. It seems to be an accurate reproduction of the 1979 Atari arcade release.

[@vernonmiles7379]

Love the "around really small bodies" joke with showing the Voyager opening

[@sea_kerman]

Another interesting method that solves the "engines dig a hole" problem and the "need a long ladder or elevator" problem is to put the cargo bay/crew space at the bottom and the engines at the top.

[@rakaydosdraj8405]

then you just need to solve the problem of not "digging a hole" in the side of your own ship. Angling out works but sacrifices drive power to Pythagoras.

[@compmanio36]

I like when you don't see the main ship, being large, land at all. Most of these long duration ships are large enough that they don't want to go inside a gravity well or atmosphere, but stay in orbit. You have auxiliary craft to do the landing and ferrying of people to/from the surface. I liked that about the first Avatar and it's a shame they threw that out the window in the second one, since those ships in no way looked to be capable of surviving the gravity of Pandora.

[@cockpeatdarkhole6909]

This Ships (the ISV - Ships) accelerating with 1.5 G for the Interstellar Travel - the 1 G from the Earth or the smaller G- force of Pandora is in this Kontext Not a Problem.

[@moteroargentino7944]

Indeed, the closest in those cases would be a space dock, where all the supplies and maintenance installations can be kept ready for the incoming big ships, instead of having to go up and down through the atmosphere in smaller spacecrafts to load/unload. Just like a deep water port today.

[@zuzoscorner]

A landing craft just makes sense for stellar travel indee.d mothership deplays a smaller craft meant for going up an down. although sci-fi often cheats with how muc thrust you need ot get to orbit depending onf gravity

[@faceboy1392]

those giant fusion engines do give 1.5 G's of acceleration that is sustained over many years of interstellar travel, and the structure of the ISV Venture Star is more held together by tension than compression, which makes it way easier for it to handle acceleration and deceleration. Pandora also has only 80% of Earth's gravity. So the ships are definitely capable of something like this, the bigger concern is just that that may not be very fuel efficient, though perhaps the humans are just a lot more impatient this time around and don't care for the awesome destruction caused by those engines.

[@CMTechnica]

The ISV is definitely capable of surviving Pandora’s gravity. It’s rated for 1.5g and Pandora has significantly lower gravity than earth

[@alexanderjones2126]

Every time I think of deliberate Lithobraking as a design feature, I think of the Space Pods used in Dragonball Z. The little white one man spacecraft the sayains and other bad guys use, don't do any fancy things to slow down, they just plop down onto the ground at full reentry speed, and end up makeing a heck of a crater and even slightly burying themselves when they land, but the pods and their passengers are totally fine afterwards.

[@AlexSDU]

My best bet is that the pod has a built in inertia damperner. That's the only answer how the occupant survive the crash.

[@Inferryu]

@@AlexSDUIs not like their intended occupants can survive anything from a mountainside fall up to a nuclear blast all on their own.

[@MyVanir]

@@Inferryu Except they often send babies in them and the babies are not strong enough to survive such trauma.

[@Inferryu]

@@MyVanirGoku did, he fell down a mountainside with no more than a concussion, and he was the weakest saiyan to be ever born, that is why he was sent to conquer Earth, the implication being everyone else was just stronger... until that got reckoned.

[@francoislacombe9071]

Isaac Arthur: "You should probably run from anything that can walk out of a crater it just dug." or word to that effect.

[@be-noble3393]

Step 1: Gravity Step 2:????? Step 3: Land Step 4: Profit.

[@TheLastStarfighter77]

It was interesting to see the merc ship coming into land on the scene from the Chronicles of Riddick on crematoria, with the somewhat dodgy heat shields and also the two retro reverse rockets or thrusters.

[@ducklinsenmayer7681]

Star Trek craft often use their nacelles as the landing gear, as those things are built to shrug ogg incredible amounts of damage- they have to be, to contain the temperatures and forces inside them. The exception are ships that have raised nacelles, like the BOP, and they do have landing gear (see st IV)

[@Hyperious_in_the_air]

The thing with sci-fi ships, especially those like in the expanse, is that they have the T:W to cancel their orbital velocity, meaning they don't actually need heat shields or anything, since they can just drop through the atmosphere at a leisurely pace straight down then rather than aerobraking.

[@filanfyretracker]

So a glorified scifi Falcon 9 first stage basically.

[@warmachine5835]

In the spirit of Spacedock, I gotta nitpick here: they have the thrust-to-weight ratio relative to the body to cancel out gravitational acceleration, AND they've got the fuel efficiency to make this practical. Powered landing without relying on atmospheric drag to decelerate from orbital velocity is a very thirsty job, and the Epstein Drive could do it with only a few sips. Thrust to weight isn't the hard part--anything capable of vertical takeoff via rocket motor needs a TWR > 1. But fuel efficiency? The rocket equation is an unforgiving mistress.

[@Migog5]

@@warmachine5835 in expanse the ships can accelerate and decelarate for weeks in 1G, basically being capable to accelerate to relativistic speeds, but that high accelerations are never done due to need for protection for even smallest particles. So in that setting they do have the fuel efficiency to deorbit and land with main engines (and to use thrusters/teekettle mode for final approach). But yes it is a bit handwavium.

[@CMTechnica]

That’s the only issue I have with the expanse. It’s all solid when you account for the Epstein Drive, but falls apart without it. The unobtainium of the series

[@Hyperious_in_the_air]

@@CMTechnica I've always assumed it was some fusion reaction that generated a magical antimatter boost reaction that gave the power and efficiency they see in the series.

[@Culdcepter]

Love how you often include "obscure" shows like The Last Starfighter. The gunstar's a perfect example for the elevator from the crew compartment section.

[@casbot71]

A practical idea for a ship landing in "wild" territory would be to send a much smaller drone down first to scout for a suitable landing zone and actually test the surface, before risking the manned ship. It could fly around surveying and once it finds a suitably clear landing zone, it can itself land and check to see if the ground is solid enough ("the orbital sensors couldn't tell it was balsa wood..") and clear of any obstacles assuming that the atmosphere wasn't clear enough to allow high resolution images from orbit. Then if everythings all okay it gets out of the way and the important ship/shuttle/lander comes in. It could even do double duty as a chase plane to monitor the ships final approach and check there wasn't any damage on re-entry, while monitoring local weather conditions for last minute changes. Not having to make it's own way back into orbit frees up the Drones design limitations, as it only needs to be a atmospheric capable flyer that can survive re-entry, which can be via a drop pod or a shield of some kind. The manned ship can even skim the atmosphere and drop it off if the ship doesn't have fuel limitations (but that's usually superscience). The actual lander that test the surface conditions could even be a separate vehicle that's dropped off, but at that point it's probably easier to make a all in one Drone. And when the manned ship has safely landed, the Drone can be recovered to be reused. While the ship is on the ground it can provide overwatch for safety and also act as a scout to check for anything that might interest the crew.... and greatly reduce the chances of the mission being wiped out by misadventure or hostile lifeforms - that might not be indigenous, and have acid for...

[@MrQuantumInc]

A pet peeve of mine: a lot of franchises show ships that have a second set of thrusters just for landing. The thumbnail is annoying since it shows the Rocicante firing thrusters that are simply not present in the show or books. A good example being Starfield ships. These landing thrusters only fire for a few seconds before the ship tilts so it can use its main thrusters, and yet this second set of thrusters are just as big and heavy as the main thrusters. It represents a massive amount of dead weight on the ship just so that you can land in a way that looks right. Ships that use anti-gravity for their initial ascent are far more forgivable, but they are still doing the same thing. It would also be forgivable if the two sets of thrusters had other differences, like power vs thrust. Fundamentally what it is, is that since here on earth the direction of gravity is at right angle to the direction of movement, we assume the same must apply to space craft, but obviously that is not actually true. Ironically Star Wars has a good example of the more realistic options in the "Slave 1" Boba Fett's ship; which lands with the engines pointing down, even though it probably also has repulsorlift anti-gravity.

[@jimskywaker4345]

Well, a lot of sci-fi ships use fusion thrusters as the main engines, you do not want to be firing fusion thrusters at the ground in a populated area because that it a lot of heat, force and radiation. a separate set of engines that run a lot cooler is a smart idea for safety.

[@Ebalosus]

@@jimskywaker4345*All* nuclear-fueled engines do that TBF.

[@capslfern2555]

some of my ships use more down thrust to land, problem is they are usually z-pinch fusion engines

[@lucaskobain]

I think there's a pretty good reason to use wheeled landing gear at least on dropships/medium landing ships: moving the damn thing around from the landing strip into a hangar. Unless it's SW and your ships can simply levitate on their own power without blowing everything away.

[@RCAvhstape]

It's why helicopters often have wheels.

[@dio3693]

I always thought the engines that swivel for landing was a cool design. It's nice to see them used so much in Starfield.

[@the7observer]

ah yes the Everspace calm soundtrack *PTSD of fighting 6 enemy fighters at the same time without intertial mitigators but somehow surviving by running donuts around an asteroid*

[@leenonymous5592]

Much appreciation for the footage source notations :)

[@wandilesibiya9749]

Bro real talk, that Avatar re-entry bit had my grown-ass shedding tears yo! Can't wait for that video!

[@cshell3424]

You are amazing. Keep up the great content

[@drahkas8526]

Those fanhome models are a cool idea, sure. But, from what I've been able to find with some quick google searches, the total cost of these models comes in at $1500-2000. Even with some silly magazines that have info you can find elsewhere for free, the final cost of this product is absolutely insane. I appreciate that a sponsor is good for your channel, but I really hope that no one falls into this trap.

[@lenaistalar8032]

I agree, it's always a problem with these collectible magazines that build a model or rc car or whatever. Way back I got myself the first two episodes of a gas-powered rc formula 1 Ferrari, then looked at the number of magazines still to come and I could have bought 2-3 ready to run rc cars for the same price. Absolutely not worth it in my eyes.

[@PltOffPPrune]

One of the things I appreciated about Babylon 5's Starfuries was the total embracing of it as a space fighter with no reference to atmospheres or planets. I was always a little disappointed by the Thunderbolt, and it's fudging of the issues to give them an atmospheric fighter for the storyline's benefit.

[@torg2126]

The Thunderbolt exists to have something that can fly through atmosphere. I don't think that they could land on the ground, just make atmosphere passes in order to continue pursuing atmospheric craft

[@TotallyNotAFox]

A video at the right time, I just work on an epic D-Day like landing on a planet for something I'm writing. Having some reference what to consider in all of this really helps. I think I go with disposable / interchangable heat sinks of some kind to have the hangar crew something to do

[@mariothegreat4197]

i must say, i love this convinient door height clif

[@traveltrektrains8365]

Outstanding as always, thank you

[@rommdan2716]

I hope you guys make reaction-less drives next, I really love them!

[@George_M_]

For lifting off, I think my favorite was Lusankya blasting free of Coruscant with a disposable lift cradle. Back when you had to leave planets to use hyperdrive >_>

[@bennythargrave]

Nice touch with the Force Unleashed music in the promotion 👌

[@LiamWarlord]

Not sure if this counts, but the Cradle from Niel Stephensons Seveneves is one of my favorite examples of getting from space to the ground. Its a space elevator where the earth end is not anchored to the ground. The Cradle ends up becoming a floating city that occasionally sets down for a few hours before continuing to traverse the equator. That book also has a lot of cool ideas for going from the ground to space! (Thors Hammer is my favorite)

[@nemorianderson]

I recognised the background music, its Everspace 1 soundtrack. Now I wish to play it again, thank you for inspiration)

[@davedsilva]

Nicely done!

[@Tyr666Thor]

Star Trek shuttle's warp nacelles double as landing legs/skids. Some shuttles do have a forward landing leg/skid as well if they have short and rearward positioned nacelles.

[@greggv8]

The Expanse TV series changed the Roci to a tailsitter from a belly lander. Being able to land flat was very important in one of the books where they hide under an overhanging cliff.

[@vincentcleaver1925]

Seeing Serenity landing again made this old Browncoat cry

[@cmedtheuniverseofcmed8775]

Designer: "OK, the great news is we have a brand new spaceship built for you to fly. It can fight dozens of alien ships at once." Pilot: "Alright.....Hey....where's the thrusters on it so I can land this thing?" Designer: "Oh.....that's right. These things need to land. Ummm....well, doesn't matter. You'll fly it tomorrow. I'm sure you'll figure out a way to take care of that."

[@kevingriffith6011]

Well, here's the thing... I'd wager *most* spaceships don't have to consider landing at all in a setting like Star Wars or Star Trek. If the ship is constructed entirely in space and is meant to serve it's entire working lifespan without ever entering the gravity well of a large celestial body then you have a lot fewer design constraints to worry about, such as "Can the underlying structure of this thing support it's weight in a planet's gravity well". Just as long as it can dock at a spaceport for repair, refit and disembarking crew then planetary landing is really an optional feature.

[@tsunami-lightwave9395]

"Lithobraking" I love it! :-)

[@iDEATH]

As a kid I loved TSR's "Star Frontiers" TTRPG. It leaned towards hard SF, with no artificial gravity or anything, and atomic/nuclear propulsion engines (as the highest grade, with chemical and ion as well) that had to be mounted away from the hull for the sake of the crew. This meant ships landed nose up, like towers, but because the engines were mounted off to the sides you could still have a ground level loading bay making vehicles and other things for planetary exploration quite practical.

[@starcraftre]

"Convenient cliff at door height." I always assumed that they could adjust the landing gear extension on the Roci to match a location that was in the right range for their docking tube.

[@padawanmage71]

Whenever I think of any ship landing, I always think of the Nostromo in ‘Alien’. And thanks the the laugh with the Airplane 2 scene, as well as the Eagle fighter scene (y)

[@gnaskar]

2:10 I wonder where that fantastic Dragon animation came from. **Sees camera do that tilt as it goes suborbital** Ah, modded KSP. Gotcha.

[@hoojiwana]

Yes I forgot to turn off of free cam lmao - hoojiwana from Spacedock

[@Alexandragon1]

Thx for the video!

[@philrm99]

Another excellent topic.

[@25usd94]

In addition to being a big fan of SpaceDock on youtube, I'm a big fan of space docks. My thinking is that Orbital stations to house ships and provide ground transfers for disembarking crew, passengers, or cargo would allow everything to specialize and better optimize cost, mass ratio, and energy efficiency for vehicles and stations. Obviously this is informed by shipping today and in history, where your big ships hang out at port so that goods can be transferred by rail. That way spaceships can stay light, landing infrastructure can be scaled up, and crew members can go to the port town and get drunk after shift.

[@Aviator_Shades]

8:27 "or you just find a perfect landing site with a convenient cliff at door height" This scene kind of bothered me in the expanse tv series. I understand they had to do it this way because they couldn't rotate the set of the Rocinante's interior sideways, but in the books, it lands on its belly, which just makes a lot more sense.

[@Nostripe361]

I could still see runways used if they don’t want to overly stress the antigravity systems or internal dampeners. Definitely don’t want those to fail while flying in space

[@eps200]

Or be able to tow a ship around while it's powered down. Especialy if yuou want to wheel it indoors.

[@ICBMPIRATE2]

“Pull an Oopsie!” Love it

[@Croz89]

I wonder if you could have a spacecraft perform a low speed landing that would only need a short runway, that might be more effecient than trying to go for a full vertical landing without needing massively long runways. Maybe using strong reverse thrust from the engines and directing some exhaust downwards to maintain lift at low speeds.

[@andrewcoulthard-clark]

I see Spacedock. I click Spacedock.😊

[@FaithFalkner]

As the author of a novel and world where getting from ground to orbit and back is a key part of the storytelling, I heartily approve of any video discussing CoM & CoL, ablatives, and lithobraking.

[@MrArbreFleuri]

Honey wake up, new Spacedock kino just dropped

[@JustAnotheNeoSilver]

The "takes no damage and doesn't change trajectory when plowing through rock" bit is an odd thing. While it should take damage, depending on the ship's mass, shape, and how and where it impacts the mountain (ie, clipping the side of a cliff as opposed to noseplanting into a ridgeline), it could easily punch through rock and keep heading along the same trajectory due to inertia. What changes is the ship's _orientation_ -that is, the direction the ship is facing. The ship would start to tumble, and further impacts would likely start to change the trajectory. It's the same kind of physics that affects bullets.

[@comet.x]

also depends on how strong the rock is vs the ship slamming into a skinny sandstone formation in the badlands is gonna be pretty different than clipping a rocky mountain made of scrunched up exposed bedrock

[@darwinxavier3516]

It's also gonna depend on the shape of the ship. A more streamlined ship might keep forward trajectory better than a brick with lots of edges to snag on things.

[@chesslover8491]

Lithobraking. Awesome!

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

Great video...👍

[@GET_YOUTUBE_VIEWS_66]

Impressive editing skills

[@JeroenDStout]

I know the vertical landing was one of those concessions the showrunners had to do, but I would be lying if I said it didn't sting when you said "convenient cliff at door height".

[@alexhajnal107]

That was one of the few times in the series where my suspension of disbelief was broken.

[@Morrifowl]

Mmm, to be fair I think it's established that they also have a far less convenient lift or ladder arrangement - it's never shown, but mentioned - for boarding the ship from below if such a cliff isn't available.

[@dkSilo]

So had hoped the USS Voyager making a a proper landing in this video. It was a novelty for Trek when she did it. Roddenberry used the beaming because he wasn't sure how to land the Enterprise and how much it would cost to show that, but Voyager finally landed. :D Thanks for a great video.

[@raidellcorps]

Well, if you are a civilization advanced enough to manage interestelar travel, you are a civilization capable enough to build vessels capable of lithobraking without having to worry by annoying mountains and terrain. XD "Why should my Von Neumann probes have landing gear? When they can crash and use the remains of whatever they hit as more building material." -Me ... ... ... ... "What do you mean we are at war with an alien civilization?!" -Me, a few tens of millennia later.

[@mill2712]

Let's hope those diplomats are ready for the job of their lives or your military is up to the task.

[@krisgonynor689]

The Space 1999 Eagle Transporter (and it's variants) are one of the most realistic small space craft designs of all time. Hard mounted directional thrusters in all directions, lift engines on the bottom side that work in multiple levels of gravity, main engines at the rear for forward thrust. Fusion powered, capable of hitting 10% lightspeed. Able to do an atmospheric landing using forward thrusters to slow it down along with aerobraking - the reason the cockpit is the only rounded shape on the structure is that it acts like the space shuttle's nose cone, deflecting the atmospheric reentry shockwave around the ship. I also love the interchangeable modules, for different missions. Two things that they should have added though - a lower "undercarriage" structure under the swappable mission specific module to make it all around a stronger structure (the modules could be slid in and out sideways) and an upgraded, and badly needed, weapons module. Though the books did say they upgraded the Eagles to all be equipped with missile launchers, we never saw them use anything but lasers. The weapons module would have extra power generators inside of it, as well as 4 additional laser cannons, to fire in 360º. Missile pods as well.

[@Tomyironmane]

"The old Mark 1 Eyeball is just not sufficient" Jim Lovell and Neil Armstrong would like a word.

[@michadabrowski3120]

Didn't expect to se Airplane 2 in a Space Dock video

[@reeceemms1643]

I have this sci-fi script that I did and there is a sequel to it but I just want to know one thing and that is what are the ethics of flying into a wormhole. Because the second one has a wormhole that leads through the fabric of reality into another dimension. The same setting save for the main ship also uses Nanobots as a defensive barrier, (basically self healing armor, at least for the good guys)

[@shadowsayan3454]

I love Space Battleship Yamato approach either its lands on water and acts like a normal Ship (which is extremely rare in Sci Fi) or there is a Dry Dock where it can dock.

[@nateghast6456]

"How do I get out of my spaceship after landing?" Google: in the structure, include an elevator, bay, hatch, etc. Bing: a ladder, maybe a rope.

[@bob38161]

Would love a video on the Valkyrie shuttle

[@ilovejettrooper5922]

I heard that music from The Force Unleashed at the start there!! :)

[@Numba003]

Thank you for another sci-fi tech video. As a writer, I'm pretty detail oriented, so I appreciate this sort of stuff. As a big sci-fi fan, I just enjoy these sorts of things too lol. God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)

[@Tobiasfowler]

Really small bodies - inserts Voyager intro 😂

[@julius-stark]

7:33 No clip from Red Planet? That balloon landing is probably the most memorable part of that movie.

[@TheMhalpern]

"or lithobraking if you want to get cheeky about it" Hey I resemble that remark

[@versinussyrin577]

My latest ship designs use a dorsal heat shield for reentry, with pulsed inductive thrusters, and the shape of the hull maintaining stability. Then it does a maneuver similar to what the Starship would do, right before engine ignition. For takeoff/landing they use nuclear aerospikes, as the fusion drives are not allowed to be used in any atmosphere below 50 kilometers from the surface. The nuclear engines also function as gimbal with thrust differential steering, so usually six or eight engines per ship. They are also used for high-thrust maneuvers, because of the generally low thrust nature of fusion drives. This system applies to all ships within my setting, what i am still working on.

[@MrQuantumInc]

Another landing method not mentioned is to have a facility similar to a real world launch pad. Rather than a launch/landing pad, a launch/landing tower. You ship would need to land with great precision, but you need good precision anyway to hit a landing pad. Rather than having landing legs, it hovers near a set of robot arms and struts that can grab it. NASA calls it "berthing" when they use the robotic arm on the ISS to dock a ship, and now they almost always use berthing, though you would need a bigger arm when under gravity. Alternatively, if you are really precise, the landing dock and ship could have matching sets of connection points. Below you have a pit that contains the dangerous exhaust. Perhaps the ship stays there, or is moved to a hangar. The downside is this means you can only land at large, dedicated facilities, the upside is it make more sense for an efficient ship that only travels between space ports.

[@TheVillainInGlasses]

I think Outlaw Star did the launch tower thing IIRC

[@simongeard4824]

That's basically what SpaceX are planning with Starship... catching boosters and ships on the tower, rather than landing nearby like Falcon does.

[@G-Forces]

One of my ship designs has rotating main engines that are used for landing (among other things), but the engines are towards the back of the ship so the ventral forward RCS has to be larger to compensate.

[@Chobittsu]

I'm just here for the comments on the thumbnail this time~ Theres gonna be some spicy reads goin' on here

[@thomashiggins9320]

Interestingly, the Roscinante is a belly-lander in the books, and all the internal equipment and furnishings can be mounted to the bulkhead that becomes the floor, when she lands. Needless to say, they decided to skip that part in the TV show.

[@bryandwyer2204]

This channel's title music... I too remember the Battlezone 2 loading screen music.