Originally posted by Saturnyne
The afterburner thing in Wing Commander has bothered me... why does one need to keep them active if there is no resistance to stop your craft? According to physics, if you fire off your afts, and turn them off, you'll continue to cruise along at that speed.
I have come up with something of a theory as to why. I'll need some clarification on a point, though...
First, about the craft's engines. They don't use up fuel, and are always on, unless the ship is at a complete stop. Chances are that the ships have some kind of retros or inertial dampening system such as the type mentioned in Star Trek so it will stop when the engines are off. Likewise, these dampeners would probably provide the resistance the afterburners need to keep firing. However, that is unlikely. In order to turn and flip the way the ships do, the engines would have to be active the whole time you're flying. That way, they can help turn your ship as you manuever through space.
Now, the afterburners. When they fire, the ship uses the fuel allocated it to keep them ignited. If a pilot fired them once, and they turned off, then the ship would continue on in one direction no matter where the pilot turned their ship. Hence, the engines must remain activated to help the ship turn. So, the pilot needs to keep the afterburners on to turn the ship as quickly and sharply as possible. At least, that is my theory.
Here is the point I need clarification on: Let's say Tamara Farnsworth goes out in a Panther (Hehe 
). She fires her afterburners and accelerates to 1200 KPS. After turning the afterburners off, the ship continues to coast at 1200 KPS. Could she use the regular engines, which are designed for slower speeds, to turn and manuever as easily as if she had kept the afterburners on?
Something about the turning of ships...
The ships obviously cannot use wingflaps to turn and twist the way they do. The Panther and Vampire also have nacelles (sp) to turn their engines for them, so the nacelles (sp) just have to re-align, and the ship can travel in the new direction. Is the turning mechanism in ships explained in the novels? The only theory I can think of that makes sense is that there is some kind of gyro turning the ships which would provide the force or weight to turn the ship, but I haven't thought out yet just how that would work.
Any thoughts? I know LOAF is miffed about the flight physics... Am I way off? Am I onto something? Could it explain what's going on in WC? Now, obviously the way ships turn differs in each game... but if my theory is right, it could still apply to all the games. The games would just handle them slightly differently in terms of turning and such.
Youre not as far off as you might think. Many of the things you pointed out here are true if you apply real world physics in the games. One example of the "inertia" would be the Apollo moon missions. They took off, orbited earth a few times to gain speed (aprox 26,000mph) then shoot (slingshot) away from the earth to head towards the moon. They maintained that speed all the way until they got close to the moon then fired "braking" thrust to slow them down to an orbit speed for the moon, then parked in orbit. They did not have to continuously fire the main engine to maintain speed, they "coasted" to the moon. The probes sent to Mars, and the Voyager probes use the same technique. They "slingshot" around moons and planets to gain speed to proceed to the next objective.
In the case of the game ships where you hit afterburner and speed up, then turn off AB and slow down, the ships would need something to reduce the speed to the set throttle speed after the AB's are off, so they would incorporate a slight reverse thrust to do this. One example is in FS and FS2 where this law of physics is left out in the cold. Accelerate to full throttle, then cut back to 0. What do you see?...the ship drifts forward some until it stops. This is not how it would happen in actuall space flight. The ships would continue at the same speed (max throttle) even tho its off, due to...drum roll please....INERTIA. The inertia dampers you mentioned like in ST are exactly that, they compensate for the affect of thrust and turn inertia. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And in space that law of physics holds very true. There is nothing that would resist the flight of the craft. Hence it would continue to move in the direction of the main thrust until something either gets in its way and stops it or you apply slight thrust in the opposite direction to slow the craft down. In gravity, the resistance would be the pull of gravity as well as atmospheric elements (air resistance) thus slightly different physics apply, but the craft would still move in the main direction of thrust. Take a boat for example, go forward in it then cut the engine, what happens? The boat continues to move forward until the resistance of the water stops it or you apply reverse thrust to slow it down. Even a car on a road shows this example, speed up to 50mph, put the car in neutral and what happens?..the car continues to move forward, but slows down, why?....the resistance of the weight on the road slows the car down plus any resistance caused by air around the car. If the car was in space going 50mph, it would continue to go forward at 50mph until something stops it, like a thruster placed on the front of the car pointing forward. Take a look at the space shuttles. On the nose of that thing are 3 main reverse thrusters. This is what they fire to slow the craft down while approaching a dead bird in orbit. The shuttle also has thrusters on the belly (hard to see because of the black tiles) and on the sides just under the cockpit and on the tail near the main engine nozzles. In other words, you have to have a thruster for each direction of intended flight path as well as one placed 180 degrees facing the opposite direction in order to maintain flight control.
Perhaps when technology gets advanced, magnetic propulsion wouldnt require these thrusters or some other form of propulsion that provides that "inertia" correction. Even a feather in space will continue to drift until something stops it. Earth is a prime example of all this, Earth does not have thrusters that makes it continue to orbit the Sun! It is simply continuing from the initial push all those millions of years ago. The Sun's gravity keeps it at its current distance and working with the Earth's mass inertia, it continues to follow that path until something stops it. Same holds true with Earths rotation on its own axis. There arent any thrusters keeping our days 24 hours and the planet spinning! It is INERTIA that does all this, and inertia can go along way when there is no resistance to stop it!!
RFBurns
