RE: starship-design: Planetary Landing

[Timothy van der Linden <Shealiak@XS4ALL.nl>]

Lee,

>> Would the ship be subjected to transverse stresses even if the speed
>> relative to the atmosphere would be virtually zero? I'm
>> imagining a radial
>> path towards the surface of the planet (just like these single stage
>> X-crafts can land), so I'd guess only wind or turbulence
>> creates stesses in
>> other directions.
>
>X craft currently DO NOT follow a radial path to the surface. They enter the
>atmosphere in a conventional nose first aerobrake maneuver and then flip to
>tail first at some point.

Sorry, I meant only that part when the X-craft land, ie. when the nose
points up. The starship doesn't use aerobraking, it slows down to say 1000
km/h of radial velocity and keeps zero velocity with the horizontal plane
of each particular part of the atmosphere. (Landing on a north or southpole
would be ideal.) During the whole descend time its trusters would be
pointed downwards like the X-craft during landing.

>> The same frame that distributes the forces of the 1g boosters
>> to the rest of the starship should also be able to distribute
>> the forces from the landing gear.
>
>Except that the landing gear must be designed to transfer the load to the
>center line of the ship

Sorry, I don't understand why the frame that distributes the forces from
the boosters, must be different when instead of boosters, a landing gear is
attached.
The boosters push with 1g against the rest of the ship. The landing gear
does exactly the same.

>and must be capable of supporting the same weight of
>the ship that the main structure is supporting. Sounds an awful lot like you
>just doubled the weight of the ship.

The same frame that distributes the forces coming from the boosters will be
used to distribute the forces of the landing gear. No large amounts of
additional weight are needed.

Timothy