drag in space

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
It does cause a (barely) measureable drag, but it is something like a fraction of a percent decrease in speed, so it does not have very much of an effect overall, esp. with the speed of engines in SE4.

Actually, it would increase with greater speed. Our spacecraft barely notice the drag because they are so slow. Get up to several percent of the speed of light and the solar wind will start to have a noticable effect on your ship.

I seem to recall that someone somewhere (NASA?) calculated what the temperature effects of 'ambient' matter on interstellar travel would be and figured out that ships could not go more than about .75 light speed without some new materials that could handle the heat buildup from friction, just like jets experience today. That's in interstellar space, not here in the much denser solar wind...

So as far as travel in 'normal' space is concerned, aerodynamic ships make perfect sense. In hyperspace/subspace/jumpspace/ whateverspace all bets are off.

[ February 09, 2003, 21:25: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]