Re: drag in space
Well, there is the whole thing about having ships that just look nice. After all, just because you can build a flying rock doesn't mean it'll look like a million bucks (unless it's a flying gold nugget -- space casinos anyone?).
And, of course, space isn't empty. There are planets out there, and chances are, if you can travel to other stars, you're also gonna wanna check out the planets along the way. Designing a ship that can function in the atmosphere of a planet is important in that case. So even if you don't need to be aerodynamic all the time, chances are you'll need to be aerodynamic some of the time.
Of course, you could also go the way of having two different kinds of spacecraft; one for space and another for air and space, but that could end up more expensive as you'd then have to build two ships instead of just one, and one of the ships (probably the space-only ship) would have to be able to carry and launch the other one.
Then there's the whole discussion of designing ships that can function in very different atmospheres than Earth's. For instance, a planet with gravity half that of Earth, or a planet with air that's twice as thick, or a planet with a very thin atmosphere (low cieling), or one with high surface winds, etc. The aerodynamics on these planets would be very different, and ships would have to be designed to function in as many different environments as possible to be useful. And many planets have different atmospheric gasses, what then? How much will that anti-corrosive plating weigh? How does heat-shielding effect your aerodynamics? And so on...
It's good that these questions can be answered in the present, using aerodynamics simulations, so that we are prepared for the future.
[ February 09, 2003, 20:49: Message edited by: Shadowstar ]
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