Tail-sitter

A Tail-sitter or Tailsitter is a type of vessel, vehicle, or other craft whose decks are perpendicular to the direction of acceleration.

Description (Specifications)

Tail-sitters use a deck and engine orientation different from the more common vehicles seen across the Imperium. As the name suggests, these craft land on their tails, with the main maneuver drive, jets, rotors, etc oriented toward the ground surface. More broadly, the designation also covers larger spacecraft that are not intended to land at all, but orient their internal decks perpendicular to the direction of acceleration. One of the most common examples is the Broadsword-class mercenary cruiser, pictured below, though there are Naval vessels, system defense boats, and even Scout vessels built this way. Naval vessel designs built this way tend to be more compartmented as a result, and may be able to isolate damage, fires, or vacuum leaks more readily.

Due to the pervasiveness of anti-gravity, tail-sitters are rare.

Image Repository

1. A landed Broadsword class deploying troops.
   

No further information yet available.

History & Background

The Third Imperium and most of its neighbors have built spacecraft influenced by millennia of artificial gravity and inertial compensation. This has led to a majority of ship and small craft designs that function like traditional aircraft. As such, most craft move like fixed-wing or rotor-wing craft. They take off and land horizontally, and fly with the internal decks oriented parallel to the direction of movement. Some ships, many of which are not intended to land at all, are designed to fly like primitive pre-gravitic rockets.

Gravitic Technology & Tail-sitters

No information yet available.

References & Contributors (Sources)

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Tail-sitter. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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