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Clearly they are not aerodynamic. Do they have some sort of hover devices which keep it in the air while the main engines make it "go" ?

GW:

That is all.


edit: but in seriousnesss. Think of it as the embodiment of the quote "With enough propulsion even a brick can fly".

The engines are so insanely powerful by our current standards that it flys on brute force alone... with a little help from science and anti grav stuff.

Given that it can hover in place, staying aloft is certainly no issue.

The miracles of anti grav technology.

Hatered, fury and faith in the emperor

An alternative explanation is that much like the Stormfang/Stormwolf it converts the hatred of the fanbase into both energy and magic.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Given that it can hover in place, staying aloft is certainly no issue.

This, really. The engines are just very powerful. No one thinks the UK Harrier jets could fly either, but they actually do and are very effective in their role. Try copying it with Soviet technology and you get a craft carrying half the payload and failing to come back 1 time out of 2.

It flies with magic. That is all. How is it supposed to fly in space with turbojet engines (which they clearly are), and without any maneuvering thrusters. That makes zero sense if you apply realworld logic.

Same could be said for starwars spaceships however.

 Keep wrote:
It flies with magic. That is all. How is it supposed to fly in space with turbojet engines (which they clearly are), and without any maneuvering thrusters. That makes zero sense if you apply realworld logic.

Same could be said for starwars spaceships however.

It can be said for virtually every sci-fi device. Sci-fi writers and artists tend to be writers and artists, not technicians or aircraft designers etc. That is why virtually nothing in sci-fi could actually work in real life. Writers usually get around it by handwaving it with "advanced technology".
And as long as it does not break my willing suspension of disbelief, I am happy with it. Key to enjoying sci-fi is to not ask questions like this.

I view the wings as stabilisation fins (like on a shark). I imagine they stay in the air with a mix of technologies, including whatever it is that makes skimmers skim.

 Keep wrote:
It flies with magic. That is all. How is it supposed to fly in space with turbojet engines (which they clearly are), and without any maneuvering thrusters. That makes zero sense if you apply realworld logic.

Same could be said for starwars spaceships however.

it's quite possiable those turbojet engines are actually a duel engine type. allowing for greater fuel efficancy.

Yeah I've always wondered how the SM flyers in particular passed basic field tests. Boxes in the sky:

You have to remember that they aren't just fliers as well, these things can consistently break and re-enter atmosphere, you they need to be brick'ish just to absorb the heat multiple times a day.

Payload as well, you can't have a gracious aerodynamic silhouette on something that is holding a dreadnaught among other things which requires a forward facing ramp that can drop quickly and retract quickly before launching back up.

It gets thrown/launched like a brick. Just watch out for windows... As for hovering... they use fish rope.

I refer you to Babylon 5:

You know, things in space don't have to be aerodynamic. You could put an engine on a brick....which actually looks like what they've done...

But yes, most imperial fighters have built in antigrav, as well as downward (or at least rotatable) thrusters. Aerodynamics is, apparently, for wimps (and Eldar).

They just throw them at the atmosphere and hurtle in at high speed deploying for shock assults.

There about as subtle as the flying bricks they are.

 jhe90 wrote:
They just throw them at the atmosphere and hurtle in at high speed deploying for shock assults.

There about as subtle as the flying bricks they are.

They serve their purpose. If I saw I flying brick, I'd be fething scared. And then when that flying brick lands and spews out a bunch of 9ft tall dudes in armour, I would be dead.

 Sgt. Vanden wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
They just throw them at the atmosphere and hurtle in at high speed deploying for shock assults.

There about as subtle as the flying bricks they are.

They serve their purpose. If I saw I flying brick, I'd be fething scared. And then when that flying brick lands and spews out a bunch of 9ft tall dudes in armour, I would be dead.

And given space marine nature you can just go in straight and ignore the stupid amount of g force generated from diving and harsh deceleration etc
There built to fly at someone. Not fly to somewhere.

Anything can fly if given sufficient propulsion. It would be silly to rely on aerodynamics and design the craft based on the atmosphere of one planet only to fail miserably on another planet. Better off to feth aerodynamics and ensure sufficient thrust on a craft so that it may be deployed on a far larger range of campaigns including surfaces that lack any atmosphere at all.

The problem with the "anything can fly with enough thrust" argument is that it has no downward thrust to keep it in the air. You can only fly by pushing forwards really hard if you can turn that forward speed into lift. If you aren't generating lift then you just go really fast into the ground.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
You have to remember that they aren't just fliers as well, these things can consistently break and re-enter atmosphere, you they need to be brick'ish just to absorb the heat multiple times a day.

I don't think having a brickish shape is good for re-entry. Re-entry vehicles have a curve to their face so that the shock can naturally curve around the vehicle. I think it you had a purely blunt face the shockwave would probably do funny things.

I always thought Space Marine flyers were hovercraft when in atmosphere with the "wings" operating as stabilizing fins. There is no way those wings would actually function if they operated like traditional aircraft.

The problem with the "anything can fly with enough thrust" argument is that it has no downward thrust to keep it in the air. You can only fly by pushing forwards really hard if you can turn that forward speed into lift. If you aren't generating lift then you just go really fast into the ground.

Some marine flyers have downward-pointing engines too. The Stormraven has a pair of thrusters on the down-angle by its nose, and the Stormeagle and variations has engine outlets in its wingtips, for example.

It has to be anti-grav. The Thunderhawk doesn't have any downward thrusters (can it vector?).

A quick back of the hand calc (so this could be totally wrong ) based on the numbers in the AI book, an empty Thunderhawk has a roughly 150m^2 wing area and weighs 121 tonnes. I'll be generous and say those square profile wings can produce a maximum lift coefficient of 1.5 (which is very generous, but I'm probably not being generous enough with the wing area because the fuselage may also produce some lift).

Based on that, the minimum speed a Thunderhawk could fly is 340km/h at sea level before it stalls (realistically, thin flat square profile wings have a CL max more in the 0.6-0.7 range according to random paper I just found on google, so that's more like a minimum of 500km/h before it stalls, but thick rectangular wings like the TH would be even lower again).

So it must have anti grav, the engines must be able to point downwards, or maybe it has some crazy high lift devices which make the square profiled wings work at higher lift coefficients than our 21st century aerodynamically profiled wings.

So vertical thrusters and/or anti-gravity final answer?

 Peregrine wrote:
The problem with the "anything can fly with enough thrust" argument is that it has no downward thrust to keep it in the air. You can only fly by pushing forwards really hard if you can turn that forward speed into lift. If you aren't generating lift then you just go really fast into the ground.

Consider that it is able to hover without any visible rotors or downward-pointing thrusters. It clearly has antigrav tech handling the problem of staying aloft, and simply uses the engines for forward acceleration.

locarno24 wrote:
Aerodynamics is, apparently, for wimps (and Eldar).

That is the same thing...

 Peregrine wrote:
The problem with the "anything can fly with enough thrust" argument is that it has no downward thrust to keep it in the air. You can only fly by pushing forwards really hard if you can turn that forward speed into lift. If you aren't generating lift then you just go really fast into the ground.

Its not flying.


Its falling with style

I literally just rewatched that movie. Feels all around.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I always thought Space Marine flyers were hovercraft when in atmosphere with the "wings" operating as stabilizing fins. There is no way those wings would actually function if they operated like traditional aircraft.

And if not stabilising fins, they are at the very least weapon mounting points!