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In a scenario of full scale war on the planet, how long does it take from being catapulted to touch down? How much can it variate?

it'll vary a lot. re-entry is a pretty complicated thing thgat'l be impacted by planetary gravity etc. I mean the real trick of re-entry is to slow down eneugh that you don't have the craft break up and the crew die from the heat of re-entry. IIRC the Apollo capsules took about ten minutes to land from the moment of re-entry to touch down. but that was a flimsy 1960s spacecraft flown by flimsy humans etc. a droppod likely would be quicker. Also it'll vary from planet to planet, and even the angle at which the drop pods are fired. that drop pods are so reliable an atmosphereic entry device, it actually REALLY impressive, the cogitator banks that manage drop pods are proably the most advanced part of the system

How high in orbit is the ship that launches the pod? What is the initial speed of the launch? What is the mass of a fully loaded drop pod? What is the drag coefficient of a drop pod and what's the density of the atmosphere on this world? What is the gravity on this world? How much can the pod decelerate before landing? What is the maximum speed it can go at touchdown without breaking or turning everyone inside into jelly? If there are answers to these questions in the lore, then you can actually calculate exactly how long it would take...

Without any accurate numbers, a reasonable estimate would be in the ballpark of 10 minutes.

BrianDavion wrote:
I mean the real trick of re-entry is to slow down eneugh that you don't have the craft break up and the crew die from the heat of re-entry.

Something tells me that this concern is hand-waved away in the 41st millennium because "plasteel" or something.
Not to mention that the pods are supposed to slam down hard as part of the whole shock assault thing, so the Marines probably don't want it slowing down.

Dawn of War series does a damn good job of demonstrating this, but in particular the opening cinematic of DoW1 shows a lot of pods dropping in the background just as it ends.

A Drop Pod ride can be traumatic for the Marines, but it's fatal for any normal humans.

One of the HH books (Unremembered Empire, I think) has a timed description of a drop pod assault IIRC -

I did a vague estimate of the math on this once, and it did depend a lot on the initial velocity the Drop Pod was fired out of the ship with, but I think the lower bound was a couple of minutes.

 Super Ready wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Dawn of War series does a damn good job of demonstrating this, but in particular the opening cinematic of DoW1 shows a lot of pods dropping in the background just as it ends.

I've been told that DoW 1 shows it wrong as the pods should slam down on the ground at high speed, not gently touch down.

Huh! I never realised before that that intro video does in fact show them slowing down at the very end, with retro-thrusters... and agreed, that's not how they land per lore. I was always focused on their speed as they come down through the clouds (1:40 onwards):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFkFo5SBx-g
Thankfully, gameplay itself does a better job of showing it off, this is from DoW3 but it's pretty much the same in all 3 games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCDy4jCrm7U

The plastic drop pod model has the retro thrusters modelled on it so it's been definite since at least then.

it would HAVE to have retro thrusters. keep in mind if a drop pod doesn't decelerate at all, it's proably gonna slam into the earth at something like Mach 25

BrianDavion wrote:
it would HAVE to have retro thrusters. keep in mind if a drop pod doesn't decelerate at all, it's proably gonna slam into the earth at something like Mach 25

Air resistance would definitely slow the pod to a more reasonable speed. Not that it'd make much of a difference anyway. If drop pods really went instantly from terminal velocity to full stop like it appears in DoW, its passengers would be subjected to accelerations in the hundreds or even thousands of g. When the doors open, you should see space marine soup flowing out.

Drop pods want to come in just slow enough not to soup the passengers on landing and not to melt from the heat of reentry. But as close to that limit as they can get.

As we don’t know how many Gs a marine can take and still be ready to charge out once the doors blow, or the properties of plasteel and other magic 40k materials, it’s hard to give a number.

Which would also vary on atmospheric density and planetary gravity.

The correct answer, of course, is as long as the narrative needs it to take.

The good book (Codex Dark Angels) tells us that "Drop Pods hurtle downwards at impossible speeds...They move at a velocity almost too fast for the human eye to follow, only slowing when the retro-thrusters fire just before impact, allowing the Drop Pod to land rather than crash..."

So how long does it take for something moving at impossible speed to land from low orbit? I wager an impossibly short time, perhaps only time enough to have one last read of your Oath of Moment.

There's the grav harnesses as well. I think trying to theorise using 2k science put into a fantasy 41k setting is a bit redundant tbh.

It's more of an issue that something in fluff that can do what these do cannot possibly take the risk of hitting , say, a unit of gretchin, when coming into the table. In one of the Heresy books a pod smacks into a tower, then through a building, and marines still get out.

Yes, fir gameplay you obviously could t have it be possible to kill your opponents forces by just raining drop pods but there must be a way to balance i.

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
In one of the Heresy books a pod smacks into a tower, then through a building, and marines still get out.

Not that it's going to make any difference to the debate, just thought it was a fun thing to mention - Quake 4 has a great sequence of you doing this on purpose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyIMegaOxyg

HexHammer wrote:
In a scenario of full scale war on the planet, how long does it take from being catapulted to touch down? How much can it variate?

On the scale of "a few minutes" for a pod launched from LEO, but it depends a lot on where it's launched from, where it's going, and the atmosphere of the planet.

The launch site makes the most difference, on the scale of "a few minutes" for LEO to "hours" coming down from a higher orbit.
The atmospheric drag will vary it by a few more minutes.

Theoretically, I could compute it for you, since I am in fact an aerospace engineer and am supposed to be able to do that, but I don't really want to, so I'm going to go with "a few minutes".

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
The good book (Codex Dark Angels) tells us that "Drop Pods hurtle downwards at impossible speeds...They move at a velocity almost too fast for the human eye to follow, only slowing when the retro-thrusters fire just before impact, allowing the Drop Pod to land rather than crash..."

So how long does it take for something moving at impossible speed to land from low orbit? I wager an impossibly short time, perhaps only time enough to have one last read of your Oath of Moment.

Hmmm... ludicrous speed would have been better... but possibly also copyrighted

 Flinty wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
The good book (Codex Dark Angels) tells us that "Drop Pods hurtle downwards at impossible speeds...They move at a velocity almost too fast for the human eye to follow, only slowing when the retro-thrusters fire just before impact, allowing the Drop Pod to land rather than crash..."

So how long does it take for something moving at impossible speed to land from low orbit? I wager an impossibly short time, perhaps only time enough to have one last read of your Oath of Moment.

Hmmm... ludicrous speed would have been better... but possibly also copyrighted

You think they go to plaid?

In the Taros Campaign, a Raptors scout squad's drop pod is launched at Z hour -105 and lands at Z hour -102. So in this case it took 3 minutes.

Thanks for answer guys!

For an interesting real life reversal, it took the Space Shuttle only 8.5 minutes to reach orbit, and that was going UP.

 Insectum7 wrote:
For an interesting real life reversal, it took the Space Shuttle only 8.5 minutes to reach orbit, and that was going UP.

True enough, but there are no ground war to keep you at a safe distance, always choose the shortest route contrary drop pods that has to spread out.

HexHammer wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
For an interesting real life reversal, it took the Space Shuttle only 8.5 minutes to reach orbit, and that was going UP.

True enough, but there are no ground war to keep you at a safe distance, always choose the shortest route contrary drop pods that has to spread out.

Safe distance? Drop Pods drop right into the middle of ground wars!

 Insectum7 wrote:
Safe distance? Drop Pods drop right into the middle of ground wars!

I thought there was weird things like ground AA batteries that could do some damage to your lovely Strike Cruiser? Or whatever you have floating above the planet?

HexHammer wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Safe distance? Drop Pods drop right into the middle of ground wars!

I thought there was weird things like ground AA batteries that could do some damage to your lovely Strike Cruiser? Or whatever you have floating above the planet?

strike cruisers aren't floating above planet, they move in unload their payload and move out. they also have extremely thick armor and good engines

And they do that because some planets have ground based anti-starship batteries. But equally, those batteries dont stop drop pods landing into combat.

 Flinty wrote:
And they do that because some planets have ground based anti-starship batteries. But equally, those batteries dont stop drop pods landing into combat.

What happened to orbital bombardment support?

HexHammer wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
And they do that because some planets have ground based anti-starship batteries. But equally, those batteries dont stop drop pods landing into combat.

What happened to orbital bombardment support?

they'll do that if they can, but sometimes orbital defences are a problem and the strike cruiser can't stick around

 Dysartes wrote:

 Flinty wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
The good book (Codex Dark Angels) tells us that "Drop Pods hurtle downwards at impossible speeds...They move at a velocity almost too fast for the human eye to follow, only slowing when the retro-thrusters fire just before impact, allowing the Drop Pod to land rather than crash..."

So how long does it take for something moving at impossible speed to land from low orbit? I wager an impossibly short time, perhaps only time enough to have one last read of your Oath of Moment.

Hmmm... ludicrous speed would have been better... but possibly also copyrighted

You think they go to plaid?

You guys get me.

I know this is slightly offtopic, but what about Land Speeder entry times then? I'd imagine them being forced to a much slower descent from orbit, since the speeder itself is open-topped and exposes the marine crew.. I can imagine the drop pods heavy outer shell to withstand the heat buildup, but I'd think a regular marine power armour cannot cope with the same..

But yeh, TIL that when a drop pod assault is declared, you have time to smoke one cigarette before the first wave touches down.. So make it a good one