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Is it me or do the engines on the thunderhawk gunship look to small to even lift it a few feet off the ground or deck. i know there are three of them.
i know some will compare them to modern engines on 747 etc, but this is supposed to be an heavly armed and armoured assault gunship that can is capable of space flight.

I'd be more concerned with how unfliably front heavy it looks and the fact its wing geometry would make it pretty much impossible to go supersonic.

By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should.

"wing geometry would make it pretty much impossible to go supersonic"

A bigger problem with the "wings" is that they are completely un-aerodynamic and could never provide any form of lift and therefor are incapable of functioning as wings.

There's simply no way it could fly without the same anti-grav generators as used by the Land Speeder and Tau vehicles - in which case I don't see a problem with it.

With technology being what it was during that time when it was created, engine capabilities could be vastly superior to what we know today. A single engine could be capable of producing the same thrust as 4 modern turbine engines on say a 747.

I'd love to see them redesign the Thunderhawk completely to a less ridiculously non-flying design.

I mean, there's a precedent...



Woot, flying bricks!

You may be confusing real world and fictional physics?

Mellow wrote:
You may be confusing real world and fictional physics?

You might be confusing being clever, with not being clever.

So it balances out.

If we can make our comments somewhat more relevant and much less rude towards other users the whole forum experience is much more fun.

Thanks.

In the fluff it said all space bricks, storm raven and the sort use anti-gravity drives in them. So if you can turn off gravity you don't need to be functional. That aside i find most SM craft atheistically unpleasing.

 cormadepanda wrote:
In the fluff it said all space marine crafts, storm ravens and the sort use anti-gravity drives in them. So if you can turn off gravity you don't need to be functional.

This is the hearth of the matter I believe. That added to the unknown output of the engines

As a voidship the Thunderhawk sort of makes sense, aerodynamics being largely redundant for a vacuum shuttle, with the wings providing a greater moment of force for the attitude thrusters, and most technology in the imperium seems prefer brute force to engineering finesse.

For an atmospheric turbine engine the power output is determined by the compression ratio, which is largely limited by the temperature generated at the turbine stage. The advances in metallurgy over the last 60 years (moving from tool steel alloys to monocrystalline metal castings) have massively improved performance, and a 747 turbofan is mostly fan, good for efficiency in a thick atmosphere, useless for more than half a transatmospheric flight.

 usedboltershell wrote:
Is it me or do the engines on the thunderhawk gunship look to small to even lift it a few feet off the ground or deck. i know there are three of them.
i know some will compare them to modern engines on 747 etc, but this is supposed to be an heavly armed and armoured assault gunship that can is capable of space flight.

Imperial power to weight ratios are probably far better than ours. It is the future after all.

 Kain wrote:

 usedboltershell wrote:
Is it me or do the engines on the thunderhawk gunship look to small to even lift it a few feet off the ground or deck. i know there are three of them.
i know some will compare them to modern engines on 747 etc, but this is supposed to be an heavly armed and armoured assault gunship that can is capable of space flight.

Imperial power to weight ratios are probably far better than ours. It is the future after all.

They can turn off gravity.. You dont need to have any amount of force, just enough to over come your inertia. The T ship wouldn't need much to over come its Inertia, as it is weightless due to no gravity.

It works because SPACE MAGIC.

I don't mean to undermine the validity of the question, but we're talking about a universe where fungi are not only growing into larger-than-human sentient creatures that apparently have *BONES* and *BLOOD*, but are thriving in the galactic community. Where lots of people believing something actually makes it true in an alternate universe that spills over into our own in selected places. Where a Marine can lift goodness knows how many stones of armoured weight several dozens of feet into the air by way of a funny "anti-gravity" rocket pack.

I don't feel terribly inclined to think too hard about how Thunderhawks fly, lest I work up a headache and have to go lie down.

 cormadepanda wrote:

They can turn off gravity.. You dont need to have any amount of force, just enough to over come your inertia. The T ship wouldn't need much to over come its Inertia, as it is weightless due to no gravity.

Negating gravity does not negate inertia, a weightless thunderhawk is still 200 tonnes of fast moving ceramite and plasteel. Lots of ΔV is required or your space fighter will accelerate like an oil tanker.


The true cause for the Thunderhawk's design is of course, that the shape was easiest to scratchbuild with what they had in the shed at the time.

 Trondheim wrote:

 cormadepanda wrote:
In the fluff it said all space marine crafts, storm ravens and the sort use anti-gravity drives in them. So if you can turn off gravity you don't need to be functional.

This is the hearth of the matter I believe. That added to the unknown output of the engines

This^

Afterall, with enough thrust even pigs fly just fine.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Afterall, with enough thrust even pigs fly just fine.

But the aerodynamic efficiency is lousy, it steers like a muscle car and its entire weight must be supported on engine thrust, unless you just want a ballistic porcine

 Senden wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Afterall, with enough thrust even pigs fly just fine.

But the aerodynamic efficiency is lousy, it steers like a muscle car and its entire weight must be supported on engine thrust, unless you just want a ballistic porcine

The same applies, roughly, to coyotes.

I don't know if the matter has been discussed anywhere, the GW team being, apparently, not much for "nuts and bolts", but I was somehow led to believe that the T-hawk uses solid fuel thrusters. This would seem to make sense for extra-atmospheric use. It also seems reasonable that all military tech includes some sort of grav-engine, with the thrusters being strictly for maneuvering.

I like the idea of Thunderhawks being "torch ships", using a hydrogen-based solid fuel. Not only does it cater to my inner geek, but it fits with Imperium tech: simple, brutal, powerful.

Edit: the qualities Senden ascribes to Thunderhawks also fit perfectly with the views I have of Imperium tech.

I personally prefer the explanation that the Thunderhawk's got an antigravity generator hanging around somewhere on board, since that solves a lot of problems at once (the question of why the Thunderhawk has Hover Mode and landing skids instead of wheels when it doesn't have any visible thrust vectoring, for instance).