A by the book Starship Trooper addon

[Growler]

Being a former airborne critter, I found the movie starship troopers to be an insult to the book.

So, I have taken it upon myself to create a by the book

This is a rough idea for the Valley Forge -1 (Remember, the Valley Forge was lost in the book after a collision with the Ypres)

Considering that ships of larger class than the Rodger Young are mentioned in the book, I decided that the Valley Forge should be a battleship. Aft of the red bloodline are four drop tubes, 2 on each side, giving the ship the ability to put a full battalion of CAP troopers dirtside.

I plan on the finished add on to have ships in various systems either in the process of retrieving or drooping troops.

I would ask if anyone has any idea how to actually have the drop capsules enter the atmosphere to let me hear them.

While I know that the retrieval ship was a rocket in the book, I am going to use a design based on one of the space shuttle designs running around the web. I see no reason why a shuttle cant be a (v)TOL craft.

[Spaceman Spiff]

I would ask if anyone has any idea how to actually have the drop capsules enter the atmosphere to let me hear them.

Do you mean from a science/technology/engineering point of view, or a celestia SSC file point of view?

For the former, I thought the dropship sequence in 'Alien 2' was very nice, though it wasn't clear if the trajectory was as vertical as possible straight down into the atmosphere, or the mothership's forward velocity was still inherited (there's usually 7 km/s of orbital speed to get rid of as you hit the atmosphere say 100km up). I think it was the latter, as the ship seemed to drop straight down relative to the mothership in one shot.

For the latter, I think there's work about making one object move relative to the other via XYZ data files and reference frames, see: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia.

The model is of the kind from the movie, though, right? Beware: there is a model of the Valley Forge from 'Silent Running', don't mix them up!

Spiff.

[Growler]

Yes, I am aware of the Silent Running add on, however, I do not plan on using that in my setup. I actually am considering doing a "Starship Troopers meets my eversowarped mind"

I have a large collection of sci fi novels, and I figure to populate my celestia with the Merchanter series by Chyrryl, The Angel series, but I cant remember who wrote it, and a few others.

I also happen to be a fan of some anime, so that opens a few doors as well.