What probably is the best aircraft ever

[ub3rman123]

Not sure if drop pods are a possibility now, there's the issue of how you get the guy up there in the first place to drop him. Bit expensive, that would be.

[Vindekarr]

http://images.wikia.com/warhammer40k/images/6/67/Img002.jpg

 

This is how the Space Marines launch their pods... You have to strip-mine a large moon down to it's core to make one, it takes about half a million people to operate it, and if you ask me, that's a bit more than it's worth just to be able to drop specops behind enemy lines.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Vindekarr

[HeyYou]

Drop them from stealth bombers. :D

[ub3rman123]

Could rig up an old ICBM to carry people... But by that point you might as well just drop the nukes for all the diplomatic troubles you'll get in for launching one.

[Vagrant0]

Not sure if drop pods are a possibility now, there's the issue of how you get the guy up there in the first place to drop him. Bit expensive, that would be.

No more expensive than some of the large cargo planes or bombers flying over the area.

 

Keep in mind, you wouldn't have to drop them from space or high orbit. Just high enough where the plane would be out of range of small arms fire or small rockets. This both makes it cheaper to deploy and more practical to deal with the stresses. The inner chamber would only need to be small enough for an 8 or 12 man group to stand in a sort of holding area that reduces forces on their body. The inner chamber would be essentially floating on hydraulic pistons, or a high viscosity gel, or both inside an outer shell, so that the impact of the landing would be absorbed primarily by the outer shell with the inner chamber only having to deal with the remaining inertial forces.

 

Like I said... An egg drop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_drop_competition

[Syco21]

15,000ft was suggested earlier, but that's really low. The problem with a high drop is how do you ensure the pods land where they need to? Won't make sense to drop a pod 3 miles off target.

[Vagrant0]

15,000ft was suggested earlier, but that's really low. The problem with a high drop is how do you ensure the pods land where they need to? Won't make sense to drop a pod 3 miles off target.

Not hard to have some sort of onboard guidance and stabilization system. They have ones for bombs that can be very accurate these days. Really though, if dropped from a plane, it would still have reasonable forward momentum (given that it would weigh about as much as a tank) so would at most need some sort of control surfaces to adjust its drag profile. Pretty much every aspect of accounting for forces is something that every physics student has done at one time or another. Sure, in an egg drop you don't check to see if the egg is scrambled inside the shell usually, but most of that is all in the design of the container.

 

We could make them if there was enough reason to these days. But like I said, the usage for something like this has kinda gone well past its time since at most you could just drop one or two on an insurgent camp and not quite accomplish as much as a high yield explosive. We really need to stop spending money killing other humans, expand to the stars, and get ourselves involved in a nice endless galactic war.

[Syco21]

I'm going to assume that we are at war with like England because screw them and their nasty tea!

 

So now we have a real military force to contend with. Even if it's like beating up Johnny's retarded little scrawny brother.

 

Anyway, so we have a huge ground war on our hands and drop pods. How much do these things cost? Are they reusable? I would think they'd get pretty beat up from such a fall. But maybe only certain parts could be made expendable, while the majority is reusable.

 

I can't imagine drop pods dropping fast enough to evade counter measures. Since they would be the size is a large APC, they'd be a pretty big target. Rules or not, I think if I saw these things falling towards my troops, I'd order AAA to fire at them. They might be able to mostly survive the artillery, but I'm not sure how they would fair versus missiles and bullets. Seems like a great way to get your paratroops slaughtered. By the way, if I am remembering correctly, paratroopers are becoming pretty ineffective on the modern battlefield and not just against terrorists, but against regular armies as well. Could be wrong though.

[ub3rman123]

Gravity probably would work faster than they could get any heavy artillery trained on the drop pods, but I'd say they'd be semi-useless for a covert mission because of the whole 'flaming lump of metal descending from the sky' thing.

[Syco21]

They wouldn't be a flaming lump of metal if they were being dropped from a plane.