That's sort of what I was thinking. It's cool, but it also drastically increases the chance of damaging something* and increases the time it takes to turn around a returning fighter for a second launch. Drop-launching definitely has merit, though.
Actually, an anti-ballast system might be interesting. Carry high-pressure oxygen/nitrogen tanks (which double as life support). On landing, kill your velocity and use the tanks to inflate balloons such that the aircraft has a net slight downward drift due to gravity, soft-land like that. Still the same problem with winds, though, and the added concern that they couldn't be reset after a botched landing. Maybe a different system where the volume of atmosphere in the landing envelopes is enough to lift slightly higher than standard colony/ship altitude, and float the fighter up into a hanger with downward-facing doors.
The winds aren't too bad, if I remember right. That high up, they're usually fairly predictable outside of storms. It will always be a concern of course, but since both the airship and the carried plane will be affected, it isn't quite as bad as it could be. Cross-sectional density differences would be the main problem there, I suspect; you might have to turn the carrier a specific direction relative to the wind, and land from a specific direction as well, but I believe that's done as it is anyway.
Subaerocraft or however you would call them would be fairly interesting. Dive into the thicker atmosphere, can afford to be a bit heavier since the lift force will be more efficient, harder to spot what with the ridiculous amount of clouds Venus has. Which is really probably the best justification you can have for short-range combat in a sci-fi environment; hard to get a good radar or GPS lock when half the sky's covered by sulfuric acid.
Still think individual suits would be cool for boarding, but full aircraft would probably help with intercepting, scouting, and so on.
I hate to take it away from weapons, but do you guys think the temperature gradient in the atmosphere would be able to be used with massively tall power plants? I'm almost certain it wouldn't be very practical for use in powering airships, but if we got automated mines or the like set up on the surface to get materials, and used the towers for transport upwards as well as power? If you had equal pressures inside and out, it wouldn't be
too bad, after all...
On yet another note, how would defenses adapt to these weapons, on both sides? I have a feeling electronic warfare will be very important.
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Topic: Theoretical weapons (Burn all the things!) and other ideas (Read 100977 times)