A thin shield that's just powerful enough to push air and artificially create a more aerodynamic profile for the fighters is pretty plausible for Star Wars tech
Technically correct (Best kind of correct) but it is also used to manage aerodynamic heating at high speeds. Also repulsor lift engines mitigate aerodynamic lift that is not often optimal with these designs. I find it hard to believe how a Tie fighter develops enough lift for it to fly. And if I'm not mistaken a normal Tie fighters repulsor lift is just strong enough to allow it lift off and land. but not for high altitude flight.... could be wrong...
That's a great idea. We see the X-wing flying in atmosphere, but what we don't see is the invisible, traditional "airplane" shaped bubble of shielding around the ship giving it vastly improved aerodynamic handling. Maybe the shield flexes or reshapes to function as ailerons, air brakes, etc. I've got no explanation for TIE fighters... clever use of inertial dampers or something...
Hi. NES guy here. The mesh is waaaaay to coarse at 0:40. YOu can see the voxels around the x-fighter wing tips at the front and these voxels are way bigger than the features of the wingtip. However, for a boundary layer they instead would have to be much much smaller and thinner to resolve any turbulance. Speaking about turbulence, your Reynolds numbers seem far too low, hence there are no turbulent eddies visible at the tail. Instead, any vortices depicted stem from Kalman effects, which are eddies on a much larger and slower scale.
and for the x-wing at 0:59 you see no dark blue at the turbine inlet, which is odd when considering that this is where they suck in the air. (probably what the software did, which you used black box), is frame a voxel grid around whatever your model, and then simulated with equidistant voxel mesh an incompressible Navier-Stokes solution around it with a Reynolds number of around 10. To give you a perspective, saying you do star wars aerodynamics (explained) that is like you stating "how to go to the moon" and then drawing how to fold a paper airplane on a piece of paper, followed by discussing techniques in detail and with motion capture on how to optimally throw it.
If this was about science, there would be no video. We don't bother making large rocket boosters particularly aerodynamic NOW. And that is a space ship which travels through atmosphere. And when SF ships re-enter, well, "we're just not going to deal with that" is how SF deals with atmosphere. They largely pretend it's not there.
New to the channel. Does this guy have the computational resources to do this properly? Unless this guy has a supercomputer it’s gonna take him several months.
He's never been in the back country roads at night. Definitely made my jeep fly, not all that legal but hit any train track crossing going 80 and your bound to catch a little air.
@@ryshellso526 Hell, I used to catch air in my 90 Suburban back home, and that's just-as-aerodynamically challenged, but significantly _heavier!_ 😅 _[said in the tone of Luke talking about "bullseyeing Womp Rats in his T-16"...]_
@@crispybacon9917 Pilot survivability. The war in Ukraine has given a live-fire demonstration of the difference in design philosophies between western and Soviet armour designs. The Soviets, and to the same extent the Russians, do not care about crew survivability. both the armour and the crew are made to be cheap, mass produced, and therefore, disposable. Either side's tanks and IFVs will be "mobility killed" when they get their tracks thrown, but western designs have far higher crew survival rates. Likewise between the Empire and the Rebellion, the Rebellion values the lives of their pilots, where the Empire does not.
This video reminds me of what my professor told me during my fluid dynamics class: _"If you don't know the C_D for an object, assume 0.1 for a bullet, 0.5 for a cow and 1 for an upright human. Interpolate."_ I still sometimes think about it
I had a 1991 Honda CRX Si of which I read an article that specifically stated its coefficient was .29. Not sure why I still remember that! That makes it less aero than a bullet but more than a cow.
It never clicked in my mind for the last 40 years that the A-wing fuselage was made from parts of two F14 wing box cut in the middle and mirrored up and down! 😮 The slot on the side is where the glove vanes retract on the F14! Now i see it! THANKS!
Makes me think that's how they made the a wing props for the movie, they probably bought some f14 model kits and modified them. Of course modify is a little underselling how much they changed haha
@@ORLY911 that is exactly how they did it. Using Photoshop i took a picture of a F14 model sprue and a A-wing. After croppping thé useful part, everything matched, panels lines included!
I mean the thing he's talking about, that being the taper on a vehicle affecting drag, has been studied since flight was invented. Its not exactly surprising someone in the 120 odd years since the Wright Brothers decided to make a cute drawing out of the effect.
Drag isn't just the Cd. The frontal area is also important. For example, the A-wing isn't just slipperier. It also is smaller than most snub fighters which compounds it's aero advantage.
Good to see this mentioned, because the arc 170 would have more drag than the x-wing and possible more than the tie interceptor just due to its size. The death star, being a sphere would have a better drag coefficient than all the ties, but no one should think it has less drag.
It’s also worth noting when talking about spacecraft that once you get past the speed of sound the physics of drag change quite a bit, and the hypersonic speeds like you might see a spacecraft do during reentry follow their own entirely different paradigm.
While this is true, I think that it doesn't make too much of a difference for the purpose of this video. I think the Drag Coefficient was chosen just because it's a number that's easy to quantify, thus making it easier to get the point across. But yeah, frontal area does play a big part (though I think it's more specifically change in area is you go along, but I don't know enough about aerodynamics to be sure). I think it's why the X-wing and ARC-170 perform worse than expected. They both have those big "intakes" that create a large, basically flat area.
I remember the X-Wing series of Comics where one of the rebel pilots (I think Wedge) takes advantage of this principle when he was dog fighting 3 TIE fighters at once in an atmosphere. One of the TIE pilots was inexperienced and when he tried to yaw turn to follow the X-Wing, The Turbulence caused by the Vertical solar panels caused his TIE to shutter violently. he pulled out of his turn, only to get blasted from behind by the X-Wing he was trying to turn with. The other Two TIE had experienced pilots so they knew to roll first before pulling up to turn. So the X-Wing Pilot spins his X-wing which causes a vortex to form behind him and causes the TIE fighters to collide into each other, destroying them both. He literally says "Put them into the Spin Cycle! And Turbulence does the rest!"
I kinda wonder how a modified Delta-7B with TIE Interceptor wings might be aerodynamically, since that’s what my OC’s ship is… On the outside. Basically. It’s also got TIE solar panels covering its topside, and the internals of an Incom T-65 X-wing (including the torpedo launchers in place of the Aethersprite’s lower cannons, since I don’t think it’d need more than the four wingtip cannons from the TIE/in)… But that’s an OC starship design, a cobbled-together mix of stuff one might find lying around and not anything remotely canon, so I obviously wouldn’t expect to see it here.
@@RuBoo001 So it's an Ugly. A lot of criminal organizations did that a lot. They kit-bashed a lot of ships. X-Wings with TIE Interceptor wings, Y-Wings with X-Wing wings, and so on.
@@26th_Primarch I feel like the Azure Angel would be almost like a brick with all that extra shit on it. The 7B would probably be much better due to the central position of the astromech as opposed to the 7A's being on the left side.
@@Tar-Numendil Yeah, I came up with it (the main concept) trying to find some sort of custom-starship-building game and finding _nothing._ Well, not “nothing”, but when the RPGGamer Ugly Starfighter Workshop is the best you can find, well… So I played with that, and eventually put the TIE Interceptor wings on the Aethersprite hull and thought, “Y’know what? I think I like that, I should see about something like that…” And over time, it evolved into… That.
Part 2? millennium falcon, both with and without escape pod? land speeder? pod racer? death star? imperial star destroyer? Imperial Shuttle? Vulture Droid? Naboo Royal Starship? Trade Federation Battleship? Slave 1? etc
There was also a reference in the cross sectionbooks that naboo starship where so sleek designed and using their special silver coating they didnt use the shields for atmospheric reentry
A cool followup to this video would be what kind of adjustments would make these starfighters more aerodynamic like real aircraft while maintaining the Star Wars aesthetic.
The N-1 would probably have the easiest: make the leading edge more rounded, say by moving the cockpit forward so the hull needs to be thicker to accommodate it. A small fairing around the droid would be all that is needed there to get to at least WW2 bomber levels of drag.
simplest thing to do is what the Expanded universe did, and have the shield geometry do the work of making them more aerodynamic without changing their shape.
@@floggyWM1 They are Aerospace vehicles, they are meant to operate in both. besides, as I've said before this was a problem that was already solved 20 years ago in the EU where shielded fighters can reach hypersonic speeds well in the double digits of mach. The V-Wing for example able to hit Mach 40.
5:00 This point about sharp leading edges being worse than rounded ones is definitely true for subsonic aircraft (which is the speed this has all been modelled at, I'm pretty sure) but at supersonic speeds the opposite becomes true, sharp leading edges are much more aerodynamic because every point that sticks out into the airflow creates a shockwave, therefore if you get a sharp point out in front the rest of the surface can be "inside" the shockwave - that's why a lot of modern fighter jet wings and missile fins etc all have very, *very* sharp leading edges. I'd imagine a lot of the spaceships can go pretty fast in atmosphere, so something like the N1 being designed for supersonic flight could make sense! (Although, I'm not sure sticking an astromech out into a supersonic flow face-first is a great idea...)
Yep, blunt round object ain't going to do well at high speeds. Though F-14 and F-15 have pretty round leading edge and wing sweep angle is used to reduce drag at high speeds. But stealth benefits from sharper leading edge, because round edge reflects radar waves back to many directions. And then there's SR-71 Blackbird, which looks like going fast even when sitting stationary...
@@VestedUTuber Its basically a TIE Interceptor but only having one wing panel, I think Sienar Fleet Systems is running a racket were they are selling what is a TIE Interceptor minus a wing for the full price of one. (And before anyone replies, yes ... its not entirely that way, its have elongated body) Speaking of TIE variants, there is also Darth Vader's TIE/ad that because its not a spherical might have better aerodynamics
I honestly always figured that Star wars ships just operated on a balance between tons of thrust and repulsor tech but aerodynamics do get a mention in one of the canon thrawn books and in the rogue squadron novels which made me think about it a whole lot more
In the Star Wars universe space is full of a substance called ether. Spaceships maneuver using etheric rudders lol. That explains why they fly like aircraft through space
@@ninjalectualx Yeah, that's only been mentioned in like one or two books, like one of the earlier Thrawn novels, and then sort of gets discarded...so, no, space in Star Wars isn't full of ether.
No, it's actually mentioned all throughout the EU as well as canon. It's alao why there is sound in outer space in Star Wars. They are not in a vacuum they are in an ether
@@ninjalectualx It's in very few EU materials: the X Wing books, some of the New Jedi Order books, I'Jedi, and one of the Thrawn novels. I can't find anything about it being in any of the new canon novels...however, apparently Timothy Zahn, the person who introduced the term, has literally commented about how the term never caught on and got quietly dropped.
Aerospace engineer here, a note about coefficient of drag. Cd values published for cars aren’t directly comparable to aircraft because the reference area used is very different. Cars use the frontal area, where as aircraft use the wing area. I suspect that is why the Cd numbers for aircraft in your comparison are .02ish and the star wars vehicle it is compared to is an order of magnitude higher. The wing area of an aircraft is an order of magnitude larger than its frontal area.
A few other ships that would have been interesting: B-Wing in "closed" vs "open" position Aethersprite Jedi Starfighter Royal Naboo Starship Naboo J-Type Diplomatic Barge The last one in particular is interesting because it's essentially a flying wing design.
I think the B-Wing by far has the closest aerodynamics to be somewhat viable in atmospheric flight. But it's design needs it to have a electronics-system to keep it flying, like F-111 . The size of its aerodynamic drag is probably lower then a X-WIng, but i am not even sure if it is better then a A-Wing.
It's probably terrible.. The larger ships are often inspired by WW2 naval ships so they allow for even more asymmetry and sticking out pieces like antenna dishes and guns. 😅 This goes especially for the destroyers and carriers etc. but the Falcon is also in that range.
To be fair, the millennium falcon is literally just a souped up small cargo ship without a cargo container. The big cut in the middle is meant to have a special cargo container slotted in. Essentially, Han solo brings a semi truck to a fighter jet dogfight and somehow wins.
@@oatmealman1586It's more of a tugboat/push-ship, e.g. look at those that push barges up and down the Mississippi and the Rhine, those are very similar in purpose
You now have the opportunity to show us what the drag coefficient is when you do those small tweaks you mention! Good job including the Naboo starfighter. 👍
I know you disclaimed you're not a math guy so I'm not knocking you or anything, this is a great video explaining this from a layman's perspective, and you're 100% correct about the 'back end' shape being very important to the drag coefficient. There is another contributor to drag though, and I just thought I'd add a little bit more info to help explain possibly why, for example, the P61 and other real world A/C have drastically lower drag coefficients than Star Wars shapes, even smooth ones like the N1, and that is something called 'transition' and I'll explain a bit further if you care enough to keep reading. TL;DR at bottom. From least drag to most drag, the three types of airflow over a surface are 'laminar', 'turbulent', and 'separated' flow. The dark blue area around your objects, especially those that have less smooth back ends, is 'separated flow', where the airflow becomes 'detached' from the surface, and there is a massive stagnant area of air immediately behind the object, surrounded by air that is much slower than the air hitting the front of the A/C. This massive pressure difference between the front and back of the object produces TONS of drag and therefore in the real world for an A/C separated flow is almost entirely undesirable. For other areas of separated flow, such as underneath the N1, the impact of fast moving air hitting that stagnant air also creates drag on the aircraft, to simplify it a bit. In a real world A/C (and in your simulation depending on how you have the input settings for the airstream configured), most airflow over an object is considered either 'laminar' (smooth, straight flow, very little 'tumbling' and no 'swirling' i.e. vortices) or 'turbulent' (some disturbed flow, vortices are present but are not very large, and the air is still flowing along the surface, or 'attached'). The airflow as it moves over the A/C starts out as laminar, then at some point, due to the surface contour shape or its roughness, it transitions to turbulent (but hopefully not separated) flow, which has more drag than laminar flow. For A/C that have 'later transition', i.e. the transition point is further back on the aircraft, more of the total drag is from laminar than turbulent flow. For A/C that have 'earlier transition', the transition point is closer to the nose of the A/C, therefore more of the total drag is from turbulent flow (for a blunt or high drag object, transition is immediate at the nose, so there is only turbulent flow). The upshot of all this is that delaying the transition means less overall drag. For this reason, tying back to the first paragraph, most real world A/C designers delay transition as much as possible via careful shaping of the fuselage (or body) of the aircraft. For wings, some turbulent flow is desirable as it prevents stalls (and loss of lift) due to turbulent flow having more of a tendency to stay 'attached' to the surface at higher angles to the oncoming air, avoiding separated flow and much higher drag. For bodies, this means at some point turbulent flow may be needed to keep it attached to the body longer and prevent flow separation and therefore very high drag. Look up why a golf ball has dimples if you're interested in why this is and how it works in a simpler example. For our Star Wars aircraft, lift is not needed due to repulsors, so the 'wings' or any of the surfaces don't have to be specifically shaped to create lift. This most likely means that if you were to put these ships in atmo or a simulation, most or all of the flow would be turbulent or separated, and any drag would be overcome by brute force from those beefy scifi engines. Most fluid simulators tend to simulate the transition points on the various surfaces by either taking it as a fixed input for any surface (simple) or calculating them based on some settings for surface roughness, fluid viscosity (how 'thick' the fluid is) in the form of something called a Reynolds Number, and how the flow itself (independent of the surface) is being modeled. For the last one, flow modeling, it can be a very simple model that generates a 3d flow stream quickly, or a very complicated one that can take hours, days or weeks on a hefty machine to calculate. More complicated models are closer to the Navier-Stokes equations, which are the 'complete' set of fluid flow equations but are essentially 'unsolvable' because they require you to simulate the airflow down to the molecular level and in 4 dimensions, which no computer can handle, so most models use some form of fudge factors and assumptions to simplify them to make them more solvable at the cost of accuracy. It's hard to tell based on your images where the transition point is, if it's even being calculated, and what kind of flow modeling is being used, but for a more 'smooth' shape like the N1, I suspect that is where a good bit of your larger amount of drag is coming from compared to real world A/C, which minimize turbulent flow and try to avoid separated flow altogether. Note in the N1 you also have separated flow at the bottom going all the way from nose to tail of the ship, resulting in more drag than just poor R2 having his head perpetually stuck in the airflow. This could also mean your simulation is calculating separated airflow as being too high, if there's no transition being simulated. If you made it this far thanks for reading, and enjoyed your video very much. TL;DR there are three kinds of airflow, normie air, spicy air, and angry air, in order from least to most drag, and the drag difference between spicy and angry air is much bigger than between normie and spicy air. The blue areas in the video are angry air, there's lots of it on Star Wars ships / basic objects and therefore very high drag. Almost all real world A/C avoid angry air at all costs and use a mixture of normie and spicy air because reasons. The sim here may or may not be figuring out that mixture 'properly', and may also be creating too much angry air and therefore too much drag.
The theoretical part was very enlightening and filled some gaps on my superficial knowledge of aerodynamics, but the summary was the true gem. Spicy and angry air are amazing 💜
Don't know much about aerodynamics, but I feel like what's missing is a reference point where something simple with known Cd is computed, so you know something is not awfully wrong. Also, the exact shapes of star wars aircrafts are up to interpretation. Different modeling, i.e. of the airfoil, might have a huge impact.
this was actually better than i thought. better results than i expected. i am sure we could do a redesign of many of these star wars fighters to see what it would take to make them (real world) aerodynamic.
The N-1 starfighter has plenty of abrupt ends. Putting aside the astromech socket, the fuselage's dorsal sides behind the cockpit and before the rat tail starts has an area that despite smoothly blending into the rat tail, is still too sudden for air to smoothly transion, ditto for the back of the engine nacelles, the ring from where the thrust exhaust comes out of is another abrupt end that messes with the aerodynamics. And there's also the "armpit" section between the bottom of the wings and the front of the fuselage's sides, which makes a sort of "armpit" section that likely disrupts airflow quite badly.
I'd like to question specifically whether the exhaust "rings" on the engines would actually cause issues on their own. You're going to have high-pressure exhaust coming from there, I'd assume that plus the aerospike effect of the tails on the nacelles would result in significantly different aerodynamic behavior than if it was just static.
@@VestedUTuber In normal circumstances absolutely, but in the program he's using to model the aerodynamics of these ships, they are treated as static models, the engine nozzles are not producing high pressure exhaust that would affect the aerodynamics
It’s interesting to see real world physics applied to designs that are mostly following a visual language (triangles or circles; curved or rigid lines)with just enough familiarity to feel like an aircraft.
This is a great *critical* video. Notice the forces building up around the windows and other hard corners and flat surfaces of these vehicles. Such things have proved deadly in the real world. Another important aspect of flight is the nature of a vehicle's control surfaces. It would be interesting to see Star Wars craft redesigned to function as advertised. That applies to land vehicles as well.
@@26th_Primarch I feel like pod racers get more of a pass than other vehicles because they're made for sport. I'm thinking they're like tractor pull tractors. Are they the best towing vehicles? Probably not, but people build them for the fun of building them. But you raise an interesting point. Honestly, the lack of lift is not the biggest problem in my opinion. You have so much energy coming out of orbit you could fly a brick fly halfway across a planet. On the other hand, unnaerodynamic hulls are a catastrophic problem. That kind of thing will either make your speeder tumble like the most fucked up paper airplane or literally explode. It would have been super cool if Star Wars had kept its starships and starfigthers among the stars and designed different aircraft for flying in atmosphere. Considering how often things are wantonly decolonized, they could easily introduce this now.
I think one of the main differences in land vehicles is that they'd all be a lot more floaty and slippery than depicted. I think one of the best landspeeders is actually Lukes (from episode IV) as the lack of obvious control surfaces can be compensated for by modulating the thrust from the engines. The main flaw I see is a lack of airbrakes or thrust reversers. Without them, the only way to stop suddenly would be to drop to the ground (which wouldn't be fun).
You finally reuploaded this! (Or at least an updated version) I remember watching it years ago and then couldn't ever find it again and eventually found out it was deleted edit: I know you don't normally delve into this series but i am curious about the aerodynamics of the fighter craft of Battlestar Galactica
I think it would be very cool if you made a ship that still stays faithful to Star Wars design philosophy but is more aerodynamic, anyway great video as always
2:44 In his novel Heir to the Empire, Timothy Zahn mentions the Etheric Rudder, used on most starships, which, instead of pushing against air, pushes against vaccum energy, or the ether.
@@ZeroB4NG Remember how Star Wars fighters move in space like aircraft moving in air and not like Newtonian spacecraft? Some Star Wars authors and fans use it to argue that Star Wars space is aether rather than actual scientific vacuum.
I always figured that the best way to beat a TIE fighter in any atmosphere was to make it go left and right, simply because all the lateral forces on the wings would shred them in pretty quick order.
The thing is you can ignore drag nearly entirely for most ships, as their thrust is more capable than enough to provide sufficient lift (even with the worst drag coefficient and no wings). This and the fact that you don't even need lift in the first place, as the repulsorlift cancels out the need for it entirely. Shuttles/transports have wings to help reduce the strain on the engines/power supply in atmospheric flight to increase carrying capacity.
@@toastyrules8221 True. Repulsors eliminate the need for lift, but even with repulsors you are still going to use more energy if the drag is higher. Although, if they can't make a cone with deflectors, then maybe the power these ships have is so great, and the structural integrity of their materials is so great, that quibbling over drag could be something they don't feel they need to worry about. A society that can summon such great energies may feel it is more of a waste to worry about the savings from drag than the value of the savings.
@@Daniel-Strain Common practice is also to fly slower in atmosphere, but indeed the generated power outweighs any strain that could be applied by drag. Most ship builders even optimize their vessels nearly entirely for cargo space, as the time spent flying onto or off planet is insignificant to the time spent in space/hyperspace.
The discussion of sharp trailing edge and *too* sharp leading edge may be the most nonchalant, concise, and one of the clearer explanations I’ve heard of the Kutta condition.
I think something that would have been interesting is comparing the ships with variable Geometry (X-Wing and ARC-170) in their two different wing configurations to see if that makes a significant difference.
And now I suddenly want the Naboo Starfighter MK.II and it would be rather cool if actual aircraft designers got in on it and were allowed to do the redesign to see just how good they could make teh model without it becoming unrecognisable as the Naboo royal star fighter.
OMG! I was looking for someone like you like for 20 years! Please do the same simulation for the "Flight of the navigator" movie space ship, both shapes! Can't wait for that video!
Honestly I think aerodynamic modeling should be done with the engines running, as the intakes would create a major low pressure region and would significantly affect the aerodynamic of the spacecraft.
@@ak8.014 This is also the answer to the poor aerodynamics, I think. Because the ether is so thin, if you're too aerodynamic, you'll act almost like a real world spacecraft, highly crippling your manoeuvrability.
I think it's worth pointing out that Star Wars ships also have deflector shields, which completely deflects all wind and essentially gives it zero drag.
Even TIEs are presumed to have some kind of shield (just not one capable of stopping weapons) to not turn into space swiss cheese when it encounters any stray particles at high speeds.
Two things: Well- three things: First: what a fun video! Even among fictional fantasy stuff, it's sometimes fun to pretend that physics exists in these places, and if so, how would these fantastical inventions of some writer's mind work, in theory? Well-researched, well-presented. Cheerful, enthusiastic narration. Informative, interesting-to-look-at visuals. Who could ask for anything more? (apart from rhythm and music, which I presume you already have.) Second: Though these are chiefly space vehicles, they are frequently shown entering and exiting planetary atmospheres, as easy as flying. No problem with losing atmosphere at higher elevations, no worry about burning up upon atmosphere re-entry. And I don't recall even hearing any mention of switching from space propulsion to atmosphere propulsion. Is it the same, regardless of whether they are in air or not? Which brings me to the actual point: what makes these things GO? Many of them are shown to have SOME kind of "thruster" that usually looks like a jet engine or a rocket of some kind, with some space-age-y blue lights or something. Which brings me to... Third: But in atmosphere, jets don't jet around because they have jet engines; they jet around because they have wings. The engines make them go forward; it's the air molecules moving over the wings that makes them stay in the air, or maneuver through it. So what is it about any of these vehicles that creates upward lift?? And in space, there is no such need for "wings," because there is no air molecules to push against or interact with. How do modern rockets in space travel and maneuver? Not by pushing against air, but by pushing against themselves: the whole "equal and opposite force" thing, from what I understand. So the ultra-maneuverable dog-fighting craft should have a bunch of tiny rockets all over them, shooting in the opposite direction of where they want to go. But they don't seem to work that way in this universe. They have "boosters" and "hyper-speed" and protective invisible force fields. Because: science fiction! :) They do whatever looks cool; they do whatever helps tell the story; they do what they do to immerse us in a world that seems familiar (fighter jets and dog fights, like in WWI and WWII), but in a world of space and fantasy. And if it can look and sound at least *plausible* that it works, then we will believe it. And we can sit back and enjoy the show.
Funnily enough, the TIE series was notorious in-universe for terrible atmospheric handling, so much so that pilots who learned the fighter in space could hardly fly it in atmosphere and the ones who learned it in atmosphere could barely fly it in deep space. That said, I'm pretty positive the sheer power of star wars ship engines makes up for the drag coefficients, especially when combined with their anti-gravity VTOL abilities.
@@Pixel22-fs3tt Yes, because they don't function on lift principles. None of the ships in star wars are designed to fly using the principles of aerodynamic lift, which is why none of them are aerodynamically designed. They don't need air lift to work because repulsors already do all the work to lift them.
@@scoman91 Even more so without shields, since the big-ass wings act like giant rudders the moment you force it to change direction. The X-Wing, meanwhile hasn't even started turning.
drag coefficient inst equal to drag. The Tesla semi as a lower drag coefficient than a Bugatti Chiron but you still have to multiply that by the frontal area of the vehicle meaning the Semi still experiences more drag
It also does explain why the speeds in atmosphere of most starfighters are more comparable to early jet fighters, WWII/Korean war era, than modern fighters. Like few of them reach mach speeds in atmosphere from memory while you'd think that with what they are supposed to do going to space and the likes shouldn't even be possible physically. I imagine that their repulsors do a lot of the work in atmosphere to help
I like to think the ships are just so ungodly powerful that they don't care about drag even a little bit. Which has quite a few destructive implications at high mach numbers, such as creating plasma trails of epic proportions and (I'm pretty sure) setting anything within a significant distance behind it on fire. You could create some seriously stupid destruction with a machine like that, and it would look great on a movie screen. Character turns off atmosphere shield, deals serious damage to his battered old ship, but annihilates pursuing tie fighters. That kinda thing would be sick.
I know that's what everyone says but it's always seemed unlikely to me. They would still need to operate in the vicinity of powerful starships with huge ion engines putting out vast amounts of energy. Not having any shields at all would be dangerous even if no one is shooting at them.
While we know Tie fighters have no shields capable of deflecting military grade plasma weapons, to my knowledge we don’t know that they don’t have simple airspeeder grade deflectors to protect against radiation, micrometeorites, and in this case, gently shove air out of the way ahead of the craft in atmosphere. I’d imagine after tens to hundreds of thousands of years of space flight a opposing starfighters weapons would be a lot more difficult to deal with than air.
This is a cool examination. It'd be awesome if you did *every* spaceship from every sci-fi series. Imagine how many years of content that would generate.
Love it!! Completely unnecessary but just perfect and accurate in a funny way. Here are a few ideas I had, what is the Drag Co. of.. The Death Star? The Tantive IV? The Jedi starfighters?(Episode 3) And finally, the emperor’s Devastator? Keep up the great work : )
Awesome video, as always. I would've been curious to see how the astromech (or lack of) impacted the Y-wing, X-wing, and Naboo starfighter seeing as the droid isn't required for ship operation.
One thing to note is those crafts only seem to have minimal propulsion systems for upward lift, if any at all. Which suggests some other kind of propulsion technologies might be at play when they take off, one of those tech could very well be magneto-aero-dynamics (better known for its subaquatic or "hydro" variant as "MHD"). The principle for this being to electrify the layers of fluid (air) around the exterior shape of the vehicle, turning this thin layer of surrounding air into plasma which very simply put kinda cancels drag and can even contribute to propulsion.
The main thing, at least in my mind, that keeps Star Wars ships flying in atmosphere is they essentially turn into hover crafts with the repulsor lifts
Please please do a continuation of this in a sorts! I recommend doing the Y-wing with the fairings installed and the TIE-striker? from rouge one, since it was “designed for atmospheric use”.
I think I remember seeing somewhere that ships in SW use their shields to project a perfectly aerodynamic shape around themselves when flying in atmosphere.
Reminds me of the Tales from the Star Wars Cantina anthology. The Wolfman of all characters was an X-Wing pilot at Endor. A starfighter assault on the shield generator was deemed hopelessly ineffective but after taking a hit he decided to give it a shot anyway
It is important to note that speed and nimbleness aren't the same thing, and drag is substantially more important to the former. Biplanes have a lot of extra drag due to their extra wings, but they can turn really tightly due to the extra lift. Additionally, as far as TIE Fighters (and Interceptors) go, they seem to be designed first and foremost for both maneuverability and as the escort/attack formations of Star Destroyers. Consequently, it's entirely conceivable that aerodynamics would be unusually low on the designers' list of concerns. Meanwhile, something like the N-1 was designed as a planetary defense fighter, so it's obviously going to be doing a lot more of its work in-atmosphere. And, rounding things out, craft like the X-Wing and Y-wing are intended for more versatile applications rather than a specific military's needs, so it's only natural they'd be more middling. To what extent any of this is actually a concern for ships with the shielding technology (and therefore potential to fabricate an aerodynamic bubble) that spacecraft might have access to in Star Wars, I'm not sure. But it is fun to think about.
I always found funny the concept of "speed" in space. Because the issue is more about acceleration (which it will be mostly limited by the pilot, and not the engines) and fuel or endurance. In another words, the "fastest" ship will be the one that can react the faster, not killing the pilot in the process but at the same time the one that can flight for longer.
I think one of the things that helps their in-atmosphere performance is the fact that they have repulsor lifts, which I imagine were put in place for the sole purpose of allowing these ships to get out of the atmosphere and into space where they were actually designed to do combat. Remove those and I don't think they'd even be able to get off the ground.
Funny video. To add to the many comments about aero: - the Cd is a good way to compare similar devices of different sizes as it removes speed and size from the actual drag force - the coefficient is taken by measuring/computing the drag force, then applying a factor of the fluid properties of the medium, the square of the speed and a reference area (Cd=D/(1/2*rho*V2*A) where D is the drag force, rho the fluid density, V2 the square of the speed and A the reference area) - for your cube, sphere and car examples, the reference area is the frontal area, ie looking from the front, project the outline of what you see on a sheet, that's the frontal area. For planes, we generally use the projected wing area. This is due to the fact that lift is the main force of interest for planes. The wing area is usually way bigger than the frontal area, making the drag coefficient really low, lower than if using the frontal area. - i suppose you used the frontal area for the spaceships. For the p38, the reference area is 30-ish m^2. The frontal area woul be in the order of 10 m^2 (i could not find sources quickly but considering the triple.fuselage as 3 squares of 2m side seems to be a generous approximation for example, i'd expect the frontal area to be lower)
Aerodynamics is the way objects move through air and there is no air in space. Assuming that they fly mostly in space, does their design matter as much?
Along with this update it would be interesting to see a part two covering dedicated Aircraft in Star Wars. The T16 Skyhooper, T47 Airspeeder, V wing Airspeeder (Not to be confused with the V wing), Cloud Car, TIE Striker, XJ6 Airspeeder (Or any of the other Coruscant speeders) Anything actually designed for flying in the atmosphere. Pod racers and Speeder bikes would be fun too.
I always assumed shields were used to make them more aerodynamic, as most ships in Star Wars don’t even try to look aerodynamic
I believe they note that in the books as well
A thin shield that's just powerful enough to push air and artificially create a more aerodynamic profile for the fighters is pretty plausible for Star Wars tech
Technically correct (Best kind of correct) but it is also used to manage aerodynamic heating at high speeds.
Also repulsor lift engines mitigate aerodynamic lift that is not often optimal with these designs. I find it hard to believe how a Tie fighter develops enough lift for it to fly. And if I'm not mistaken a normal Tie fighters repulsor lift is just strong enough to allow it lift off and land. but not for high altitude flight.... could be wrong...
That's a great idea. We see the X-wing flying in atmosphere, but what we don't see is the invisible, traditional "airplane" shaped bubble of shielding around the ship giving it vastly improved aerodynamic handling. Maybe the shield flexes or reshapes to function as ailerons, air brakes, etc. I've got no explanation for TIE fighters... clever use of inertial dampers or something...
Tie Fighters have no shields however I think we can assume there is some basic "atmospheric shield" that all ships have.
"We could do this all day but..." No no, really, let's do this all day - I love these examinations of vehicles.
That was my first thought to. "We could do this all day but..." No, no but, you've got yourself a deal.
Yeah! Let's do ALL the ships!
Yes! Let's optimize them!
He should make this a legitimate series
Fac5s
Ah, EC Henry. Doesn't upload often, but when he does you know it's golden.
I don't even like Star Wars, I just want to know what he'll think of next
Hi. NES guy here. The mesh is waaaaay to coarse at 0:40. YOu can see the voxels around the x-fighter wing tips at the front and these voxels are way bigger than the features of the wingtip. However, for a boundary layer they instead would have to be much much smaller and thinner to resolve any turbulance. Speaking about turbulence, your Reynolds numbers seem far too low, hence there are no turbulent eddies visible at the tail. Instead, any vortices depicted stem from Kalman effects, which are eddies on a much larger and slower scale.
and for the x-wing at 0:59 you see no dark blue at the turbine inlet, which is odd when considering that this is where they suck in the air. (probably what the software did, which you used black box), is frame a voxel grid around whatever your model, and then simulated with equidistant voxel mesh an incompressible Navier-Stokes solution around it with a Reynolds number of around 10. To give you a perspective, saying you do star wars aerodynamics (explained) that is like you stating "how to go to the moon" and then drawing how to fold a paper airplane on a piece of paper, followed by discussing techniques in detail and with motion capture on how to optimally throw it.
@@KaiSong-vv7wh I think the models are taken directly from the internet and the inlets are not working inlets. More like 3D toy models.
If this was about science, there would be no video. We don't bother making large rocket boosters particularly aerodynamic NOW. And that is a space ship which travels through atmosphere. And when SF ships re-enter, well, "we're just not going to deal with that" is how SF deals with atmosphere. They largely pretend it's not there.
I'm gonna pretend I understand all that
New to the channel. Does this guy have the computational resources to do this properly? Unless this guy has a supercomputer it’s gonna take him several months.
Who need aerodynamics, then we have the engine power to beat the atmosphere into submission.
you will burn the ship's hull
Who needs material science, then we have force field to beat the heat transfer into oblivion
That's called a Helicopter.
@@ngroy8636 Everything is manageable given infinite energy supplies
Ah, yes, the triumph of thrust over aerodynamics
"And they (Jeeps) are not exactly designed for flight."
Someone must have told them about my little maneuver at the Battle of Taanab.
He's never been in the back country roads at night. Definitely made my jeep fly, not all that legal but hit any train track crossing going 80 and your bound to catch a little air.
Dude, I know, I was in the back with the arrows and dynamite!
@@Dargonhuman😂
@@ryshellso526 Hell, I used to catch air in my 90 Suburban back home, and that's just-as-aerodynamically challenged, but significantly _heavier!_ 😅
_[said in the tone of Luke talking about "bullseyeing Womp Rats in his T-16"...]_
If I remember correctly, the shields of a fighter also influence its atmospheric speed. And the shield bubble is often teardrop shaped.
Tie fighters happen to not have shield so that still makes no sense.
they blow out the window really hard
@@crispybacon9917 Because the Empire takes the same attitude towards it's "elite" pilots as the Russians do: "We can always make more of them."
@@BlackEpyon ok but what does that have to do with what I was talking about
@@crispybacon9917 Pilot survivability. The war in Ukraine has given a live-fire demonstration of the difference in design philosophies between western and Soviet armour designs. The Soviets, and to the same extent the Russians, do not care about crew survivability. both the armour and the crew are made to be cheap, mass produced, and therefore, disposable. Either side's tanks and IFVs will be "mobility killed" when they get their tracks thrown, but western designs have far higher crew survival rates.
Likewise between the Empire and the Rebellion, the Rebellion values the lives of their pilots, where the Empire does not.
This video reminds me of what my professor told me during my fluid dynamics class: _"If you don't know the C_D for an object, assume 0.1 for a bullet, 0.5 for a cow and 1 for an upright human. Interpolate."_ I still sometimes think about it
0.47 if that cow is spherical, and any number at all if it's in a vacuum
'0.01 for anything that flies civilians.'
I had a 1991 Honda CRX Si of which I read an article that specifically stated its coefficient was .29. Not sure why I still remember that! That makes it less aero than a bullet but more than a cow.
It never clicked in my mind for the last 40 years that the A-wing fuselage was made from parts of two F14 wing box cut in the middle and mirrored up and down! 😮 The slot on the side is where the glove vanes retract on the F14! Now i see it! THANKS!
now we need an A-Wing livery for the DCS Tomcat...
Makes me think that's how they made the a wing props for the movie, they probably bought some f14 model kits and modified them. Of course modify is a little underselling how much they changed haha
Learning the A-wing is based on the F-14 made my day
@@ORLY911 that is exactly how they did it. Using Photoshop i took a picture of a F14 model sprue and a A-wing. After croppping thé useful part, everything matched, panels lines included!
Cool huh!!
4:40 that is such an amazingly specific visualization, you must have been thanking your lucky stars when you found that. Good video
I mean the thing he's talking about, that being the taper on a vehicle affecting drag, has been studied since flight was invented. Its not exactly surprising someone in the 120 odd years since the Wright Brothers decided to make a cute drawing out of the effect.
Drag isn't just the Cd. The frontal area is also important. For example, the A-wing isn't just slipperier. It also is smaller than most snub fighters which compounds it's aero advantage.
Good to see this mentioned, because the arc 170 would have more drag than the x-wing and possible more than the tie interceptor just due to its size.
The death star, being a sphere would have a better drag coefficient than all the ties, but no one should think it has less drag.
It’s also worth noting when talking about spacecraft that once you get past the speed of sound the physics of drag change quite a bit, and the hypersonic speeds like you might see a spacecraft do during reentry follow their own entirely different paradigm.
While this is true, I think that it doesn't make too much of a difference for the purpose of this video. I think the Drag Coefficient was chosen just because it's a number that's easy to quantify, thus making it easier to get the point across.
But yeah, frontal area does play a big part (though I think it's more specifically change in area is you go along, but I don't know enough about aerodynamics to be sure). I think it's why the X-wing and ARC-170 perform worse than expected. They both have those big "intakes" that create a large, basically flat area.
@@EmperorNefarious1 If the death star is entering your atmosphere, it's a whole different kind of drag. :0
I remember the X-Wing series of Comics where one of the rebel pilots (I think Wedge) takes advantage of this principle when he was dog fighting 3 TIE fighters at once in an atmosphere. One of the TIE pilots was inexperienced and when he tried to yaw turn to follow the X-Wing, The Turbulence caused by the Vertical solar panels caused his TIE to shutter violently. he pulled out of his turn, only to get blasted from behind by the X-Wing he was trying to turn with. The other Two TIE had experienced pilots so they knew to roll first before pulling up to turn. So the X-Wing Pilot spins his X-wing which causes a vortex to form behind him and causes the TIE fighters to collide into each other, destroying them both. He literally says "Put them into the Spin Cycle! And Turbulence does the rest!"
The Delta-7 Aethersprite Light Interceptor would be interesting.
Yeah, the 7A and 7B would definitely be different do to the droid placement and the Azure Angel would definitely be it's own beast
I kinda wonder how a modified Delta-7B with TIE Interceptor wings might be aerodynamically, since that’s what my OC’s ship is… On the outside. Basically. It’s also got TIE solar panels covering its topside, and the internals of an Incom T-65 X-wing (including the torpedo launchers in place of the Aethersprite’s lower cannons, since I don’t think it’d need more than the four wingtip cannons from the TIE/in)… But that’s an OC starship design, a cobbled-together mix of stuff one might find lying around and not anything remotely canon, so I obviously wouldn’t expect to see it here.
@@RuBoo001 So it's an Ugly. A lot of criminal organizations did that a lot. They kit-bashed a lot of ships. X-Wings with TIE Interceptor wings, Y-Wings with X-Wing wings, and so on.
@@26th_Primarch I feel like the Azure Angel would be almost like a brick with all that extra shit on it. The 7B would probably be much better due to the central position of the astromech as opposed to the 7A's being on the left side.
@@Tar-Numendil Yeah, I came up with it (the main concept) trying to find some sort of custom-starship-building game and finding _nothing._ Well, not “nothing”, but when the RPGGamer Ugly Starfighter Workshop is the best you can find, well… So I played with that, and eventually put the TIE Interceptor wings on the Aethersprite hull and thought, “Y’know what? I think I like that, I should see about something like that…” And over time, it evolved into… That.
Part 2? millennium falcon, both with and without escape pod? land speeder? pod racer? death star? imperial star destroyer? Imperial Shuttle? Vulture Droid? Naboo Royal Starship? Trade Federation Battleship? Slave 1? etc
Jedi Starfighter?
Might as well throw in cloud city and the Republic Senate building if you're gonna include the death star
I wonder how the Naboo Royal Starship would perform since it is supposed to be modeled after the SR-71
I would guess that it has a similar problem to the N-1 (too sharp of a leading edge) but it lacks the astromech so that may do it a favor
4:00
@@xinguan2681Not the N-1 Starfighter, the J-Type Nubian starship
@@captaindoubleday Oh right. Must have misread
@@captaindoubledayaaah yes, Nubian.. we have lots of that
You and your team are single handedly keeping my love for Star Wars alive these days. Thank you!
This video has made me wonder how aerodynamic a Cloud Car is. Or even any air speeder for that matter.
We don't talk about the cloud car...
@@NayuzAquaI always liked the cloud car because it's so daft looking.
There was also a reference in the cross sectionbooks that naboo starship where so sleek designed and using their special silver coating they didnt use the shields for atmospheric reentry
A cool followup to this video would be what kind of adjustments would make these starfighters more aerodynamic like real aircraft while maintaining the Star Wars aesthetic.
The N-1 would probably have the easiest: make the leading edge more rounded, say by moving the cockpit forward so the hull needs to be thicker to accommodate it. A small fairing around the droid would be all that is needed there to get to at least WW2 bomber levels of drag.
simplest thing to do is what the Expanded universe did, and have the shield geometry do the work of making them more aerodynamic without changing their shape.
Xwing and Tie fighter are space vehicles, there is no air in space so aerodynamics doesnt apply.
@@floggyWM1 They are Aerospace vehicles, they are meant to operate in both. besides, as I've said before this was a problem that was already solved 20 years ago in the EU where shielded fighters can reach hypersonic speeds well in the double digits of mach. The V-Wing for example able to hit Mach 40.
5:00 This point about sharp leading edges being worse than rounded ones is definitely true for subsonic aircraft (which is the speed this has all been modelled at, I'm pretty sure) but at supersonic speeds the opposite becomes true, sharp leading edges are much more aerodynamic because every point that sticks out into the airflow creates a shockwave, therefore if you get a sharp point out in front the rest of the surface can be "inside" the shockwave - that's why a lot of modern fighter jet wings and missile fins etc all have very, *very* sharp leading edges. I'd imagine a lot of the spaceships can go pretty fast in atmosphere, so something like the N1 being designed for supersonic flight could make sense! (Although, I'm not sure sticking an astromech out into a supersonic flow face-first is a great idea...)
Yep, blunt round object ain't going to do well at high speeds.
Though F-14 and F-15 have pretty round leading edge and wing sweep angle is used to reduce drag at high speeds.
But stealth benefits from sharper leading edge, because round edge reflects radar waves back to many directions.
And then there's SR-71 Blackbird, which looks like going fast even when sitting stationary...
Thanks I was wondering about that because the f104 starfighter has a reputation for having stubby little wings that are letarly razor sharp
I wish you covered the TIE Striker since it’s the only TIE Fighter specifically designed to operate well in atmosphere. Still great video!
That's where I thought he was going right before he brought up the TIE Interceptor.
yeah was hoping to see some newer canon aircraft
Problem is the Striker still follows the same overall TIE design language. It might be better than the more space-oriented TIEs, but not by much.
Yeah, that being included would be good to include (though it's drag coefficient probably still wouldn't all that great).
@@VestedUTuber Its basically a TIE Interceptor but only having one wing panel, I think Sienar Fleet Systems is running a racket were they are selling what is a TIE Interceptor minus a wing for the full price of one.
(And before anyone replies, yes ... its not entirely that way, its have elongated body)
Speaking of TIE variants, there is also Darth Vader's TIE/ad that because its not a spherical might have better aerodynamics
Thanks for the re upload it’s great! Hope you do it with any other old ones. Every video is a banger
I honestly always figured that Star wars ships just operated on a balance between tons of thrust and repulsor tech but aerodynamics do get a mention in one of the canon thrawn books and in the rogue squadron novels which made me think about it a whole lot more
In the Star Wars universe space is full of a substance called ether. Spaceships maneuver using etheric rudders lol. That explains why they fly like aircraft through space
@@ninjalectualx Yeah, that's only been mentioned in like one or two books, like one of the earlier Thrawn novels, and then sort of gets discarded...so, no, space in Star Wars isn't full of ether.
No, it's actually mentioned all throughout the EU as well as canon. It's alao why there is sound in outer space in Star Wars. They are not in a vacuum they are in an ether
@@ninjalectualx It's in very few EU materials: the X Wing books, some of the New Jedi Order books, I'Jedi, and one of the Thrawn novels.
I can't find anything about it being in any of the new canon novels...however, apparently Timothy Zahn, the person who introduced the term, has literally commented about how the term never caught on and got quietly dropped.
Aerospace engineer here, a note about coefficient of drag. Cd values published for cars aren’t directly comparable to aircraft because the reference area used is very different. Cars use the frontal area, where as aircraft use the wing area. I suspect that is why the Cd numbers for aircraft in your comparison are .02ish and the star wars vehicle it is compared to is an order of magnitude higher. The wing area of an aircraft is an order of magnitude larger than its frontal area.
Its a good day when EC publishes new work
This an old video, he reuploaded it.
@@spencersholden reworked no?
@@Gabiman66 yep
Great vid, thanks for pulling out of the archive and retouching it!
A few other ships that would have been interesting:
B-Wing in "closed" vs "open" position
Aethersprite Jedi Starfighter
Royal Naboo Starship
Naboo J-Type Diplomatic Barge
The last one in particular is interesting because it's essentially a flying wing design.
The ship Anakin and Padme have in Episode II would be great.
I think the B-Wing by far has the closest aerodynamics to be somewhat viable in atmospheric flight.
But it's design needs it to have a electronics-system to keep it flying, like F-111 .
The size of its aerodynamic drag is probably lower then a X-WIng, but i am not even sure if it is better then a A-Wing.
Anything from Naboo would be interesting to model the aerodynamics of.
Also, I want to add Vulture Droids to the list.
Always love your content. You are living (and sharing) my "Spaceship Design & Applications" dream - thank you!
I wonder about the Millennium Falcon. That split in the front, and the weird placement of the cockpit can't help.
It's probably terrible.. The larger ships are often inspired by WW2 naval ships so they allow for even more asymmetry and sticking out pieces like antenna dishes and guns. 😅 This goes especially for the destroyers and carriers etc. but the Falcon is also in that range.
To be fair, the millennium falcon is literally just a souped up small cargo ship without a cargo container. The big cut in the middle is meant to have a special cargo container slotted in. Essentially, Han solo brings a semi truck to a fighter jet dogfight and somehow wins.
@@oatmealman1586 Not just a semi-truck. It's one of those super-long tractors with not just a sleeper cab, but an entire mini-RV!
@@oatmealman1586It's more of a tugboat/push-ship, e.g. look at those that push barges up and down the Mississippi and the Rhine, those are very similar in purpose
In hopes of RUclips allowing me to post a link: commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schubboot_auf_einer_Maasbrachter_Werft_II.jpg
You now have the opportunity to show us what the drag coefficient is when you do those small tweaks you mention! Good job including the Naboo starfighter. 👍
I know you disclaimed you're not a math guy so I'm not knocking you or anything, this is a great video explaining this from a layman's perspective, and you're 100% correct about the 'back end' shape being very important to the drag coefficient. There is another contributor to drag though, and I just thought I'd add a little bit more info to help explain possibly why, for example, the P61 and other real world A/C have drastically lower drag coefficients than Star Wars shapes, even smooth ones like the N1, and that is something called 'transition' and I'll explain a bit further if you care enough to keep reading. TL;DR at bottom.
From least drag to most drag, the three types of airflow over a surface are 'laminar', 'turbulent', and 'separated' flow.
The dark blue area around your objects, especially those that have less smooth back ends, is 'separated flow', where the airflow becomes 'detached' from the surface, and there is a massive stagnant area of air immediately behind the object, surrounded by air that is much slower than the air hitting the front of the A/C. This massive pressure difference between the front and back of the object produces TONS of drag and therefore in the real world for an A/C separated flow is almost entirely undesirable. For other areas of separated flow, such as underneath the N1, the impact of fast moving air hitting that stagnant air also creates drag on the aircraft, to simplify it a bit.
In a real world A/C (and in your simulation depending on how you have the input settings for the airstream configured), most airflow over an object is considered either 'laminar' (smooth, straight flow, very little 'tumbling' and no 'swirling' i.e. vortices) or 'turbulent' (some disturbed flow, vortices are present but are not very large, and the air is still flowing along the surface, or 'attached'). The airflow as it moves over the A/C starts out as laminar, then at some point, due to the surface contour shape or its roughness, it transitions to turbulent (but hopefully not separated) flow, which has more drag than laminar flow. For A/C that have 'later transition', i.e. the transition point is further back on the aircraft, more of the total drag is from laminar than turbulent flow. For A/C that have 'earlier transition', the transition point is closer to the nose of the A/C, therefore more of the total drag is from turbulent flow (for a blunt or high drag object, transition is immediate at the nose, so there is only turbulent flow). The upshot of all this is that delaying the transition means less overall drag. For this reason, tying back to the first paragraph, most real world A/C designers delay transition as much as possible via careful shaping of the fuselage (or body) of the aircraft. For wings, some turbulent flow is desirable as it prevents stalls (and loss of lift) due to turbulent flow having more of a tendency to stay 'attached' to the surface at higher angles to the oncoming air, avoiding separated flow and much higher drag. For bodies, this means at some point turbulent flow may be needed to keep it attached to the body longer and prevent flow separation and therefore very high drag. Look up why a golf ball has dimples if you're interested in why this is and how it works in a simpler example.
For our Star Wars aircraft, lift is not needed due to repulsors, so the 'wings' or any of the surfaces don't have to be specifically shaped to create lift. This most likely means that if you were to put these ships in atmo or a simulation, most or all of the flow would be turbulent or separated, and any drag would be overcome by brute force from those beefy scifi engines. Most fluid simulators tend to simulate the transition points on the various surfaces by either taking it as a fixed input for any surface (simple) or calculating them based on some settings for surface roughness, fluid viscosity (how 'thick' the fluid is) in the form of something called a Reynolds Number, and how the flow itself (independent of the surface) is being modeled. For the last one, flow modeling, it can be a very simple model that generates a 3d flow stream quickly, or a very complicated one that can take hours, days or weeks on a hefty machine to calculate. More complicated models are closer to the Navier-Stokes equations, which are the 'complete' set of fluid flow equations but are essentially 'unsolvable' because they require you to simulate the airflow down to the molecular level and in 4 dimensions, which no computer can handle, so most models use some form of fudge factors and assumptions to simplify them to make them more solvable at the cost of accuracy.
It's hard to tell based on your images where the transition point is, if it's even being calculated, and what kind of flow modeling is being used, but for a more 'smooth' shape like the N1, I suspect that is where a good bit of your larger amount of drag is coming from compared to real world A/C, which minimize turbulent flow and try to avoid separated flow altogether. Note in the N1 you also have separated flow at the bottom going all the way from nose to tail of the ship, resulting in more drag than just poor R2 having his head perpetually stuck in the airflow. This could also mean your simulation is calculating separated airflow as being too high, if there's no transition being simulated.
If you made it this far thanks for reading, and enjoyed your video very much.
TL;DR there are three kinds of airflow, normie air, spicy air, and angry air, in order from least to most drag, and the drag difference between spicy and angry air is much bigger than between normie and spicy air. The blue areas in the video are angry air, there's lots of it on Star Wars ships / basic objects and therefore very high drag. Almost all real world A/C avoid angry air at all costs and use a mixture of normie and spicy air because reasons. The sim here may or may not be figuring out that mixture 'properly', and may also be creating too much angry air and therefore too much drag.
The theoretical part was very enlightening and filled some gaps on my superficial knowledge of aerodynamics, but the summary was the true gem. Spicy and angry air are amazing 💜
You can say that again
I…think I’m gonna just add a comment and hope I remember to read this in the morning 😅
update: yey
Do you know what software he used for the CFD in this video?
Don't know much about aerodynamics, but I feel like what's missing is a reference point where something simple with known Cd is computed, so you know something is not awfully wrong. Also, the exact shapes of star wars aircrafts are up to interpretation. Different modeling, i.e. of the airfoil, might have a huge impact.
this was actually better than i thought. better results than i expected. i am sure we could do a redesign of many of these star wars fighters to see what it would take to make them (real world) aerodynamic.
The N-1 starfighter has plenty of abrupt ends. Putting aside the astromech socket, the fuselage's dorsal sides behind the cockpit and before the rat tail starts has an area that despite smoothly blending into the rat tail, is still too sudden for air to smoothly transion, ditto for the back of the engine nacelles, the ring from where the thrust exhaust comes out of is another abrupt end that messes with the aerodynamics. And there's also the "armpit" section between the bottom of the wings and the front of the fuselage's sides, which makes a sort of "armpit" section that likely disrupts airflow quite badly.
I'd like to question specifically whether the exhaust "rings" on the engines would actually cause issues on their own. You're going to have high-pressure exhaust coming from there, I'd assume that plus the aerospike effect of the tails on the nacelles would result in significantly different aerodynamic behavior than if it was just static.
@@VestedUTuber In normal circumstances absolutely, but in the program he's using to model the aerodynamics of these ships, they are treated as static models, the engine nozzles are not producing high pressure exhaust that would affect the aerodynamics
The car aerodynamics graphic at 4:46 is excellent
It’s interesting to see real world physics applied to designs that are mostly following a visual language (triangles or circles; curved or rigid lines)with just enough familiarity to feel like an aircraft.
Aerodynamics don't matter in space, but no less a great breakdown. Love it
No, but they do in atmospheres…
@@billymays7210 100%
They Sonthofer in starwars in starwars space is not vacuum but instead filled with ether
@@ak8.014 ummm… wut?
This is a great *critical* video.
Notice the forces building up around the windows and other hard corners and flat surfaces of these vehicles. Such things have proved deadly in the real world.
Another important aspect of flight is the nature of a vehicle's control surfaces. It would be interesting to see Star Wars craft redesigned to function as advertised.
That applies to land vehicles as well.
If you've ever played KSP you'll know that getting a Star Wars craft to work, even with the highly simplified aero model, is quite difficult
Hmmm...
We could finally find out which Podracer at the Boonta Eve race from TPM was actually the best one.
@@26th_Primarch I feel like pod racers get more of a pass than other vehicles because they're made for sport. I'm thinking they're like tractor pull tractors. Are they the best towing vehicles? Probably not, but people build them for the fun of building them.
But you raise an interesting point. Honestly, the lack of lift is not the biggest problem in my opinion. You have so much energy coming out of orbit you could fly a brick fly halfway across a planet. On the other hand, unnaerodynamic hulls are a catastrophic problem. That kind of thing will either make your speeder tumble like the most fucked up paper airplane or literally explode.
It would have been super cool if Star Wars had kept its starships and starfigthers among the stars and designed different aircraft for flying in atmosphere.
Considering how often things are wantonly decolonized, they could easily introduce this now.
I think one of the main differences in land vehicles is that they'd all be a lot more floaty and slippery than depicted. I think one of the best landspeeders is actually Lukes (from episode IV) as the lack of obvious control surfaces can be compensated for by modulating the thrust from the engines. The main flaw I see is a lack of airbrakes or thrust reversers. Without them, the only way to stop suddenly would be to drop to the ground (which wouldn't be fun).
This could easily be an awesome series of videos.
You finally reuploaded this! (Or at least an updated version) I remember watching it years ago and then couldn't ever find it again and eventually found out it was deleted
edit: I know you don't normally delve into this series but i am curious about the aerodynamics of the fighter craft of Battlestar Galactica
Yeah. It’s nice to see again.
I'm glad it's not just me.
3:25 I never knew that! Incredible!
a new EC henry video? A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.
Carmine!?
@@gokbay3057 No
I can’t explain how excited I get when EC posts a video
I think it would be very cool if you made a ship that still stays faithful to Star Wars design philosophy but is more aerodynamic, anyway great video as always
Actually I could watch this all day…..more ships please!
2:44 In his novel Heir to the Empire, Timothy Zahn mentions the Etheric Rudder, used on most starships, which, instead of pushing against air, pushes against vaccum energy, or the ether.
wtf is vacccum energy? lol
@@ZeroB4NG Remember how Star Wars fighters move in space like aircraft moving in air and not like Newtonian spacecraft? Some Star Wars authors and fans use it to argue that Star Wars space is aether rather than actual scientific vacuum.
@@gokbay3057 See also why you can hear the blaster fire in Star Wars space.
I'd love to see this thought exercise applied to Star Trek ships.
Also, great narration!
This makes me wish we could get a follow up video with other star wars ships - I desparately want to see the Cloakshape in here
I always figured that the best way to beat a TIE fighter in any atmosphere was to make it go left and right, simply because all the lateral forces on the wings would shred them in pretty quick order.
Maybe deflectors can create a cone that improves the aerodynamics.
The thing is you can ignore drag nearly entirely for most ships, as their thrust is more capable than enough to provide sufficient lift (even with the worst drag coefficient and no wings).
This and the fact that you don't even need lift in the first place, as the repulsorlift cancels out the need for it entirely.
Shuttles/transports have wings to help reduce the strain on the engines/power supply in atmospheric flight to increase carrying capacity.
That was the EU explanation for why the V-Wing can fly at speeds over Mach 40
@@toastyrules8221 True. Repulsors eliminate the need for lift, but even with repulsors you are still going to use more energy if the drag is higher. Although, if they can't make a cone with deflectors, then maybe the power these ships have is so great, and the structural integrity of their materials is so great, that quibbling over drag could be something they don't feel they need to worry about. A society that can summon such great energies may feel it is more of a waste to worry about the savings from drag than the value of the savings.
@@Daniel-Strain Common practice is also to fly slower in atmosphere, but indeed the generated power outweighs any strain that could be applied by drag. Most ship builders even optimize their vessels nearly entirely for cargo space, as the time spent flying onto or off planet is insignificant to the time spent in space/hyperspace.
@@toastyrules8221 Oh that's a neat point about cargo space optimization. :)
The discussion of sharp trailing edge and *too* sharp leading edge may be the most nonchalant, concise, and one of the clearer explanations I’ve heard of the Kutta condition.
I think something that would have been interesting is comparing the ships with variable Geometry (X-Wing and ARC-170) in their two different wing configurations to see if that makes a significant difference.
pretty much this whole time i was thinking about the N1, so glad you did cover it
And now I suddenly want the Naboo Starfighter MK.II and it would be rather cool if actual aircraft designers got in on it and were allowed to do the redesign to see just how good they could make teh model without it becoming unrecognisable as the Naboo royal star fighter.
OMG! I was looking for someone like you like for 20 years!
Please do the same simulation for the "Flight of the navigator" movie space ship, both shapes!
Can't wait for that video!
Honestly I think aerodynamic modeling should be done with the engines running, as the intakes would create a major low pressure region and would significantly affect the aerodynamic of the spacecraft.
the engines aren’t like jet engines. remember, space is a vacuum.
for all we know, those aren’t air intakes.
@@darthvirgin7157space isn’t vacuum tho in starwars in Star Wars space is filled with a substance (i think it’s called ether)
@@ak8.014 This is also the answer to the poor aerodynamics, I think. Because the ether is so thin, if you're too aerodynamic, you'll act almost like a real world spacecraft, highly crippling your manoeuvrability.
I want a 30 minute long version of this video. Amazingly intrresting!
I think it's worth pointing out that Star Wars ships also have deflector shields, which completely deflects all wind and essentially gives it zero drag.
Even TIEs are presumed to have some kind of shield (just not one capable of stopping weapons) to not turn into space swiss cheese when it encounters any stray particles at high speeds.
@@kanrakucheese I think it's purely just to compensate for the wind drag in atmosphere.
Two things: Well- three things:
First: what a fun video! Even among fictional fantasy stuff, it's sometimes fun to pretend that physics exists in these places, and if so, how would these fantastical inventions of some writer's mind work, in theory? Well-researched, well-presented. Cheerful, enthusiastic narration. Informative, interesting-to-look-at visuals. Who could ask for anything more? (apart from rhythm and music, which I presume you already have.)
Second: Though these are chiefly space vehicles, they are frequently shown entering and exiting planetary atmospheres, as easy as flying. No problem with losing atmosphere at higher elevations, no worry about burning up upon atmosphere re-entry. And I don't recall even hearing any mention of switching from space propulsion to atmosphere propulsion. Is it the same, regardless of whether they are in air or not? Which brings me to the actual point: what makes these things GO? Many of them are shown to have SOME kind of "thruster" that usually looks like a jet engine or a rocket of some kind, with some space-age-y blue lights or something. Which brings me to...
Third: But in atmosphere, jets don't jet around because they have jet engines; they jet around because they have wings. The engines make them go forward; it's the air molecules moving over the wings that makes them stay in the air, or maneuver through it. So what is it about any of these vehicles that creates upward lift?? And in space, there is no such need for "wings," because there is no air molecules to push against or interact with. How do modern rockets in space travel and maneuver? Not by pushing against air, but by pushing against themselves: the whole "equal and opposite force" thing, from what I understand. So the ultra-maneuverable dog-fighting craft should have a bunch of tiny rockets all over them, shooting in the opposite direction of where they want to go.
But they don't seem to work that way in this universe. They have "boosters" and "hyper-speed" and protective invisible force fields. Because: science fiction! :)
They do whatever looks cool; they do whatever helps tell the story; they do what they do to immerse us in a world that seems familiar (fighter jets and dog fights, like in WWI and WWII), but in a world of space and fantasy. And if it can look and sound at least *plausible* that it works, then we will believe it. And we can sit back and enjoy the show.
Funnily enough, the TIE series was notorious in-universe for terrible atmospheric handling, so much so that pilots who learned the fighter in space could hardly fly it in atmosphere and the ones who learned it in atmosphere could barely fly it in deep space. That said, I'm pretty positive the sheer power of star wars ship engines makes up for the drag coefficients, especially when combined with their anti-gravity VTOL abilities.
I bet you that the only reason why most Star Wars ships can fly in atmosphere is because of replusor lift technology that they use
@@Pixel22-fs3tt Yes, because they don't function on lift principles. None of the ships in star wars are designed to fly using the principles of aerodynamic lift, which is why none of them are aerodynamically designed. They don't need air lift to work because repulsors already do all the work to lift them.
All that wind resistance actually gives it pretty good manoeuvrability, if you ignore that it bleeds off all it's speed as it does so.
@@BlackEpyon I don't see how, given the drag will be affecting both sides of the craft so you'll have to struggle against it when turning anyway.
@@scoman91 Even more so without shields, since the big-ass wings act like giant rudders the moment you force it to change direction. The X-Wing, meanwhile hasn't even started turning.
Knowing the drag of actual planes would have been a better frame of reference
I assume S-foils are "Space-foils" as a direct analog to "airfoils"
The ‘canon’ explanation was strike-foil, but space foil is probably the original intention.
This is the only Star Wars related content worth watching in the last 8 years or so
drag coefficient inst equal to drag. The Tesla semi as a lower drag coefficient than a Bugatti Chiron but you still have to multiply that by the frontal area of the vehicle meaning the Semi still experiences more drag
Good input for Sci-fi writers/designers. A taper added to the central fuselage looks interesting and unique while serving some practical purpose.
It also does explain why the speeds in atmosphere of most starfighters are more comparable to early jet fighters, WWII/Korean war era, than modern fighters. Like few of them reach mach speeds in atmosphere from memory while you'd think that with what they are supposed to do going to space and the likes shouldn't even be possible physically. I imagine that their repulsors do a lot of the work in atmosphere to help
Repulsorlifts being why starfighters even work in atmosphere was explicit by Thrawn trilogy, and may even be in WEG material.
I like to think the ships are just so ungodly powerful that they don't care about drag even a little bit. Which has quite a few destructive implications at high mach numbers, such as creating plasma trails of epic proportions and (I'm pretty sure) setting anything within a significant distance behind it on fire. You could create some seriously stupid destruction with a machine like that, and it would look great on a movie screen. Character turns off atmosphere shield, deals serious damage to his battered old ship, but annihilates pursuing tie fighters. That kinda thing would be sick.
To everyone saying "shields counteract the need for aerodynamics" remember, tie fighters have no shields
I know that's what everyone says but it's always seemed unlikely to me. They would still need to operate in the vicinity of powerful starships with huge ion engines putting out vast amounts of energy. Not having any shields at all would be dangerous even if no one is shooting at them.
@@Akm72 True, but shields are expensive, so they have none
While we know Tie fighters have no shields capable of deflecting military grade plasma weapons, to my knowledge we don’t know that they don’t have simple airspeeder grade deflectors to protect against radiation, micrometeorites, and in this case, gently shove air out of the way ahead of the craft in atmosphere.
I’d imagine after tens to hundreds of thousands of years of space flight a opposing starfighters weapons would be a lot more difficult to deal with than air.
This is a cool examination. It'd be awesome if you did *every* spaceship from every sci-fi series. Imagine how many years of content that would generate.
You don't need aerodynamics in a vacuum.
At the beginning of the video he says he wants to see how they work in the atmosphere.
Love it!! Completely unnecessary but just perfect and accurate in a funny way.
Here are a few ideas I had, what is the Drag Co. of..
The Death Star?
The Tantive IV?
The Jedi starfighters?(Episode 3)
And finally, the emperor’s Devastator?
Keep up the great work : )
USS Voyager 😱 (Intrepid class)
Awesome video, as always. I would've been curious to see how the astromech (or lack of) impacted the Y-wing, X-wing, and Naboo starfighter seeing as the droid isn't required for ship operation.
I'm sure a lot of people are newer than 6 years. So i would say go for the remakes.
Could be interesting running real life plane models through the software also? It might give a better comparison? Love the video, love the channel!
I'd love to see a followup video that showcases revised models of these ships (and more) that would allow them to be more arrow dynamic.
I wanted thos video to go on for hours. Please more!
A smile is a light in the window of your face to show your heart is at home.
The tie fighter noise is actually the atmosphere screaming in agony i like it
One thing to note is those crafts only seem to have minimal propulsion systems for upward lift, if any at all. Which suggests some other kind of propulsion technologies might be at play when they take off, one of those tech could very well be magneto-aero-dynamics (better known for its subaquatic or "hydro" variant as "MHD"). The principle for this being to electrify the layers of fluid (air) around the exterior shape of the vehicle, turning this thin layer of surrounding air into plasma which very simply put kinda cancels drag and can even contribute to propulsion.
That is extreamly interesting. Please do more ships
The main thing, at least in my mind, that keeps Star Wars ships flying in atmosphere is they essentially turn into hover crafts with the repulsor lifts
Please please do a continuation of this in a sorts! I recommend doing the Y-wing with the fairings installed and the TIE-striker? from rouge one, since it was “designed for atmospheric use”.
Okay, maybe _you_ can't do this all day, but we want more! Maybe do us a solid and turn this into a recurring series? Please?
I think I remember seeing somewhere that ships in SW use their shields to project a perfectly aerodynamic shape around themselves when flying in atmosphere.
Reminds me of the Tales from the Star Wars Cantina anthology. The Wolfman of all characters was an X-Wing pilot at Endor. A starfighter assault on the shield generator was deemed hopelessly ineffective but after taking a hit he decided to give it a shot anyway
I think the TIE Interceptor is still one of the coolest looking of the TIE variants
This five minute video is more thought than anyone making star wars ever put into the topic.
It is important to note that speed and nimbleness aren't the same thing, and drag is substantially more important to the former. Biplanes have a lot of extra drag due to their extra wings, but they can turn really tightly due to the extra lift.
Additionally, as far as TIE Fighters (and Interceptors) go, they seem to be designed first and foremost for both maneuverability and as the escort/attack formations of Star Destroyers. Consequently, it's entirely conceivable that aerodynamics would be unusually low on the designers' list of concerns. Meanwhile, something like the N-1 was designed as a planetary defense fighter, so it's obviously going to be doing a lot more of its work in-atmosphere. And, rounding things out, craft like the X-Wing and Y-wing are intended for more versatile applications rather than a specific military's needs, so it's only natural they'd be more middling.
To what extent any of this is actually a concern for ships with the shielding technology (and therefore potential to fabricate an aerodynamic bubble) that spacecraft might have access to in Star Wars, I'm not sure. But it is fun to think about.
I always found funny the concept of "speed" in space. Because the issue is more about acceleration (which it will be mostly limited by the pilot, and not the engines) and fuel or endurance. In another words, the "fastest" ship will be the one that can react the faster, not killing the pilot in the process but at the same time the one that can flight for longer.
Acres of almond trees lined the interstate highway which complimented the crazy driving nuts.
My dad and I built a model rocket kit of a Y-wing in the 90s. It flew pretty good.
Fantastic concept for a lesser known successor to the Skipray.
Please do more of These!!!
I think one of the things that helps their in-atmosphere performance is the fact that they have repulsor lifts, which I imagine were put in place for the sole purpose of allowing these ships to get out of the atmosphere and into space where they were actually designed to do combat. Remove those and I don't think they'd even be able to get off the ground.
This is why I love RUclips
Funny video. To add to the many comments about aero:
- the Cd is a good way to compare similar devices of different sizes as it removes speed and size from the actual drag force
- the coefficient is taken by measuring/computing the drag force, then applying a factor of the fluid properties of the medium, the square of the speed and a reference area (Cd=D/(1/2*rho*V2*A) where D is the drag force, rho the fluid density, V2 the square of the speed and A the reference area)
- for your cube, sphere and car examples, the reference area is the frontal area, ie looking from the front, project the outline of what you see on a sheet, that's the frontal area. For planes, we generally use the projected wing area. This is due to the fact that lift is the main force of interest for planes. The wing area is usually way bigger than the frontal area, making the drag coefficient really low, lower than if using the frontal area.
- i suppose you used the frontal area for the spaceships. For the p38, the reference area is 30-ish m^2. The frontal area woul be in the order of 10 m^2 (i could not find sources quickly but considering the triple.fuselage as 3 squares of 2m side seems to be a generous approximation for example, i'd expect the frontal area to be lower)
Yay Glenn Research Center reference - hurray for NASA in Cleveland, OH! 💫
Aerodynamics is the way objects move through air and there is no air in space.
Assuming that they fly mostly in space, does their design matter as much?
Along with this update it would be interesting to see a part two covering dedicated Aircraft in Star Wars. The T16 Skyhooper, T47 Airspeeder, V wing Airspeeder (Not to be confused with the V wing), Cloud Car, TIE Striker, XJ6 Airspeeder (Or any of the other Coruscant speeders) Anything actually designed for flying in the atmosphere. Pod racers and Speeder bikes would be fun too.
always incredible videos, thanks!