> On 14 August 2017 21:51 Grimmund wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> If your ship is hovering a half-meter off the ground, that's a little more
> dicey.
>
> On the other hand, a ship has a lot of mass to move.  That would tend to
> mitigate whatever force load you're getting with simple environmental factors
> like wind.
>
> On the gripping hand, if your ship is hovering, it's maintaining station with
> drives or CG, not friction, and potentially easier for the wind to push around,
> particularly if your stationkeeping software is slow to react.
>
> [snip]
>

Presumably similar solutions to those used for airships (i.e., mooring lines and/or towers) would work, aided by the fact that starships are significantly denser and have massively more thrust available for stationkeeping so are less likely to get blown around and smashed up than the average airship. E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R33-class_airship

(Now picturing the PCs chasing their ship in their air-raft after the ship breaks free of its mooring in high winds and is heading for a nearby locale with lots of tall buildings or deep canyons...)

Also I can imagine that at higher grade downports the pad could be equipped to project a shaped AG field with sufficient gradient that the starship would want to settle into the middle of it in all but the most extreme conditions.  Perhaps with an auxiliary power cable running from the ship so that the ship's fusion reactor can take over in case of a starport power failure or just trigger the ship's AG to kick in.

Greg.

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