Drop Pods: When it's not enough to fire bullets, missiles and bombs at a problem. they fire battle crazed lunatics that want to bite your face off and THEY fire bullets, missiles and bombs at the problem.
Proto pods like Starship troopers are probably the most realistic. They are more reentry pods, burning up around the trooper during reentry and creating chaff that messes up anti air systems, while the armored troopers, using their boosters and parachutes to actually land safely.
Sounds similar to mech cocoons from battletech. The cocoon takes all the reentry and sheds off while the mech decelerate down with either built in or strapped on one shot jump jets.
These would be the next RL evolution from paratroops. Much better thought out than other methods. The movies of Starship Troopers would've been much better if they had included the power suits from the book...not to mention everything else that was hacked out...bunch of hacks!
I think it was the Gemini ejection seats that NASA was developing, had inflatable reentry bags for the astronauts. Apparently it would be filled with an expandable foam that would albate, then parachute down.
HellDivers players: _"OMG these pods are so intense, it even killed a charger once!"_ Planetside Vets: _"Meh, ours used to take out a whole Sky-Whale"_
i always preferred using galaxy's AS droppods. a whole company of light assault with each person in a galaxy slamming them into any enemy they can spot and jumping out at the last second to jetpack over the impact point and rain some extra explosives just to be sure. its one of those "60% of the time it works every time" tactics but it will always leave an impression.
Besides the sheer cool factor of 40k's drop pods that don't need to slow down because space marines are just that tough, they are the coolest implementation of drop pods I've seen in any media.
@@alicorn3924 Specifically there's a 6 part 1988 OVA produced by Sunrise using a refined version of the Studio Nue Suit Design that was commissioned in the late 1970s for the Japanese localization of the novel. It has never been legally licensed, but it has been fansubbed. You can find it on youtube.
@@quarkedbutt3957 right you are. But Verhoeven, good as he is, doesn't understand the source material. I get that Heinlein is deeply divisive, but Starship Troopers is rather easy to understand. It's definitely a far cry from Stranger in a Strange World.
I like how Starship Troopers novel uses a series of parachutes that break away to slow down with explanations on the timing to avoid being a easy target or pancaked on impact
You think drop pods are a crazy concept, but if you really think about it, the early space capsules were essentially one to three man drop pods. Granted, yes, the capsule initially get into orbit by riding on a rocket. The Soyuz pod for the ISS is/was a three-person drop pod that pulls double duty as an escape pod. In a shtf scenario that thing only goes one direction, down.
It is the space version of humans using an escape and survival tool (i.e. parachutes) in order to go into battle (i.e. paratroopers). Drop pods are basically special purpose escape pods.
TBC Yes, I understand that capsules are for escaping from danger, and drop pods are for escaping from safety. Two different intended purposes. But mechanically more or less the same. And as crazy an idea as it seems we've definitely done crazier s*** in real life. I can't help but feel that should humanity ever be in a point of space warfare drop troopers are just going to be as regular as airborne or Halo (high altitude [drop] low opening [parachute]).
Battletech mech drops are interesting. An ablative heat shield to get you down into the lower atmosphere. Then they break up and act as chaff, leaving a mech with extra jump jets and or more fuel in a back pack to get the Delta V down. But the break up stage seems to have enough drag to slow down a lot.
There's a good part in one of the Black Thorn's novels where they do a real good description of an orbital drop. Any Mech that doesn't have built-in Jump jets gets some huge bolt on rockets. If I remember right, the pods also have parachutes, but they only last long enough to get below Terminal velocity before they cut away. Then pray your Jump Jets have enough fuel for a (somewhat) soft landing.
You mean Heinlein's Starship Trooper Droppods, which FASA copy-pasted in their fluff. In turn the co-creator of Battletech, worked on the turn based Battletech game which decided to depict them as WH40k style instead.
As others have mentioned, Heinlein's Starship Troopers was one of (if not the) first. Power armoured troops are literally *fired* out of their carrier along with a myriad of dummy pods. Some immediately scream a high threat signal on entering orbit, others burst in to showers of chaff at varying altitudes. The ones with the troopers in are covered in an ablative thermal layer for re-entry, then they jettison an outer layer to act as chaff and shed some velocity, at least two chutes are used to bring them down to a survivable velocity (one of which simply makes sure they're the right way up) and then they use the suit jets to land. Best, most well thought out implementation ever.
"Inertia is for cowards! I will face-tank this planet and there's nothing you can do to stop me! My forehead is my shield!" -Some Bane-of-All-Crayon's Space Marine (probably)
for the halo drop pod, if you calculate the pod terminal velocity and subtract the time it take to come to a full stop ( counting the retro rocket and the hard landing in it), the highest g force the occupant take is around 20 G. the human body in a sitting position can tolerate 25 G for a bit more that a second ( a aircraft ejection seat can go up to 25 G)
Fair point, on the other hand, pilots only get a certain number of those before they are perma-grounded, at least for the navy. And the general consensus seems to be that ejecting is probably more enjoyable than fiery death, but not by much.
Well there's also the other option based on what we've already done with Fusion technology: Extremely powerful capacitors enable an anti gravity field for a second or two which changes where all G-forces are pulling inside of the pod
halo also has that gel layer spartans use and CHeif used more than once to do a almost orbital drop..... without a pod. so perhaps using something like that to reduce the g-forces like how a car has a crumple zone could lessen the impact further, put it on the bottom of the drop pod They're not getting back up anyway so why not use a crumple zone on the bottom of the pod to lessen impact even more?
Almost unrelated to the video, but you mentioned the Star Trek transporter and this fun tidbit fits the theme of the channel. The Star Trek transporter exists for one sole reason: The model for the shuttle wasn't done yet, and they couldn't wait any longer. The SFX crew asked Gene what to do, and he said, "Just make them appear there." If you ever wondered why TOS mostly used the shuttle instead of the transporter after the first few episodes, that's why. Teleportation was never part of the original plan for the series. Later on, they added McCoy's fear of the transporter to explain why they used the shuttle (might have had to wait until The Motion Picture for that, I don't remember if it came up during the series proper), but that was a use of narrative to explain decisions forced by out-of-universe factors. If the shuttlecraft model had been ready in time, the transporter would not exist.
Back in 5th edition 40k, I had a drop pod army. Lots of dreadnoughts, marines and land speeders. You could own the battlefield, but once down you were down so had to play aggressively. A hilarious tactic I used against horde armies was to deploy the infantry on the field and use the drop pods to fence in the enemy. If they weren’t jump troops, the enemy would probably would lose a 2+ turns of movement whilst you kept your distance and gunned the enemy.
The Anime Genocide organ had a gliding drop pod that would act like a guide missiles. Pop Parachutes to slow down, use legs to catch it self and on each legs where machine guns that would clear the area directly under the pod and once landed clear the area with more machine fire before releasing the troops in side.
@minimurder2832 I mean, you ever wonder if ODST pods acted like the Genocide organ pods. I'm pretty sure a lot of Covenant would be killed before they got a chance to fight their opponents. Then again, that would probably fit better in 40k since they already do pretty crazy stuff like that.
@minimurder2832 Same, the method of construction was extremely interesting, if a bit heavy-handed on the morality play aspect (slave kids processing hunted dolphins for military hardware, wuuuuuut?)
If you absolutely need to ensure that SOMEBODY gets to the surface, drop pods are actually far more reliable than drop ships or shuttles. Sort of like cluster munitions, the point is being incredibly difficult to intercept. As for survivability, it's actually not unreasonable to survive a drop pod landing. Realistically, they would use a classic Kerbal Space Program technique commonly referred to as the "suicide burn", which is where you only have enough fuel to slow down to survivable speed if you wait until the last second before you turn your thrusters to maximum. This makes sure you aren't easy to shoot down while darting into the gravity well, but also that you don't land at full speed and get vaporized. Performing this technique with a pod that hasn't been calibrated to the exact gravity and atmosphere of the planet or moon in question would involve significant losses even if you aren't getting shot at, of course.
It gets even more interesting if we look at it from current top end tech. The best AA systems like the Iron dome are able to calculate the impact site so that they don't have to waste rounds targeting munitions that won't hit anything. So if you mix drop pods in with an orbital barrage having the drop pods land in open areas or just short of the target these systems will ignore them and prioritise the munitions.
I've always assumed that most droppods have some sort of shock absorption system or use inertial dampers. Most sci-fi factions tend to have some sort of artificial gravity tech anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Covenant use some sorta stasis field in their pods. I know in one of the books it's mentioned their life pods have them when one pod going rocketing around a hanger, but the crew inside were still fine. So that's another option if somewhat rarer. Btw, would you consider doing a video on the drop pod's cousin? The boarding torpedo. Both operate on sorta the same concept, but boarding torpedo aren't normally single man, almost always carry squads and have the additional minor hurdle of boring through God damn space ship hulls.
Uh no you are surrounded by a fluid an amniotic fluid analogue that thickens into a hard gel upon hard impact (thereby protecting the occupant) and after impact roughly 6 seconds later the gel goes back to a fluid state and boils away when the pod door is blown off.
I’d assume that the ODSTs use a less reactive form of the hydrostatic gel the Mjolnir armor uses as a shock buffer. It doesn’t need to be nearly as reactive as the armor requires, and doesn’t have to worry about crushing a human since the gel layer would be cushioning the impact zones of a SOEIV pod.
the ODST pods have rollercoaster harnesses for the troopers. the pods are equipped with airbrakes and rocket powered drag chute combo (later being just rocket chutes), and if need for relocation after landing the pods are equipped with limited powered rockets for short jumps.
Of all the drop pods I've seen in sci-fi, I think the type depicted in Starship Troopers the book are the coolest and most reasonably designed as they're only meant to get you through re-entry and then burst open, as the mobile infantry inside them make rest of the way down with parachutes. Using the falling debris as decoys.
The granddaddy of them all. I love that passage where he tells you how drops work, explaining what Johnny is seeing, what the ground is seeing all while building the anticipation of the first real look at combat of the story. Easily in my top ten for books I never get tired of.
IIRC Battletech's 'Mech drop pods are ablative, disposable pods which use drag chutes to decelerate and rely on the 'Mech's crash couch, harness, and innate robustness to keep the pilot alive upon impact. The alternative is a low altitude podless drop using jump jets or a detachable jump pack.
I remember a proposed method to evacuate a low orbit space station like the ISS, it was essentially jumping out of the airlock with a space suit and basically a parachute, and just fall like 300k feet from orbit, somehow the falling astronaut doesn't build up enough speed to be burned by the atmosphere and the parachute automatically opens at like 5k feet. It was so outrageous that it would make sense to work.
@@Firesgone I remember it, Felix Baumgartner, he was supposed to jump from about half the low orbit or so, but he had to bail out at like two thirds of the height because the globes his capsule was suspended started to fail or something. Still something to admire, not a thing you see every day.
I think by wearing heavy armor as you jumped out in the atmosphere, with dummy decoys followed suit in your descend. Your armor break apart during or after landing and your decoys would serve to concealed your real numbers. It would also self destruct after landing to further making it harder to tell.
The speed isn't built up from falling. The speed is already there by the mere fact that you're in orbit(7.66km/s). If you want to get out of orbit you have to cancel that velocity. To do that, you need a rocket engine and you need to fire a lot and fast to get that velocity down to a survivable rate in a quick enough time. At that point, just use a capsule. You need the rocket anyway, and with a capsule you don't need to slow down as much. The redbull thing: that was a capsule with a balloon attached. There was no lateral component. That was basically just a very high altitude skydive. It cannot be compared to actual re-entry.
The Drop pods in David Weber's "Path of Fury" is my favorite. The Pods carry one power armor troop in each. The pod never reaches the ground, at some point ion the entry the troop deploy from the pod to a high-tech parachute while the pod acts as and deploys decoys.
Battletech also has drop pods for mechs on Commando raids. The gist is a cocoon that burns layers away on its way down. Also how you get to the ground intact, the mechs fire jumpjets at altitude to burn speed. If you don't have jumpjets? No problem! They strap one time use models that fall off jn landing! Just time the burn carefully or your tech chief will kill you if the fall didnt
In battletech drop pods are used in another scenario as well, securing landing zones. Losing a few mechs is no where near as bad as losing a whole dropship in a failed landing.
I tend toward a hybridized form of Drop Pod specifically intended to get the advanced units past the most dangerous part of planetary assault. Reentry! Power Armored Infantry and Combat Mechs are loaded in and deployed in a concentrated pattern toward the intended landing Zone. made of ablative coated light metals and rigged to split apart once atmospheric entry has been completed. upon opening, the shed "petals" form a sort of Chaff overwhelming ground sensors as to what is threat and what is scrap. this also applies toward aerospace interceptors. all those pieces falling make entire cubic kilometers of atmosphere a "NO Zone" of deadly as any one of those bits hitting your plane will pretty much end any pilot foolish enough to actually fly into that metallic Hailstorm. once released, the Mech or P.A. Infantry descend using Jump Jets/Retro Booster packs or the tried and tested disposable Parachute to make actual landfall and form up. my pods don't actually fall "Straight Down" but at a steep angle so when the pods break apart releasing their deadly payloads, the spent bits further slow via Atmospheric Resistance and fall short of the actual LZ where everyone else is touching down so friendly units don't have to worry about getting splattered by a chunk of spent Pod. in addition my Drop Pods have escorting Fighters to make sure they are not molested by hostile aircraft. these interceptors descend ahead of and around the Drop Corridor engaging any hostiles and keeping them busy somewhere else. once the LZ is secured sufficiently, the bigger Dropships and landers arrive bringing down those units incapable of orbital drop.
Its funny to me that Heinlein, who most people attribute with coming up with Drop Pods *(in the 1950's), conceived of them as ablating layers during the drop, specifically designed to create radar ghosts that mimic the main pod and acting as a sacrificial decoy to flak and AAMs during the decent. Also, that they had heavy thrusters to do a terminal breaking maneuver that only slowed the pod enough to keep the occupant from "splatting" on impact. He really put alot of thought into the practical application of them as a plausible military transport system.
I think the description of mech droppods in battletech is the most believable to me. High ejection, narrow glidepath, suicide burn, ejection miles above ground and then use additional thrusters attached to the mech or its jumpjets to land.
I really liked the Drop Gel used by the Police Force in the "Final Fantasy Movie" - not a drop pod, but an interesting idea to consider dropping 'giant orbies full of space marines' lol
I am running a sci-fi pen and paper game (phase world) where the party has found ancient warships equipped with drop pod fabricators / launchers. They were built for droids to use, but they can be used by organics after a player invented a small contra-gravity unit for them. It projects a field inside the pod which protects the occupants from the descent and impact.
Honestly, the most believable drop pod explanation I found is from the channel Installation 00. His work is awesome, he uses material science to explain the fun, wacky setting of Halo. Definitely recommend.
I wrote a orbital secret agents drop pod insertion in a novel I tried to write years ago avoided most of the issues with drop pods by pretending to be a meteor and using an ablative outershell to burn up and bleed speed on atmospheric entry revealing a stealth glider core that delivered the agent and their gear into the ocean close to a pick up location.
Drop pods play the numbers game: lose a shuttle or a drop ship and you’ve lost anywhere from a squad to a platoon. Almost the same amount of munitions would needed to bring down just a few pods, leaving half a squad left. “The cruel calculus of war” -Garrus
In Halo Legends, an ODST drop pod actually lands in a swamp and the ODST couldn't get out. He needed a Spartan to drag the pod out of the swamp for him.
Drop Pods was popularized by the Novel Starship Troopers which was an influence towards the Sci-fi Genre that was created by Robert E, Heinlein during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Many Famous Sci-fi Series like Halo, W40k, Starcraft, Doom, and Even Helldivers took alot of inspiration from the Original Grand daddy of Sci-fi Story.
Just got me thinking and I remember a Sci-Fi movie / show ( can’t remember) that dropped a gelatinous cube that the soldier/trooper drops into to breaks their fall , then dissipates
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda has something that straddles the line between drop pod and drop ship: The Lancer Drop Pod. One-person, lightly armored pod with enough engines to re-enter safely (and return to orbit), light weapons to assist in clearing out the LZ, but lacking the range or maneuverability to do anything more.
I'll add Battletech also has drop pods for its mechs. Nothing says "assault landing" like a 10-meter tall mech coming down in a ablative cocoon directly from orbit.
There are a few design considerations that could make it possible. First off there where military acceleration/deceleration studies in the cold war where they actually strapped men to rockets on chairs which brought up some interesting results. If you turn the chair around, facing same way as the rocket nozel, the rider can withstand about three times more deceleration than facing forward. Another thing, and this done by nascar, to have restraining harness that restricts the neck and head moving, Much of the deceleration trauma is due to a whiplash effect that causes the front plate of the skull to try to separate from the head. How the shock wave of a speed landing is distributed is also important. The human is actually capable of surviving a terminal velocity, providing the fall correctly of course. Thus distribution of force is key to a successful deployment. Another technology thats actually used right now, by the us military in particular is honey combed cardboard shock absorbers that shave of a couple Gs on an airdrop keeping supplies safe. While theres not so much "wow" factor just remember thats just paper, imagine what aluminum or some other strong and springy material can do. The seating arrangement should also promote an even distribution of of energy and how quickly the shock is transfered, ideally around the pod more than the contents are important engineering challenges.
Also chiming in to endorse the Mobile Infantry from the Starship Troopers novels. I'm not sure if it was the first use of it, but it was definitely one of the earlier uses of the concept in a story. The pods didn't make it to the surface except as chaff, I guess. They were there to get a power armor equipped MI deep enough to deploy a parachute and I think the suits had thrusters that could assist on the landing as well.
There are some drop pod scenes in fiction where the whole sky is overloaded with targets and the super troopers ride in behind and with the fun to bring the pain
LOL... this video was very entertaining. I have to confess, I designed the drop pads for ExoSquad , the animated sci-fi TV series, used to delivery Jumptroops. I'll have find an episode clip to post to my UA-cam page. Thanks again.
The Helldivers drop pod is probably the most scientifically safe one. It doesnt just slam into the ground, but instead drills into the ground to slow the impact. And I think some like in the novel Starship Troopers uses entry thrusters to slow the descent or a parachute breifly.
Two things I have noticed from a hell divers pod is that the pod is designed to use the ground as an inherent shock absorber, and probably a double hull to protect the occupant. The other is that the user takes the impact standing up rather sitting down or facing the impact direction which totally changes how G force is recieved.
@@eddapultstab2078 That's what I'm saying. It's probably the most realistic drop pod and itself being heavily influenced by Starship Troopers, it makes sense since iirc thats how Mobile Infantry troopers would be in their pods too, standing in the pod.
I'd argue that if you want a stealth insertion, it's better to use a some sort of stealth-shuttle, than a thing that burns as a plasmsa ball in atmosphere. Where drop pods are actually be useful, is full on assault operations, you first drop some 'elite' units, that clear out neares surface-to-air and surface-to-orbit installations and prepare a beachhead, then use conventional dropships to land the bulk of assault force.
I remember playing Halo 2 as a kid and it was one of the first times I looked at something like the ODST pods and thought "hmm. I can't imagine that being very practical." It was also one of the first and few times I said to myself "you know what, fuck it. It's cool enough that I don't care."
I have a sci-fi fantasy world that I keep failing to actually literally write down with a specific alien race that used "drop pods" kind of. Basically they have antifreeze blood like a species of frog (wood frog) because of this they are the only species that can Cryo sleep their people. In their spaceship I had the Cryo sleep pods double as escape pods like in the aliens movie because of this when they are frozen it is in a Jell-O kind like goo (kind of like the inside of some ice pack) for the purpose of softening impact. Granting the occupants the ability to survive rough landings which leads to military personnel using them as drop pods instead of slowing down they'll actually meant to accelerate with the intention of killing anyone nearby basically the occupants are literally free floating inside the goo and the interior of the pod is design to deflect the viscous liquid and occupants up and down the container in a circle motion until they slow down and then defrost that is why the military one goes faster, to essentially roleplay as the meteor that struck Canada
The drop ship from Aliens is still one of the best ways to do it. From orbit fly down under power, drop of an APC then provide close air support, then reverse the process once you are done.
I’d be impressed if a scifi work mentioned tech to simulate suspension in a fluid to cancel out the feeling of acceleration for an occupant. What I’m talking about is portrayed in an experiment where a balloon is put in a centrifuge. When unsupported, it deforms under acceleration. But placed in a water-filled flask, it takes the acceleration without squishing.
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the Lancer TTRPG talks about crash couches (more for emergency sublight jumps to escape danger) that utilize some kind of fluid mechanics
In my own pod capable universe i used them generally for ship boarding, in those cases pods are basically a grenade with an egg in their core, your spaceship passes close enough to the target ship and burst fires them into any CIWS they have just fast enough to not give it enough time to destroy the pod, tactically usually there are decoy pods going in ahead of the file, soaking up the damage, bursting into shard and cluttering the sensors point zero some seconds before troop carriers come through, inside the inner egg, your augmented trooper floating in a none newtonic liquid and their bodies full of a less toxic version of it come through, almost at the speed of a subsonic ASM on its final leg, bash into the target superstructure and let the friction deal with breaking, outer pod explodes to clear a landing zone for them, carrier liquid vaporises in room pressure or the vacuum if the target lack proper damage control equipment, and so does the one injected into their system, through respiration, it will take about half an hour under duress or a bit over one in calm condition, but it's not anymore toxic than most of the junk food a trooper gulps on a daily basis... For planet entry i drove the way sensei Heinlein decided to go, the purpose of pod is not to land you through enemy anti orbital fire, it is there to protect you from burning to fine space duat at reentry until you are slow "enough" to leave the pod rather safely, i quote " what kind of idiot will wish to stay in a pod a second longer, what do you think a radar can pick up easier, a metal coffin the size of your dad's delivery van, or a single dude..." the pod itself peels off and shatters and creates a lot of debris to clutter the sensors looking up for target, there is also electronic countermeasures and decoy pods dropped ahead of the actual troops in the case of direct combat entry, the 8nfilteration pods do what any good honest mini meteor does, the trooper at the end just leaves the pod and super HALO deploys into the AO... and this HALO is the actual military term of it for High Altitude jump and Low Opening of chute method of troop deployment... Just as the drill sergeant said:" remember son, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at its end..."
I see many Starship Troopers references, remember shot out, not just dropped! If you go to vehicles, FASA's old mech drop. Like Troopers it disintegrates on the way down. Fine slowing by jump jet, strapped on if mech doesn't normally have them.
I'm a bit late but in case nobody mentioned it the ODST suits have a fluid pressure system in the legs that allows them to survive jumps like the Rookie. I would imagine this was intentional seeing as there's a fair chance the average drop pod ends up in as precarious a position as his.
Honorable mention: Gundam. Gundam drop pods are meant to deploy mobile suits into atmo, not to the surface. They open mid air, and the mechs then deploy mid air. Theyre only meant to get the mech through reentry. The mech itself handles the descent.
ODST SOEIV Pods are made with a crash and crumple cage and with a lot of shock absorption built into the crash cage and the underside of the pod. Retro-rockets like Space-X's powered landing of the Falcon 9 are actually fired on the landing sequence after the chute. Thing about the chute is that its a bigger version of the Mk.82 Snake-eye 500lb Bomb's 4 petal chute that slowed down the bomb and kept it in the air a little bit longer to allow for fighter-bombers to get away from the blast radius better. Not to mention that the landing sequence is similar to that of the one more recently developed for NASA rovers on Mars. In the lore the ODST's deployed originally in "assault shuttles" that only landed and carried a squad; they were found to be vulnerable to AAA fire so the fireteam sized pod like capsule like that in CoD: Advanced Warfare was developed and they similarly had vulnerabilities. So the SOEIV & other HEV pods were developed and made to be one-man so that AAA and orbital defenses couldn't shoot down and eliminate a whole platoon on a mass drop cause they were packed into multi-crew craft. Thus why ODST's took over the paratrooper role for the UNSC.
Thanks for this. I was trying to explain the drop cocoon to my daughter when she used it to insert 100 ton Atlas into a battle. Needless to say, she was wanting to know if there was a way to cut the last-second thrust of the bolt on rockets and attempt to DFA somebody.
My favorite theory about the Helldiver drop-pods is that the reason they embed themselves so deep into the terrain is specifically cuz each one is also filled with a bunch of automated systems for setting up new Super Earth colonial infrastructure and checking for useful resources.
I remember reading a space fiction book (sorry don't remember the name). The troops in drop pods are Time Locked, thus keeping the person safe till the released or the tech was destroyed.
Yes, considering the technology that goes into a drop pod and is usually needed for the occupants to survive the 'landing' you could just build a armoured troop shuttle that can additionally give air cover for the troops or be used as a mobile base and/or medic station. On top of it they can be used to redeploy the troops more quickly.
Traditionally drop pods are a niche attack option. The whole point of it is to literally fall behind enemy lines and reak havoc faster than the enemy can notice and respond to. In that very specific role they make alot of sense as they are literally the fastest option to take advantage of an opening or shore up your defensive line as quick as possible in certain situations. When used outside that there flaws start to immediately show. Like in hell divers, the enemy is always on high alert and always seem ready to drop dump trucks of enemies for even a single soldier, you don't really have the element of surprise, firepower advantage and destroying enemy infrastructure only rewards you with even more brutal responses even swifter than before. Well i geuss there's a reason why they have a 78 percent casualties rate.
I don't know. I find Star Trek transporters conceptually terrifying. Like, how what if the the person being transported isn't actually dying each time and the person coming out the end isn't just essentially a clone with access to the exact same set of memories? With each copy just having its own soul. And then imagine the afterlife like that full of copies? "Which one were you?" "Transporter sequence 346."
Hello Sci. I noted that you only mentioned video game sources for drop pods. I feel this was a mistake, since the best description of the use of drop pods for soldiers was done by Robert Heinlein back in the 60s. Starship Troopers, to be exact. The pod ablates during re-entry to slow the pod, and several drogue chutes are used as well. Finally, the trooper is in a thin pod used mainly to resist air friction at lower than supersonic speeds. This thin pod can be explosively stripped from the soldier, who, then uses 'jump jets' in his backpack and legs to descend to the surface. I have played a LOT of video games over the past 5 decades. And no one has done Heinlein's dropship troopers right. The descent of the trooper in his pod is designed to fill the sky with reflective surfaces to confuse enemy sensors. Giving the soldier the greatest chance to survive his drop to the surface. This is what all those ablative panels were for. First, to slow the 'craft', and second, to fill the sky with debris. Several dozen pods are also launched with 'dummy' cargo, that act in the same manner as the 'manned' pod. Also filling the sky with junk, and eventually just either, slamming into the surface and exploding,, or deploying some mechanized device. Oh, yeah... deployment for the pods is via a 'rail gun' arrangement. And descent is fairly shallow, although the final approach is probably vertical.
From my understanding, the biggest failing of a drop pod is the durability of the cargo. Guns, bot, and other mechanical devices might be air droppable and functional, but humans have finite limits.
I came up with orbital drop tanks in my sci-fi universe. They are autonomous (no squishies) and use rockets to slow down. However, their heat shield fires off before impact, and is designed to clear the LZ by being a bomb.
You missed Battletech drop pods, dropping mechs from space from Warships or Dropships, it's just a shell for the mech to get through the atmosphere then it uses rockets to slow down then breaks open revealing the mech for a rocket assisted landing
ODSTs boots allow them to survive falls from great heights, so they can jump out of Pelicans instead of fast roping down. You can see it in the Halo short promo film they did prior to Halo 5. Also in the games, Marines in general can jump out of pelicans and be fine so it's probably not technology that's exclusive to ODSTs.
Even the Whateley Academy series (which is a Superheroic 'verse rather than Sci-Fi proper, with both magic and explicitly superpower-driven hyper-tech in the mix) has both drop ships and drop pods, though only in small numbers given that they are ludicrously expensive to field and operate. It is mentioned that in 2006 most major nations field about a brigade of drop troopers, as does the Mutant Commission Office, and even some supervillains manage to as well (most notably Dr Diabolik and Lord Paramount). In the Halloween Invasion story, a _private research facility_ (Arkham Research Center) inserts a couple of squads worth into the fight at a critical moment. Note that they tend to refer to any flying troop transport as a 'dropship', even if it isn't meant to go to orbit, so long as it flies by some sort of hyper-tech VTOL propulsion system rather than jets or rotors, but actual orbital dropships do exist in-universe.
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Drop Pods: When it's not enough to fire bullets, missiles and bombs at a problem. they fire battle crazed lunatics that want to bite your face off and THEY fire bullets, missiles and bombs at the problem.
So basically we heard you like bullets so we decided to put more bullets in your bullet so you get more bullets per bullet.
Tactical Tip: Your reinforcements ARE the orbital strike, Helldiver!
Ooorah
@@Der_Dekanter Semper Fi, Mac
Proto pods like Starship troopers are probably the most realistic.
They are more reentry pods, burning up around the trooper during reentry and creating chaff that messes up anti air systems, while the armored troopers, using their boosters and parachutes to actually land safely.
Sounds similar to mech cocoons from battletech. The cocoon takes all the reentry and sheds off while the mech decelerate down with either built in or strapped on one shot jump jets.
These would be the next RL evolution from paratroops. Much better thought out than other methods. The movies of Starship Troopers would've been much better if they had included the power suits from the book...not to mention everything else that was hacked out...bunch of hacks!
I think it was the Gemini ejection seats that NASA was developing, had inflatable reentry bags for the astronauts.
Apparently it would be filled with an expandable foam that would albate, then parachute down.
@@camioincogneato3635if the movie had the powered armor from the book what would they do with the mini nukes?
Meanwhile in 40k, those drop pods *do not* slow down.
HellDivers players: _"OMG these pods are so intense, it even killed a charger once!"_
Planetside Vets: _"Meh, ours used to take out a whole Sky-Whale"_
i always preferred using galaxy's AS droppods. a whole company of light assault with each person in a galaxy slamming them into any enemy they can spot and jumping out at the last second to jetpack over the impact point and rain some extra explosives just to be sure. its one of those "60% of the time it works every time" tactics but it will always leave an impression.
Oh God, i totally forgot about the Skywhales. 😂 maybe i should check back on the Game.
What about the ones from Starship Troopers (the novel and its anime adaptation), that DISINTEGRATE HALFWAY to procure clutter and distract enemy fire?
Besides the sheer cool factor of 40k's drop pods that don't need to slow down because space marines are just that tough, they are the coolest implementation of drop pods I've seen in any media.
Starship Troopers has an anime???
@@alicorn3924 Specifically there's a 6 part 1988 OVA produced by Sunrise using a refined version of the Studio Nue Suit Design that was commissioned in the late 1970s for the Japanese localization of the novel. It has never been legally licensed, but it has been fansubbed. You can find it on youtube.
Oh yeah, from the 70s or 80s@@alicorn3924
@@alicorn3924 It have CG animated movies and series. In Japan those are considered animes.
I love the Drop Pods in The Book Starship Troopers
The OG drop pod! The movie really sucked in that regard.
@@Keiranful especially since we could have had the OG power armor too
@@quarkedbutt3957 right you are. But Verhoeven, good as he is, doesn't understand the source material. I get that Heinlein is deeply divisive, but Starship Troopers is rather easy to understand. It's definitely a far cry from Stranger in a Strange World.
I like how Starship Troopers novel uses a series of parachutes that break away to slow down with explanations on the timing to avoid being a easy target or pancaked on impact
You think drop pods are a crazy concept, but if you really think about it, the early space capsules were essentially one to three man drop pods. Granted, yes, the capsule initially get into orbit by riding on a rocket.
The Soyuz pod for the ISS is/was a three-person drop pod that pulls double duty as an escape pod. In a shtf scenario that thing only goes one direction, down.
It is the space version of humans using an escape and survival tool (i.e. parachutes) in order to go into battle (i.e. paratroopers).
Drop pods are basically special purpose escape pods.
TBC Yes, I understand that capsules are for escaping from danger, and drop pods are for escaping from safety. Two different intended purposes. But mechanically more or less the same.
And as crazy an idea as it seems we've definitely done crazier s*** in real life. I can't help but feel that should humanity ever be in a point of space warfare drop troopers are just going to be as regular as airborne or Halo (high altitude [drop] low opening [parachute]).
Battletech mech drops are interesting. An ablative heat shield to get you down into the lower atmosphere. Then they break up and act as chaff, leaving a mech with extra jump jets and or more fuel in a back pack to get the Delta V down. But the break up stage seems to have enough drag to slow down a lot.
There's a good part in one of the Black Thorn's novels where they do a real good description of an orbital drop. Any Mech that doesn't have built-in Jump jets gets some huge bolt on rockets. If I remember right, the pods also have parachutes, but they only last long enough to get below Terminal velocity before they cut away. Then pray your Jump Jets have enough fuel for a (somewhat) soft landing.
You mean Heinlein's Starship Trooper Droppods, which FASA copy-pasted in their fluff. In turn the co-creator of Battletech, worked on the turn based Battletech game which decided to depict them as WH40k style instead.
"Drop pods is fun! You can watch the ground coming up really really really really fast!"
-Ogryn from Warrior Tier
As others have mentioned, Heinlein's Starship Troopers was one of (if not the) first. Power armoured troops are literally *fired* out of their carrier along with a myriad of dummy pods. Some immediately scream a high threat signal on entering orbit, others burst in to showers of chaff at varying altitudes. The ones with the troopers in are covered in an ablative thermal layer for re-entry, then they jettison an outer layer to act as chaff and shed some velocity, at least two chutes are used to bring them down to a survivable velocity (one of which simply makes sure they're the right way up) and then they use the suit jets to land. Best, most well thought out implementation ever.
"Inertia is for cowards! I will face-tank this planet and there's nothing you can do to stop me! My forehead is my shield!" -Some Bane-of-All-Crayon's Space Marine (probably)
for the halo drop pod, if you calculate the pod terminal velocity and subtract the time it take to come to a full stop ( counting the retro rocket and the hard landing in it), the highest g force the occupant take is around 20 G. the human body in a sitting position can tolerate 25 G for a bit more that a second ( a aircraft ejection seat can go up to 25 G)
So, you say, its possible to build those?
@@julonkrutor4649 i say it is possible to survive the harsh landing
but building the thing is a other story
Fair point, on the other hand, pilots only get a certain number of those before they are perma-grounded, at least for the navy. And the general consensus seems to be that ejecting is probably more enjoyable than fiery death, but not by much.
Well there's also the other option based on what we've already done with Fusion technology: Extremely powerful capacitors enable an anti gravity field for a second or two which changes where all G-forces are pulling inside of the pod
halo also has that gel layer spartans use and CHeif used more than once to do a almost orbital drop..... without a pod. so perhaps using something like that to reduce the g-forces like how a car has a crumple zone could lessen the impact further, put it on the bottom of the drop pod They're not getting back up anyway so why not use a crumple zone on the bottom of the pod to lessen impact even more?
Almost unrelated to the video, but you mentioned the Star Trek transporter and this fun tidbit fits the theme of the channel. The Star Trek transporter exists for one sole reason: The model for the shuttle wasn't done yet, and they couldn't wait any longer. The SFX crew asked Gene what to do, and he said, "Just make them appear there."
If you ever wondered why TOS mostly used the shuttle instead of the transporter after the first few episodes, that's why. Teleportation was never part of the original plan for the series. Later on, they added McCoy's fear of the transporter to explain why they used the shuttle (might have had to wait until The Motion Picture for that, I don't remember if it came up during the series proper), but that was a use of narrative to explain decisions forced by out-of-universe factors.
If the shuttlecraft model had been ready in time, the transporter would not exist.
Back in 5th edition 40k, I had a drop pod army. Lots of dreadnoughts, marines and land speeders.
You could own the battlefield, but once down you were down so had to play aggressively.
A hilarious tactic I used against horde armies was to deploy the infantry on the field and use the drop pods to fence in the enemy. If they weren’t jump troops, the enemy would probably would lose a 2+ turns of movement whilst you kept your distance and gunned the enemy.
The Anime Genocide organ had a gliding drop pod that would act like a guide missiles. Pop Parachutes to slow down, use legs to catch it self and on each legs where machine guns that would clear the area directly under the pod and once landed clear the area with more machine fire before releasing the troops in side.
Was looking around for someone to mention this.
@minimurder2832 I mean, you ever wonder if ODST pods acted like the Genocide organ pods. I'm pretty sure a lot of Covenant would be killed before they got a chance to fight their opponents.
Then again, that would probably fit better in 40k since they already do pretty crazy stuff like that.
@minimurder2832 Same, the method of construction was extremely interesting, if a bit heavy-handed on the morality play aspect (slave kids processing hunted dolphins for military hardware, wuuuuuut?)
"A schoolbus full of crayon eaters" had me chortling.
If you absolutely need to ensure that SOMEBODY gets to the surface, drop pods are actually far more reliable than drop ships or shuttles.
Sort of like cluster munitions, the point is being incredibly difficult to intercept.
As for survivability, it's actually not unreasonable to survive a drop pod landing.
Realistically, they would use a classic Kerbal Space Program technique commonly referred to as the "suicide burn", which is where you only have enough fuel to slow down to survivable speed if you wait until the last second before you turn your thrusters to maximum.
This makes sure you aren't easy to shoot down while darting into the gravity well, but also that you don't land at full speed and get vaporized.
Performing this technique with a pod that hasn't been calibrated to the exact gravity and atmosphere of the planet or moon in question would involve significant losses even if you aren't getting shot at, of course.
Just like in real life, you don't send dropships and shuttles in enemy contested air. The Russian learned this the hard way in Ukraine.
It gets even more interesting if we look at it from current top end tech.
The best AA systems like the Iron dome are able to calculate the impact site so that they don't have to waste rounds targeting munitions that won't hit anything.
So if you mix drop pods in with an orbital barrage having the drop pods land in open areas or just short of the target these systems will ignore them and prioritise the munitions.
I've always assumed that most droppods have some sort of shock absorption system or use inertial dampers. Most sci-fi factions tend to have some sort of artificial gravity tech anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Covenant use some sorta stasis field in their pods. I know in one of the books it's mentioned their life pods have them when one pod going rocketing around a hanger, but the crew inside were still fine. So that's another option if somewhat rarer.
Btw, would you consider doing a video on the drop pod's cousin? The boarding torpedo.
Both operate on sorta the same concept, but boarding torpedo aren't normally single man, almost always carry squads and have the additional minor hurdle of boring through God damn space ship hulls.
I think halo uses grav tech for g management. Considering there's children's games using it it's a safe bet.
Their ships certainly do.
Uh no you are surrounded by a fluid an amniotic fluid analogue that thickens into a hard gel upon hard impact (thereby protecting the occupant) and after impact roughly 6 seconds later the gel goes back to a fluid state and boils away when the pod door is blown off.
I’d assume that the ODSTs use a less reactive form of the hydrostatic gel the Mjolnir armor uses as a shock buffer. It doesn’t need to be nearly as reactive as the armor requires, and doesn’t have to worry about crushing a human since the gel layer would be cushioning the impact zones of a SOEIV pod.
the ODST pods have rollercoaster harnesses for the troopers.
the pods are equipped with airbrakes and rocket powered drag chute combo (later being just rocket chutes), and if need for relocation after landing the pods are equipped with limited powered rockets for short jumps.
Yep...the Pods wouldn't need their own power source either so long as the Batteries and Capacitors inside it were super advanced
Only thing sillier than a drop pod .. is the boarding torpedo in 40K 'lets shoot you into another ship in a big torpedo into the enemy ships hull!'
And if they have dense outer hulls, sir?
We ring their bell corporal.
Boarding breachers in any SCI FI space combat series is silly, especially in where they can control gravity to a room by room basis .
It makes sense for orks because they're crazy and suicidal enough to not care
I feel space marines are rather too valuable to throw away like that lol
@@anorouch 40K space marine torpedoes are the size of today's attack submarines. (To deliver 4 Terminator armor clad marines at most a hundred miles.)
hey they have used those boarding torpedoes as drop pods too. to infiltrate super hardened fortifications lol.
Of all the drop pods I've seen in sci-fi, I think the type depicted in Starship Troopers the book are the coolest and most reasonably designed as they're only meant to get you through re-entry and then burst open, as the mobile infantry inside them make rest of the way down with parachutes. Using the falling debris as decoys.
The granddaddy of them all. I love that passage where he tells you how drops work, explaining what Johnny is seeing, what the ground is seeing all while building the anticipation of the first real look at combat of the story. Easily in my top ten for books I never get tired of.
IIRC Battletech's 'Mech drop pods are ablative, disposable pods which use drag chutes to decelerate and rely on the 'Mech's crash couch, harness, and innate robustness to keep the pilot alive upon impact. The alternative is a low altitude podless drop using jump jets or a detachable jump pack.
I remember a proposed method to evacuate a low orbit space station like the ISS, it was essentially jumping out of the airlock with a space suit and basically a parachute, and just fall like 300k feet from orbit, somehow the falling astronaut doesn't build up enough speed to be burned by the atmosphere and the parachute automatically opens at like 5k feet. It was so outrageous that it would make sense to work.
Red Bull did that with a guy in the 2010s
Of course it's Red Bull, Respect for the owners living life in the hot seat!
@@Firesgone I remember it, Felix Baumgartner, he was supposed to jump from about half the low orbit or so, but he had to bail out at like two thirds of the height because the globes his capsule was suspended started to fail or something. Still something to admire, not a thing you see every day.
I think by wearing heavy armor as you jumped out in the atmosphere, with dummy decoys followed suit in your descend. Your armor break apart during or after landing and your decoys would serve to concealed your real numbers. It would also self destruct after landing to further making it harder to tell.
The speed isn't built up from falling. The speed is already there by the mere fact that you're in orbit(7.66km/s). If you want to get out of orbit you have to cancel that velocity. To do that, you need a rocket engine and you need to fire a lot and fast to get that velocity down to a survivable rate in a quick enough time. At that point, just use a capsule. You need the rocket anyway, and with a capsule you don't need to slow down as much.
The redbull thing: that was a capsule with a balloon attached. There was no lateral component. That was basically just a very high altitude skydive. It cannot be compared to actual re-entry.
The Drop pods in David Weber's "Path of Fury" is my favorite. The Pods carry one power armor troop in each. The pod never reaches the ground, at some point ion the entry the troop deploy from the pod to a high-tech parachute while the pod acts as and deploys decoys.
Ditto!!
I prefer the Stealth Insertion method.
"Planet diving" Just start your hang glider trip from outside the atmosphere.
Battletech also has drop pods for mechs on Commando raids. The gist is a cocoon that burns layers away on its way down. Also how you get to the ground intact, the mechs fire jumpjets at altitude to burn speed. If you don't have jumpjets? No problem! They strap one time use models that fall off jn landing! Just time the burn carefully or your tech chief will kill you if the fall didnt
In battletech drop pods are used in another scenario as well, securing landing zones. Losing a few mechs is no where near as bad as losing a whole dropship in a failed landing.
That's true I forgot that
I tend toward a hybridized form of Drop Pod specifically intended to get the advanced units past the most dangerous part of planetary assault.
Reentry!
Power Armored Infantry and Combat Mechs are loaded in and deployed in a concentrated pattern toward the intended landing Zone.
made of ablative coated light metals and rigged to split apart once atmospheric entry has been completed.
upon opening, the shed "petals" form a sort of Chaff overwhelming ground sensors as to what is threat and what is scrap. this also applies toward aerospace interceptors.
all those pieces falling make entire cubic kilometers of atmosphere a "NO Zone" of deadly as any one of those bits hitting your plane will pretty much end any pilot foolish
enough to actually fly into that metallic Hailstorm.
once released, the Mech or P.A. Infantry descend using Jump Jets/Retro Booster packs or the tried and tested disposable Parachute to make actual landfall and form up.
my pods don't actually fall "Straight Down" but at a steep angle so when the pods break apart releasing their deadly payloads, the spent bits further slow via Atmospheric Resistance and
fall short of the actual LZ where everyone else is touching down so friendly units don't have to worry about getting splattered by a chunk of spent Pod.
in addition
my Drop Pods have escorting Fighters to make sure they are not molested by hostile aircraft. these interceptors descend ahead of and around the Drop Corridor engaging any hostiles
and keeping them busy somewhere else.
once the LZ is secured sufficiently, the bigger Dropships and landers arrive bringing down those units incapable of orbital drop.
i love the Helldiver Drop Pods because they are like the drop pods described in the original Starship Troopers novel
Its funny to me that Heinlein, who most people attribute with coming up with Drop Pods *(in the 1950's), conceived of them as ablating layers during the drop, specifically designed to create radar ghosts that mimic the main pod and acting as a sacrificial decoy to flak and AAMs during the decent. Also, that they had heavy thrusters to do a terminal breaking maneuver that only slowed the pod enough to keep the occupant from "splatting" on impact. He really put alot of thought into the practical application of them as a plausible military transport system.
I think the description of mech droppods in battletech is the most believable to me. High ejection, narrow glidepath, suicide burn, ejection miles above ground and then use additional thrusters attached to the mech or its jumpjets to land.
Planetside 2 still has insane drop pod action. Also a man of culture for playing section 8
I really liked the Drop Gel used by the Police Force in the "Final Fantasy Movie" - not a drop pod, but an interesting idea to consider dropping 'giant orbies full of space marines' lol
First chapter of Starship Troopers, a drop in an MI Capsule in exacting detail.
I am running a sci-fi pen and paper game (phase world) where the party has found ancient warships equipped with drop pod fabricators / launchers. They were built for droids to use, but they can be used by organics after a player invented a small contra-gravity unit for them. It projects a field inside the pod which protects the occupants from the descent and impact.
Honestly, the most believable drop pod explanation I found is from the channel Installation 00. His work is awesome, he uses material science to explain the fun, wacky setting of Halo. Definitely recommend.
"Express elevator to hell, going down!." I know there aren't any in that movie but I feel it applies.
I can't remember which Sci-Fi series used the term but my favourite description of using a drop pod was doing a "Coffin Drop".
"Lawn dart" as a verb is among the best analogs for the practicality of drop pods.
Sounds like a tactical entry for martyrs and forlorn hope.
Gravity makes entering an atmosphere easy, and leaving an atmosphere hard.
I wrote a orbital secret agents drop pod insertion in a novel I tried to write years ago avoided most of the issues with drop pods by pretending to be a meteor and using an ablative outershell to burn up and bleed speed on atmospheric entry revealing a stealth glider core that delivered the agent and their gear into the ocean close to a pick up location.
Drop pods play the numbers game: lose a shuttle or a drop ship and you’ve lost anywhere from a squad to a platoon. Almost the same amount of munitions would needed to bring down just a few pods, leaving half a squad left.
“The cruel calculus of war”
-Garrus
In Halo Legends, an ODST drop pod actually lands in a swamp and the ODST couldn't get out. He needed a Spartan to drag the pod out of the swamp for him.
DRG mention, obligatory rock and stone and we're rich meme added. This is one of the many reasons I love SCI
SKADOOSH!
*TRUMPETS BLAIR*
My favourite, is when it's a two-man Drop and you get the *POW-FWOO!* sound
Drop Pods was popularized by the Novel Starship Troopers which was an influence towards the Sci-fi Genre that was created by Robert E, Heinlein during the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Many Famous Sci-fi Series like Halo, W40k, Starcraft, Doom, and Even Helldivers took alot of inspiration from the Original Grand daddy of Sci-fi Story.
I love how the anime Redline (2009) leans into how crazy drop pods are when JP has to take one down to EUЯPSS.
More people need to see that movie, one of my favorites
There are drop pods in Battletech too.
Fun for big stompy robots or power armor infantry. On an elevator...going down!!!
Drop pod lands in enemy lines, "so you're saying we can attack in any direction."
Ben Prutney made some great music for FTL
Just got me thinking and I remember a Sci-Fi movie / show ( can’t remember) that dropped a gelatinous cube that the soldier/trooper drops into to breaks their fall , then dissipates
that sounds like the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
@@lordhylia5745 I think you’re correct
Drop pods, When the most lethal payload is YOU.
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda has something that straddles the line between drop pod and drop ship: The Lancer Drop Pod. One-person, lightly armored pod with enough engines to re-enter safely (and return to orbit), light weapons to assist in clearing out the LZ, but lacking the range or maneuverability to do anything more.
I'll add Battletech also has drop pods for its mechs. Nothing says "assault landing" like a 10-meter tall mech coming down in a ablative cocoon directly from orbit.
There are a few design considerations that could make it possible. First off there where military acceleration/deceleration studies in the cold war where they actually strapped men to rockets on chairs which brought up some interesting results. If you turn the chair around, facing same way as the rocket nozel, the rider can withstand about three times more deceleration than facing forward. Another thing, and this done by nascar, to have restraining harness that restricts the neck and head moving, Much of the deceleration trauma is due to a whiplash effect that causes the front plate of the skull to try to separate from the head.
How the shock wave of a speed landing is distributed is also important. The human is actually capable of surviving a terminal velocity, providing the fall correctly of course. Thus distribution of force is key to a successful deployment. Another technology thats actually used right now, by the us military in particular is honey combed cardboard shock absorbers that shave of a couple Gs on an airdrop keeping supplies safe. While theres not so much "wow" factor just remember thats just paper, imagine what aluminum or some other strong and springy material can do. The seating arrangement should also promote an even distribution of of energy and how quickly the shock is transfered, ideally around the pod more than the contents are important engineering challenges.
The only thing more balls to the walls is a titanfall. The mech IS the drop pod
Also chiming in to endorse the Mobile Infantry from the Starship Troopers novels. I'm not sure if it was the first use of it, but it was definitely one of the earlier uses of the concept in a story. The pods didn't make it to the surface except as chaff, I guess. They were there to get a power armor equipped MI deep enough to deploy a parachute and I think the suits had thrusters that could assist on the landing as well.
I'd be willing to lay cash those were the first.
@@grayboats7741 I'm not sure. It might've been, but I think Lensmen had things like that. Or maybe that was just powered armor.
There are some drop pod scenes in fiction where the whole sky is overloaded with targets and the super troopers ride in behind and with the fun to bring the pain
LOL... this video was very entertaining. I have to confess, I designed the drop pads for ExoSquad , the animated sci-fi TV series, used to delivery Jumptroops. I'll have find an episode clip to post to my UA-cam page. Thanks again.
I love that show as a kid wish they made a season three really wanted to see the aliens invade. Thanks for your work on the show.
The Helldivers drop pod is probably the most scientifically safe one. It doesnt just slam into the ground, but instead drills into the ground to slow the impact. And I think some like in the novel Starship Troopers uses entry thrusters to slow the descent or a parachute breifly.
Two things I have noticed from a hell divers pod is that the pod is designed to use the ground as an inherent shock absorber, and probably a double hull to protect the occupant. The other is that the user takes the impact standing up rather sitting down or facing the impact direction which totally changes how G force is recieved.
@@eddapultstab2078 That's what I'm saying. It's probably the most realistic drop pod and itself being heavily influenced by Starship Troopers, it makes sense since iirc thats how Mobile Infantry troopers would be in their pods too, standing in the pod.
Drop pods....
Holy hell
I love drop pods!!
Section 8: prejudice mentioned. I loved that game. Was sad when it died
The Section 8 reference made me all warm and fuzzy. That game was awesome!
I'd argue that if you want a stealth insertion, it's better to use a some sort of stealth-shuttle, than a thing that burns as a plasmsa ball in atmosphere.
Where drop pods are actually be useful, is full on assault operations, you first drop some 'elite' units, that clear out neares surface-to-air and surface-to-orbit installations and prepare a beachhead, then use conventional dropships to land the bulk of assault force.
I remember playing Halo 2 as a kid and it was one of the first times I looked at something like the ODST pods and thought "hmm. I can't imagine that being very practical." It was also one of the first and few times I said to myself "you know what, fuck it. It's cool enough that I don't care."
I have a sci-fi fantasy world that I keep failing to actually literally write down with a specific alien race that used "drop pods" kind of. Basically they have antifreeze blood like a species of frog (wood frog) because of this they are the only species that can Cryo sleep their people. In their spaceship I had the Cryo sleep pods double as escape pods like in the aliens movie because of this when they are frozen it is in a Jell-O kind like goo (kind of like the inside of some ice pack) for the purpose of softening impact. Granting the occupants the ability to survive rough landings which leads to military personnel using them as drop pods instead of slowing down they'll actually meant to accelerate with the intention of killing anyone nearby basically the occupants are literally free floating inside the goo and the interior of the pod is design to deflect the viscous liquid and occupants up and down the container in a circle motion until they slow down and then defrost that is why the military one goes faster, to essentially roleplay as the meteor that struck Canada
The drop ship from Aliens is still one of the best ways to do it. From orbit fly down under power, drop of an APC then provide close air support, then reverse the process once you are done.
Chad Section 8 soldier to virgin OSDT: "I face-tank a planet's crust, we are not the same"
I’d be impressed if a scifi work mentioned tech to simulate suspension in a fluid to cancel out the feeling of acceleration for an occupant.
What I’m talking about is portrayed in an experiment where a balloon is put in a centrifuge.
When unsupported, it deforms under acceleration. But placed in a water-filled flask, it takes the acceleration without squishing.
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the Lancer TTRPG talks about crash couches (more for emergency sublight jumps to escape danger) that utilize some kind of fluid mechanics
In my own pod capable universe i used them generally for ship boarding, in those cases pods are basically a grenade with an egg in their core, your spaceship passes close enough to the target ship and burst fires them into any CIWS they have just fast enough to not give it enough time to destroy the pod, tactically usually there are decoy pods going in ahead of the file, soaking up the damage, bursting into shard and cluttering the sensors point zero some seconds before troop carriers come through, inside the inner egg, your augmented trooper floating in a none newtonic liquid and their bodies full of a less toxic version of it come through, almost at the speed of a subsonic ASM on its final leg, bash into the target superstructure and let the friction deal with breaking, outer pod explodes to clear a landing zone for them, carrier liquid vaporises in room pressure or the vacuum if the target lack proper damage control equipment, and so does the one injected into their system, through respiration, it will take about half an hour under duress or a bit over one in calm condition, but it's not anymore toxic than most of the junk food a trooper gulps on a daily basis...
For planet entry i drove the way sensei Heinlein decided to go, the purpose of pod is not to land you through enemy anti orbital fire, it is there to protect you from burning to fine space duat at reentry until you are slow "enough" to leave the pod rather safely, i quote " what kind of idiot will wish to stay in a pod a second longer, what do you think a radar can pick up easier, a metal coffin the size of your dad's delivery van, or a single dude..." the pod itself peels off and shatters and creates a lot of debris to clutter the sensors looking up for target, there is also electronic countermeasures and decoy pods dropped ahead of the actual troops in the case of direct combat entry, the 8nfilteration pods do what any good honest mini meteor does, the trooper at the end just leaves the pod and super HALO deploys into the AO... and this HALO is the actual military term of it for High Altitude jump and Low Opening of chute method of troop deployment...
Just as the drill sergeant said:" remember son, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at its end..."
It Titanfall 1 you can sometimes hear a grunt ask his squad mate if he's a "Drop pod man or a dropship flunky"
I see many Starship Troopers references, remember shot out, not just dropped!
If you go to vehicles, FASA's old mech drop. Like Troopers it disintegrates on the way down. Fine slowing by jump jet, strapped on if mech doesn't normally have them.
I'm a bit late but in case nobody mentioned it the ODST suits have a fluid pressure system in the legs that allows them to survive jumps like the Rookie. I would imagine this was intentional seeing as there's a fair chance the average drop pod ends up in as precarious a position as his.
Honorable mention: Gundam. Gundam drop pods are meant to deploy mobile suits into atmo, not to the surface. They open mid air, and the mechs then deploy mid air. Theyre only meant to get the mech through reentry. The mech itself handles the descent.
ODST SOEIV Pods are made with a crash and crumple cage and with a lot of shock absorption built into the crash cage and the underside of the pod. Retro-rockets like Space-X's powered landing of the Falcon 9 are actually fired on the landing sequence after the chute. Thing about the chute is that its a bigger version of the Mk.82 Snake-eye 500lb Bomb's 4 petal chute that slowed down the bomb and kept it in the air a little bit longer to allow for fighter-bombers to get away from the blast radius better. Not to mention that the landing sequence is similar to that of the one more recently developed for NASA rovers on Mars.
In the lore the ODST's deployed originally in "assault shuttles" that only landed and carried a squad; they were found to be vulnerable to AAA fire so the fireteam sized pod like capsule like that in CoD: Advanced Warfare was developed and they similarly had vulnerabilities. So the SOEIV & other HEV pods were developed and made to be one-man so that AAA and orbital defenses couldn't shoot down and eliminate a whole platoon on a mass drop cause they were packed into multi-crew craft. Thus why ODST's took over the paratrooper role for the UNSC.
we all want to see TitanFall in real life too huh?
I like the Starship Troopers (book variety) of drop pods.
Thanks for this. I was trying to explain the drop cocoon to my daughter when she used it to insert 100 ton Atlas into a battle. Needless to say, she was wanting to know if there was a way to cut the last-second thrust of the bolt on rockets and attempt to DFA somebody.
The 40K weapon pods are great. Door falls open, and the enemy gets a las cannon to the face.
My favorite theory about the Helldiver drop-pods is that the reason they embed themselves so deep into the terrain is specifically cuz each one is also filled with a bunch of automated systems for setting up new Super Earth colonial infrastructure and checking for useful resources.
Cabal. Drop. Pods. They fucking MELT. AFTER. USE.
"Drop pods don't go back up." Never heard of a Dreadclaw, I take it? *Laughs in Chaos Space Marine*
The power armor in section 8 is still my favorite design to this day.
I remember reading a space fiction book (sorry don't remember the name). The troops in drop pods are Time Locked, thus keeping the person safe till the released or the tech was destroyed.
Yes, Section 8 was. I reminisce on it frequently when I'm alone
For the Algorythm!!!
Also: I loved the way you tangentially mentioned DRG and it was a laugh with the model doing the thing^^
6:00 ODST armor has built in fall absorbers in the legs.
Yes, considering the technology that goes into a drop pod and is usually needed for the occupants to survive the 'landing' you could just build a armoured troop shuttle that can additionally give air cover for the troops or be used as a mobile base and/or medic station. On top of it they can be used to redeploy the troops more quickly.
Traditionally drop pods are a niche attack option. The whole point of it is to literally fall behind enemy lines and reak havoc faster than the enemy can notice and respond to. In that very specific role they make alot of sense as they are literally the fastest option to take advantage of an opening or shore up your defensive line as quick as possible in certain situations. When used outside that there flaws start to immediately show. Like in hell divers, the enemy is always on high alert and always seem ready to drop dump trucks of enemies for even a single soldier, you don't really have the element of surprise, firepower advantage and destroying enemy infrastructure only rewards you with even more brutal responses even swifter than before. Well i geuss there's a reason why they have a 78 percent casualties rate.
I don't know. I find Star Trek transporters conceptually terrifying. Like, how what if the the person being transported isn't actually dying each time and the person coming out the end isn't just essentially a clone with access to the exact same set of memories? With each copy just having its own soul.
And then imagine the afterlife like that full of copies? "Which one were you?" "Transporter sequence 346."
Hello Sci.
I noted that you only mentioned video game sources for drop pods. I feel this was a mistake, since the best description of the use of drop pods for soldiers was done by Robert Heinlein back in the 60s. Starship Troopers, to be exact.
The pod ablates during re-entry to slow the pod, and several drogue chutes are used as well. Finally, the trooper is in a thin pod used mainly to resist air friction at lower than supersonic speeds. This thin pod can be explosively stripped from the soldier, who, then uses 'jump jets' in his backpack and legs to descend to the surface.
I have played a LOT of video games over the past 5 decades. And no one has done Heinlein's dropship troopers right.
The descent of the trooper in his pod is designed to fill the sky with reflective surfaces to confuse enemy sensors. Giving the soldier the greatest chance to survive his drop to the surface. This is what all those ablative panels were for. First, to slow the 'craft', and second, to fill the sky with debris. Several dozen pods are also launched with 'dummy' cargo, that act in the same manner as the 'manned' pod. Also filling the sky with junk, and eventually just either, slamming into the surface and exploding,, or deploying some mechanized device.
Oh, yeah... deployment for the pods is via a 'rail gun' arrangement. And descent is fairly shallow, although the final approach is probably vertical.
Drop pods are just paradropping for people who don't like having spines
My Favorite droppods are the original from heinleins stsrship troopers. Why? Tead the book and learn the glory of the frag.
From my understanding, the biggest failing of a drop pod is the durability of the cargo. Guns, bot, and other mechanical devices might be air droppable and functional, but humans have finite limits.
I came up with orbital drop tanks in my sci-fi universe. They are autonomous (no squishies) and use rockets to slow down. However, their heat shield fires off before impact, and is designed to clear the LZ by being a bomb.
You missed Battletech drop pods, dropping mechs from space from Warships or Dropships, it's just a shell for the mech to get through the atmosphere then it uses rockets to slow down then breaks open revealing the mech for a rocket assisted landing
ODSTs boots allow them to survive falls from great heights, so they can jump out of Pelicans instead of fast roping down. You can see it in the Halo short promo film they did prior to Halo 5. Also in the games, Marines in general can jump out of pelicans and be fine so it's probably not technology that's exclusive to ODSTs.
Wow, I remember Section 8. Only played it a little (it was rented) but I loved the cinematics that is started with.
Sheilds and inertial dampeners!
I enjoy all of SCIENCE INSANITY videos
Section 8 is awesome. I would enjoy seeing it talked about more.
Even the Whateley Academy series (which is a Superheroic 'verse rather than Sci-Fi proper, with both magic and explicitly superpower-driven hyper-tech in the mix) has both drop ships and drop pods, though only in small numbers given that they are ludicrously expensive to field and operate. It is mentioned that in 2006 most major nations field about a brigade of drop troopers, as does the Mutant Commission Office, and even some supervillains manage to as well (most notably Dr Diabolik and Lord Paramount). In the Halloween Invasion story, a _private research facility_ (Arkham Research Center) inserts a couple of squads worth into the fight at a critical moment. Note that they tend to refer to any flying troop transport as a 'dropship', even if it isn't meant to go to orbit, so long as it flies by some sort of hyper-tech VTOL propulsion system rather than jets or rotors, but actual orbital dropships do exist in-universe.