Since you are working on the Xi'an Scout, which from its initial concept had a set of movable thrusters, can you update us on the technology development to support this, as well as any effect it might have on other ships with rotating or otherwise articulating main thrusters? Specifically any comments on the Cutlass, the Freelancer, and the Reliant, would be deeply appreciated!asked by Far-seeker

Yes. We can start to talk about that. just to start on a few of the comments about the Xi'an Scout which i'm currently implementing for the hangar ready, in the hangar.The actual name of the vehicle is the Aopoa Khartu Al. It is the manufacturer Aopoa's conversion of the Xi'an scout for human use. It currently has a single seat and no ejection capabilities. I just want to put that out there. We decided that for a light fighter of this size the current single seat arrangement worked best for it. In the future we may have a variant of perhaps another Aopoa manufactured seat that has multiple seats but the current iteration of the Khartu Al is single seater.The thruster questions on here. Yes, the Khartu Al will have four articulated thrusters. The thrusters themselves will orient themselves to actually be able to complete a turn a turn up to ninety degrees for the outer most axes. Each of the thrusters themselves will include the retro thrusters in the front so they'll be dual sided thrusters which will greatly allow the Khartu Al to have a lot of maneuverability so that the main thrusters can actually contribute to horizontal and vertical thrust as well.

Basically it's vectored thrusting.

Right. The way we're going to do this, we're going to allow the main thrusters to contribute to sideways thrust without actually animating them as quickly as they need to provide that thrust. One issue what we had with the Cutlass, that we still currently have with the Cutlass. Is that having the large thrusters provide thrust in the actual vector that are facing makes the thrusters so that they're really floppy and so from the rear, when the Cutlass is flying should we provide any type of vertical thrust to provide stability for the ship.We found that, they're simply too floppy and it just looks awful. So the way to do this is to provide that thrust and actually throttle the, speed at which they rotate so that will have a ship that has this type of nice, floaty motion without having four long wings that simply flap in the wind which will make it look awful. So we're still developing that and we will of course have that available for the engine and for future ships so that, that will become available. In the near time, we're considering making the Cutlass thrusters only rotate for VTOL.The same is maybe true of the Freelancer that way they still will have joint rotation without that weird floppy animation. Some other technology we will need to develop, the Khartu Al is one of the first ships that will have a landing and flying mode, which are vastly different. you'll notice it is very folded up when it's landed and will expand out like a flower when it's in flight mode. The same will be true for the Reliant.So what we'll do is, we'll create states for the ship; landed or in freeflight that way the thrusters know how they're going to behave and will allow things like; turning them off when it's in landed mode or for the Reliant because of the vertical orientation of them. We will know how these thrusters are supposed to affect the ship because of those two states that the ship is in.

Yeah, how does something like... we have our Flight Engineer: John Pritchett, who works on the ICFS and SCM how would does this change what he needs to do as far as flight controls are concerned.

That's a great question! We would need to discuss with him how we would need to signal the ship, so that it knows which orientation its in. I think that's a simple variable in the ship will determine when it's not in landed mode or when it's in flight mode and then John can then, recalculate what the actual thrust from each of the thrusters, needs to generate in order to maintain proper flight based on that orientation of the ship.

That is a mouthful!

It's a complicated ship!