Where do we want to go with atmospheric flight? What's your vision of atmospheric flight, in an ideal world?
TL;DRThe goal is atmospheric flight that feels distinct from space flight, closer to how planes fly but shaped by spaceship design, as a best guess at what realistic flight might be like far in the future.
I want this to get to something that feels more different. Right now, the atmospheric flight is space flight, but with this extra thing pushing on your ship. And we want to get it to more like how real planes fly, but with differences that are caused by how spaceships are designed. So for a lot of ships, they're not very aerodynamic, and so the way that they fly with pretty strong thrusters, even if it was perfectly realistic, it's still not how a plane would actually fly. And we want to try and capture that, so that if you fly other plane games or you have some experience with how planes fly, you will realize that, oh, I can see how this is working, but it's a whole different experience because of how this ship works. And that's the experience that we want: an interesting, deep aerodynamic model that's something new, that seems like it would be the most realistic outcome, given the way the ships are designed.
Realistic by today's standards, but then 940 years advanced in the future through the additional technology.
I say realistic, but it's our guess at what realistic flight might be like in 900 years. That's really what it is. Because nobody's flown a spaceship 900 years in the future in the atmosphere.