baen.com
>Technology had dragged the tank to the brink of abandonment. Not surprisingly, it was technology again which brought the panzers back. The primary breakthrough was the development of portable fusion power plants. Just as the gasoline engine with its high horsepower-to-weight ratio had been necessary before the first tanks could take the field, so the fusion unit's almost limitless output was required to move the mass which made the new supertanks viable. Fusion units were bulky and moderately heavy themselves, but loads could be increased on a fusion-powered chassis with almost no degradation of performance. Armor became thick—and thicker. With the whole galaxy available as a source of ores, iridium replaced the less effective steels and ceramics without regard for weight.
>The air-cushion principle is a very simple one. Fans fill the plenum chamber, a solid-skirted box under a vehicle, with air under pressure. To escape, the air must lift the edges of the skirts off the ground—and with the skirts, the whole vehicle rises. Fans tilt with the velocity and angle of attack of the blades determining the amount and direction of thrust. The vehicle skims over surfaces it does not touch.
>On tanks and combat cars, the lift was provided by batteries of fans mounted on the roof of the plenum chamber. Each fan had its own armored nacelle. Mines could still do considerable damage; but while a single broken track block would deadline a tracked vehicle, a wrecked fan only made a blower a little more sluggish.
Why aren't hovertanks a thing?
Well a 30mm cannon slows down a fucking jet, explain how throwing a shell that much larger doesn't faze a floating fart pillow with little or no forward thrust, Dr. Science.
The kind of speed a propeller would have to attain to maintain such a heavy vehicle would be monstrous. Can you imagine how LOUD it would be?
Just spitballing here, but the easiest way would be to use the fusion power to heat atmosphere as reaction mass in thermal turbofans.
But that's just lift, you're gonna need some method to control linear and rotational motion, and that necessitates fast response time on changes to thrust vector.
This is very hard to do with turbocompression engines.
You can have proper armor or a hover tank. Not both.
Agreed. Spandexfags deserve to face the might of the terran republic.
This sounds like something Iran would be into
>checks out
Boner achieved. Hammer’s Slammers was my childhood introduction to hard SF.
Turbofans or other jets could do it now, no fusion required. Bury the engines deep in the hull, use a network of thrust cells already developed for other hovercraft. Or use a Pegasus from a Hawker Harrier.
>mission killed by a single bullet, or maybe some kind of large nail
Aren't the skirts of even civilian hovercraft made out of kelvar, or something?