Thrust Calculator

Ship & Destination

Enter the mass you are lifting and the well you are lifting it out of. Hovering is the easy half — the climb is where ships die.

Lift Thrusters

Count only your down-facing thrusters — they are the only ones fighting gravity on the way up. Thruster mass is added to your ship mass automatically, so enter your hull mass above without it if you are designing from scratch.

Verdict

Thrust vs Altitude

Stacked bands are the thrust each type actually delivers at that height. The amber line is the thrust you need to hold your ship up. Where the line rises above the stack, you stop climbing.

Net acceleration

Thrust minus weight, per kilogram. Below the zero line you are falling.

Lift capacity

The heaviest total mass you could be holding up at each height. The cyan line is where you actually are — the gap above it is your headroom, and the narrowest point of that gap is what caps your payload.

Altitude breakdown — density, gravity and per-type thrust

Air density falls linearly from the planet's surface density to zero at its density ceiling. Every thruster reads that one density value and applies its own curve to it — that indirection is what creates the stall band.

Data profile — thruster stats, curves and planets

Vanilla ships read-only. Duplicate it to correct a number after a Keen rebalance or to add modded thrusters, then export the profile to share it or move it between machines.

Thruster curves

Effectiveness interpolates linearly between these two air-density points. Atmospheric runs 0.3 → 1.0 density for 0 → 100% thrust; ion runs the other way. These four numbers define the entire stall behaviour.

Thrusters

Force in newtons, mass in kg. Draw is MW for electric thrusters and L/s of hydrogen for hydrogen thrusters.

Planets

Density ceiling is the altitude where air density hits zero. If your atmospheric thrusters cut out at a different height than this tool predicts, that is the one number to correct — everything else follows from it.