I have a pet hypothesis about that. What if the Tardis is hovering somewhere just off space-time, perhaps in the Void, and that what manifests at a certain place and time is nothing more than the disguised airlock poking into real-space like a submarine's sail poking through the arctic ice-pack. (See below.)

Aerodynamics would thus be largely irrelevant, and might explain why the Tardis traveling linearly through space is both feasible and exceptional, and might even help explain why the Tardis was relatively invulnerable in real-time (vs and on the Dalek fleet, for example.)

Attached Thumbnails

 

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

see here
http://www.thedigitalbeat.com/2007/0...elevators.html

I think I remember Voyager flying through Earth's atmosphere in this episode and being shown on the evening news. The ship was caught on video gliding gracefully through the clouds.

Alternatively it was Generations (I think) where Enterprise most certainly does NOT fly. Granted it flew and landed in other times, but that one sticks out as a "not so much" moment. It wasn't meant to fly in that scene for reasons other than not being aerodynamic but...anyway.

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None to speak of

Voyager landed on a planet a few times, too. But the TOS Enterprise was specifically stated to be unable to fly properly in an atmosphere. Also, the budget on Voyager was far higher than the first Star Trek, and special effects were more advanced than during the original series. The saucer-section of Enterprise-D from TNG/Generations was damaged before its crash anyway. 3 different ships, 3 different series, 3 different circumstances.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

RevDoc, I just noticed your avatar. Is that a Matt Mason figure?

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Details, who needs them anyway?... I do remember several Voyager episodes where the whole ship landed on another planet, guess my memory isn't perfect after all.

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None to speak of

There's a whole real-world project devoted to developing ornithopters.

Here is a list of (their) reasons why an ornithopter is a good idea.

1. Improved Efficiency. An airplane propeller is only about 70% efficient. Energy is wasted because some of the aerodynamic force produced on the blade acts to resist the motion of the propeller. In an ornithopter, the downstroke blade resistance provides lift, and we can feather the blade during the upstroke so resistance is minimized. Therefore the ornithopter has potentially higher efficiency than an aircraft with a rotating propeller.

2. More Lift. Flapping wings have some additional ways of producing lift and thrust that aren't available with fixed or rotating airfoils. One is the clap-fling technique, first discovered in insects. By bringing together the wings and then abruptly flinging them apart, a powerful burst of thrust can be produced. Another technique is delayed stall. Flapping wings don't stall as easily as fixed wings, because the cyclical motion doesn't allow much time for a stall to develop. In some situations, it might actually be useful to stall the wings, because the downstroke air "resistance" is actually a strong lifting force. These techniques can be used to improve the slow flight and hovering capabilities of the ornithopter.

3. High Manuverability. Whereas an airplane relies on its forward speed to produce maneuvering forces, the flapping wing can produce large maneuvering forces at any time. The incredible maneuvering of birds is partly due to their small size and partly due to their use of flapping wings.

4. Reduced Noise. Airplanes and helicopters make a lot of noise. Much of the noise is produced by the rotating blades and not by the engine. High noise levels are one factor preventing wider use of the helicopter. Adalbert Schmid reported low noise levels for his manned, engine-powered, ornithopter flights of the 1940s. Radio-controlled ornithopters are also fairly quiet.

Here is one of their flights
As you can see they haven't gotten control worked out yet, but it did get off the ground.

So if the people of Dune have figured out how to get Ornithopters working properly, good for them!

They have the advantage of writer-made physics on their side.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort