Editing Drop Pod (section)

== Starship Troopers ==

Each member of the Mobile Infantry gets his own pod, containing his suit of armor. The armor itself is supposedly capable of surviving re-entry ''(a ship making a drop is on a sub-orbital, ie, falling, trajectory during the drop before accelerating back to orbital speed; for the troopers the reentry is more like SpaceShipOne than say Dragon)'', and can even fly ("a little," as Heinlein writes). The purpose of the pod is to improve the accuracy of the drop by controlling for the aerodynamic factors, as well as disintegrate on the way down producing chaff and debris to distract enemy defenses and blend in with a much larger number of decoy pods used to screen the dropping force. The decoys contain additional tricks such as flares, jammers, bombs, and dumb rockets to increase the amount of visual and electromagnetic noise in the drop area.