The valkyrie booster questions

[Gundamhead]

Well paint aside, this vehicle is shown for about a minute. Max, Millia, and Hikaru use them to blast off the Earth. Along with them are about a 1/2 dozen Grey schemed VFs and a shuttle mounted on a enormous booster.

The tower, (A cool idea to include in a display with the new model) gives the go for launch, and they all blast off.

The Shuttle shows it's booster free falling back to Earth, so I would imagine a parachute and sea recovery to reclaim it.

The next shot is the VFs escorting the shuttle to Breetai's ship, and they are all plain.

What happened to the boosters?

They don't strike me as being parachuteable (is that a word?). They aren't very aerodynamic looking and appear like they would tumble too much during re-entry.

So would they jettison them once the VF's reached space? It seems the most likely to me. So what do you guys think?

[Grayson72]

Yup, a one time use booster that becomes floating space junk or a reef for the fishies after reentry.

Hey can you do more screen caps? Would love to see more of the booster paint schemes and the tower you mention.

[Gundamhead]

It was Cdr Fokker who had the screen caps, sorry. I wish I could do that. The episode is 'Viva MIllia' (#30) and the scene opens on the SDF-1, and the camera pans down to the tower. It all happens in the first 2 minutes of that episode.

I've been thinking that it seems awful wasteful for them to just trash the boosters. They'd have to be fairly low priority on the construction priority lists, A VF can make orbit without the booster like in the first couple of episodes when Roy catches up to the SDF-1 with a cockpit pod in tow no less. But I'm sure the range is greatly reduced. Multiple uses for the booster would be more economic.

Maybe they get jettisoned in deep space? They look to have enough power to make it well past Earth's gravity. Then they could be programed to decelerate and a ARMD could send a recovery team for them to be refurbished? I think that would make more sense. The idea of something that big and powerful being completely disposable just doesn't sit well with my pack-rat/salvage nature.

[AlphaHX]

here grayson, ive got the booster pics you requested.

tower and booster

max and hikaru's boosters (color)

this was a combination of multiple screen shots so its a bit discolored

max and hikaru's boosters (plain white)

misc vf-1 boosters

booster closeup

(also a combination... obviously)

hope this helps you with ur color scheme.

i tried to clean up the pictures as much as possible. i have a good majority of the episodes so tell me if you want any other screen shots of anything else. i also have macross plus, zero, and dyrl if you want anything from there too.

Edited August 31, 2004 by AlphaHX

[Grayson72]

Go AlphaHX!, welcome to the boards buddy!

Edited August 31, 2004 by Grayson72

[AlphaHX]

thanx! glad to be here!

[Gundamhead]

Man those are cool screen grabs... Thanks!

[ChristopherB]

AlphaHX,

Thank you very much!

The close up shot of Max does indeed show that his booster matches his valkyrie, as does Hikaru's Skull One, and of course the same logic will apply to Miria.

The distance shots switch Max back to a plain white booster, but that's to be expected given the established precedence of inconsistent animation, especially where "Anime Friend" is involved. That's not to say that they necessarily were responsible for this episode.

Given the conclusion that time is taken in some instances to apply special paint jobs to specific boosters, I would think that they would recover them for future use.

The boosters are essentially big fuel tanks with (4) booster nozzles on the end, and as such are very similar to the (2) white long cylindrical boosters used in conjunction with the space shuttle. Even though my dad spent (35) years with NASA, I can't recall if they are recovered, or are jetisoned so high up that they burn up upon re-entry, or become space garbage.

Sincerely,

Christopher

PS: Gundamhead, thank you for the PM and link.

Edited September 1, 2004 by ChristopherB

[VF-19]

The two "thin" white boosters that are attached to the whole shuttle contraption are recovered after they're used, reprocessed, and slapped on the next shuttle. What's probably confusing you is the Challanger footage. Normally, rockets, and boosters have a self destruct mechanism, so that if anything goes wrong, they can be blown up, rather than risking having a rocket that can't be shut off (at least the solid fuel kind) going who knows where. How often you can use these things I don't know. At the very least, you'd might want to replace the nozzle at the buisness end of the rocket on a fairly frequent basis, as that part does get quite a bit of stress over the duration of use (hot gasses etc...). The only part of the shuttle that isn't recovered is the orange main fuel tank. That is jettisoned very late into the orbital ascent, and either burns up on re-entry, or is torn to pieces by atmospheric forces.

[Major Johnathan]

oh no.... this is the kind of inconsistancy that gnaws at me. I'm only going to have one Booster, it's tough enough for me to decide between Max or Millia, but now I don't know if I should paint the booster red/blue or white...?

I think the booster would look cooler red/blue, but I'm not sure...

[Gundamhead]

BUMP for ONE ZERO.

[onezero]

Thanks Joe-

So, the consensus is ... there is no canon answer, so we can speculate all we want.

Works for me!

[Gundamhead]

You can make an arguement for anything really.

You can't really use the launch vehicle as a arguement one way or the other. They could have a small number of them and many boosters. (There's only 1 shuttle tower for all of NASA's shuttles.)

Nor can you use the custom paint. (Remember the VF-1D for Max'x wedding)

So what you are left with is, Earth has been devastated. Scrap material is everywhere. Technology is almost magical. People are valuable, equipment isn't.

But, is the material valuable for the booster?

Are the risks to people in recovering the booster worth the effort?

Is custom paint really that simple in Macross?

Is the effort to build new boosters minimum, or complex?

I still kinda like my space recovery idea. Gives the ARMD carriers a neat role other than being cannon fodder. It also gives the Spider Bugs a military support role.

But after they get them aboard the ARMD, how would they get them back on Earth?

Shuttles? I'd think they'd be able to stuff 2-3 in the bay of that massive shuttle.

Does anybody know if the ARMD carriers are capable of re-entry and lift off? Are they just spaceborn only? If they can re-enter the atmosphere, it'd be a cinch to bring back a whole squadron of booster units in one shot.

The reason I favor the deeper space recovery idea is I would think the production of boosters would be a fairly complex operation. More complex than a recovery anyway. Many examples are shown in Macross of things being re-used. I don't think they'd afford to waste material like that. Also we know Roy got his VF-1S carrying a VF-1D nose section into low orbit without any booster unit. That would imply the Boosters are needed for greater speed and range. That much power and size implies a great deal further than a standard VF, which would put the seperation sequence in space away from Earth's gravity. Maybe as the VF seperates, the boost from the feet initiate a slowdown/stop command for the Booster unit so a recovery team could retrieve them.

Then again, they could just tumble and burn and become an artificial reef for mutant fish.

But then again, why would it tumble to Earth if the booster takes the VF farther from Earth?

Then again... ...

[Gundamhead]

Yeah, we pretty much agree it seems. I could see the Fast packs, but they aslo never say they have to eject it before they land. Just that Hikaru usually winds up pummeled and can eject it to become aerodynamic again. I'd imagine the majority of VFs would manage to RTB with their armor still intact. So the paint thing is kinda moot again. Just because they can eject it, doesn't really mean they have to. So maybe a custom armor set is a bit less disposable than everybody assumes.

Can you imagine the meteor showers in Macross? All that junk floating around, worse than Earth in Cowboy Bebop!