Seto Kaiba

Yeah, they do work better when they're inside the ship. It occurred to me that there's one other high-profile case of reactionless drives being used for flight in-series... http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross2/battlepod/battlepod.gif The Mardook's version of the Regult battle pod... which on several occasions is shown hovering or flying at very slow speeds without using the thrust from its thrust-vectoring engine pods to do so.

Well, at least it's ignoring The Predator... that's an automatic point in its favor. Still, I have a hard time imagining they'll be able to put a new and interesting spin on the idea that more clicky bois are coming to Earth to hunt The Most Dangerous Game. The Predators suffered too much villain decay in previous sequels to ever be properly scary or intimidating again, now they're just fishnet-wearing serial killers with bad teeth and no compelling motive. Like Alien Isolation, they need to go back to Predator's roots to have any hope of making this one worth a damn.

Yup... reactionless flight using gravity manipulation is pretty useful.

Also, many MANY cases of inexplicable floating rocks e.g. Macross Zero and like... 2/3 of the local geology on Uroboros. It's also probably how the Protoculture-created insectoid bioweapons known as the Dyaus get around. Pretty much every ship built using overtechnology is capable of reactionless flight using gravity control too so there's that as well.

Size, I would assume... the Vajra's bio-gravitational field propellers are almost 2/3 as long as a VF in fighter mode.

There are some that are similar, though they're almost exclusively a fixture of VF models and variants that are optimized for service in space and are mounted farther back around the engine nozzle to take best advantage of the peak turbine pressure south of the thrust production stage. Mostly they come in the form of the "vernier ring" feature that was first seen on the VF-14 and carried over onto the VF-17, VF-11MAXL, VF-19, and VF-171. That is essentially a thrust reverser on steroids, a 360 degree collar of verniers around the engine nozzle that draw engine exhaust for propellant. Then there are more traditional examples like the VF-19A/B/C/D type's LHE-10B verniers which are designed like other high-thrust verniers but which similarly divert engine exhaust for propellant.

So... first things first, "nuclear energy" isn't a separate and distinct form of energy. The term refers to the heat and particle radiation produced by the fission or fusion of atomic nuclei. Only a small amount (~0.645%) of the fuel's mass is converted into kinetic energy as alpha particles and so on. The rest of the fuel mass is converted into heavier elemental nuclei like helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc., though in the plasma state at a VERY high temperature due to the massive amount of kinetic energy released. The heat from that plasma is the energy harnessed by the VF's thermoelectric generators to produce electricity to power its systems. In an atmosphere, trace amounts of that extremely hot plasma are used to flash-heat the air passing through the engine in lieu of burning jet fuel in order to produce thrust. In space, the plasma produced in the reactor is used as propellant to generate thrust. The VF's fuel consumption increases exponentially in space in order to have the reactors create enough plasma to produce the required amount of thrust. This exponential increase in fuel consumption is the reason for things like FAST Packs, which contain rocket motors to take more of the burden of acceleration off the main engines and additional fuel tanks to extend the maximum operating time of the engines.

Accidents like that are the reason behind the well-traveled engineer's aphorism "the safety regs are written in blood". Every one of those seemingly obvious safety rules in any field or work site exists because it wasn't obvious to some idiot and they got hurt or killed. Not very... that's why Arad cautions Hayate to keep a sharp eye on his propellant levels when he's about to set out on his first space sortie early in Macross Delta. One way space-optimized VFs tried to mitigate this was with the vernier ring that General Galaxy pioneered on the VF-14 and which later made its way onto the VF-17, VF-171, and VF-19 space types, which diverts main engine exhaust into a sort of sectored-off thrust-vectoring thrust reverser. Pretty sure that only has one setting: well done. Smoking is generally inadvisable these days.

Well... if they work anything like their description in Variable Fighter Master File, then probably not. Both the high-thrust verniers used for braking and roll control and the low thrust verniers used for minor attitude control are described by Master File as thermal rockets. They rely on power from the compact thermonuclear reactors and the high-energy capacitors elsewhere in the airframe to power lasers or high-voltage electrical arcs that heat propellant to produce thrust. Without that power, the propellant is inert and comes out at much lower pressure. It might knock you on your butt or frost your eyebrows, but it's unlikely to toss you across the room unless you're foolish enough to be standing in front of a vernier that's being tested under power. Someone unwise enough to be standing directly in front of one of those verniers being tested under power will have more immediate concerns like being hot exhaust gas akin to a blowtorch setting them on fire. (While fire retardant coveralls are almost certainly standard issue, nobody really wants to be the one to test just how fireproof they really are.) Given that automotive diagnostic tools can do everything from clear fault codes to manually actuate everything capable of moving without direct connection to the engine... it'd be something more or less guaranteed to exist. Luckily, it's not hydrazine. Survey says it's probably gaseous hydrogen.

Yeah, it wouldn't take much to just detach the entire section you need to work on and leave the rest of the aircraft in place. We've seen a few cases, esp. in Macross Frontier, where aircraft in hangars were shown missing parts as if in the middle of a service visit or overhaul. They do rotate... but not for that reason. Put simply, they're thrust-vectoring nozzles for the verniers. I'd lay odds there are probably specific commands that can be sent to a VF's transformation system using a diagnostic test stand tool to only move a particular set of transformation joints for easier maintenance access. Yeah, we do have a few scenes in Macross Plus and Macross Frontier of them being serviced while in Battroid mode instead of just in Fighter mode.

It probably helps that VFs are made from materials much more durable than anything available today thanks to the reverse-engineered OTM advancements in material science. From the sound of it, a lot of the articulations outside of the hands are fairly simple stuff that doesn't require a lot of attention.

... and then there's me just going "WANT!" at the prospect. Assuming the date doesn't get pushed back, two weeks until the book drops... I'm glad I got my preorders in in the first wave. I'm surprised and slightly gratified to know it has English text. It'll save me some time.

Wait, we need a reason to get multiple copies?

Depends on which version of Plus you're watching... in the movie, the YF-21 is badly damaged but still technically intact in what looks to be a low orbit. Hopefully Guld's flight suit contained the consequences of his ultra-high-g maneuvering.

Well, it hardly matters now... it's in the past, as much as a war fought entirely via time travel can be said to be in the past without it becoming a snarky play on words. As quickly as Discovery's writers dismissed the entire Temporal Cold War, it seems unlikely that they'll pin the blame for "the burn" on one of the factions of temporal bad actors from previous shows like the Vorgons, Devidians, Krenim, Na'khul, or the Sphere Builders. Pretty much everything about "the burn" as a plot device ends up being more of a gargantuan plot hole on examination in the broader context of Star Trek, so I don't expect the explanation for "the burn" to make any sense in context either.

Yeah, I'd hope that Star Trek: Discovery's third season will avoid the mid-season plot snarl in the name of serial escalation that made the previous two seasons such a bear to watch. It feels like the series already has way too much on its plate while it juggles all the different secondary plot holes caused by the massive setting-breaking primary plot hole that is "the Burn", the Discovery's crew doing the "fish out of temporal water" thing, that seemingly irrelevant bit about Booker and the couriers, and wandering around what's left of the Federation to show us how far it had to fall to make an all-around horrible person like Michael Burnham into its hope for a brighter future. "Forget Me Not" has a line from Xi that I sincerely hope is a major Did-Not-Do-Research moment for the writers... because the alternative is incredibly dark and depressing. This is my most fervent hope for season three... that, for once, Michael Burnham will not be written as a Mary Sue around whom the fate of the galaxy revolves. Given the antipathy most fans and the production staff had for the Temporal Cold War story arc of Star Trek: Enterprise, I'm somewhat relieved to that that seems unlikely. The Sphere Builders were just one faction in the Temporal Cold War tho, it's never indicated who actually instigated it all. There was the Federation and the other Temporal Accords signatories, the Na'khul (the baddies from "Storm Front", whose defeat ended the Temporal Cold War), the Sphere Builders, and the unknown Suliban benefactor "Future Guy" (whose identity was never set by the production staff... some concepts had him as a Romulan, others as a future Admiral Archer, still others had him being an augment from a second Eugenics War in the future, etc.).

Ugh... no thank you.

... in Warhammer 40,000, it's more or less a rule of the setting that any relic of a bygone era that shows up unexpectedly is going to cause Very Bad Things to happen in the very near future. Especially if it's an ancient starship. Mind you, what I was getting at was more that Star Trek: Discovery's writers have yet to let optimism stand. Episode 6 in last season was about the point where they jettisoned the show's brief experiment with acting like real Star Trek to set up that nonsensical Control story arc with the genocidal AI that wants to exterminate all life for no reason. Various fanservice nods like the Voyager-J, the Nog, and so on aside, 32nd century Starfleet has made it clear they see Discovery's very existence as a criminal act given that they illegally time-traveled into the future. It feels like there's an imminent betrayal coming, otherwise there's no real way to raise the stakes like the Kurtzman-Trek writers insist on doing in the most ridiculous ways halfway into any season. (5'll get you 20 it's somehow Burnham's fault that The Burn happened too, because the writers are convinced the entire universe has to revolve around her.)

Back to getting caught up on this season's offerings. Jujutsu Kaisen is increasingly my #1 pick for this season, if only because it's the series that feels the best-developed of the lot. It'd be a fairly standard shonen anime if it weren't for how surprisingly dark it is. Given how casually the series handles violent dismemberment and creepy monsters, it feels like Bleach by way of Gantz. Yuji gets hurt A LOT, and some of those injuries are rather grisly. The cursed spirits they're fighting get their fair share of the gore too in unlovely ways... like the most recent episode where the jovial and genial teacher responsible for Yuji and his two classmates oh-so-casually decapitates one of the show's principal antagonists then interrogates him. (Even the show's occasional moments of levity are colored by this, like the omake after the last episode where the battered but still-living decapitated head of the cursed spirit from the episode is used as an improvised soccer ball by his own side and ends up having most of his teeth kicked out in the process.) Tonikaku Kawaii is, unfortunately, still wallowing in that one joke it seems to have. It'd be a cute and entertaining, if fairly generic, romcom if it had more diversity in its humor. So far, the only joke it really has it that its protagonist Nasa overreacts to absolutely anything involving his new wife because he's literally never had any interaction with a girl before. It's had a few nice charming moments, mostly involving Tsukasa revealing she's just as much of a nerd as Nasa but better at hiding it, but it doesn't really impress. Iwakakeru - Sport Climbing Girls is still gratifyingly free of the kind of blatant fanservice that I and everyone I'd spoken to about it was expecting from the outset, but it feels like its writers were kind of counting on having that kind of fanservice to fill time or add interest. What I know about rock climbing could fit comfortably on a napkin with enough room to pen a dirty limerick or two, but this feels like the showrunners are committed to an authentic depiction of the sport of rock climbing... except in their decision to depict it as being highly competitive and wildly popular like soccer or baseball. I'm sure it's very accurate, but it's not really doing a good job as an ambassador for the sport because it makes the whole affair seem rather boring (esp. when the best comparison they can seem to draw is to a cell phone puzzle game similar to Bust a Move or Magical Drop). I'm Standing on a Million Lives is probably one of the most disorganized-feeling shows I've seen in a good while. There's no real sense of a coherent plot thread. Things just sort of happen and the protagonists seem just as lost as the audience is 99% of the time. It's just that meme where Moon Knight is throwing things and yelling "RANDOM BULLSHIT! GO!", as a story.

Discovery did seem to be headed in that grimdark direction for two entire seasons and as of the last episode I am increasingly struck with a foreboding feeling that they're about to make it three.

Well, the VF-19 is noted to have had both a high initial cost and a high average cost of operation... though it's not clear how much of that was the cost of replacement parts for the high-spec hardware and how much was the frequency of its required maintenance. It's not something most crew chiefs ever had to worry about, though. A combination of factors including rising tensions between the central New UN Government and its emigrant governments, Isamu's little stunt in Macross Plus, and the unacceptably high rate of training accidents early in its rollout that were directly attributed to its high performance led the New UN Government and New UN Forces to pull the plug on plans for its widespread adoption AND slap various export restrictions on the design and its technology that prevented emigrant governments from fielding them in significant numbers and reduced their performance. (This led to the development and adoption of the VF-171 as the 4th Gen main VF of the New UN Forces in the mid-2040s.) The few crews who had to deal with them were either those early crews who spent a fair amount of their time cleaning up the crashed aircraft after loss of control accidents during that initial problematic period of model conversion training and the crews servicing Special Forces aircraft who were used to the greater maintenance demands from their previous experience with Special Forces VFs like the VF-17.

Without the Protodeviln throwing a wrench into the growing tensions between the Stellar Republic and the opposing faction, they'd have probably fought a long and bloody civil war instead of being nearly wiped out and having to join forces to oppose the third party (the Supervision Army) that attacked both sides.

For what it's worth, the reasons behind the ancient Protoculture repeatedly deciding to bury and seal away the consequences of their folly probably have a lot to do with the swiftness of their civilization's collapse. The Protoculture lost 85% of their population in the space of a year when the Protodeviln appeared, and what was left when the dust settled was a slowly crumbling network of colonized planets, emigrant fleets, and space colonies out on the galactic rim. It seems likely that the reason the Protoculture didn't destroy the delta wave system in the Brisingr globular cluster when their civilization entered the final phases of its collapse was because doing so would've probably entailed completely destroying at least half a dozen habitable planets they'd semi-recently created sub-Protoculture life on. The system was so massive, and so integrated into the crusts and mantles of those planets, that destroying it would've had apocalyptic consequences for the planets even if they didn't outright destroy the planets themselves. The relay station on Windermere IV seen in Macross Delta seems to have fold crystal "roots" spread throughout almost an entire hemisphere of the planet. Why the Protoculture didn't go the extra mile and kill the Protodeviln once their anima spiritia had successfully captured them is a mystery. Spiritia deprivation will absolutely kill a Protodeviln stone dead, and from what we saw when Gigile killed himself on Lux to save Sivil it looks like a dimensional warhead detonation of planet-killing scale might have been enough to do the job. It's possible they were afraid the Protodeviln's seal wasn't strong enough to prevent fold-based shenanigans like Valgo being able to interrupt space folding or Gepernich space folding Max's reaction missile back to the Stargazer in 2046. Perhaps they believed the only way to kill them would be to starve them to death, given how powerful they were even after 500,000 years of confinement without spiritia. (A more ominous theory might be that they intended to starve the Protodeviln and then come back and reclaim the still-living bodies of the Evil series for use in rebuilding their civilization.)

As I understand it from a friend who is a big fan of the Halo franchise, the Forerunners aren't abusive/neglectful precursors so much as abusive/neglectful contemporaries... having apparently reverted humanity and other species to stone age levels after the early Flood containment efforts by those species were mistaken for acts of aggression. TBH, I'm not sure the Protoculture's motives were anything like altruistic. They were, according to the official timeline, re-engineering native species on planets they found to ensure the emergence of sub-Protoculture species who would prepare their worlds for future colonization. It's likely the Birdhuman was left by the Protoculture as insurance that humanity wouldn't develop into a species that could threaten the Protoculture when they returned to colonize the planet, rather than as a guarantee that we wouldn't repeat their own mistakes... since at the time it was left, they hadn't really realized the magnitude of their error yet. There is the (mythologized) mention that the Birdhuman was accidentally activated once before, and that its Kill All Humans program was interrupted by forcibly separating the Birdhuman's head from its body. Given the Birdhuman's mission, "failing safe" would be destroying humanity rather than risk a violent species making it into space. To me, it seems more like the pilot's influence on the system... esp. given that Sara was only able to steer its defensive fire away from Shin after breaking through its "kadun" brainwashing and seeing that she was firing on Shin and not some amorphous monster. One has to wonder what its program dictated if humanity passed its test. Macross Chronicle suggests that when Sara folded it away it went to Gallia IV. It wasn't able to do that alone... it needed the songs of the Mayan priestesses who'd been engineered with the biological fold wave abilities necessary to maintain it in order to regenerate and sustain itself over the intervening millennia. That's not quite what the Birdhuman said, though... it asked if humans had stopped fighting amongst themselves, full stop. The answer was "No", so it decided to destroy humanity. "Are you fighting for any reason? Yes? Then you're possessed by the Kadun of Battle and have to die for the sake of galactic peace." Birdhuman icons are present on several planets including the Vajra planet at the end of Frontier, but as far as we know the only Birdhuman found was the one on Earth. (It's possible others were present, but unable to restore themselves or activate because the tribe tasked with maintaining them had died out or simply abandoned its traditional role.) The horrible part is that they don't seem to have had any of those conversations until AFTER the worst had already happened. They went on their merry way creating weapons of the most atrocious destructive potential and only AFTER things went Tango-Uniform did they seemingly stop to think "Was that a good idea?". I'm sure it wasn't the first major case of cultural discord... given that, in Macross 7, the schism is described as a sort of Cold War-like condition where two different socio-political groups in the Protoculture coexisted but never reached any kind of accord until things blew up into a mutually self-destructive shooting war. Even in DYRL?, it was the culmination of lifetimes of failure to sit down and talk out their problems. Nah, what Vrlitwhai was so stunned by at the start of Super Dimension Fortress Macross was that the supposedly primitive species he'd just discovered had opened fire on him with thermonuclear reaction weapons. To the Zentradi, thermonuclear reaction weapons are long-lost technology. The factory satellites that manufactured them were destroyed by the Supervision Army some 380,000 years before the series. Nope. Yes and no? It's more a question of scale than anything. Humanity doesn't exactly have the firepower to be taking on Zentradi main fleets willy-nilly, but when it comes to isolated infrastructure-type atrocities humans c.2059 do finally have the firepower to safely dispose of a lot of the Protoculture's mistakes via dimensional warheads. That does seem to be the case, given that we've seen that something like a dimensional warhead could potentially even kill a Protodeviln... at the cost of a planet. Humanity's first attempt to dispose of the delta wave system after realizing how stupidly dangerous it was was more restrained, but still boasted enough firepower to erase a city from existence. The second attempt was more extreme, but even less successful.

What's surprising is that it took the government of the Varauta colony eighteen years to get around to investigating the neighboring theoretically-habitable planet where the laws of thermodynamics were seemingly out to lunch. Varauta was settled in 2025, but the Special Research Unit that investigated the system's 4th planet looking for the origin of the mysterious energy field didn't start work until 2043. I'd imagine a LOT of the technology on Varauta's 4th planet would be pretty damned interesting to the New UN Government's research agencies. Undamaged Protoculture overtechnology in basically pristine condition would be a BIG draw. (Especially given some of the nonsense of theirs we learn about later, like dimensional energy conversion technology or factory satellite manufacturing tech that can violate conservation of mass.) Sort of... if companies like that hadn't had any indigenous peoples to enslave and abuse. Remember, they did leave a bio-technological weapon of mass destruction on Earth for the very specific goal of exterminating us should we repeat their mistakes and make it into space before settling our internal disputes. They'd be pretty shocked to learn that not only did humanity NOT develop the way they'd hoped, but that we'd failed so hard we managed to cripple the weapon that was supposed to destroy us before it could do much of anything. Depending on the experiment, most of their stuff arguably went horribly right. Like, they created the Zentradi to be an unstoppable military force and were then subsequently disappointed to learn they could do nothing to stop them when they'd lost control of them during the war with the Supervision Army. Or the Evil-series they designed to be civilization-ruining autonomous weapons of mass destruction with infinite endurance ending up operating as civilization-ruining autonomous weapons of mass destruction of infinite endurance under someone else's control.