Seto Kaiba
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Split the difference? I'm seeing a yellow band on the AIM-9X-2 there, but blue bands on the AIM-120D's. Probably an issue with the reference photography they used while making the CG models for Macross Zero. Similar errors can be found in Variable Fighter Master File (on the ASM-1 and ASM-2).
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The VF-1 did, yes... but oddly none of the fighters that came after it seem to have the capability. Even the VF-25's hardpoint & weapon set diagram shows only one RMS-7 per station (and the even larger PaCSWS-1G's and Dimension Cutters need to be spaced out to every other hardpoint normally). If the stations are spaced wider than they normally are, it'd be workable IMO... though the RMS-5 and RMS-7 are both a good deal larger than the old RMS-1. The Dimension Cutter is so large that Master File has it at "not more than 1 per wing". That's the way it is in Macross 30. The VF-27 isn't an anti-ship attack specialist craft either... it's a super-high performance dogfighter with almost exclusively short-range weaponry (and, officially, a victim of crippling overspecialization).
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OK, definitely should've qualified that... I based that on the 2,039lb published mass of the Mk.84 under normal conditions. The RMS-1's weight is only given in one source (the old Sky Angels book), but it's given as 2,387lb. Munition size is a factor, but mercifully only in terms of the possibility of ejected missiles striking other hung ordinance and the ability to retain that ordinance with the wings folded in battroid mode... external fuel tanks having become largely unnecessary thanks to the adoption of thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. Very few VF-carried missiles and bombs are so large that multiples can't be hung from a single pylon... but reaction missiles, para-cruising stealth warheads, and dimension cutters all seem to fall into that category under normal conditions.
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True... though, with VF's, weight seems to be less a concern than the physical size of the munitions being carried. (vs. a F-14, the VF-1 had approximately 1.65x the per-pylon loading limit.) With the known pylon arrangements for fighters of its generation, the only way I could possibly see the YF-30 carrying heavier armament than a VF-25 would be if its pylons had wider spacing... allowing it to go two-a-pylon on RMS-7's, or carry four PaCSWS-1G's or Dimension Cutters. The only reaction missile for which a stated weight is given is the RMS-1, which is about 348lb heavier than a Mk.84.
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Define "intact". As far as we know, yes... on paper, the VF-1S Hikaru is flying at the end of the series is the same one he "inherited" from Roy. How much of its mass is replacement hardware for damaged or destroyed components, we can't say with precision. Hikaru lost the arms blocking a missile attack during the space battle against the Boddole Zer main fleet, as well as the canopy, and a bunch of other bits and pieces were probably damaged and subsequently replaced prior to the conclusion of the actual conflict in 2012. True, it is the only one with a visible Modex number in the original series... though platoon markings are briefly visible on the body of Max's VF-1A when he bails out of it in that Zentradi elevator. (I'm not sure if that actually "counts", though... since the series wasn't drawn at a super-high level of detail most of the time, the modex numbers may simply have been left out for the animation budget's sake.)
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A technological cousin of the Macross Cannon, at least... it's unclear whether it's actually fusing the heavy quantum the way that a Macross Cannon does, or if it's just lobbing bolts of the stuff around and letting the impossible mass do the talking. That much is unclear/debatable. The "beam grenade" mode is certainly packing more oomph than a conventional gun pod, but as far as how the regular beam machine gun mode compares to something like a GU-17, I couldn't say. (Specialty ammo such as the MDE rounds muddies the water still further.) In the novelization, the YF-30's gun pod was converted to a MDE beam gun, so really all bets are off there as well. The gun pod is debatable at best. The container system is an asset, but more suited to dogfighting or ground attack with its micro-ordinance, beam cannon, or reconnaissance options. The wing... well... based on official spec, the difference in wingspan between the VF-25 and YF-30 is about 4 3/4 inches. To make room for the ordinance container, the YF-30 has a much wider body, and the limbs are built into the wing surface... so it has fewer pylons than a VF-25. (It appears to have four, while the VF-25 has either six or eight depending upon whether you trust CG models or Master File.) It could probably carry a few especially heavy missiles, but no more than any other large VF.
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The UN Spacy in Macross uses an Army/Air Force rank system. Whether it's Army or Air Force is hard to say, but signs point to it being an Air Force rank system based on how they're shown to abbreviate the rank "Staff Sergeant" as SSgt instead of SSG. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comparative_military_ranks#United_States They're not using a straight Japanese rank system because they have a rank that doesn't exist in the Japanese system (that of Brigadier General). Many translations have brought over the officer candidate rank (准尉, Jun-i) as "Warrant Officer", though in Japanese style, it's a rank/position directly below a 2nd Lieutenant, rather than part of a separate class of ranks altogether. Roy was a Major. Hikaru got promoted several times throughout the original series, from his original post as a Sergeant, to a 2nd Lieutenant, and by the end of the series he was a Captain, IIRC. http://macross.anime.net/wiki/UN_Spacy Translators are a bit divided on how to translate the term shotai... official Macross merch suggests the approved translation is "Platoon" rather than "Team". (Should probably go Squadron / Flight / Platoon instead of Group / Squadron / Team). The ranks seen on screen, written in perfectly legible English, are consistently those of an Army/Air Force rank system. In the real world, a space fleet would be under the administrative authority of a nation's Air Force, and it appears that Macross's creators were well aware of that fact. (As noted above, the abbreviation used for Staff Sergeant in onscreen text suggests an Air Force rank system instead of an Army one... it's abbreviated SSgt onscreen, instead of SSG.) This is actually a fairly common misconception. "UN Spacy" is not a contraction of "Space Navy". In Japanese, it's written as 宇宙軍 (Uchuu-gun), which is "Space Army" or "Space Military". "Space Navy" or "Space Fleet" are written differently. The ranks we're presented with (in English) in the series and later are those of an Army or Air Force. It's all but impossible to tell which, since the lowest mentioned rank is Sergeant, and the lowest written rank is Staff Sergeant, both of which exist in both systems. Klan's rank is always given as Tai-i (equiv. Army Captain, Navy Lieutenant). It should be translated as Captain (in the Army or Air Force sense) based on official material, though some fansubs translate it using the Navy rank Lieutenant instead. No, this is not a case of mistranslation... but rather an area of linguistic precision. Ozma's rank (in SMS) is that of a Major (少佐 Shosa)... the reason for the confusion is his title (隊長 Taichou) which is "Unit Leader" or "Commanding Officer", which translators sometimes (irritatingly) shorten to "Commander" even though it's not actually a rank. Roy's position was Commander of the SDF-1's Air Group (and Squadron CO for Skull Squadron). Organizationally, this aspect of the UN Forces is not based on the USAF... it's a distinctly Japanese touch. The term (小隊 Shotai) refers to a level of organization below that of a Flight (translated as "Platoon" in Macross) consisting of 2-4 aircraft led by a junior officer. This looks like something out of the-show-that-must-not-be-named... As noted previously, the rank system in use is that of an Army/Air Force, and titles like "Captain (of a ship)" or "Admiral (in the sense of an officer commanding a fleet)" are not ranks, but titles. I prefer "Shipmaster" and "Fleetmaster" to minimize confusion... they're entirely separate words from the ranks of "Captain" and "Admiral" in Japanese. "Captain" Global's rank is Brigadier General (准将 Junsho), but his title is Shipmaster (艦長 Kanchou)... separate and distinct from the actual rank of Colonel/Captain (大佐 Taisa). Similarly, a flag officer commanding a fleet could be a General (大将 Taisho) but his title (as commanding officer of a fleet) would be "Admiral"/"Fleetmaster" (提督 Teitoku).
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It's a dimension weapon... similar, in principle, to the other forms of super dimension energy weaponry used as "main gun" systems and turrets aboard most ships. It's lobbing bolts of extradimensional, super-massive matter at the enemy. I'm not really sure I follow your logic as to why the YF-30 seems to be made for attacking bigger targets. Most Variable Fighters are, as noted previously, multirole by their very nature and can be used for attacking ships as easily as they can be used for taking out enemy fighters and battle pods. Dedicated Variable Attackers basically just turn the weaponry aspect of the Attack role up to 11. The YF-30's default armament is extremely light by the standards of the fighters of its generation... just a pair of beam guns on the monitor turret, a heavy quantum beam gun pod, the ordinance container (typically with 18 micro-missile launchers, but other options for the package correspond to the standard FAST pack varieties), an assault knife, and what appears to be four pylon stations on the wings. The one remark in Chronicle about the YF-30's ordinance container being especially suited to low-speed attacks makes it sound a little like the YF-30 might be a good choice for close-air support, but in general the implication of the descriptions seems to be that the YF-30 was designed to 1. evaluate technologies to penetrate fold faults, and 2. meet the specific needs of combat on the often isolated world of Uroboros. While it's undeniable that Shinsei had a hand in the development of some of the one-off or limited production enhanced versions of the VF-11 or VF-19's "monkey models", the groundwork seems to have mostly been laid by various emigrant fleets who each had a different view of how they wanted their military equipped. The VF-11 seems to have been left mostly alone, except for one-off enhancements produced for specific ace pilots or "aftermarket" modifications once the military started selling off the VF-11's that weren't being converted into target drones. Export restrictions the UN Government imposed on AVF's and AVF technologies probably did a lot to limit improvement of older fighters with AVF tech as well. The VF-19EF/A's mechanic sheet notes that those laws made it all but impossible for SMS to legally use a VF-19A. General Galaxy had an upgrade plan for the VF-19 in the Macross Galaxy fleet as a calculated snub aimed at their rival, but Shinsei itself seems to have given up on the VF-19 after the VF-171 was made next main fighter. The VF-19EF/A was proposed as a SLEP upgrade trial on paper, but its background in Macross Chronicle notes that it was really a vanity project with little-to-no support from Shinsei's management. It was a proposal Dr. Jan Neumann cooked up in an effort to get Isamu to stop trying to coerce him illegally selling him a VF-19A piece by piece, bankrolled mostly by Isamu's own savings.
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's possible... though, taking the known examples into account, I suspect it would probably not have been done as part of any kind of official plan to improve the Thunderbolt. Most likely, they would be like the ones we know about: one-off craft for aces or elite units, and secondhand airframes modified by air racers. That's certainly demonstrable. The only catch is that it appears that the new developments are mostly being applied to the export "Monkey Model" variants whose performance suffers at the hands of arms export restrictions. On the whole, they seem to be a lot less intent on improving the VF-19's flight performance than they are on improving its stability and avionics. (Which is an entirely worthy goal... were it not for the economics of the defense industry and fear of the Vajra's capabilities, many of the refinements that went into the YF-24 would have been applied to the VF-19.) Well, it's not really a "big" gun... the heavy quantum gun pod is more or less the same type used by the YF-29, rather than the huge BFG used by the VF-27 or even more colossal one used by the YF-27-5. WRT the ordinance container... your guess is entirely correct. The spec. mentions that the micro-missile container can be swapped for a variety of other mission-specific packages, which is where a fair bit of its multi-role-ness comes from. (It's like having all of the versatility of a FAST pack without the extra mass.) Pretty much every VF is a multi-role fighter by definition... on account of the variable system and how the tactics of the era employ that advantage. The YF-30 is, in most respects, a pretty typical Variable Fighter design of the VF-25's generation. It shares a lot of features with the YF-29 as well.
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The YF-30 is nominally just a multi-role variable fighter... but the real purpose behind it, according to the Macross 30 novelization, is testing technologies for breaking through fold faults. Go back and read that post, mac... because I didn't say that or anything like it. What I did say was that you couldn't dump a lot of heat into the fuel tanks in the wings. Why? Because we're dealing with an engine that produces a LOT more heat than a rocket motor, and the fuel tanks are pressure vessels full of cryogenic fuel slush. I don't have tons of experience with cryogenic fuel handling, but I've worked with the stuff enough to know that the last thing you want to be doing is adding a high-heat source to a cryogenic fuel tank for long periods of time. It'll put a lot of extra stress on the tank itself, and if the amount of energy being introduced to the sealed system rises too quickly, you've got a good chance of the tank turning into a bomb. All I see is some crosshatching that appears to be over, rather than under, the structural members inside the wing. IF that is a heat exchange system, that would point to it being outside the tank, adjacent to the wing surface, rather than inside the tanks. Also, it's page 34, not 24... and the BLCS extends into the empennage as well, which makes it less likely that the heat is introduced inside the wing surface. (pg.36) Looking at the cutaway, it looks more like the heat is introduced to the system in the sub-intake as it runs over the body of the Stage II turbine's precompressor stage. There's what looks like several high-gauge coolant lines running through the back of the joints of the knee.
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One thing noted on that front in the Macross Frontier portions of the VF Evolutionary Theory article in Great Mechanics.DX 9 is that the VF-25's wings are used as heat sinks to dispose of waste heat after combat. I would assume that this is probably not a new feature... As far as FAST packs go... the VF-25's SPS-25S Super Pack leaves most of the wing surface exposed, so it can continue to be used to dispose of waste heat. The APS-25A Armored Pack is noted as having four armored heat sinks built into the engine pods (the "ribbed" portions on the top and bottom), and the TW1 Tornado Pack is also noted as having dedicated coolant systems for its heavy quantum beam gun turret.
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Some do, some don't. Isamu's VF-19EF/A is in the latter category, while SMS equipped its Frontier fleet VF-19EF Caliburn units with EX-Gear. Doesn't look like they were, no.
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Well, the VF-19 ADVANCE from Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa isn't actually a VF-19 first mass production type... it's a remodeled VF-19EF Caliburn export model. The full designation Macross Chronicle gives it is the VF-19EF/A "Isamu Special", because it's a one-off aircraft produced specifically for our Mr. Irresponsible by Shinsei Industry, pitched as a demonstrator for VF-19 service life extension. Still, I'd imagine we'd see a fairly similar path for updates... improvements to engine reliability, reinforcement of the airframe, adoption of improved materials, avionics improvements, etc. Isamu's VF-19EF/A actually had its flight control software downgraded to the original ARIEL system used on the YF-19, though. We'd probably also see the adoption of EX-Gear in the cockpit in the late 2050's, though Isamu apparently skipped that one too. Just aesthetic, IIRC.
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HLJ, CDJapan, HMV, amazon.co.jp, eBay...
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Eh... you could argue that. The YF-29 was probably NUNS property when SMS was had it, like the VF-25s that the Frontier branch of SMS was hired to field test under combat conditions by Frontier's government. The YF-29B is, most accurately, the improved YF-29 used by the NUNS special forces unit "Havamal". Uroboros had independent VF R&D facilities and a factory satellite, so the YF-29B may be (likely is) a local variant based on the YF-29 spec that was "made to order" for Havamal and isn't used anywhere else... or by anyone else. Though that could change.
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Science would have to unravel the low-level processing functions of the brain for us to do that... right now, we know just enough of how the brain functions at a high level to reconstruct very basic (often rather trippy) visual input from fMRI and EEG scans of brain activity. Even that is a HUGE leap forward for our understanding of the brain... we're not sure what kind of logical arrangement it's even running on. Are we really running on extraordinarily complex boolean logic trees, or does the brain's basic signaling operate with more than just two signal states? Perhaps we operate on balanced ternary, or something beyond that. (I'd love to find out... and not just because that Nobel prize comes with a big chunk of cash.) I'm not so sure... we've already proven in labs that we can use rudimentary implants to permit people to control things like a PC's mouse pointer or to stimulate sharper memory recording. With a proper functional map of the human brain and a sophisticated-enough interface, I think it'd be perfectly possible to introduce malicious "code" into the brain to cause unwanted changes mood or behavior. Something like a Ghost in the Shell-style virus that causes very specific behavior is probably out of the question though. Back before the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russians used to have a saying: Новости не истина и правда не новость "The News isn't the Truth, and the Truth isn't News." (It was a dig at the two main newspapers of the time... the Communist Party's sponsored newspaper Pravda (Truth), and the Soviet government's sponsored newspaper Izvestia (News)... but it's still pretty valid in general terms.) The testing they're doing is real, and it does demonstrate a potential threat... but to do the things they were doing, you need to get inside the vehicle itself and either physically compromise the correct CAN bus (most vehicles have more than one, some can have as many as four or five, separated and filtered by network gateways) or use a flash-capable diagnostic assistant (not normally available outside of dealerships) to re-flash module firmware or manually adjust parameters. It's possible, if you have an enormous amount of insider knowledge (CAN message maps are generally only available to suppliers under NDA for a reason), but it'd be hard to argue it was even remotely practical at this time. The news is jumping all over it because it can be made to smell of a scandal, and because it sounds scary if you leave out some important context. (Now, if some automaker were gormless enough to put unsecured over-the-air flash capability into a network device like that... it'd be a much different story...)
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Sometimes, I'm not sure... does "engineer" count as a dialect or another language? Percussive maintenance... the great equalizer. (With solutions like those, I hope I don't become a problem...) Network security in general is an evolving field, and has been for almost as long as networked computing has been a thing (ARPANET in '69). Things like cars and other simple network systems are secured easily enough because there's a limited range of information they can actually communicate and they can easily check incoming data for consistency without getting bogged down. The more complex the system, and the more types of data it can process, the harder it is to secure. It's hard to hack a car because a car's communications are very orderly, regular, and restricted. It's a lot easier to hack a PC, which has to sort out for itself if that sequence of 1's and 0's is a picture, an abstraction of a sound's waveform, a representation of plain text, or instructions to perform a task. For a networked brain, we'd be able to apply a lot of lessons-learned from our efforts to secure mobile data networks and the internet. The human brain is the most monstrously complex computer we've yet discovered, that means there's probably a lot of potential attacks that haven't even occurred to us yet, but the potential gains for implant technology probably outweigh the risks in a lot of areas. Instantaneous access to the sum total of human knowledge. The ability to export a person's objective recollections of an event. Selectively disabling pain receptors instead of using painkillers. Moderating appetite or treating various mood disorders by stimulating changes in brain chemistry. The possibilities are endless... and so are the risks. The governments of various emigrant fleets in Macross are clearly very interested in the possible risks... like having to deal with soldiers that don't have the same performance limits on their bodies, who feel no pain and know no fear. Now THAT'S probably going to be the biggest obstacle to implant technology as a whole... figuring out the "language" the human brain uses to communicate with itself. If we ever figure it out, it'll turn the computing world on its ear. It'll probably make almost every modern programming language instantly obsolete. That'd possibly be enough to make a self-aware computer a practical possibility instead of pure science fiction. One has to wonder how much of human implant tech in Macross is modeled on human technology and how much is modeled on overtechnology. (Maybe that's what sets the OTM computers like the ANGIRAS system apart from modern computers... instead of using a Von Neumann load-store architecture like a modern PC, which can't fetch data from storage AND perform an operation at the same time, they might be using a fuzzy logic computer modeled on the complex brain of a sentient being?)
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To be fair, people have been complaining about improvements in technology "ruining" manners and/or polite correspondence going back AT LEAST as far as the telegraph. (I vaguely recall seeing some remarks in old newspapers complaining that things like using trains to speed the postal service was ruining correspondence by increasing the pace of delivery and thus reducing the consideration the letter-writer needed to put into his letter.) Speaking as someone with a fair amount of professional investment in the computer security field... in my experience, it's often more a matter of companies being massively overconfident in their security than not having a clue how to secure their systems. Apple's a poster child for overconfidence. Their small market share in the PC industry meant that their systems were less frequently targeted by malware developers and/or hackers, and they misconstrued that to mean their software was more secure. Cue the bragging on how MacOS doesn't need antivirus... and the malware devs responding to that thrown gauntlet with gusto. That's a really bad example... because it's not actually true. (We are now firmly into the territory of my day job, esp. in terms of my SAE obligations.) That Wired article is actually really, fantastically misleading and tries to make the (admittedly real) threat of hacker attacks on cars sound a lot scarier (and thus, more sensational) by omitting important context. Communications filtration is not only present, it's a fundamental part of how a CAN bus functions, as are various fault-checking methods that double as tamper-proofing. The author conveniently forgot to mention Miller and Valasek's 2011 experiment only worked because they chose a vehicle that didn't have a media hub system and installed a custom-made transceiver specifically designed to circumvent security and achieve that result. (In short, they cheated to show that it was theoretically possible under very specific conditions.) This thing about the Cherokee's uConnect head unit is a similar demonstration in which a number of security measures had to be bypassed beforehand to get the malicious firmware in place. The article even admits that, for their earlier 2013 demo, they had to be IN THE CAR and physically connected to the OBD II port with a legit scan tool to modify variables by hand. Believe me, the idea of the connected automobile as a potential target of external attack was most definitely something that all of the major automakers considered long before Bluetooth was even a thing... (we're talking ISO-11898 in 1986-1991). Obviously, it's still something being taken VERY seriously. To say nothing of the living components of the DYRL? Zentradi warships likely having their software burned directly into the part's genetic code... Though we know relatively little of how an overtechnology-based computer works. The description of the VF-1's avionics package makes it sound like they're not using a Von Neumann architecture like modern computers do. The security and stability implications of that alone are staggering.
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We need someone who actually has a copy of the English Fire!! album. I've found a whole bunch of details of the people who did the arrangements and the composition of the English lyrics... but the only 2 members of Fire Bomber American who have artists associated iwth them are Dennis Gunn (who "voices" Rak Nabekasi) Dawn Moore (who "voices" June Ley Miles). No word on who did the drum and keyboard parts for real (just credited to the characters Kcool V Realy and Five Fads).
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I know... and, believe, the writers of those series know too. It's still probably going to happen in reality, because as a species we've never really let potential security problems in implementation keep us from adopting new technologies that have the potential to be life-improving or just darn cool. (e.g. THE INTERNET) Eventually, the security problems get sorted out, but no implementation will ever be perfect from the word "go". In my own lab, there are multiple technologies that are absolutely too dangerous or finicky for "prime time" now... but that doesn't mean they can't be made safe enough for consumer use in the future. Far from ignoring the risks, Macross and Ghost in the Shell make rather a meal out of the potential problems of that kind of implant technology. Ghost in the Shell in particular is fond of the "someone hacked my brain" thing, though Macross Frontier-era Macross titles (incl. Macross the Ride) make no bones about the possibility of this happening on a societal scale. Macross Galaxy's civilians and military are supposedly being mind-controlled through their implants, and they've demonstrated the ability to withdraw the free will of their soldiers and even putting alternate personalities into their heads to turn civilians into battle-ready troops (Maris Stella in the Macross the Ride series), and they were planning to turn all of humanity into a distributed intelligence via cybernetics. That's a part of why some fleets still outlaw implant technology... and why the military has elite anti-cyborg soldiers (as seen in the Frontier movies). With our technology, certainly... that's one of the areas where Macross's setting is advantageous to this kind of thing. They can use overtechnology to produce more robust, durable, and possibly even self-repairing implants. The standard of technology is just that much higher... though outside the Macross Galaxy fleet, all but the most minor implant work seems to be relatively rare. (WRT Ghost in the Shell, the prohibitive costs involved in preventative maintenance on cybernetics is one of the factors the setting acknowledges as keeping all but the super-rich, the government's elite servants, and those for whom natural healing is not a viable option from ditching their flesh-and-blood bodies altogether. Implants that ape both the look and full range of functions of a human body are just too expensive.) By all indications, the Protoculture built their technology to last... they can't repair battle damage, but there's no indication that the undamaged technology doesn't run as well now as it did 120,000 or even 500,000 years ago, like the computers on Uroboros and Lux, or the entropy control field in the Varauta system. Some of their more complex creations are known to have had self-repair and even self-improvement capabilities. The biggest hit the Zentradi took, militarily, was the loss of factory satellites that produced some of their weapons like thermonuclear reaction ordinance or the Glaug battle pod.
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You can't do that with a lot of heat... it works for rocket motors, but we're talking about a pair of thermonuclear reactors here. That's a clever alternate use for the wing heat sinks... probably not a common usage, since most VF's are operating in space or in the relatively temperate regions of inhabited planets where human settlements are raised. Many do ignore the issue... though a lot of the ones that put serious thought into how the technology works do manage to throw an acknowledgement to addressing it somewhere in their work. (e.g. Macross, Gundam, Star Trek, Five Star Stories, Full Metal Panic!) Eh... it crops up more often than you give it credit for, though it didn't really start to become a prominent issue until Macross Plus's technical specs established that the YF-19 and YF-21's more powerful engines had a serious heat-exchange problem. Much more ink is expended about how to make more efficient use of the heat for practical purposes than there is about disposing of the waste heat... though the issue has become progressively more prominent as time has gone on. The BLCS sub-intakes are used for a lot more than that... but disposing of waste heat though that system isn't much different from disposing of it via engine thrust.
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As an addendum to Mr March's answer, Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix has a similar cutaway diagram... but it's facing the wrong way to get a good look at the AN/AWG-12 radar.
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Yes, we know. The point was that there is no demonstrable link between the Zentradi or Meltrandi cybernetics seen/mentioned in the Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie and either human implant technology or the BDI system. The Queadluun-Rhea is, after all, a Queadluun-Rau redesigned by human engineers and enhanced with human overtechnology. That would have made it very difficult for the DYRLverse versions of Max and Milia to start a family... which they did. Eh... I think we'll be seeing it in the real world sooner rather than later. (Well, we already have on a trial basis... but I mean on a large scale.) There's just too much potential application to use cybernetics for prosthetic applications and organ replacements to treat injuries and illnesses that would otherwise be impossible to treat. As far as military applications go, it'll be a long time before we start seeing cybernetics for combat troops... but Macross has that whole "overtechnology" thing to lean on. The tech the Protoculture designed for the Zentradi (and Meltrandi) was IMPOSSIBLY robust by modern standards. Right now, we can't even build a car that'll run for six months without preventative maintenance to sustain performance... the Protoculture built computers and starships that were still working fine after hundreds of thousands of years without maintenance. (Also, they had a rather cavalier attitude towards the whole "Casualties" thing...)
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That's heat from the reaction itself though, not from the coolant loops keeping the core at a safe temperature or the other systems in line.
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I fear I may become a perpetual source of aggrivation... as I'm not about to stop citing sources in favor of guessing wildly. It's just not my style. Eh... actually, there's a straightforward explanation for that difference in length. The VF-171EX's nose section changed shape (the nose tips down slightly) to make room for the improved visibility of the "bubble" canopy. The reduction in length is due to that minor change in angle, the nose is otherwise pretty much the same dimensions. It's hard to tell in the animation, but looking at the art or physical models of the craft makes it very easy to spot. Officially, the redesign of the arms to remove the bi-directional beam cannons was not an end in and of itself... it was a necessity of the simplified transformation. As noted previously, the path would've been considerably smoother starting from the VF-17 than the VF-11 in light of the fact that the VF-17's design was already stressed for an AVF-tier engine and was renowned for its exceptional durability and defensive ability. In the redesign process, they wouldn't have to reevaluate every aspect of the design to see if it would stand up under considerably greater stresses than it was originally designed for. At the time the VF-11 Thunderbolt was developed, thermonuclear reaction burst turbines were still a ways off... so the only way to achieve a similar thrust rating to an AVF would be to build an excessively large and consequentially fuel-intensive engine, scaling up output by scaling up input. You're missing a crucial difference here... possibly the most obvious crucial difference of all. SIZE. The VF-11 and VF-25 may have roughly similar masses due to improvements in materials and design, but the VF-25 is SUBSTANTIALLY larger. Not only does it have more efficient and powerful engines, it also has a good deal more internal space in which to store fuel. The same can be said for every other AVF which has shown up thus far. (Size is a noted asset for the nearest neighbor to AVF territory before the VF-17, and the VFs that've been upgraded to AVF levels... the VF-14 is even bigger than a VF-17, and the VF-0 and SV-51 are some of the biggest VFs ever built.) VERY limited... the MAXL is a build-to-order aircraft, supposedly only a dozen or so made and no two truly alike. 's probably a question of cost and availabilities... with the Special Forces already using the VF-17 and the VF-19 tentatively penciled in as a successor craft, why bother upgrading the VF-11's to MAXL status? For most pilots, the regular variant is more than sufficient and for those who need more powerful craft, just give them the latest toys that are scheduled for mass production. There are several known typographical errors in Macross the Ride. The FF-3600J number is one. The printed stats block for the SV-52 also asserts that the VF-17 uses the FF-2010X, rather than 2100X.
