Seto Kaiba

To a point, yeah... though there is one notable exception. Missiles using infrared guidance - the most common primary guidance system on micromissiles - are going to overwhelmingly target a Valkyrie's engines no matter where they're situated in the airframe because that's the part of a Valkyrie that emits the most heat. For most Valkyries, this means they'll home in on the legs.

Information for Macross Delta is relatively thin on the ground in general. About all we know, via the Macross Delta TV series, is that those specific classes of space warship are among the products produced and sold by the many subdidiary companies operating as part of the Epsilon Foundation. Windermere IV's government was buying basically all of its technology through the Epsilon Foundation even before relations with the New UN Government soured, so we can't pin down when they were purchased. They spent big on upgrading their forces between the War of Independence and their attack on the Brisingr Alliance, so it's possible those ships may be new ships purchased in the 2060s. Or they may just be reusing old carriers because their trump card Sigur Berrentzs can fold fighters to and from targets without needing to jump itself. General Galaxy are the preeminent shipbuilders in the New UN Government's sphere of influence. Given that, and the Epsilon Foundation's seeming focus on doing business with emigrant governments that may not have the resources to be fully self-sufficient, it's not surprising in the least that one or more of the conglomerate's subsidiaries in the defense industry would be a shipbuilding firm manufacturing General Galaxy's designs under license for sale to emigrant governments like Windermere IV. Macross Galaxy's versions of those designs are said to be state-of-the-art as of 2059. We just can't say whether the very similar designs used by Windermere IV's armed forces were an older version of those designs, an economized version of the Macross Galaxy fleet's proprietary escorts meant for export sale, or have simply been customized to meet some specific need the Windermereans have.

Probably not. A liquid air cycle engine is able to separate gases in its intake, but only through the difference in their boilings points when chilling the intake air for liquifaction. They're intended to run just cold enough to liquify oxygen but not cold enough to liquify nitrogen on the engine's ascent through the atmosphere as a way to cheat down the weight of a rocket through collecting oxidiser for its fuel on the flight up instead of having to carry all of its fuel from the word "go". (The idea is not workable at the present time in the real world, but what's being done with the Macross version "SLACS" is a lot more restrained and feasible.) Kinda... we call those "aircraft carriers", "space stations", and "surface airbases". Given that the fuel of choice for thermonuclear reactors is the most plentiful element in the universe, emigrant fleets and planets have no shortage of ways to obtain it. Harvesting it from the interstellar medium with something like a bussard ramscoop is Hard Mode and terribly inefficient. The approach with the best yield would probably be using robot ships to collect hydrogen gas from the upper atmospheres of gas giants. The safest approaches with the least effort would be either using refrigeration and pressurization to separate air into its component gases or using electrolysis on water to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. Given that water and water ice can be found on many planets, moons, asteroids, and comets... well... they can probably harvest it while they're collecting other resources.

Further development based on the YF-21/VF-22 seems to have been based entirely upon improving the brainwave control system. The one late model that we see that was being used as an experimental test bed (VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei) was being used to develop improvements to the BCS that eventually evolved into the cybernetic version of the system seen on the YF-27 and VF-27. Development of VF defensive measures seems to have focused far more on making sure that the limbs stay on rather than trying to work around losing a limb. The focus being on improvements to structural materials, energy conversion armor, and pinpoint barrier systems to make the limbs more resistant to damage.

That's a small part of it... but the main reason is that Shinsei Industry went back and dramatically reworked the VF-19 in order to address feedback from the New UN Forces about its performance. They simplified its structure somewhat to improve maintainability and adjust its aerodynamic performance, they optimized the design for space operations, and reworked the airframe control AI to improve controlability. SLACS was no longer necessary for the VF-19's late type since it was designed principally for use in space but the redesign of its exterior was for other reasons.

Yuuuuuup. It's really hard to believe someone so naive, gullible, and incapable of detecting malice was ever a top bounty hunter. It would've been way better for him as a character to go out at the top of his game than to live to deteriorate into that. On the other hand, it does make it a lot easier to understand why the Empire moved away from clone soldiers. If that's the quality they were getting from clones left to their own devices in the field, no wonder they decided clones weren't cutting it.

An explicit explanation isn't given in any of the technical materials that I've seen. Of course, we can make some reasonable assumptions based on what we know about why the YF-21/VF-22 ended up designed the way it was and what concessions had to be made in its design to compensate for those unconventional decisions. Variable Fighter Master File and Macross Chronicle both lean into the idea that the YF-21's unconventional transformation was a product of two things: the design's basis in the Queadluun-Rau battle suit and the design team's goal of maximizing passive stealth performance. Macross Chronicle's coverage of the YF-21's GERWALK mode makes a brief note about how most VFs mount their engines in the (lower) legs because it makes for a more efficient transformation. (This probably helps stability a fair bit too, putting the heaviest single part of the Battroid closest to the ground.) The YF-21's unconventional design required some additional considerations to preserve GERWALK mode operation. Most VFs use the main engines to produce thrust for lift and vector that thrust to maneuver while supplementing that vectoring with a sub-engine for forward thrust. The YF-21's unconventional design meant that General Galaxy had to get weird with it. The legs are basically deadweight in GERWALK mode, containing only verniers. The main engines have to produce both forward thrust AND lift thrust, so how they went about it was to essentially install a set of large slats in the underside of the engine compartment so that bypass airflow from the engines could be redirected downward to produce lift while the main engines produced thrust for forward motion. This is probably rather hard on the engines (which Master File alleges already suffer from a significantly reduced operating lifespan due to being overtuned to compensate for the YF-21's greater mass and energy requirements) and the extent to which that thrust can be vectored to maximize maneuverability is far more limited. Master File also notes that putting the engines in the main body instead of the legs makes them more difficult to service... which is more of a problem for the YF-21/VF-22 than many other VFs since as noted above its overtuned engines need more TLC from the mechanics than those of other VFs. The loss of maneuverability from being less able to vector main engine thrust was presumably compensated for by the Inertia Vector Control System. That's probably a double-edged sword on its own, since that system is extremely expensive and difficult to produce. The ability to purge the limbs and keep flying is a very niche and not particularly useful feature. Mind you, it doesn't make the VF itself more resistant to damage... it just means that hits to the limbs are less disabling than hits to center mass, while the opposite would be true for other VFs. Even then, if other VFs had the same energy generation improvements applied to their engines and were willing to make the same design compromises to get that greater output, they'd still be better off since they'd have far more energy to throw at energy conversion armor and pinpoint barrier systems at the expensive of engine lifespan. What you might gain in terms of stealtiness and tolerance for a lost limb you lose in terms of ease of maintenance, a larger airframe, and greater burden on the active stealth system.

There is no indication of such a capability in official materials. Master File mentions a system called the Slush and Liquid Air Cycle System (SLACS) in 4th Gen and later VFs that does something similar, albeit only within a planet's atmosphere. SLACS is a system built into a sub-intake like the dorsal intakes in the VF-19's shoulders that is a practical application of Liquid Air Cycle Engine theory. In short, the VF is using its internal stores of cryogenic hydrogen fuel to rapidly cool air passing through the sub-intake into a liquid state. That liquid air is then further chilled into a slush for storage and put into a separate tank for use as a propellant in space. It's worth noting that said slush is not injected into the reactor as fuel but is instead introduced into the plasma stream in the thrust increase section of the turbine in an afterburner-like manner to increase the thrust output of the engine. That said, it's also noted that SLACS doesn't work in space and that units intended primarily or entirely for space operation tend to remove the system and replace it with supplemental tanks instead.

Well, yes... it's the piece of art in your post. The line art version of that painting, which can be found in the Macross Model Hobby Handbook among other places, is what Macross Chronicle uses for the original appearance of the Supervision Army gunship that became the SDF-1 Macross. (See Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet SDF:M TV UN Spacy 01A.) It'd been abandoned before it crashed on Earth, but given that its crew spaces were designed for giants (like the airlock we see Hikaru and Minmay use) and backstory materials suggest they recovered some battle pods from its hangars... it seems relatively clear that its crew when it was manned were Zentradi of the Supervision Army.

Presumably so. It's never been explicitly stated, but it's very likely that the same hydrogen fuel slush used in Valkyrie and Destroid compact thermonuclear reactors is also used in larger shipboard thermonuclear reactors. Mind you, because those thermonuclear reactors use a Gravity and Inertia Control system to provide fuel compression and plasma confinement they can in principle use a variety of possible fuels. Elemental hydrogen and isotopes of same are simply the most abundant.

Finished The Book of Boba Fett last night... and it's as much a mess as I remember it being. I can definitely see why Star Wars fans consider it The Mandalorian Season 2.5 instead of a separate series in its own right. It's pretty weak stuff. Boba Fett's a pretty boring main character and his story would have been even shorter than it ended up being if he weren't a complete idiot. Pivoting to Din Djarin and later Luke, Ahsoka, and Grogu was a blatant authorial saving throw that really didn't work nearly as well as they were hoping it would. Having Grogu decide to ditch his Jedi training and rejoin Din feels like The Mandalorian's marketing and merchandising teams kind of hijacked The Book of Boba Fett to keep the "Baby Yoda" money coming in. Nah, Din was carrying Boba so damn hard... so hard that he had to carry Boba for the second half of Boba's own show.

Maybe if they had been developed that way just for kicks... but they weren't. Remember, the reason 5th Generation development kicked off when it did was because the New UN Government had made its first confirmed contact with the Vajra. The 5th Gen performance targets were set as high as they were because the New UN Government's goal was a Variable Fighter that could fight the Vajra on an even footing. Master File has a few remarks suggesting that previously unknown forces that wiped out New UN Spacy warships and fighter patrols were later believed to be run-ins with Vajra forces. That excessive performance did also have quite a lot of benefits in use against the Zentradi, as described in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah. It's hard to argue with a unit able to hold off an enemy force ten times their size with no losses and only minor damage while guarding a defenseless target in an hours-long rescue mission.

Based on what's said both in-story and in creator interviews... not all that differently from how it works in the real world. Shoji Kawamori has described the current state of affairs in the Macross setting as being like the age of sail, but with the internet. Emigrant fleets and planets can be months or even years away from Earth by space fold, but advancements in fold communications technology and the ever-growing number of emigrant fleets and planets have turned what was once just point-to-point communications links into a massive decentralized FTL internet called the Galaxy Network. Commerce involving the transmission of digital assets (e.g. software and cultural exports like music, movies, television shows, ebooks, etc.) can be done directly over the Galaxy Network, but when it comes to transactions involving physical goods the logistics of fold travel present serious obstacles. Improvements in fold technology have reduced the disparity between subjective and objective time during a fold jump over the years, but the incredible energy demands of fold navigation mean that there are still practical limits to how far you reasonably travel in a single fold. Frontier and Delta suggest that by 2060 that practical limit on distance for a single fold jump is somewhere in the vicinity of 800-1,000 light years with adequate prep time. We see the space equivalent of container ships for the first time in the Macross Delta TV series as they transport things like perishable foods over interstellar distances, and we know from Macross Frontier that major instellar shipping firms make colossal amounts of money shipping goods across massive interstellar distances but spend enough time doing so that they have to have their own private security forces to safeguard shipments. When the cost of shipping goods in from elsewhere is too high - be it in time, money, or both - the option exists for emigrant governments or private companies to license whatever the product is from its original creator and manufacture it locally. When it comes to Variable Fighters and other military hardware, what we see is a mixture of the approaches that've been taken on this topic in the real world: Export variants built in one locale and shipped to another for service, often stripped of proprietary systems that the developing government doesn't want the purchasing government to have. The F-4 Phantom did a roaring trade in export variants in the 60's and 70's. The Macross universe's main example is the VF-19P Zola Patrol model and presumably the VF-5000G and T-G versions also used by the Zola Patrol. Build-under-license variants where the purchasing government has the manufacturing capability but for whatever reason doesn't want to go to the trouble of designing its own aircraft. The purchasing government buys a license to locally produce an existing design developed by another government. Some aspects of the design might be omitted if they involve proprietary technologies subject to security restrictions. Japan's Mitsubishi F-2 is a build-under-license version of the US's General Dynamics F-16. The Macross universe's main examples here would be the VF-171 Nightmare Plus and the VF-19EF Caliburn. Use an existing concept design and previously developed technology in an original development. The purchasing government doesn't want to do all the legwork on their own and want to sell the finished product in export themselves, so they use a mixture of original and "off the shelf" parts in an original design loosely based on a previously shared concept. Japan's Mitsubishi F-X/F-3 is the real world example. The Macross universe's examples would be the VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31, with the VF-31 being a direct reference to the F-3. It helps a bit in this regard that many of the major corporations involved have branch offices in different New UN Government member nations, in much the same way that various parts suppliers in the auto and aircraft industries have branch offices in different countries where they sell to local OEMs. (For instance, how Japan's Sumitomo Electric Networks and Aisin, as well as Germany's ZF, have US branches in the Detroit area to serve the needs of the "Big 3".) As far as intellectual property rights go, Shoji Kawamori has in the past compared the current shape of the New UN Government to the European Union. Presumably this means that there are both national and central registries for things like copyrights and trademarks, and that those marks are respected and enforceable internationally under treaty and supranational law the way they are today. Emigrant fleets are, by nature, mobile and this can pose problems for shipping to/from one... so there is a certain incentive to manufacture locally under license. The New UN Government gives emigrant governments quite a lot of latitude in deciding how to arm their local defense forces. Each emigrant fleet or planet's economic situation plays a big role in how they decide to go about arming their forces. Developing a new fighter is extraordinarily expensive and it requires quite a lot of technical expertise. Consequently, very few emigrant governments have the resources to do so. Typically only the ones that have the backing of one of the megacorporations and a major defense contractor like Macross Frontier (Bilra Transport, Shinsei, and LAI), Macross Galaxy (its parent company General Galaxy), Uroboros (Bilra Transport again), and the Brisingr Alliance (twenty planetary governments and regional branches of four defense contractors including Shinsei and LAI). Even then, that's a huge capital investment those governments can't make casually or on a regular basis so they're dependent on the expectation of selling those models in export sales to recoup costs and can't develop new models at will... so export model sales and buying licenses to build existing models locally are the norm. The lifespan of a VF, like that of a normal fighter, is finite... and older generations of VF can only be upgraded so much to keep them viable. As we've seen a few times, upgrading VFs to/past their design's limits can adversely impact their usability and cause them to damage or even destroy themselves. Macross the Ride's VF-1X++ Hakuna Aoba Special was the first really blunt example of this, being a Special Forces VF-1X++ that its (retired) pilot had subsequently upgraded with engines and rocket boosters that far exceeded its aerodynamic design limits... turning it into an unreliable mess that frequently cost its pilot victory in races because it could barely be controlled at all. Macross the Ride's VF-9E was another, which had engine issues that would cause the airframe to effectively self-destruct. There's a more subdued example in Macross Frontier with the VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX, a VF-171 upgraded with EX-Gear and detuned VF-19 engines that suffered handling issues as a result of the rest of the aircraft struggling to keep up with its more powerful engines. Macross Delta offers us two separate examples... the VF-31 Siegfried and VF-31AX Kairos Plus. The Siegfried was a customized VF-31A with its more powerful engines and fold wave system pushing its airframe past its structural limit to the point that it could damage itself with its post-upgrade performance as was often the case with Hayate's VF-31J. The VF-31AX was a further hacked-together upgrade of the Siegfried that was so ill-equipped to handle its own performance that all five VF-31AX Kairos Plus units were beyond repair after only a single engagement and had to be scrapped (per Master File). With issues like that from upgrades, most emigrant governments can generally be counted upon to adopt new generations of fighter as the resources to do so become available and the need presents itself.

Not that weird, IMO. The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett have done a lot to let Boba Fett escape his Original Trilogy standing as a glorified extra and a flat character, but that doesn't mean they made him a likeable or interesting character. He spends his time in The Mandalorian mainly being a gruff, taciturn mook in a mask who helps Mando bust heads and that's all. In his own series, Boba Fett borders on Idiot Hero territory with his near-continuous displays of breathtaking idiocy and naivete. The overwhelming majority of his problems in The Book of Boba Fett are self-created... a product of his inexplicable ignorance of how being a crime lord works, his stubborn refusal to act as a crime lord should, and a determined and consistent rejection of the advice of his own subordinates and advisors. It's nearly impossible to get invested in his struggle because he wouldn't be struggling if he would just listen to others. Din Djarin, on the other hand, is a much more interesting character because his problems are chiefly external and a catalyst for his own growth. He listens, thinks constructively, and finds ways to work around or through his problems.

Just got to the part of my The Book of Boba Fett viewing where the series completely forgets it's not The Mandalorian for an entire episode. I think that kind of says all that needs to be said about that series... They had to bring in Mando to save it from itself.

Back in the early 2000s, several Macross featurettes in various model hobby magazines toyed with the idea of a fighter-bomber variant of the VF-22 inspired by Lockheed Martin's then-recently revealed "FB-22" fighter-bomber concept based on their F-22 Raptor fighter. The idea might've gained official traction had the FB-22 proposal in the real world not been quickly rejected as basically unnecessary... anything it could do, a dedicated bomber could do better.

Only if you're concerned with carrying the absolute maximum amount of ordnance they can carry and still fly. Both the YF-19 and YF-21 were designed to be able to carry enough weaponry for normal operations internally in order to preserve their stealthiness. Hanging bombs, missiles, or fuel tanks on the outside of the aircraft greatly degrades passive stealth performance. Keeping the missiles and bombs in internal bays prevents that degradation and minimizes the burden on the Valkyrie's extremely energy-hungry active stealth system as a result. The YF-21 has even less margin than the YF-19 does, since it's larger and therefore puts a greater burden on the active stealth system already and Master File suggests the BCS's subsystems draw an enormous amount of power too.

From this, I can only assume that the infamous Bothan Spies(TM) are named things like "Suun TuDiye" and "Iym DuMed".

Twice over... wasn't it Luke's surname in the early drafts of A New Hope?

Having a biology-inspired design aesthetic is not the same thing as having actual organic technology. The TV version Zentradi just have a biology-inspired design aesthetic, their technology's inorganic. The movie version Zentradi do incorporate biotechnology into their ships and mecha (esp. in control systems), but they're still constructed in factories rather than grown. Exactly how that biotechnology is mass produced is not established, but given that those automated factories are in space and the equipment they're building is intended to operate in space without maintenance effectively indefinitely... odds are that it's pretty well hardened against radiation through the Protoculture's mastery of the material and genetic sciences.

... looking at Dave Filoni's filmography, it really is surprising if people didn't foresee that an avid pre-Disney Star Wars fan and creator being involved wouldn't result in him trying to tie his work under Disney back to his pre-Disney work. Though I guess this did predate Disney's authorial saving throw attempt to start "rescuing" material from the old Expanded Universe after they failed to stick the landing with the sequel trilogy and Solo: a Star Wars Story. As someone who hasn't seen ANY of the cartoons, up to at least the middle of The Book of Boba Fett nothing has really given me the feeling that the cartoons are required... more like an easter egg than a course prerequisite. The few references that I assume are to the events of those cartoons are so minor that I could get the gist of what happened just from what's said in The Mandalorian. I haven't gotten to... is his name really "Cad Bane"? That's the best kind of awful naming sense. 🤣 That's like naming a pair of knife fetishists "Shanklin" and "Slashley".

It hasn't been described as an issue that I'm aware... The YF-21's airframe is somewhat larger than that of the YF-19 because of its unconventional transformation but it was engineered to prioritize passive stealth performance above almost all other considerations. It can take the same standard weapons pallets the YF-19 can, and its internal bays are roomy enough to accommodate even larger weaponry like the latest model thermonuclear reaction missile as seen in Macross 7. Variable Fighter Master File does depict provisions for conformal and pylon mountings of additional weaponry on the YF-21/VF-22, but it's primarily body mountings instead of using underwing pylons. EDIT: The chart does show the option to attach pylons, though because the wings fold there are relatively few options for those stations.

IMO, a more likely explanation is that the idea propigated while Han was on display in Jabba's palace. By nature of his chosen vocation, Jabba the Hutt was naturally inclined to do a fair amount of business with bounty hunters and kept at least one (and more likely several) of them on retainer as hired muscle. Every one of them would have known that Fett collected the bounty on Han Solo and had an opportunity to see the carbonite slab because Jabba had it mounted on the wall of his audience chamber. That would probably have been enough for most bounty hunters to put two and two together and end up spreading the idea when they talked shop with other bounty hunters. (Though I do find the idea of some PR flack trying to convince Lord-freaking-Vader to do PV spots for a portable carbon freeze system marketed to bounty hunters absolutely hilarious. Doubly so since Rogue One revealed he's not above a villainous pun, and Vader being Anakin and therefore a massive drama queen he'd be as hammy as possible in something like that.)

Removing the conventional horizontal stabilizers from the design reduces drag on the airframe. The loss of the accompanying control surfaces (the elevators) is compensated for by angling the vertical stabilizers into so their control surfaces can serve as both the rudders and elevators ("ruddervators") and the use of thrust vectoring nozzles for pitch and roll control. It is drawn with a conventional muzzle flash... see episode two c.14:40.

To be honest, I didn't find anything wrong with Mando having a carbon freeze system on his ship. Keeping a live prisoner is a nontrivial risk for a bounty hunter. They have to be fed, watered, have access to sanitary facilities, etc., which all costs money. Many prisoners facing the no doubt harsh punishments from those who posted the bounty on them would be inclined to attempt to escape from confinement and attack the bounty hunter, hijack the ship, or sabotage the ship if they have accomplices who might rescue them. Carbon freezing prisoners neatly evades most of those issues, since the prisoners in cryogenic hibernation are incapable of escaping on their own or engaging in self-harm, don't consume food or water, and don't produce waste. That way the prisoner can be delivered alive and shenanigans-free even if the process is acutely unpleasant for the prisoner. They also keep for a long time, so a bounty hunter freezing their quarrey wouldn't necessarily have to take one job at a time. It's a bit of accidental genius, IMO... since it really makes for an effective way to demonstrate why it's so insane that people treat Din and Boba with such a cavalier attitude. There's nobody policing the bounty hunters and no legal safety net preventing them from employing the most incredible violence to secure the bounty head. They aren't some dumb hick bail bondsman cosplaying a member of the Village People who'll go to jail himself if he gets rough... these are heavily armed career killers whose only incentive to keep you alive is that you're worth more money that way, and for their purposes "alive" doesn't necessarily mean unharmed. Never mind that they have zero incentive to keep alive anyone who's dumb enough to get between them and their prize.