Master Dex

Well I think Dr. Kaku was more or less referring the urbanized areas of the world, which are the areas that have the biggest effect on the world today. However it is good to not take things for granted. Yes... I'd hope we would have better than fission before long space missions, that wouldn't be efficient. However we know in Macross they have nuclear fusion, or some augmented type based on OTEC. They seem to have also at least cracked pair annihilation for the purposes of weaponry, so they are on their way to finding out how to use it for energy collection. As a futurist, I often think about what the future can look like. While I understand what you mean about futurism and contemporary vs what Star Trek often shows, you have to keep in mind that Macross 7 takes place only 35 years from now (albeit in an altered reality where and alien space ship crashed in 1999) and Star Trek takes place 300 years in the future. Nothing stays the same forever. However I do agree that some things would be similar for a long time to come. Often is the fads of the teenage generation that shapes what the world will be most like next but things like men wearing suits to work and such will probably never get old unless the casual workplace idea catches on big time. However Star Trek rarely shows life outside a star ship, so one can't say that it is the same everywhere. I have it on good authority (the latest movie is a decent example of this) that on Earth in the Star Trek universe, not everything is super sciencey and futuristic. It just so happens on star ships they are, because that is how people dress and act in that profession. Starfleet is a military after all. I also think about futurism a lot since I am working on my own sci-fi novels, each set in different time periods, all far in our future. However I am not quick to make everyone and everything so different just because it is the future. Some things change with time, while some things about people never change. How different a time is from ours really does depend on how far it is in the past or future.

Entirely true. Just look at Moore's Law. Moore's Law states that computer power doubles every 18 months. Hard to believe but true. With that the price of such technology also changes. In 30 years it is estimated that a computer chip could cost as low as 2 cents, that is cheaper than paper is today almost. With computer power being that cheap, it almost becomes more economical, and environmentally sound to use disposable or recyclable computer systems in place of paper like I described earlier. While I wouldn't say the brochure pads in that episode were capable of super computer processing (probably very basically programmed) it is true that 30 years from now we will be taking computers and internet for granted the same way we do electricity today. To quote from famed Theoretical Physicist Dr. Michio Kaku (a personal favorite of mine): "Today we walk into a room and we expect there to be electricity, we expect there to be lights. We don't think about whether or not the electricity is there or not because we know it is everywhere in the walls, just invisible. 30 years from now the same will happen with computers and the internet. We will walk into a room and without thinking expect to automatically have internet access anywhere in the room. The internet will be in the walls just as electricity is now, invisible like today." I wouldn't think of the pads as fully disposable, as I imagine that full disposability on a star ship involved incineration or dumping into space. The pads could be easily recycled, like a bin as people leave the concert for the brocures (much like the bin you dump 3D glasses in after a movie in theaters) and then reprogrammed for another event. Going green is important in a closed habitat like a space craft or colony because pollution won't take as long to affect you as on a planet. While you could dump all your trash into space and it is just as fine, why not reuse those resources. Resources are finite, especially on a space craft. I'd be hesitant to dump something if I have a very limited supply of that material at the moment before a resupply. Very good and fascinating points of discussion Pete. Granted I realize I brought them up first, but you helped flesh out the context more. While it may not be exactly relating to the story of Macross 7, it is relevant. From the previews for the next episode I already have a good idea of some of the things I could bring up for my science bit.

Oh that is a very good question indeed. Well I don't know if I can say you're correct or not, but I think I should clarify somethings first about gravity. It is a very common misconception (therefor no fault of you or anyone) that there is this sphere of gravity emanating from a large mass, usually a planet or star. A larger misconception is the idea that at a certain distance from an object, their gravity pull is stopped. The fact of the matter is however, gravity doesn't stop anywhere, it is always there. No matter how far away you are from the Earth, the Earth's gravity is still acting on you. However the farther away you are, the less it affects you. Say you were 5 light years away from Earth. The planet's gravity would still be affecting you (never mind the gravity of our sun and all the other planets, asteroids, comets, and what have you) but due to the distance the gravitational pull on Earth on you would be so negligible, so infinitesimally small that you wouldn't even know it was there. In that light every star in the sky does have some affect on you, but so small compared to the Earth below your feet. The sun and the moon affect us more though. Matter of fact the sun affects the moon's movement more than the Earth, despite distance since the Sun is so large. So to part of your question, the escape pod is affected by the gravitational field of Macross 7. However then we must ask ourselves, what is the gravitational field strength of M7 (aka the gravitational acceleration). Well I don't know but I might imagine it is pretty small. As large as the ship is, it is nowhere near the size of a planet or asteroid (or dwarf planet if you must, but the classification is rather pointless, but Pluto isn't a planet still). The ships have gravity, hell even an individual person has gravity, but I don't think it is that much. Given time the pod would be pulled into the ship by gravity, but I think it would take quite a long while. Now of course I am not taking into account the effect of artificial gravity... they seem to have the ability to create that in Macross... but I have no idea how it works. Maybe is artificially adds or subtract mass to change gravity, or maybe it alters the gravitational constant in small areas. I have no idea how you'd do that but that is why it is called science fiction. I don't know if that technology would change the conditions or not. So then the escape pod isn't really thrusting to escape the gravitational pull of the ship (this is what we refer to as escape velocity, although thrusting is an acceleration actually) it is just thrusting to pick up velocity and move. As for the missile shards. Well I would imagine the explosions of the missile would probably disintegrate the missile casing and you wouldn't be left with much that could do too much damage. While it is true in space the smallest particles can be deadly, we are dealing with the future here where ships are made of better materials that can withstand things better. Now if there were sufficient pieces of the missile left after the explosion they would have a direction and velocity (or velocity vector by technical terms) caused by the force of the explosion, but they wouldn't all be going in the same direction. Explosions create an omni-directional outward force, so the pieces would be traveling outward away from the explosion. I feel like I'm rambling. To get to the point, I think there wouldn't be much to worry about in your scenario. I believe that there wouldn't be too much debris from an exploding missile that didn't hit anything. Also I can safely assume that the ships of the Macross 7 fleet are far too light in mass to have a noticeable gravitational field by human standards. While there is gravity, it is too small that it would take a long time for stuff to be pulled down to the center of gravity. The ships are also moving I believe, though it is hard to tell but they most likely have some velocity. So in my opinion, I think the escape pod is safe from anything more than the Protodeviln firing another missile at it that might actually hit. That ended up longer than I intended, hope it helps though. Questions are good, it is good to always wonder about things. So if you are curious about anything else, never hesitate. I'll do my best to answer.

Just finished watching episode 6. This was actually a really well done episode I believe. It is also the first episode we get to see a decent amount of Gamlin. He has only appeared in small bits before now. Also this is the beginning of his acquaintance with Mylene. I have to reiterate it, it is clear Basara was in a rut the whole episode and is still having some trouble dealing with the fact he has to resort to using weapons. However he seems a bit more content with things by the end. The fact of the matter is is that he was under a lot of pressure this battle, he tried to sing his heart out to stop Gigil from blasting away at Gamlin but it wasn't working and he had no option but to fire when the missiles were starting to affect the escape pod (more on that in a bit). It is clear he directed his anger to the attackers. In his mind, their refusal to understand and listen to his song in order to cease the attack was the reason he had to fire. So I think that is why Basara looks like he is feeling better at the end. He now no longer thinks he is failing to reach them, he is seeing that it is the enemy that is being stubborn here. I think when it comes down to it, this episode was Basara questioning if he really was doing all he could with his singing since he wasn't achieving success, hence his rut. However by the end of the episode he has decided he is giving it all he can, and it is that the enemy is just really hard to get through. So now he is just continuing to make sure he is giving it his all to try and reach them and hope that the enemy will one day understand. So from character analysis to science! That's right, it is your weekly science review by none other than your very own Master Dex!!! Too flashy? I thought it was humorous. Actually I don't have a lot to mention this time around really. Though I loved the fact that the pamphlets were on digital pads, which is a very likely thing to happen in the near future thanks to OLEDs (that's Organic Light Emitting Diodes) which are small lights that can be applied to any surface, including flexible ones like paper. It will one day be used to perfect the idea of a video or moving image playing on something as thin as a paper or magazine cover (remember the magazines in Frontier, yeah, like that). The pamphlet here though, is an in between step though, more like using something like the Amazon.com kindle or the Barnes&Noble e-reader which have become popular lately for being able to download books and read them on the device. This thing here seems a bit more disposable though, suggesting it is simple to make at that time and are programmed only with information for that concert and can't be used for anything else. Probably get recycled for further use. Until OLED technology becomes super cheap (it is already pretty cheap though) this is more likely to happen before we have those video magazine covers we can just toss when we are done reading/watching them. I mentioned the missile that exploded near the escape pod though and rocked it. I though I'd note that there isn't much the missile would do to the pod without actually hitting it. With a lack of atmosphere there is no shock wave to explosions so the missile would have to be really close for the actual release of energy from the explosion to do much to the escape pod. I'm not sure if the energy release from an exploding missile without atmospheric effects can do that much... I'd have to know just what kind of punch the missile carried. So there is really nothing wrong with the scene, but I can guess it was a bit fudged for dramatic effect. So nothing new there, lol. We know the show creators realize the lack of sound in space due to no medium, but that is becoming more well recognized. What many forget is that explosives do less in a vacuum unless they really close or directly touching their target due to lack of shock wave. This was nothing, but wait until they bring out the reactions weapons later in the series and you can listen to me go on about how nuclear explosions in space work (yes I know they aren't quite nukes, but it is the closest real world analogy), which is actually quite cool. Good episode, on to the next one, BOMBAA!!

Actually I find that SDFM has the best stories personally. M7 has the best music though. Frontier excelled at fan service and mecha porn, but it still had a very good story.

Perhaps you suggest if he hadn't eaten the steak at all his lightened weight would have let him escape?

The pineapple salad's presence is what concerns me the most.

But... it's fun to do that.

No, that is a terrible idea, everyone at the conventions would die!

I would think it more logical that they would get their orders via a radio link rather than listening through the metal. Especially when they are in space... with no sound. Granted the mecha doesn't need to be sound proof, I just think it would be by design. I don't know how much ambient sound could get through in an atmosphere. Actually that makes me think, I was only thinking of relation to pilot anyway, as in the cockpit being soundproof rather than the entire craft. Like I said though it only seems like it would be by design, not that I think it should be. Pete makes some good points about speaker pods there... indeed.

I never said the milky road was an accident. Nor do I believe that having you own 'space car' wouldn't be cool. I did mention I would want to fly the spacecraft to the other ship, not sit on a shuttle. While such public systems should exist, I think personal vehicles are far more fun. However I would want to have the space car that could fly in space like any craft and not need the generated road and have to stick to that. Granted you need some sort of traffic control in the short range all the ships exist in. All the ships there of course and spacecraft sensors could make a neat little grid for monitoring where everyone is so you don't have collisions though. Now of course having a car can that drive on a road in the ship and then do the space craft thing is a little unlikely. I would imagine a civilian would have a car for use in ship, and a private spacecraft for transit, in which they could bring the car with them most likely. It might seem easier with the milky road, but I can't see how it is more efficient. As for the spiritia draining bit. I thought Basara was immune because he was anima spiritia? Don't they have a spiritia that can't be fed on?

Nice Review. I can't add too much to that. It was clear Basara had a rough day. It is amazing to see how strong a pacifist he is. I wouldn't think twice about shooting or firing a missile to defend people like that probably. He hates that his song isn't working and he has to resort to violence. Just a bad day it seems. At least he got through to people last episode, but this time Rex is giving him a challenge. He seems to like that though, it shows him how far he has to go to get people to understand his music and such. Regarding my science bit about sound in space, check it out, the Fire Valkyrie has speakers in its shoulders! More evidence Kawamori is more than aware of the lack of sound in space, as are the characters. Basara didn't did to fire speaker pods because they were inside a ship and he could just use giant speakers. One has to wonder though why enemy mecha aren't soundproof though.... The big thing in this episode for me is that we get to see more of the Milky Road in this episode, and how it appears to work. I am at a loss for trying to explain the milky road. Frontier fleet replaces the system with interlocked colony ships, so Kawamori made a conscious effort to diverge from that. I don't know how it works, but the Milky Road seems to be some type of energy beam or strand that connects the various ships either rigidly or loosely (more likely the latter). The entire purpose being seems to be to allow civilians to get from ship to ship without utilizing a smaller spacecraft like a shuttle and they can use their own vehicles. What's more is that they can practically drive on this energy based road. My best guess in cars and such can be magnetically propelled but the bikes and such here clearly showed some time of propulsion to move. They must be airtight then to do that in space, cars today are far from airtight, as that would be really expensive (and unnecessary today). Same goes for driving on top of the dome, I wonder how Michael's car got back after they did that flip by running into that bump.... Guess the artificial gravity of the city expands to the dome. I was wondering if those motorcycles were using internal combustion engines, sounded like it but that should be far passe. Perhaps it just mimics the sound, as such an engine wouldn't work in space for sure. If you ask me, I'd be more than happy to fly a spacecraft between ships that driving two dimensionally on a generated road, but not everyone is up for that I guess. I think Frontier had a better idea, but that is why it came later I suppose. Pete raised a good point, why did the Protodeviln attack this time? They didn't even drain spiritia. Matter of fact all they did was rough house a bit. Very coincidental they only attacked the ship that Fire Bomber happened to be singing on. Do they know something we don't? Also it seems the attack wasn't important enough for the military to get involved, seeing as Basara did all the work, whether he enjoyed it or not. A weak premise for this episode, but it worked itself out I suppose. I guess piloting skill is genetic too seeing Mylene, heheh, cool. Also I am constantly trying to decipher how Basara's control interface works. It seems moving the guitar acts like the yoke, and various buttons control various things from there. I thought the slider was the throttle but it seems to do other things as well. Well that is all I have for this episode, till the next one!

Lawrence actually said his 'speaker' system was inspired by Dr. Chiba's work. I always assumed this meant his speakers were really miniaturized sound boosters. That or the speakers could somehow transmit music to other craft and to the whales... somehow. Yeah I haven't quite figured it out myself. Although tomorrow is the date for it, I actually watched ep. 5 tonight. I'll wait until the first person gives their review to talk about it though.

I've noticed several people here have taken to doing specific things related to their portion of the discussing of episodes. Looking back on all my posts I've decided as well as reviewing the episode and what I liked and such, I'll be the official skeptic/science critique for the show discussion. Already every episode I have spoken about I've thrown in a bit of science explanation or curiosity. So far it has been a criticizing of misused science but that doesn't mean it will always be bad. To offer a free one, here is a science lesson true for the entire series. It is fact there is no sound in space, but for dramatic effect many sci-fi shows and movies still display sound. While in Macross we do here the woosh of valkyries flying by, hear gun pods and missile fire and all the spectacular explosions, it is clear this is only for dramatic effect. The show writers are aware there is no sound in space, as are the characters. This is why Basara must fire speaker pods into the enemy mecha in order for them to hear his song. Later on in the show he has the sound boosters which transmit song energy via an energy wave, but all the while it is noted he can't just crank up a big speaker in space, because that would result in nothing (even though the sound boosters look like speakers, they are not). This has been your free science quibble from Master Dex, tune in tomorrow to hear what I have to say both scientifically and otherwise about Macross 7 Episode 5.

I admire the conscious effort to better your grammar. As for Frontier, well Azrael said anything I was thinking. I can't add much more to that.

Actually the Pineapple Cake even without Fire Bomber was shown to be helpful, as it got Ranka to speak when she was young, and My Soul for You was only playing as background scene music at the time. So it helped her come out of her shell, but when combined with the music, it make Ozma invulnerable.

Two major flaws in that argument. 1. It is more commonly suggested just being in the vicinity of pineapple salad is deadly, who knows what results of eating it. 2. Ozma did eat Pineapple Salad, he had Pineapple Cake. It was agreed upon by most people here that the combination of Pineapple Cake and Fire Bomber music makes you temporarily invulnerable from death, hence Ozma's survival. The Pineapple Cake on it's own also open up young Ranka (the FB music was background in that scene so it is unclear if the music helped her at all).

May we also try to raise awareness of the danger of pineapple salads, the one true produce market killer.

No doubt, a lot of air was sucked out when the dome rupture. I'm talking about from the start, not counting for accidental losses. Scrubbers can't make up for several thousands cubic meters of lost air overnight, and would probably need a resupply to do so.

You made a very smart decision.

Oxygen isn't really that hard to come by, but having it in a large volume could be. With scrubbers though, the exhaled CO2 can be recycled into oxygen though. It is the Nitrogen that they'd have to find a way or supplying or recycling. Luckily breathing air (72% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 7% trace gases) is a compressible fluid and so can be stored in tanks smaller than the volume it is meant to fill when not in use. Still even if it was the volume of air that was the reason for the dome size, there is no reason to make buildings come out of the dome like that. Just have smaller buildings if you have a smaller dome.

Well there is something to be said for aesthetic choices. The ship can look like a bottle of Tylenol for all it matters as long as the aesthetic choices don't compromise the ships integrity or safety of the people inside. Really it is like saying why does any building on Earth look the way it does when it can be a simple gray rectangle. There are a lot of building with very interesting designs, but if those designs don't cause any problem and are safe, then there is no problem. However the protruding buildings of City 7 do seem problematic to me and represent a poor architectural and civil engineering design. Having said that, I do think that the basic pill shaped islands in Frontier seems better to me. If one of the islands is for specifics purposes like research or farming, then the unique building designs can be inside the dome. In that way it constitutes less work in the design of a space craft that doesn't need to look any more special than it needs to be, but you can still get your aesthetic flair. Also the pill islands in Frontier have shutters like the shell for island one, so they could be better protected than the various ships in the Macross 7 fleet. That's two wins for the Frontier fleet design over Macross 7 fleet. I guess Kawamori did some homework in between these shows. I like to say in the engineering world, it maybe be ugly as hell, but if it has to be ugly in order to work, then it will be ugly.

Don't pander about temporal mechanics with me kid (note, I don't know how old you are, you may be older than me, but I call a lot of people kid despite age). I think most people ignore my more science babble oriented posts because they just don't care (I don't blame them), but I do know a bit about of what I speak. Granted I'm no expert in the fields of theoretical physics, but the idea of universe ending paradoxes are quite old and not commonly accepted by most theoretical physicists anymore. That is if they even believe time travel is possible, some don't. There is no point in talking about this though as Pete was just making a joke about the time loop bit and I only responded to that because I'm a nerd and it is funny to see me go out of my way like that for no reason, lol.

Ok, hello everyone! I've been gone from this thread for a while. School work is never done, but the semester is almost over. Thanks to Gubaba I finally have a good copy of the first 20 episodes of the remastered set I was looking for. Now that I've caught up and just watched through ep. 4 I can finally give my opinions. However since I'm late I'll focus on ep. 4. I'd like to note though I have been reading everything up till now, I agree with a lot of it as well. You know I usually hate the vampire gimmick, but it is different enough this time that it doesn't bother me so much. I'd like to look the other direction for a second and note the enemy characters. Gigil is already getting annoyed with Gepelnitch (that is how I'm going to spell it from this point on, it has like 7 different spellings and I can't keep up). It is clear why Gigil ultimately ended up going against Gepelnitch, though the real reason he does later is a certain Protodeviln, but we won't talk about that plot device just yet. Still he seems to be fed up with Gepelnitch going behind his back on some plan he sees no point on. Gigil prefers the old attack and drain their spiritia technique that worked for them in the past. Since this is supposed to be early on I'll feign knowledge of what the past for them really is since we aren't suppose to know yet. Soo.... anyone else wonder why they designed City 7 to have buildings protrude out the dome? That seems to be just reckless and dangerous. The tops of those buildings better be super airtight and heavily fortified because if they blow off you have a huge air leak for the dome. While we are on the fact of the easy to reach buildings... fat lot of good that protective shell did. They started closing it at the beginning of the battle and it didn't finish until after the battle ended, lol. Of course I know why, the power to move that shell is all in the hinge at the front and moving something from a hinge of that much mass (the shell must have a lot of mass/be heavily armored to be strong enough to resist attack) isn't easy so of course it will move slow. Also you don't want the shell closing fast because if something that massive just smacks down on the dome it could cause massive damage... not to mention wrecking the protruding buildings... The Frontier Island One dome got it right. Got rid of the protrusions and even was able to close the shell on a dime. Still a lot of mass to move at once but it is clear to me (from an engineering standpoint) that the Island One dome on Frontier was designed to be able to let the shell close down quicker without worrying about any damage as a result. I'd feel safer under that dome than City 7. So yeah I didn't talk about any character stuff save for Gigil, but most people got to that already and I was late even for this episode. Maybe next week I'll get in something good for ep. 5. Hell I'll write up the first review if you like... that is if studying for my finals doesn't get in the way...

Because Perceptor is freaking awesome.. though I'd try using bigger words myself. Staying on topic... I haven't watched 2 yet... sorry.