U.N. Spacy Earth Defense Grid

[Yohsho]

Score! Canada seemed to get through that pretty much unscathed. As for the 19 and 21 getting thru the defence grid. If they played dead it would be a pretty good method of getting past the satellites, being that they were probaly not set up to shoot down peices of junk falling towards earth.

Didn't Yang tell Isamu to blow up some stuff so that all the satellites saw was just debris falling?

[JB0]

Score! Canada seemed to get through that pretty much unscathed.

So? Canada had a major city destroyed by the heroes.

Remember the barrier overload that killed Kakizaki also turned Ontario into a smoking crater.

[Yohsho]

Hey there's still Montreal and Vancouver... and at a lesser extent Calgary.

[JB0]

Hey there's still Montreal and Vancouver... and at a lesser extent Calgary.

Yes, but everyone knows that when the heroes nuke a city it means the producers REALLY don't like you.

All the debris from Bodolzaa's ship exploding probably landed in Canada just out of spite.

...

Actually, debris from the battle is a pretty valid concern.

We know that zentradi vessels crashed into the Earth, some of them largely intact . And large objects hitting the Earth is generally a Very Bad Thing.

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was 10 kilometers wide. We know zentradi ships tend to be about 2-4 kilometers long.

Granted that asteroids are solid and spaceships are hollow, but the fact that we have 1.8 million ships' worth of debris should be more than enough to make up for it.

The only way ANYTHING survived on Earth is if a lot of the debris was moving away from the Earth(easy to swallow with the .8 million vessels hit by the Grand Cannon, somewhat less with everything else). Say 300,000 ships' worth of debris made it to Earth(debris from Grand Cannon vessels was completely deflected out by the force of the beam, and around a third of the remaining debris made it to Earth). That's still a mind-bogglingly large amount of crap polluting your once-beautiful homeworld. Physical impacts likely make up a good portion of this.

These impacts were probably largely in the northern hemisphere due to the line of the attack(straight up the corridor opened by the Grand Cannon), but would have far-reaching consequences for the entire world.

And this is discounting stuff kicked up by weapons fire.

Hence why an atmospheric purification operation and nature reclaimation project were needed. Without them, the Earth was, at best, plunged into another ice age. More likely, the air was becoming so choked with debris that it wouldn't be breathable without a serious cleanup effort.

[Uxi]

Yes, but everyone knows that when the heroes nuke a city it means the producers REALLY don't like you.

All the debris from Bodolzaa's ship exploding probably landed in Canada just out of spite.

No doubt the debris in the atmosphere would be an issue, but its not like every hulk would be on trajectories to fall through. Some would "skip" off the atmosphere... some would stay in orbit, some could well be vaporized (though the vapor IS still an issue). Any guestimate on percentages would be a WAG, but it woudln't seem to be anything but a very small number of ships that would get through to impact. And then then, they're more likely to hit water than just about anything else...

No doubt cleanup was an issue, though.

[Dangard Ace]

Hey there's still Montreal and Vancouver... and at a lesser extent Calgary.

Yes, but everyone knows that when the heroes nuke a city it means the producers REALLY don't like you.

All the debris from Bodolzaa's ship exploding probably landed in Canada just out of spite.

Man...they must really hate Tokyo alot too.

[Uxi]

What I want to know, is what's up with Australia? Isn't most of that uninhabited?

Kinda reminds me a little bit of Star Control 2. How when you come back to Earth, they say how the Ur-Quan hit places they didn't consider significant like something under the Arctic ice cap, a large chunk of the south atlantic ocean floor, and a square km of land in central iraq (presumably the uninhabited desert)...

But Africa looks like it should have plenty of people but Europe is pretty much toast with a couple exceptions. The central US and Mexico/Central America are almost untouched...

[JB0]

Yes, but everyone knows that when the heroes nuke a city it means the producers REALLY don't like you.

All the debris from Bodolzaa's ship exploding  probably landed in Canada just out of spite.

No doubt the debris in the atmosphere would be an issue, but its not like every hulk would be on trajectories to fall through. Some would "skip" off the atmosphere... some would stay in orbit, some could well be vaporized (though the vapor IS still an issue). Any guestimate on percentages would be a WAG, but it woudln't seem to be anything but a very small number of ships that would get through to impact. And then then, they're more likely to hit water than just about anything else...

No doubt cleanup was an issue, though.

Well, a small # of 2 million ships is still pretty signifigant. Especially when some of them are coming down intact.

I figure a lot of them were blown up, though. Some junk headed towards the earth, some away, some stuck in orbit.

Hmmm...

The orbital defense grid may have actually started as a way to prevent straggler impacts. Get the world up and running again, then launch satellites into orbit to blast any large chunks into smaller chunks so they burn up in the atmosphere instead of knocking a hole in some poor sap's house. Or just deflect it so it's headed out of the system.

Debris showers on Earth and the moon were likely a problem for a long time after the battle, and the orbital debris would cause major problems with space travel. Meteor defense would've become a very big priority.

[Nied]

Remember that when you destroy a ship in orbit all you do is turn it from one larg object in orbit to many small objects in orbit. It's quite clear that the Zentradi ships were in quite a high orbit (possibly geosynchronous), so it would take quite a bit of energy to force any debris to hit the ground.

As for crashed ships, those that we see seem to have made reletively soft landings (otherwise there would be huge craters surrounding them) so I doubt they kicked up much dust.

[Tekkaman Blade]

Because its Earth, evnen though it was damaged, people still want to live on it. The homeworld is important, coloines are good but they need a central hub. Earth was that hub. And besides, the Grid allowed Isamu to blow stuff up, and pull off some crazy stunts while flying. B)

Damn right. It's like the motherland or the fatherland, it's our homeworld.

Also, what makes you think they aren't working on terraforming earth?

[JB0]

Remember that when you destroy a ship in orbit all you do is turn it from one larg object in orbit to many small objects in orbit. It's quite clear that the Zentradi ships were in quite a high orbit (possibly geosynchronous), so it would take quite a bit of energy to force any debris to hit the ground.

A good nudge is enough to bring it out of orbit. From there, gravity takes over and guides it in. An explosion would send things flying in diffrent directions.

Some parts head away from the Earth, most stay in orbit or wind up in another orbit, and some start moving towards impact.

Some parts came straight down and got there pretty fast, but others would still be falling years later without a cleanup effort(that was needed to clear the area for space travel anyways and is almost guaranteed to have happened during the 2 year intermission, if for no other reason than the debris would've posed a threat to the force sent to capture the factory satellite, if not the factory itself).

The exact nature of this cleanup has never been stated to my knowledge, though I'd bet attempts were made to capture the larger scraps for construction resources. And a mostly intact vessel would be quite a prize for a government seeking to build a defense fleet in a hurry and with few signifigant shipyards with which to do so, so it's virtually guaranteed those were salvaged instead of destroyed(I assume some were still in orbit and that they didn't all fall).

As for crashed ships, those that we see seem to have made reletively soft landings (otherwise there would be huge craters surrounding them) so I doubt they kicked up much dust.

Well, on the flip side we know one buried itself far enough in the ground that it could stand slanted at an angle(like the Leaning Tower of Piza, only greener). That implies a signifigant impact.

So we have conflicting evidence here.

[ewilen]

If the ship stayed intact enough to look like a leaning tower, I don't think it hit that hard.

The problem with comparing the Zentradi ships to the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs, is the comet had a massive velocity relative to the earth. Maybe 100,000 km/hr. That, and its size, means the impact carried a huge amount of kinetic energy.

Now, when the ASS-1 (Macross) hit the earth, it caused a lot of destruction, but it wasn't coming out of orbit--meaning the relative velocity could also have been quite great. (Though not so great as to result in the ship being vaporized by impact.)

I think the falling Zentradi ships (and pieces of ships) caused a good amount of damage, but probably fairly localized. Pollution would be a greater factor.

[Skull00]

That had to be strange. Were the clones produced full size adults or where they infant size? Had to be strange if not a little distrubing either way. You go in to be cloned, while you are waiting for yourday to board a colony ship you run into several of your clones cause you all had the need to eat at certain food place.

I get the impression it's supposed to be realistic cloning, not traditional sci-fi cloning.

Born a baby, no memories.

But anyways, I really think the mass cloning bit needs to go into the DYRL/Macross II bin of "movie in a movie" or Alternate Universe.  It's just nonsensical and the implications are enormous. 

Hey, you got a better way to rebuild a species in a hurry?

It makes perfect sense.

Better to just say the bombardment and related casualties just wasn't that bad.  Sure the major centers could have been wiped out but not in the manner indicated...  something like how Robotech had it (perish the thought!). :cool:

And that DOES make sense? There were so many zentradi ships you couldn't see through the cloud.

I'm suprised they weren't shooting EACH OTHER while bombarding the planet. The odds of any signifigant population of humans surviving were pretty slim.

According to Macross Compendium, the survivors were either off-planet or in well-fortified areas(namely the incomplete Grand Cannons). Which makes sense given the scale of the bombardment.

Is it just me or did the Grand Cannon totally kick some? I think it was underrated in the series. Minmay and the the Macross didn't win Space War I by themselves, it was also largely due to the awesome Grand Cannon.

[JB0]

Yes. The Grand Cannon was a key component to victory, clearing a path to Bodolzaa's flagshipwith it's firing(Too bad he was out of the way of the beam. They probably would've gotten away with far less spatial debris, and certainly with far fewer casualties).

Of course, it was sheer luck that the Macross was headed that direction. If they were looking for someone over south Africa, it wouldn't have been very useful.

If the ship stayed intact enough to look like a leaning tower, I don't think it hit that hard.

But it still had to hit hard enough to imbed itself in the ground.

I put its survival up to advanced alloys.

The problem with comparing the Zentradi ships to the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs, is the comet had a massive velocity relative to the earth. Maybe 100,000 km/hr. That, and its size, means the impact carried a huge amount of kinetic energy.

Asteroid.

And the flip side is that it was just one impact. The Earth at the end of Space War 1 was peppered with thousands of impacts.

Plus, you forget that each and every one of those objects is in freefall and accelerating at 9.8 meters per second per second, untill it hits either terminal velocity or the surface(likely the former). Whether it drifted out of the Kuiper Belt or was blasted off a giant space pickle is irrelevant.

Now, when the ASS-1 (Macross) hit the earth, it caused a lot of destruction, but it wasn't coming out of orbit--meaning the relative velocity could also have been quite great. (Though not so great as to result in the ship being vaporized by impact.)

A lot of the damage was from the shockwave as it plowed through the atmosphere.

And the impact damage was lessened by the low angle it came in at. If it'd come straight down, it would've been in much worse shape. As would the island it landed on.

I think the falling Zentradi ships (and pieces of ships) caused a good amount of damage, but probably fairly localized. Pollution would be a greater factor.

Yes. Pollution is the key. And always has been.

The dinosaurs weren't killed by a giant wave of dirt that buried them alive.

They died because pollution blotted the sun out, which stunted plant life, which stunted herbivores, which stunted carnivores.

Add to that a rapidly cooling climate due to missing infrared radiation, and you have all the ingredients for a mass extinction.

Whether it's one big impact, one million small impacts, or 1 billion objects vaporizing in the atmosphere is irrelevant, as long as enough dirt gets in the atmosphere(which doesn't take a titanic impact).

The dirt thrown up by an individual impact may be trivial, but when you have a million such impacts it becomes signifigant.

Edited November 7, 2003 by JB0

[Uxi]

Asteroid.

And the flip side is that it was just one impact. The Earth at the end of Space War 1 was peppered with thousands of impacts.

Well I'm not sure exactly how the Grand Cannon (or the Macross operates) but its basic science that even being destroyed by them would just convert the mass of everything into another form (vapor, constituent molecules, etc)... which could be worse than debris that can be dealt with (pushed into the sun or out into space or on another, lifeless, planet/moon, etc).

Do we really KNOW there were "thousands" of impacts from Zentraedi ships on the surface of the Earth? Why? I don't seem to remember lots of kamikazes on the ground bombarded surface (that wasn't that thorough it looks like...)

Good thing that South Ataria island happened to be where the ASS landed.

[JB0]

Asteroid.

And the flip side is that it was just one impact. The Earth at the end of Space War 1 was peppered with thousands of impacts.

Well I'm not sure exactly how the Grand Cannon (or the Macross operates) but its basic science that even being destroyed by them would just convert the mass of everything into another form (vapor, constituent molecules, etc)... which could be worse than debris that can be dealt with (pushed into the sun or out into space or on another, lifeless, planet/moon, etc).

Do we really KNOW there were "thousands" of impacts from Zentraedi ships on the surface of the Earth? Why? I don't seem to remember lots of kamikazes on the ground bombarded surface (that wasn't that thorough it looks like...)

Good thing that South Ataria island happened to be where the ASS landed.

It's logical that there were thousands of impacts. You don't just destroy 1.8 million ships and not have debris, even if most if it's sent flying out of the system(my assumptions regarding the Grand Cannon involved imparted velocity from the beam impact to the vessels/debris/vapor).

What we KNOW is that ...

approximately 1.8 million Zentradi vessels were destroyed in Earth orbit;

one battleship, one fighter pod(Quel-Quallie, I think's the right name), and one GERWALK crashed on the surface;

all 3 were largely intact;

the battleship and fighter pod both imbedded themselves well enough to stand vertically while all 3 hit lightly enough to not destroy themselves;

and the surviving humans began an atmospheric purification operation within a month of victory.

[Uxi]

It's logical that there were thousands of impacts. You don't just destroy 1.8 million ships and not have debris, even if most if it's sent flying out of the system(my assumptions regarding the Grand Cannon involved imparted velocity from the beam impact to the vessels/debris/vapor).

Yeah but lacking evidence, is it really any more logical that they would have enough of a vector to descend into the atmosphere instead of just saying in orbit (much less being blasted out of orbit)? And of the ones coming down to atmosphere shoudln't most of these have been in slow decaying orbits instead of meteoric descents?

[JB0]

It's logical that there were thousands of impacts. You don't just destroy 1.8 million ships and not have debris, even if most if it's sent flying out of the system(my assumptions regarding the Grand Cannon involved imparted velocity from the beam impact to the vessels/debris/vapor).

Yeah but lacking evidence, is it really any more logical that they would have enough of a vector to descend into the atmosphere instead of just saying in orbit (much less being blasted out of orbit)? And of the ones coming down to atmosphere shoudln't most of these have been in slow decaying orbits instead of meteoric descents?

Logic dictates that if something explodes, fragments go in all directions. And logic also dicates that a LOT of those 1.8 million destroyed vessels exploded(about 1 million were vaporized by the grand cannon, leaving 800,000 to be blown up by less unbconventional means).

Which means that a lot of fragments DID head towards Earth.

And yes, most of them should've taken the long way to get there instead of coming in in a straight line.

But then they hit the atmosphere and either burned up or hit something, depending on what angle they hit at and how large they were.

Either way, they introduce debris into the air. If they hit the ground they knock dust into the air. If they burn up in the atmosphere, it just means they're now a cloud of dust floating in the air.

And dust is our enemy in this scenario.

[Nied]

THe Zentradi fleet was in a very high orbit, most likely geosynchronous. At that altitude even stuff shot directly at earth would just end up accelerating and entering a different orbit, rather than actually making planetfall. The explosions seen in Macross really don't look to be energetic enough to really change the trajectory of the debris enough to send many into the Earth. It would seem the main legacy of Space War one would be a very large cloud of debris, that while making navigation dificult, would probably pose little threat to the inhabitants below.

If you want to talk reasons for an atmospheric cleanup, just think of how much radio active material there is in your average nuclear reactor, and then think of how most of the nuclear reactors in the world would have been turned into vapor by an orbital bombardment.

[Angel's Fury]

Speaking of turning fantasy into reality, isn't somebody recent from this particular administration who want to weaponize space ala U.N. Spacy Earth Defence Grid? (cue in David Hingtgen)

[Cyclone]

What I want to know, is what's up with Australia?  Isn't most of that uninhabited?

*smiles*

Around 70-80% of the Australian population live in and around the 3 east coast state captials, so nuking Western Australia, apart from killing Perth, title holder for city furtherest away from any other city on Earth, doesn't do to harm Australia much as far as that image is concerned

Cyc

Edited November 20, 2003 by Cyclone

[Nied]

What I want to know, is what's up with Australia?  Isn't most of that uninhabited?

*smiles*

Around 70-80% of the Australian population live in and around the 3 east coast state captials, so nuking Western Australia, apart from killing Perth, title holder for city furtherest away from any other city on Earth, doesn't do to harm Australia much as far as that image is concerned

Cyc

It's possible that that's where the Australian Grand Cannon (and it's surrounding military facilities) were being constructed.

[Druna Skass]

It's possible that that's where the Australian Grand Cannon (and it's surrounding military facilities) were being constructed.

Did they ever get that one up and running or did it just get completly blasted?

[Nied]

It's possible that that's where the Australian Grand Cannon (and it's surrounding military facilities) were being constructed.

Did they ever get that one up and running or did it just get completly blasted?

Well it was attacked and purportedly destroyed by anti-UN forces in 2006, there's no word on weather any efforts were made to re-build. I'm sure that the (assumedly) large military facilites surrounding such a project would look like quite an atractive target from orbit. If the Grand Cannon II were in the area shown in the display I'd doubt there'd be much to re-construct.