sdf-1 length allocation

[Nied]

the first number, (1.1 milion people/km2) is based on one layer in one leg.

the second (the 276,000 people/km2) is based on 2 layers in both legs.

well, that episode that was pointed out indicates more like 3 layers. now just for the benefit of the doubt, they built up city space everywhere they could and they got another leg (with 3 layers of city) worth of space out of that. now you're closer to 127,000 people/km2 which is getting a lot more reasonable, but still sounds a little too cramped compared to how things are depicted.

of course, there's a lot of other questions to look at like where rest of the crew is living, and where they're keeping all the mechs and stuff, and what was all that empty space that got turned into city originally used for?

I could understand there being so much open space if the ship needed a similar complement before and after rebuild but with the crew being 5 times bigger. I'd wonder why so much of it is unused, though it could be that before the civilians showed up, the military crew had a LOT of space to live/work/store everything (i.e. it was more like being on an airbase rather than a ship), and after the fold they had all the military stuff cramed down to submarine level, and all mecha related material moved to the Daedalus and Prometheus in order to make things comfortable for the civilians.

I wonder how that went over with the military personnel when they found out they were going to have to hot bunk so the civilians could build a stadium?

Well remember we're not just talking about 10 meter tall people but the consumables needed to support them. Otech seems to allow for considerable recycling but you still need space to feed and clothe a crew, space that would be exponentially smaller for microns. That doesn't even get to the storage requirements to maintain the Supervision Army equivalent of a Reguld or Queadeluun-Rau. Maybe Macross City was built inside the walk in refrigerator.

[sketchley]

The UN Forces are in the middle block of the ship. Presumably supplies and support equipment are in that section and other sections of the ship not used by the citizens (there's plenty of implied space in the two booms of the guns.)

Density would be high, but let's keep in mind that we are dealing with people stacked on top of people. I don't mean that literally. I mean that as in apartment blocks. Let's say there are 4 units with 5 people living in each, per level. A ten storey building would have 200 people in it. Let's say that each unit is 10 km². That would give that building a density of 5,000 / km². (If I'm doing the math right). Compare that to the densities of Tokyo (5847 /km²) and Osaka (11,869 /km²).

Now, if we have 4 of those buildings in the same area (2 layers "down", 2 layers "up"), we get a density of 20,000 / km².

Anyhow, I'm not disagreeing that the artists and writers have taken artistic license in their portrayl, but just wish to point out that the numbers can be misleading.

Anyhow, the average apartment size in Japan is 20 to 30 m². It's not out of the ordinary to see 3 to 4 people living in that space. In the emergency situation that the Macross fortress was put into, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to see up to double that for short durations.

Nevertheless, IMHO, I think parts of the UN block were made into the "city" (the people living there could easily be "hot bunked" (if it came to that) in the Daedalus and Promethus.

[Retracting Head Ter Ter]

Of course you can stack em up and have 20+++ floors along just the shortest of the 3 dimensions of just one of the 'legs'. But that is NOT how the city was drawn and depicted in either the TV series of DYRL. Thats my point.

To have a livable city of 50k and not cubeville (look, i am not arguing that you cannot stuff 500,000 people in there if they live like submariners in a WW2 Imperial Japanese Submarine), you need a LOT more space than even the _entire_ SDF can provide.

Edited February 3, 2009 by Retracting Head Ter Ter

[nhyone]

I always thought it was a stretch to squeeze a city (as shown) into the 1.2km Macross. Why not admit the figure was wrong and that Macross was really 12.0km long?

Did Macross look 1.2km in the show? It looked much longer than that.

[Mr March]

Because the civilian city is not the only consideration when it comes to the scale of the SDF-1 Macross.

Miyatake Kazutaka designed the Macross to be in scale with it's docked aircraft carriers to provide the audience with a visual benchmark for the incredible size of the Macross. There is also the matter of the bridge being properly scaled to a 1.2 km ship. Alter the size of the SDF-1 and it throws everything else out of scale. The city can be accommodated, but now the aircraft carriers are not aircraft carrier size (defeating their purpose as a scale benchmark) and the bridge is out of scale. Not to mention that a 12km SDF-1 would be undermanned and virtually empty.

When Miyatake Kazutaka designed the SDF-1, maybe he knew there would be civilians living in a makeshift city and maybe he didn't. He probably didn't know there would eventually come an episode that would require a stadium. So the creators took some creative license to make the Miss Macross Contest work. Mistakes happen. Point being, the ship can handle the people, even as animated. It can't handle the buildings, as animated. But that doesn't mean we throw everything out. We simply try to unify the known facts as best we can. We side with what "mostly" works and that's the best we can do.

Edited February 3, 2009 by Mr March

[AcroRay]

If you're wondering how he eats and breathes

And other science facts,

Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,

I should really just relax...

[Bri]

I t would seem that the city designers in DYRL and SDFM went for a different aproach.

SDF-1 DYRL has a fixed multi layered city in the legs.

SDF-1 SDFM has the city on movable plateaus (on rails?) that can rotate with the transformation. This city extends beyond the legs into the torso.

The SDFM design is actually quite clever. I compared Macross city to one of the smallest city states in the world: Monte Carlo (33000 residents and ten-thousands of tourists at any given time during the summer) and we are talking upper class luxury here. Monaco has a land area of 1.95 square km. To fit that into the Macross would require 8 plateaus of 400m by 600m (1.92km square km). The city has its own footbal/rugby stadium aswell. Asuming a ceiling at 30 m high per plateau.

The whole box would require 240x400x600m. Which would fit in the legs and torso when the SDF-1 is in ship mode.

Macross city is probably far more condensed than Monaco as it's far less luxurious reducing the size of the box even more. Heck they could still hold a Formula 1 race and have space for a 30.000 seat stadium;)

Other then the need for some dramatic shots the designers didnt cheat that much.

Edited February 3, 2009 by Bri

[anime52k8]

When Miyatake Kazutaka designed the SDF-1, maybe he knew there would be civilians living in a makeshift city and maybe he didn't. He probably didn't know there would eventually come an episode that would require a stadium. So the creators took some creative license to make the Miss Macross Contest work. Mistakes happen. Point being, the ship can handle the people, even as animated. It can't handle the buildings, as animated. But that doesn't mean we throw everything out. We simply try to unify the known facts as best we can. We side with what "mostly" works and that's the best we can do.

thats kind of my point. it's totally plausable that you could fit that many people inside the SDF-1, I see nothing wrong with having the ship be 1.2 kilometers, and I don't think having 58,000 civilians and 20,000 military personnel is at all unreasonable. What I mean is that it is completely improbable that the city could be constructed the way it is depicted and still be able to support that many people in the ship. If they were to depict the civilian sections realistically there would be no outdoor stadium, no roads, no parks, it would be more like life on an ocean liner: small apartments and public areas that optimize space.

you probably could get away with a small concert hall if you built it more like that, but then you wouldn't have room for mechs to be flying around blowing crap up inside the ship.

there's just no way to have the city be that sprawling in the SDF-1. you could most likely get away with such a layout on the SDF-2

[SchizophrenicMC]

I still blame Zentraedi-size design. It would seem anything and everything designed on Zentraedi scale is out of proportion.... Well, this is probably the most minor... Which is odd, considering it's the largest example of such a folly...

[Morpheus]

Ever thinking about using the Fold technology to "fold" the interior of the engine section so a whole city could fit in?

That's my contribution today for the cat girl massacre.

[anime52k8]

Ever thinking about using the Fold technology to "fold" the interior of the engine section so a whole city could fit in?

That's my contribution today for the cat girl massacre.

I don't think fold space works that way... (as in as a pocket dimension, which is a cop out and evidence of bad writing by the way)

[Gubaba]

(as in as a pocket dimension, which is a cop out and evidence of bad writing by the way)

Unless we're talking about Doctor Who, in which case it's AWESOME.

[Morpheus]

Well, most anime girls have their own 'hammer space', maybe SDF-1 have it that way .

BTW, back on the SDF-1, I think it safe to assume that SDF-1 hangar bays is located on the joint between the shoulder and the attached carrier.

[SchizophrenicMC]

It's my assumption that the strange particles generated where the missing fold generators were created a fold anomaly A) powering the PPB and ODB as well as B ) creating a hammer space, for lack of a better word.

[mpchi]

Why do they have cars in the first place if they were only gonna run for 300 meters back and forth the city...

LOL. And they even have taxi in there too. If you can run pretty fast, you can cover 100m within 15secs. So having a city around 300-500m long (even with double or triple layers) and having 50000 people living in there is really pushing it. All they really need to change is the length of Macross from 1.2 km to something much longer. Not too sure why they didn't just change those stats and make the whole fiction much more convincing. But instead, they being stubborn about it when the entire show's visual is telling a story of a much much larger Macross.

[RedWolf]

Well from what we've seen the frequent customers of Taxis are pilots scrambling towards the Prometheus for launch.