The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[JB0]

I hadn't thought of it before he said it, but sketchley makes a good point. The island is under VASTLY different geological circumstances after the fold than before. It's gonna stretch out and relax now that the Earth's gravity isn't pressing down on it, and it isn't going to be particularly stable for a while until it works out its new situation.

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

I hadn't thought of it before he said it, but sketchley makes a good point. The island is under VASTLY different geological circumstances after the fold than before. It's gonna stretch out and relax now that the Earth's gravity isn't pressing down on it, and it isn't going to be particularly stable for a while until it works out its new situation.

And here I was going to write a story about the first orbital McDonalds around Pluto.

Drats.

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

And here I was going to write a story about the first orbital McDonalds around Pluto.

Drats.

Just as well, imagine the DoorDash/GrubHub service charge for a trip of 5.4 billion km...

[sketchley]

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Not as such... the Lancer II does have a cold sleep function, but it's not for long-distance journeys.

(...)

I meant more that "cryo-sleep is a thing in SDF-1" rather than the other part (in that we first see cryo-sleep depicted in Macross Plus).

Anyhow, I've been pouring over my SDFM books, and scanned what few pictures there are on South Ataria Island after the space fold.  Keep in mind that they are all immediately after the fold:

① What was transported and its state immediately after arrival (note the dispersal direction arrows in the lower right of the bottom right image):

 

② One of South Ataria's emergency shelters floating in space:

 

③ A pair of mystery objects floating in space from the same episode.  While the second one looks like some type of tug or rescue boat, the first one could be a fuel tank from the airport (based on the 'JP-7') or even some kind of satellite.  The text that accompanied the images is equally baffling: 'stuff floating in space':

Edited January 8 by sketchley

[sketchley]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

And here I was going to write a story about the first orbital McDonalds around Pluto.

Drats.

I wouldn't write off your story right away.  Pluto is definitely a viable place to build... something.  There is frozen water on the surface (literally mountains made of ice), and in the real world places with water ice are where we are most likely going to explore and build (permanent) settlements on first.  In short, water also provides air (oxygen) and fuel (hydrogen).  As the fuel thirsty VF-1 (and other Valkyries) apparently rely on 'hydrogen slush' for fuel, it makes perfect sense to build at least a mining outpost/refinery on Pluto.

I understand that you are being a bit facetious, but it makes perfect sense to have some kind of orbital platform to facilitate the transfer of fuel to cargo ships.  So, a McDonald's orbiting Pluto isn't completely out of the question—though, shouldn't it be 'Humburger Popo'*? 😋

 

* where Hikaru and Minmei went on their date in DYRL

Edited January 8 by sketchley

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Just as well, imagine the DoorDash/GrubHub service charge for a trip of 5.4 billion km...

Don't forget tip for the driver...

Hey... a new use for the Lancer!!!

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, sketchley said:

I meant more that "cryo-sleep is a thing in SDF-1" rather than the other part (in that we first see cryo-sleep depicted in Macross Plus).

It is... but as far as we know it's never been used that way (to facilitate long-range patrols), no doubt due to the very limited range of small craft without fold capability.

It's only ever been presented as an emergency measure to protect the life of a mecha's operator when immediate rescue is not possible.

[pengbuzz]

25 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It is... but as far as we know it's never been used that way (to facilitate long-range patrols), no doubt due to the very limited range of small craft without fold capability.

It's only ever been presented as an emergency measure to protect the life of a mecha's operator when immediate rescue is not possible.

*Surprised after Project Supernova Col. Johnson didn't load Isamu into a Lancer in cold storage and fire him towards the nearest black hole*

[Bolt]

13 hours ago, sketchley said:

I meant more that "cryo-sleep is a thing in SDF-1" rather than the other part (in that we first see cryo-sleep depicted in Macross Plus).

Anyhow, I've been pouring over my SDFM books, and scanned what few pictures there are on South Ataria Island after the space fold.  Keep in mind that they are all immediately after the fold:

① What was transported and its state immediately after arrival (note the dispersal direction arrows in the lower right of the bottom right image):

 

② One of South Ataria's emergency shelters floating in space:

 

③ A pair of mystery objects floating in space from the same episode.  While the second one looks like some type of tug or rescue boat, the first one could be a fuel tank from the airport (based on the 'JP-7') or even some kind of satellite.  The text that accompanied the images is equally baffling: 'stuff floating in space':

Damn good homework 👍🏼

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, sketchley said:

though, shouldn't it be 'Humburger Popo'*? 😋

Or Macrossnald's... that's what it was in the TV series.

 

Edited January 9 by Seto Kaiba

[cheemingwan1234]

On 1/8/2024 at 4:02 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Not as such... the Lancer II does have a cold sleep function, but it's not for long-distance journeys.

At least, not intentional ones.

Despite being designated a space fighter, the Lancer II is actually a space attacker that functions rather like a manned missile.  It's designed to make a single high-powered strafing run on an enemy ship and then be caught up to and recovered by an aircraft carrier.  Its engine is a thermonuclear rocket that only has enough fuel to burn for 60 seconds (but at a gargantuan 153,000kgf) and its verniers are only good for about 5 seconds (but at a similarly gargantuan 230,000kgf).  It has massive acceleration but basically no endurance, so it's designed to come screaming in at high speed, strafe the enemy ship with its high-powered particle beam cannons and thermonuclear reaction missiles, coast past the enemy, and wait for recovery.  The low metabolic function cold sleep system built into the Lancer II's cockpit is there to cover the possibility that immediate recovery might not always be possible due to the loss of the carrier, the fighter drifting off course, etc.  It's rated to operate for anywhere from 6 hours to 6 months using the Lancer II's backup power system.

If a Lancer II with a pilot in cold sleep was discovered out near Pluto (which is ~36 AU from Earth) it would either have to have come out there on a fold-capable ship (by accident or design) and been mistakenly written off as destroyed, or its pilot is the luckiest SOB in existence having his life support system somehow hang on 50 times longer than it was designed to while his fighter spent 25 years or so drifting there at ~7km/s after missing a carrier recovery near Earth.

If there are patrols out that far after the war, they're either operating from a base out there or from a fold capable carrier.

Yeah, possibly why people want their Fold Boosters.....

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Yeah, possibly why people want their Fold Boosters.....

Being able to cross interplanetary distances basically instantaneously and interstellar distances in only a short time is pretty darn useful, yep.

High powered engines'll only get you so far, since any ship has a limit to the amount of fuel it can carry at one time.

[aurance]

On 1/9/2024 at 5:11 PM, cheemingwan1234 said:

Yeah, possibly why people want their Fold Boosters.....

At first I read Fold Burgers.

[pengbuzz]

30 minutes ago, aurance said:

At first I read Fold Burgers.

🤣

[Seto Kaiba]

34 minutes ago, aurance said:

At first I read Fold Burgers.

For the truly aggressive calorie-counters in the spacefuture...

[pengbuzz]

On 1/9/2024 at 7:47 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Being able to cross interplanetary distances basically instantaneously and interstellar distances in only a short time is pretty darn useful, yep.

High powered engines'll only get you so far, since any ship has a limit to the amount of fuel it can carry at one time.

On that note:

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossplus/stellarwhaleliner.htm

Must make for some interesting passenger cruises.

[JB0]

8 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

On that note:

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossplus/stellarwhaleliner.htm

Must make for some interesting passenger cruises.

Wait... this thing has an entire shopping mall in it, and passengers are sitting in rows of seats instead of cabins? There's some serious misallocation of resources here.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Must make for some interesting passenger cruises.

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

Wait... this thing has an entire shopping mall in it, and passengers are sitting in rows of seats instead of cabins? There's some serious misallocation of resources here.

There's possibly a bit of early installment weirdness going on with the Stellar Whale-type starliner.

For example, it's noted that it has enough resources to go 30-60 days between port calls... but at the same time it's said to be operating exclusively over short distances (service to planets within 100ly of Earth) and that the Earth-Eden run takes it 3-4 fold jumps to complete.  Instead of being set up like a cruise liner for multi-day voyages, the interior supports the idea that it's meant for short-duration flights like a particularly spaceous high-capacity airliner instead of long cruises like a cruise liner.

The only explanation I can really come up with for this is that it really is just a giant airliner, and the reason it takes 3-4 fold jumps to do what every other source claims is the space fold equivalent of a milk run is this thing's got a route like a city bus and it's putting into multiple ports every shipboard day to pick up and drop off passengers and that the onboard amenities are for the folks who have a few stops between them and their destination and can't stomach another go at the catalog of inflight movies or want something to do while the ship is embarking/disembarking passengers.

[cheemingwan1234]

On 1/8/2024 at 3:35 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Just as well, imagine the DoorDash/GrubHub service charge for a trip of 5.4 billion km...

Enough to possibly afford some VF-25s for you and two of your closest school mates.

[Devil 505]

Aside from the VF-0's gun pod, are there any rate-of-fire figures for other gun pods?

[Seto Kaiba]

18 minutes ago, Devil 505 said:

Aside from the VF-0's gun pod, are there any rate-of-fire figures for other gun pods?

The VF-1's GU-11[A] has had several different sets of numbers listed over the years.

The official spec lists 1,200 rounds per minute as the standard rate, though sources over the years have specified various different levels.  30 rounds per minute shows up in several different iterations, along with either 500 or 800 rounds per minute, and occasionally rates as high as 1,600 or 2,000 rounds per minute.

[RangerKarl]

Comms question: We've seen real time communications across light years for military operations (MacF), strategic round-table discussions (Mac7) and intracluster news broadcasts (Delta Zettai Live!). With all that, do normal civilians living in emigration fleets or settled worlds have access to superluminal comms? e.g; some manner of Xaos!Discord or federated social media?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, RangerKarl said:

Comms question: We've seen real time communications across light years for military operations (MacF), strategic round-table discussions (Mac7) and intracluster news broadcasts (Delta Zettai Live!). With all that, do normal civilians living in emigration fleets or settled worlds have access to superluminal comms? e.g; some manner of Xaos!Discord or federated social media?

Yes, they do.

The main example - and probably the medium on which all the other options work - is the Galaxy Network.  An interstellar internet linking all of the different emigrant planets and fleets together that's used for basically everything the regular internet is used for today.  It's been a part of the setting since Macross Plus and Macross 7, though didn't really start being described as "the space internet" until around Macross Frontier when Shoji Kawamori started explaining the current space emigration era in Macross as being like the Age of Sail "but with internet".  

Xaos actually got its start as a private interstellar communications company before expanding into a conglomerate with subsidiaries in various fields like defense, entertainment, etc.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yes, they do.

The main example - and probably the medium on which all the other options work - is the Galaxy Network.  An interstellar internet linking all of the different emigrant planets and fleets together that's used for basically everything the regular internet is used for today.  It's been a part of the setting since Macross Plus and Macross 7, though didn't really start being described as "the space internet" until around Macross Frontier when Shoji Kawamori started explaining the current space emigration era in Macross as being like the Age of Sail "but with internet".  

Xaos actually got its start as a private interstellar communications company before expanding into a conglomerate with subsidiaries in various fields like defense, entertainment, etc.

Would have helped Megaroad-1 : "Help, we hit a fold fault and need a tow please?"

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Would have helped Megaroad-1 : "Help, we hit a fold fault and need a tow please?"

Maybe, maybe not... 

Spoiler

Given that time doesn't flow at the same rate in fold space as it does in realspace, and that fold faults apparently cause some time dialation or some similar effect when you attempt to fold through them, it might not do them any good regardless...

Though the Galaxy Network depends on a network of relay satellites to circumvent fold faults and maintain the fastest possible communication speed... and that network didn't exist yet at the time of Megaroad-01.

 

[RangerKarl]

Maintaining a comms network across the Milky Way? Sounds like titanic work in the most literal of senses.

I think the name "Galaxy Network" reminded me a bit of how TV channels used to name themselves, which makes sense for the medium. Nice to know Kawamori did clarify that bit recently, though I bet you still get lagswitching hackusations in whatever passes for online gaming.

[pengbuzz]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Maybe, maybe not... 

  Hide contents

Given that time doesn't flow at the same rate in fold space as it does in realspace, and that fold faults apparently cause some time dialation or some similar effect when you attempt to fold through them, it might not do them any good regardless...

Though the Galaxy Network depends on a network of relay satellites to circumvent fold faults and maintain the fastest possible communication speed... and that network didn't exist yet at the time of Megaroad-01.

 

Right, had it existed then.

Spoiler

I wonder what year it is for them on the Megaroad then?

 

Edited January 19 by pengbuzz

[sketchley]

3 hours ago, RangerKarl said:

Maintaining a comms network across the Milky Way? Sounds like titanic work in the most literal of senses.

I think the name "Galaxy Network" reminded me a bit of how TV channels used to name themselves, which makes sense for the medium. Nice to know Kawamori did clarify that bit recently, though I bet you still get lagswitching hackusations in whatever passes for online gaming.

It's not so much "TV network" as it is "internet network".  In one article, Kawamori-san stated that the setting for Macross F (and so on) is like "the great age of exploration with Internet".

It's not clear what version of the internet he's referring to, but I'd hazard a guess that it's somewhere between dial-up (40-56 kb/s) and broadband (1~25 Mb/s).  Definitely not fibre-optic class (250~1,000 Mb/s).

[RangerKarl]

5 hours ago, sketchley said:

 

It's not clear what version of the internet he's referring to, but I'd hazard a guess that it's somewhere between dial-up (40-56 kb/s) and broadband (1~25 Mb/s).  Definitely not fibre-optic class (250~1,000 Mb/s).

Going to think that this would be a per-user limitation, forcing an entire fleet to talk galactically via the equivalent of a T1 line means you'd have to limit what you send out. But that helps to clarify what to expect. I guess within the fleet, no such restrictions apply?

[Seto Kaiba]

14 minutes ago, RangerKarl said:

Going to think that this would be a per-user limitation, forcing an entire fleet to talk galactically via the equivalent of a T1 line means you'd have to limit what you send out. But that helps to clarify what to expect. I guess within the fleet, no such restrictions apply?

Eh... given the state of computer hardware in the Macross setting, I doubt it's anywhere close to that bad.

After all, the galaxy network connecting the various New UN Government member states - be they fleets or planets - is an internet backbone that supports not just the ever-growing volume of civilian and commercial traffic but also the military's communications needs.  The typical individual line in a backbone connecting networks on the internet today runs at 100Gbps, and most backbones have far more than just one line.  To give everyone living in the Macross Frontier fleet basic DSL-level internet connectivity, your backbone would be running at over 36,500 Gbps to cover peak loads.  Traffic across the modern global internet backbone networks is typically measured at 500 Tbps or so.

Consider as well that the state of computer technology in Macross is at least several hundred years ahead of the modern day's thanks to OTM.  Odds are the fidelity of things like music, movies, and the other data like blueprints for nanometer-precise engineering being sent over the network commercially is probably MUCH higher than anything we have today to support.  I'd expect an emigrant fleet to have enough bandwidth in its galaxy network connection to rival the internet backbone of a far larger modern metropolis if not a small first-world nation like Japan.

(Hell, considering video games today are already tens if not hundreds of gigabites in size... imagine how bloated they've become in a world where someone can walk into a store and buy a laptop with a 250GHz processor, a few hundred gigs of RAM, and a graphics card with enough shaders to render the electron orbits in a character model's hair?)

[sketchley]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Eh... given the state of computer hardware in the Macross setting, I doubt it's anywhere close to that bad.

After all, the galaxy network connecting the various New UN Government member states - be they fleets or planets - is an internet backbone that supports not just the ever-growing volume of civilian and commercial traffic but also the military's communications needs.  The typical individual line in a backbone connecting networks on the internet today runs at 100Gbps, and most backbones have far more than just one line.  To give everyone living in the Macross Frontier fleet basic DSL-level internet connectivity, your backbone would be running at over 36,500 Gbps to cover peak loads.  Traffic across the modern global internet backbone networks is typically measured at 500 Tbps or so.

Consider as well that the state of computer technology in Macross is at least several hundred years ahead of the modern day's thanks to OTM.  Odds are the fidelity of things like music, movies, and the other data like blueprints for nanometer-precise engineering being sent over the network commercially is probably MUCH higher than anything we have today to support.  I'd expect an emigrant fleet to have enough bandwidth in its galaxy network connection to rival the internet backbone of a far larger modern metropolis if not a small first-world nation like Japan.

(Hell, considering video games today are already tens if not hundreds of gigabites in size... imagine how bloated they've become in a world where someone can walk into a store and buy a laptop with a 250GHz processor, a few hundred gigs of RAM, and a graphics card with enough shaders to render the electron orbits in a character model's hair?)

I'm approaching it more from the perspective of 'what was available when Kawamori-san made his comments' coupled with how long it takes for the material to come after you ask for it—as in, it takes milliseconds to display a request when I select a link in MW, but that's planet wide.  Even with using Fold Communication relays, it will take significantly longer for the request to go down the network, and a response to come back.

 

To clarify, what I'm getting at is a "speed" limit rather than a "volume" limit.

Edited January 20 by sketchley

[JB0]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Eh... given the state of computer hardware in the Macross setting, I doubt it's anywhere close to that bad.

After all, the galaxy network connecting the various New UN Government member states - be they fleets or planets - is an internet backbone that supports not just the ever-growing volume of civilian and commercial traffic but also the military's communications needs.  The typical individual line in a backbone connecting networks on the internet today runs at 100Gbps, and most backbones have far more than just one line.  To give everyone living in the Macross Frontier fleet basic DSL-level internet connectivity, your backbone would be running at over 36,500 Gbps to cover peak loads.  Traffic across the modern global internet backbone networks is typically measured at 500 Tbps or so.

Consider as well that the state of computer technology in Macross is at least several hundred years ahead of the modern day's thanks to OTM.  Odds are the fidelity of things like music, movies, and the other data like blueprints for nanometer-precise engineering being sent over the network commercially is probably MUCH higher than anything we have today to support.  I'd expect an emigrant fleet to have enough bandwidth in its galaxy network connection to rival the internet backbone of a far larger modern metropolis if not a small first-world nation like Japan.

(Hell, considering video games today are already tens if not hundreds of gigabites in size... imagine how bloated they've become in a world where someone can walk into a store and buy a laptop with a 250GHz processor, a few hundred gigs of RAM, and a graphics card with enough shaders to render the electron orbits in a character model's hair?)

Even on the modern IRL internet, download and streaming services have multiple content delivery nodes. You don't connect to THE Steam and Netflix servers, you connect to your region's Steam and Netflix servers.

 

I imagine the Galaxy Network would be similar. Every fleet and solar system likely has their own content caches precisely so no one is streaming petabit-per-second holodramas from servers on Earth.

Heck, it'd make sense for some form of content caching to be an integral part of the protocol. Possibly even user-distributed(bittorrent as a core internet protocol sounds wild)

[Seto Kaiba]

21 minutes ago, sketchley said:

I'm approaching it more from the perspective of 'what was available when Kawamori-san made his comments' coupled with how long it takes for the material to come after you ask for it—as in, it takes milliseconds to display a request when I select a link in MW, but that's planet wide.  Even with using Fold Communication relays, it will take significantly longer for the request to go down the network, and a response to come back.

 

To clarify, what I'm getting at is a "speed" limit rather than a "volume" limit.

The word you're looking for there is "latency"... the delay time between an input and a response.

Speed is the modulation rate of the waveform... that is to say, how quickly the transmitting micro can change the outgoing signal per unit of time on a single channel.  Volume for a network is simply the speed times the number of channels.

That said, I'm not sure latency is all that big of an issue c.2040 or beyond except perhaps for the farthest-flung reaches of the galaxy.  Macross 7, Frontier, and Delta offer examples where people are shown to be able to access realtime or near-realtime video streams (including bidirectional video calls) for people and events that are tens, hundreds, or even thousands of light years away without cheats like fold quartz.  For a conversation to flow naturally the way we see in-series, a real world video call generally needs a latency of less than 150 milliseconds.  It's not quite "online pro gamer" levels of low ping but that's not much different from what you'd get browsing on a typical 4G cell phone.

 

Just now, JB0 said:

Even on the modern IRL internet, download and streaming services have multiple content delivery nodes. You don't connect to THE Steam and Netflix servers, you connect to your region's Steam and Netflix servers.

It depends... not every service has servers in every region, and quite often those servers are not actually located in the countries they're supposedly for.

Even then, that's less about speed of delivery and more about load balancing and maximizing reliability via shortest-path-to-target.  It's still perfectly possible to manipulate those applications to connect to a server other than the closest without even using a VPN.  

 

Just now, JB0 said:

I imagine the Galaxy Network would be similar. Every fleet and solar system likely has their own content caches precisely so no one is streaming petabit-per-second holodramas from servers on Earth.

Heck, it'd make sense for some form of content caching to be an integral part of the protocol. Possibly even user-distributed(bittorrent as a core internet protocol sounds wild)

I'd expect that to be the case for a lot of consumer media, but things like communications and browsing content hosted elsewhere is still going to incur latency from the outside networks.  Especially for things like bidirectional communications.

I'd assume there's something very much like the border gateway protocol used to find the shortest/optimal route to the requested resource since we know they have to route the communications through various relay satellites and so on to circumvent fold faults and other problematic astrographic phenomena.  That probably plays a significant role in the latency of communications the same way it does for the internet today.

[sketchley]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That said, I'm not sure latency is all that big of an issue c.2040 or beyond except perhaps for the farthest-flung reaches of the galaxy.  Macross 7, Frontier, and Delta offer examples where people are shown to be able to access realtime or near-realtime video streams (including bidirectional video calls) for people and events that are tens, hundreds, or even thousands of light years away without cheats like fold quartz.  For a conversation to flow naturally the way we see in-series, a real world video call generally needs a latency of less than 150 milliseconds.  It's not quite "online pro gamer" levels of low ping but that's not much different from what you'd get browsing on a typical 4G cell phone.

There's a bit of artistic licence going on in the Macross shows—heck, all SF shows—as the reality of space travel is rather boring and we are being shown what is effectively a highlight reel.

At work today I was thinking about this: what are the costs (energy, etc.) involved in maintaining a constant connection on the Galaxy Network?  Such as we know that multiple relay satellites are used, and that there is a significant energy/material cost when an Emigrant Fleet undertakes a (long range) space fold.  Do those relay satellites have the power resources and/or capabilities to continuously open multiple (micro) space folds in multiple directions?  Or are they more like repeater stations that only 'dial' the next relay satellite after 'receiving' a data transmission?  I'm sure they would have protocols in place for high priority (ie military emergency) communication, but in so doing, how much would that impact, reduce or otherwise delay the non-high priority (e.g. civilian) communication?

Then there's the physical network itself.  From what we can glean, it is more akin to a series of cell phone towers rather than an all-powerful network that covers the entire galaxy.  Therefore, just like a cell phone network, would there be areas where the signal drops out, or is otherwise very poor?  ... and that's not even taking Fold Faults into consideration!  (Would they be akin to a tree falling on a telephone line during a windstorm?)

 

I also came to the same conclusion as JBO: it just makes much more sense to send regular updates and cache things locally.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, sketchley said:

There's a bit of artistic licence going on in the Macross shows—heck, all SF shows—as the reality of space travel is rather boring and we are being shown what is effectively a highlight reel.

TBH, I'm not sure I'd say there's all that much artistic license being taken.

Many sci-fi titles like Star Trek, Star Wars, Macross, Gundam, etc. are pretty upfront about the fact that most of space travel is boring stretches of getting from Point A to Point B in which nothing particularly exciting happens.  It's one of the favorite approaches for "breather episode" stories.  Star Wars doesn't indulge in it as heavily as others since it's mainly a film series, but there are prominent moments showing that the actual business of space travel is waiting to get there like Obi-wan training Luke while en route to Alderaan with Han bumming around the ship's lounge with them.  So many Star Trek bottle episodes involve the crew going about their daily lives while the ship is traveling to its next port of call, never mind Voyager explicitly being the exciting moments in what was otherwise seven years of sailing back to Earth or Picard directly acknowledging the fact that space travel is mostly passing the time waiting to get where you're going.  Multiple Gundam titles acknowledge the incredible tedium of interplanetary travel to even the nearest planets (e.g. Iron-Blooded Orphans and Reconguista in G) with weeks of downtime spent on training and other pastimes.

Macross is more open about it than most, with both Macross 7 and Macross Frontier acknowledging that the titular emigrant ships sail for years if not decades to find a habitable planet to colonize... ideally uneventfully.  They're not looking for adventure, they're trying to get a prefab city to a suitable environment in one piece without any undue "excitement" which might put the lives and livelihoods of its civilian inhabitants at risk.  Everything they have is set up to preemptively detect, and avoid detection by, potential threats if at all possible.  In all four of the Macross TV shows, there are weeks or months between episodes where people are aboard ship doing not much beyond getting on with daily routines... including a number of breather episodes and the like.

 

5 hours ago, sketchley said:

At work today I was thinking about this: what are the costs (energy, etc.) involved in maintaining a constant connection on the Galaxy Network?  Such as we know that multiple relay satellites are used, and that there is a significant energy/material cost when an Emigrant Fleet undertakes a (long range) space fold.  Do those relay satellites have the power resources and/or capabilities to continuously open multiple (micro) space folds in multiple directions?  Or are they more like repeater stations that only 'dial' the next relay satellite after 'receiving' a data transmission?  I'm sure they would have protocols in place for high priority (ie military emergency) communication, but in so doing, how much would that impact, reduce or otherwise delay the non-high priority (e.g. civilian) communication?

Probably not as much as you're thinking,

Macross Frontier elaborated more on how fold communications work.  From the name, we'd think of something like what you're envisioning.  A transmitter that creates a tiny space fold to connect two points in realspace.  Instead, what Frontier established was that fold communications is more like your standard sci-fi FTL communication tech that works like radio but uses an exotic energy wave that propagates at FTL speeds.  Producing these waves (fold waves) is one of the key uses of fold carbon or fold quartz, since fold waves are used for all kinds of things.  The most important is controlling the heavy quantum that's used in gravity control systems and dimensional weapons, but they're also used in the FTL communications and FTL radar technology as a substitute for lightspeed-limited radio waves.

Armed with that understanding, it's seems very likely that the relay satellites used in the Galaxy Network are little different to the communications satellites today... maintaining a large number of parallel frequencies at all times that are used for point-to-point communications.  Just the range is much broader than geostationary orbit because the fold waves can cross interstellar distances easily and the obstacles being circumvented are things like fold faults instead of the curvature of the Earth.

 

5 hours ago, sketchley said:

Then there's the physical network itself.  From what we can glean, it is more akin to a series of cell phone towers rather than an all-powerful network that covers the entire galaxy.  Therefore, just like a cell phone network, would there be areas where the signal drops out, or is otherwise very poor?  ... and that's not even taking Fold Faults into consideration!  (Would they be akin to a tree falling on a telephone line during a windstorm?)

If we were to look for the closest real-world analog, I'd say it's probably the in-flight wifi and phone systems of modern jet airliners.

Those systems use a high-powered, high-bandwidth antenna clusters in the outer skin of the aircraft that maintain connections to either ground-based towers directly when over land and to satellites that redirect to ground stations when over the ocean in order to provide a link between the wifi access points in the cabin and the internet.  The antennas in the ship connect to whatever station in the network provides the best signal, and when it moves to an area where a new station has better signal it switches over to use that relay instead, as your PC or phone might in a mesh network.  Long-distance emigrant ships in Macross just operate in a condition where they have to continue dropping new relay stations whenever they get too far from the previous one in order to maintain communications with the rest of the network.

(Basically, if you've got a home wifi system like Netgear's Orbi, Asus's AiMesh, Linksys's Velop, etc. you can play with this principle at home as your device will seamlessly switch to whichever base station has the best signal strength and maintain the same communications sessions through a dedicated backhaul frequency that the different stations use to talk to each other.  If you have Philips Hue smart lights, a similar mesh technology called ZigBee is used wherein any client on the network is also a repeater on the network so you can construct daisy-chains of clients to places well outside the range of the base station/hub that'll still be connected to the hub as long as they're connected to a client directly or indirectly that's within range of the base station/hub.)