The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[azrael]

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

Also, in Macross 7. Their test for "have the zentradi stopped killing everyone yet?" was "stab a random visitor to our ruins and then when she bleeds on the floor we check the DNA".

It was... perhaps not the CLEANEST test of character they could have executed.

I'm sure a finger prick test would have worked if they left instructions. Minor oversight (who reads instructions anyways).

[SMS007]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Maybe so, but you'd think they would've at least programmed their walking apocalypse to get a second opinion before trying to end the world.  I mean, what if a disillusioned total misanthrope managed to unearth the damned thing and became the one it interrogated?

I know, right? Sara's superstitious nature, which the scientifically-developed Tori no Hito didn't question in the slightest, was a plot point I disliked about Macross Zero.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 11/21/2017 at 1:48 PM, SMS007 said:

I know, right? Sara's superstitious nature, which the scientifically-developed Tori no Hito didn't question in the slightest, was a plot point I disliked about Macross Zero.

That wasn't the Birdhuman's first encounter with the Mayan islanders and their superstitions, so it may have known what to expect.  It was accidentally activated on a prior occasion, in which it halted its own program by separating its head from its body... an event that passed into islander myth.

[SMS007]

On 11/21/2017 at 6:11 AM, JB0 said:

Hey, better to overdo it than underdo it.

 

Also, in Macross 7. Their test for "have the zentradi stopped killing everyone yet?" was "stab a random visitor to our ruins and then when she bleeds on the floor we check the DNA".

It was... perhaps not the CLEANEST test of character they could have executed.

Ha, and that doesn't account for the possibility that the Zentradi conquered and enslaved humanity either.

But of course, all Protohumanoids are dead and can't be held accountable for their incompetence. So it goes.

Edited November 23, 2017 by SMS007

[Gerli]

Do we know the range of those scary energy main cannons of the Nupetiet-Vergnitzs from the Zentradi? 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Just now, Gerli said:

Do we know the range of those scary energy main cannons of the Nupetiet-Vergnitzs from the Zentradi? 

At least a light second, based on dialog in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series that establishes that the SDF-1 Macross and Vrlitwhai's branch fleet were exchanging fire at distances of approximately 280,000km in "Booby Trap".

[Sildani]

So around 186,000 miles then. 

Edited November 25, 2017 by Sildani

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, Sildani said:

So around 3,000 miles then. 

Not sure if math failure or Palladium Books joke... 

[Gerli]

Someone say it was 14,000km, but that distance was too short for space combat. If those things travel at or near the speed of light, just one second for reaction time is not enough.

However in the original Macross TV we only see the secondary armament of the Nupetiet-Vergnitzs firing, not the whole 2km main gun from DYRL, maybe that gun has a longer range?

 

[Seto Kaiba]

8 minutes ago, Gerli said:

Someone say it was 14,000km, but that distance was too short for space combat. If those things travel at or near the speed of light, just one second for reaction time is not enough.

As noted previously, the benchmark set by the Macross's main gun is over 280,000km... there's no reason to assume that a heavy quantum reaction beam cannon at least as powerful as the Macross's would be less capable in that regard.

www.macross2.net/temp/LightSecond.JPG

 

8 minutes ago, Gerli said:

However in the original Macross TV we only see the secondary armament of the Nupetiet-Vergnitzs firing, not the whole 2km main gun from DYRL, maybe that gun has a longer range?

It's possible it has an even longer range than the main gun batteries, or it may simply be more killy out to the same range.  Either way, a light second is nothing to sneeze at.

[Sildani]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Not sure if math failure or Palladium Books joke... 

How’s sheer stupidity grab ya?

[JB0]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's possible it has an even longer range than the main gun batteries, or it may simply be more killy out to the same range.  Either way, a light second is nothing to sneeze at.

You ain't lyin'. I know the screenshot already says lunar orbit, but... terrestrial surface to lunar surface is only (about) 240 megameters, so the Macross could have actually blown craters on the Moon while parked on Earth. 

Edited November 25, 2017 by JB0

[Sir Galahad®]

On 11/23/2017 at 10:40 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

That wasn't the Birdhuman's first encounter with the Mayan islanders and their superstitions, so it may have known what to expect.  It was accidentally activated on a prior occasion, in which it halted its own program by separating its head from its body... an event that passed into islander myth.

This brings me to another question, was the Birdhuman failsafe only placed on earth? How about the other races the protoculture developed. I would have hoped that something like that would have been planted in Winderemere.

Was the "best children of the protoculture" asserted by every Winderemean? Or was it just Roid and the Royal Family?

[Seto Kaiba]

16 hours ago, Sir Galahad® said:

This brings me to another question, was the Birdhuman failsafe only placed on earth? How about the other races the protoculture developed. I would have hoped that something like that would have been planted in Winderemere.

Dunno.  It's entirely possible that other worlds had them and they just never activated because the planets they were on never dug them up or failed to maintain them properly... or it may be that the theory that the Brisingr cluster was one of the last areas settled by the Protoculture is true, and they were never installed to begin with.

There were Birdhuman icons found on other planets, like the Vajra homeworld in Frontier, so it's not unreasonable to suspect that there are probably others around.

 

 

Quote

Was the "best children of the protoculture" asserted by every Winderemean? Or was it just Roid and the Royal Family?

Given what was shown in the Macross Delta series, the belief that Windermere's native people had a manifest destiny as the true and chosen inheritors of the ancient Protoculture's legacy doesn't seem to have been widely accepted even among Windermere IV's elite.  The first time it comes up is in King Grammier's speech to motivate the troops right before a major operation to complete the Starwind Sector by capturing Ragna, and even he doesn't seem to really believe it.  I think he was probably just using it as a convenient way to tap into the anti-human sentiment that had emerged during Windermere IV's war of independence against the New UN Government in 2060.  Some of the Aerial Knights in the Macross Delta series did seem to think that their superior physical abilities made them superior to humans, and after the atrocities accidentally committed during the 2060 war they definitely felt they were morally superior to humanity.  By claiming to be the true inheritors of the Protoculture, Grammier could let them see themselves as superior to humanity in one more way... by asserting that humanity's "claim to fame" was a false one.

Roid Brehm seems to have been the only one who TRULY believed it.  Keith seems to have considered the whole thing a load, and seemed to resent the Protoculture themselves.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[SMS007]

On 11/26/2017 at 8:17 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Dunno.  It's entirely possible that other worlds had them and they just never activated because the planets they were on never dug them up or failed to maintain them properly... or it may be that the theory that the Brisingr cluster was one of the last areas settled by the Protoculture is true, and they were never installed to begin with.

There were Birdhuman icons found on other planets, like the Vajra homeworld in Frontier, so it's not unreasonable to suspect that there are probably others around.

But isn't the Bird Human icon on the Vajra homeworld likely just the original source that the Protoculture copied for their art?

Or are you suggesting that the icon Brera saw in Macross F episode 25 is in fact a millennia-old carving crafted by a Protohumanoid who ventured to the Vajra homeworld?

[Seto Kaiba]

25 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

But isn't the Bird Human icon on the Vajra homeworld likely just the original source that the Protoculture copied for their art?

The Bird Human is a bio-technological construct that the ancient Protoculture created, inspired by the Vajra Queen.  The statuary modeled on it is something the Protoculture created and left behind on various worlds... it's their calling card.

 

25 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Or are you suggesting that the icon Brera saw in Macross F episode 25 is in fact a millennia-old carving crafted by a Protohumanoid who ventured to the Vajra homeworld?

That does seem to be the case, yes.  The "magic floating rocks" (no I don't have a better term) are also presumably some of their sufficiently advanced technology.

There's the interesting related question of whether the megastructure on the Vajra planet in Macross Frontier was something that the Vajra built or something the Protoculture built for the Vajra, considering both have an organic design aesthetic and the part in which the Vajra hive is situated is a large spiral design very similar in appearance to the icon associated with the Protoculture on several occasions.  It raises the question of whether the Protoculture created a home for the Vajra and then tagged it with their Stellar Republic's insignia or whether the Republic adopted the Vajra's hive design as their formal emblem.

[Scream Man]

Is there any reason a 25 or 31 couldn’t fly in Atmo with their Fast Packs, minus the wing packs? The control surfaces would still be free, and while there would be extra drag, it wouldn’t be unflyable would it?

Edited December 7, 2017 by Scream Man

[Master Dex]

Inflatable?

That aside... I think the VF-25 was stated that it could use the super parts in atmosphere... though this was never shown and the show goes out of its way to show them not doing this multiple times. It could be it is just a case of overkill and unnecessary maybe. Aerodynamics matters but the power available to these planes is ridiculous so they can manage.

Can't say for the VF-31, it's super parts aren't as streamlined as the 25, specifically the wing boosters.

[Seto Kaiba]

24 minutes ago, Scream Man said:

Is there any reason a 25 or 31 couldn’t fly in Atmo with their Fast Packs, minus the wing packs? The control surfaces would still be free, and while there would be extra drag, it wouldn’t be inflatable would it?

Well, the remaining conformal packs would disrupt the boundary layer airflow and lead to increased drag that would disrupt handling and impede the operation of the boundary layer control system and vortex flow control system.  It wouldn't be a dealbreaker for powered flight, the decrease in lift coupled with the increase in drag and mass would definitely lower maneuverability.

The main reason I can see that they wouldn't retain the other conformal packs in the transition from space flight to atmospheric flight would be that they're not really hanging onto anything of value.  Option packs affixed to the boosters are where most of the actual armament is.  The conformal packs mounted elsewhere hold relatively little in terms of micro-missiles.  For the most part, they're conformal fuel tanks holding the additional cryogenic fuel slush necessary to give the VF a longer operating time in space and cool the reactors inside the engines.  Thermonuclear reaction turbine engines are thousands of times more fuel efficient in atmosphere than they are in space, and their internal tanks normally hold sufficient fuel for weeks of continuous operation as it is, so they don't really need that extra fuel slush.

[Scream Man]

inflatable was meant to be Unflyable. Apparently my phone doesn't like that phrase. 

 

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, the remaining conformal packs would disrupt the boundary layer airflow and lead to increased drag that would disrupt handling and impede the operation of the boundary layer control system and vortex flow control system.  It wouldn't be a dealbreaker for powered flight, the decrease in lift coupled with the increase in drag and mass would definitely lower maneuverability.

im unclear what those 2 control systems you mentioned are?

That said i get the idea; little gain for much loss. understood.

Also, I suppose the 29 DOES fly into Atmo with its super packs on... but then it has minor additions that are tightly conformed to the aerodynamics of the plane already. 

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, Scream Man said:

im unclear what those 2 control systems you mentioned are?

Aids to maneuverability.

The Boundary Layer Control System (BLCS) is a collection of air pumps situated in the main and sub-intakes and inside the control surfaces which collectively work to manipulate the laminar airflow over the airframe.  Two different real world methods are used.  The first, boundary layer suction, is used via air pumps in the main intake and a dedicated sub-intake above the main intake, to extract the boundary layer (the air closest to the surface) and thus prevent it from breaking away from the surface and forming drag-increasing low pressure zones in the aircraft's wake (flow separation).  It also employs what are called "blown" control surfaces, which use air drawn from the turbines and blown out a series of vents in the trailing edge of the wing to shape the airflow downwards, which increases the lift coefficient by delaying boundary layer flow separation.  This manipulation of the boundary layer results in reduced drag that increases fuel efficiency, and also offers improved lift, low-speed performance, and increases the stalling angle of attack, making the aircraft more agile and even offering limited maneuverability without control surfaces if applied asymmetrically.

The Vortex Flow Controller (VFC) is a more recent addition to VFs that injects trace amounts of neutral gas into the boundary layer to asymmetrically change the pressure gradient on the aircraft skin.  The gas causes a vortex to form or an existing vortex to change position, shifting the airflow pressure on the aircraft enough to actually change the direction of flight.  Essentially, an attitude control system that uses the air moving over the airframe as a control surface.

(And yes, boundary layer suction, blown control surfaces, and vortex flow controllers are all real-world technologies.)

 

Quote

Also, I suppose the 29 DOES fly into Atmo with its super packs on... but then it has minor additions that are tightly conformed to the aerodynamics of the plane already. 

Yeah, though the YF-29's Super Pack is specifically designed to cause as little disruption to the fighter's aerodynamics as possible and is pretty minimal in all respects.

 

For more fun with boundary layers, you may find it enjoyable to watch the Mythbusters episodes for the Tailgate up or down? myth and the Blue Ice myth.

Edited December 7, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[SMS007]

Has any canon publication detailed what the inhabitants of Macross Frontier have been up to after landing on the Vajra homeworld? (Besides what is shown in the Sheryl~Kiss in the Galaxy manga and the Macross 30 game.)

I like to imagine that Island 1 would have been repurposed into a planetside "Glass City". Seems natural to honor the late Howard Glass.

Edited December 7, 2017 by SMS007

[Seto Kaiba]

8 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Has any canon publication detailed what the inhabitants of Macross Frontier have been up to after landing on the Vajra homeworld? (Discounting the Sheryl~Kiss in the Galaxy manga and the Macross 30 game.)

Nothing concrete, no... just that the 55th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet established its permanent colony on the former Vajra hive world.  

Variable Fighter Master File and Variable Fighter Episode Archive come the closest to commenting upon their doings, but that's almost exclusively talk about the VF-25 finally being approved for the start of mass production and its adoption by Frontier's local New UN Forces and the forces of their allies and closest trading partners as either export sales or local build-under-license agreements.

The Macross Delta novelization offers one other tidbit.  Its second volume establishes that the MP representing the former Macross Frontier emigrant fleet in the New UN Government parliament is none other than Macross the Ride main character Chelsea Scarlett.

 

8 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

I like to imagine that Island 1 would have been repurposed into a planetside "Glass City". Seems natural to honor the late Howard Glass.

Island-1 is a cert for the planetary capital, given that it already houses most of the fleet's population and the fleet's entire government.  Since city ships are, by their very nature, given to water landings it'll probably end up parked in a bay or lake with causeways linking it to a bayshore city the way the habitat ship in Barette City on Ragna was.

[SMS007]

Am I correct in assuming that no name has been given to the Vajra homeworld?

I like to think of it as "Vajra Prime", but I doubt the Macross staff name things like that.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, SMS007 said:

Am I correct in assuming that no name has been given to the Vajra homeworld?

I like to think of it as "Vajra Prime", but I doubt the Macross staff name things like that.

None that I've seen.

[sketchley]

6 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Am I correct in assuming that no name has been given to the Vajra homeworld?

The name, in all the Japanese sources I've come across, is literally "Vajra Homeworld".

You could, of course, play with the terminology a lot to get such things as "the homeworld of the Vajra", "the Vajra's homeworld" and so on.  But for the sake of brevity, and the lack of any other name, "Vajra Homeworld" works best.

Edited December 10, 2017 by sketchley

[ManhattanProject972]

I wonder what the folks from Macross The Ride were doing during Frontier?

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, ManhattanProject972 said:

I wonder what the folks from Macross The Ride were doing during Frontier?

Most of the principal characters were civilians in 2058, so it's unlikely they did much of anything apart from try to go on with their lives as air racers on the pro circuit and/or go on with their lives in the private sector like Magdalena Zielonaska.

The only ones whose activity during the Vajra War we can talk with certainty about are the ones who were holdovers or cameos from the Macross Frontier series... Ozma Lee and Brera Sterne.

[SMS007]

What about Chelsea Scarlett herself? Are we to assume that she was one of the many unseen VF-25A pilots fighting alongside Skull Platoon and Pixie Platoon?

[Scream Man]

On 12/8/2017 at 4:35 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Aids to maneuverability.

The Boundary Layer Control System (BLCS) is a collection of air pumps situated in the main and sub-intakes and inside the control surfaces which collectively work to manipulate the laminar airflow over the airframe.  Two different real world methods are used.  The first, boundary layer suction, is used via air pumps in the main intake and a dedicated sub-intake above the main intake, to extract the boundary layer (the air closest to the surface) and thus prevent it from breaking away from the surface and forming drag-increasing low pressure zones in the aircraft's wake (flow separation).  It also employs what are called "blown" control surfaces, which use air drawn from the turbines and blown out a series of vents in the trailing edge of the wing to shape the airflow downwards, which increases the lift coefficient by delaying boundary layer flow separation.  This manipulation of the boundary layer results in reduced drag that increases fuel efficiency, and also offers improved lift, low-speed performance, and increases the stalling angle of attack, making the aircraft more agile and even offering limited maneuverability without control surfaces if applied asymmetrically.

The Vortex Flow Controller (VFC) is a more recent addition to VFs that injects trace amounts of neutral gas into the boundary layer to asymmetrically change the pressure gradient on the aircraft skin.  The gas causes a vortex to form or an existing vortex to change position, shifting the airflow pressure on the aircraft enough to actually change the direction of flight.  Essentially, an attitude control system that uses the air moving over the airframe as a control surface.

 

Thanks dude

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, SMS007 said:

What about Chelsea Scarlett herself? Are we to assume that she was one of the many unseen VF-25A pilots fighting alongside Skull Platoon and Pixie Platoon?

Nah, Chelsea Scarlett quit frontline combat service in SMS Frontier's Apollo Platoon at the start of Macross R.  She was a talented pilot but couldn't bring herself to shoot the rogue Zentradi she'd been deployed to fight in her first combat engagement, so she got reassigned to be SMS's sponsored Vanquish League pilot.  At the end of Macross R, she'd taken her leave of SMS and was racing as a private/independent entry in the league after spending a big chunk of her winnings on several VF-11B fuselages at a military disposal sale to construct a custom VF-11B she called the Nothung II.

After the Vajra conflict, she apparently went into government and was the Macross Frontier fleet's representative to the New UN Government parliament in 2067.

[SMS007]

When Sheryl says that she's "all-natural", are we to assume that includes a perfect set of teeth? From a realistic perspective, spending time homeless as a young child surely can't have been good for her dental health. 

[Focslain]

1 hour ago, SMS007 said:

When Sheryl says that she's "all-natural", are we to assume that includes a perfect set of teeth? From a realistic perspective, spending time homeless as a young child surely can't have been good for her dental health. 

It just means that she doesn't have any bionic enhancements that the majority of Galaxy are known for doing. We're talking GitS levels here.  

[JB0]

SHE'S TALKING ABOUT HER RACK!11

[dizman]

So what you are saying is Sheryl has bionic teeth?