Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Underneath the High Speed Raiding Space Cruiser there's a similar looking but different ship dubbed the "バトルスーツ母艦," which roughly translates as "Battle Suit Mothership." To me at least somewhere in 7's production it seems to imply that Zentradi Battle Suits was going to be apart of the Varauta Army's arsenal, which would track considering they got a whole group of unwilling recruits of Zentran through the Macross 5 fleet. It also seems like it would eventually become what we know as the Large Battroid Transport Carrier/Mothership (バトロイド大型輸送母艦), as not only it's not in this book along with other later designs like the Vanguard Frigate and New Giant Carrier, but it also has some design similarities like the tube pattern, the bow mounted beam guns, and the flat stern. Switch battle suits to the functionally similar Battroids, and I think I kinda cracked the case.

Yeah, that's the conclusion I would've reached as well based on the similarities in the bow's design... that this was an early draft of the Battroid Large Transport Carrier that made its appearance in Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me!.

[TG Remix]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, that's the conclusion I would've reached as well based on the similarities in the bow's design... that this was an early draft of the Battroid Large Transport Carrier that made its appearance in Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me!.

So that's why I have no recollection on it in the TV show! The short movie iirc was something that was released days after the final episode.

 

In universe I always was kind of confused about its usage within the Varauta Army; the New Giant Carrier was said to be built because they lacked a dedicated carrier like the more conventional Uraga or Guantanamo classes. Yet the Battroid Transport Carrier is described as having launch catapults for fighters, even if it's mainly designed to have them as cargo. I guess it comes to something like the differences between a aircraft carrier and a landing helicopter assault ship, where the latter is more generalized and more firepower oriented?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

So that's why I have no recollection on it in the TV show! The short movie iirc was something that was released days after the final episode.

Yeah, that's the one.  It's basically just a bonus TV episode, but it's classified as a movie because it was screened in cinemas as a special feature.

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

In universe I always was kind of confused about its usage within the Varauta Army; the New Giant Carrier was said to be built because they lacked a dedicated carrier like the more conventional Uraga or Guantanamo classes. Yet the Battroid Transport Carrier is described as having launch catapults for fighters, even if it's mainly designed to have them as cargo. I guess it comes to something like the differences between a aircraft carrier and a landing helicopter assault ship, where the latter is more generalized and more firepower oriented?

The key word in that description is "dedicated".

Most ships in Macross, even those which are not strictly speaking aircraft carriers, carry at least a few combat mecha for defense purposes.  The ships of the Zentradi forces are mainly considered to be classes of battleship, and yet they still have hangars supporting units of battle pods and battle suits for defensive and offensive use.  The New UN Spacy similarly deploys small numbers of Valkyries aboard its Northampton-class frigates and stealth cruisers like the Algenicus as seen in Macross 7 PLUS and Macross M3.

Where the New UN Spacy from the 2030s and beyond seems to favor a reasonably strict division of roles between escort warships and dedicated aircraft carriers, the Protodeviln-controlled forces of the Varauta fleet follow the earlier and more Zentradi-like model of multipurposeful ships.  Most of their fleet is made up of cruisers and battleships that are a good deal larger than anything in the New UN Spacy's regular forces, in order to accommodate having the heavy armor and weapons of a space battleship while also having room for a modest fighter complement. 

The Varauta standard battleship has a fighter complement roughly comparable to a Guantanamo-class stealth carrier, but it's more than twice the size, much more expensive, and nevertheless still nowhere near as effective as that much smaller carrier.  With only four catapults that must be fired one at a time, the Varauta battleship needs a lot longer to get its 40 aircraft in the air compared to the Guantanamo and its ability to operate eight catapults in parallel.  It's why Macross Chronicle notes that the Varauta need to field 2-3 of the standard battleship to achieve the same operational capacity as a single NUNS carrier.  The same is true for the larger ships too, like the assault ship Gigile favored.  It was nearly 900m long, cost ten times as much as a regular battleship, and still couldn't rival the carrier performance of a single Uraga-class despite a similar aircraft capacity.  The large Battroid carrier is kind of that idea taken to its logical extreme.  It can carry a hundred Valkyries, but it can't deploy them efficiently or effectively because it's simply not set up to handle that many aircraft.  Despite its enormous capacity, it's worse off than smaller ships of the line in terms of carrier performance and a lot more vulnerable for it.

Faced with the Spacy's ability to get a crapton of aircraft in the air quickly, the Varauta realized they needed similiar capabilities and thus the new giant carrier was born.  It was that lesson taken to its logical extreme... a ship that had one job: get the maximum possible number of fighters in the air all at once.  The ship is basically a massive hangar complex and eight three-plane scramble catapult decks strapped to an engine.  It's noted that it can launch 24 aircraft simultaneously and be ready to launch 24 more in two and a half minutes, allowing it to get its entire complement of 200 aircraft in the air in just 20 minutes.  That is an insane pace that says that the Varauta were absolutely not messing about when they designed the thing.

Luckily for the Spacy, the Varauta forces were late to the realization and only managed to build three of the bloody things before the war ended.

[TG Remix]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Where the New UN Spacy from the 2030s and beyond seems to favor a reasonably strict division of roles between escort warships and dedicated aircraft carriers, the Protodeviln-controlled forces of the Varauta fleet follow the earlier and more Zentradi-like model of multipurposeful ships.  Most of their fleet is made up of cruisers and battleships that are a good deal larger than anything in the New UN Spacy's regular forces, in order to accommodate having the heavy armor and weapons of a space battleship while also having room for a modest fighter complement. 

Does make me want to bring the topic that despite all of their inherit differences from what the Macross 7 fleet has in its arsenal...They were UN ships from the start! Even when not citing Macross Chronicle, in the Kazutaka Miyatake Design Works book, Miyatake states that the concept behind them is that they were "Earth ships" that were remodeled, not unlike what happened with the conversion from the VF-14 to the Fz-109A. Whether that means they were either local UN Varauta ship classes, or uncommon but standard non-hero designs like the VF-14 hidden in certain corners of the galaxy, they do show similar design pathos that showed they were human designed, as they were built with stealth exteriors and "planks" of Energy Conversion Army that even as overtechnology in practice it was only applied to the mechs for Zentradi and not their ships.

 

Personally, with the relevation that they were UN ships, it'd be nice to see a bit more variety in terms of ship types within the military, even if we'll probably never see them on the side of the protagonists as the carriers and Northampton since 7 have been going strong for 4 series since. (Not sure if I should self promote here, but it's a nice little exercise to edit the ships to make them look more conventional before they were modified here)

 

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Varauta standard battleship has a fighter complement roughly comparable to a Guantanamo-class stealth carrier, but it's more than twice the size, much more expensive, and nevertheless still nowhere near as effective as that much smaller carrier.  With only four catapults that must be fired one at a time, the Varauta battleship needs a lot longer to get its 40 aircraft in the air compared to the Guantanamo and its ability to operate eight catapults in parallel.  It's why Macross Chronicle notes that the Varauta need to field 2-3 of the standard battleship to achieve the same operational capacity as a single NUNS carrier. 

I'm not sure if it's said that the Standard Battleline Battleship was said to be particularly expensive. If anything Chronicles infers that costs are kept low as a mass production type, and the performance is comparable to the average UNG ship of its period. Though I suppose compared to the insanely optimized and inexpensive design like the Guantanamo it would be more costly by comparison. Though it is true, it's a battleship first and foremost...Which does kinda make me wonder if the hull designations of these things under UN control if they'd have the same moniker as the big ships like BB-61 USS Iowa.

 

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The same is true for the larger ships too, like the assault ship Gigile favored.  It was nearly 900m long, cost ten times as much as a regular battleship, and still couldn't rival the carrier performance of a single Uraga-class despite a similar aircraft capacity.  The large Battroid carrier is kind of that idea taken to its logical extreme.  It can carry a hundred Valkyries, but it can't deploy them efficiently or effectively because it's simply not set up to handle that many aircraft.  Despite its enormous capacity, it's worse off than smaller ships of the line in terms of carrier performance and a lot more vulnerable for it.

I'm more convinced it's more to ferry Battroids and other equipment to one place to another, something more analogous to the Quiltra Queleual Landing Ship Tanks. Seems to me that considering the Flagship Carrier Gepelnitch decided to make his home not only was designed to wipe out a small scale Zentradi fleet, but to also dock 30-40 frigates as well as 6-8 bigger ships within its interior docks, I'm assuming that it was going to do much of the grunt work when it comes to sending many VFs at a time when push comes to shove. A 500 variable fighter capacity is nothing to scoff at in the slightest, probably more than some entire fleets and planetary defenses alone through that.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Does make me want to bring the topic that despite all of their inherit differences from what the Macross 7 fleet has in its arsenal...They were UN ships from the start! Even when not citing Macross Chronicle, in the Kazutaka Miyatake Design Works book, Miyatake states that the concept behind them is that they were "Earth ships" that were remodeled, not unlike what happened with the conversion from the VF-14 to the Fz-109A. Whether that means they were either local UN Varauta ship classes, or uncommon but standard non-hero designs like the VF-14 hidden in certain corners of the galaxy, they do show similar design pathos that showed they were human designed, as they were built with stealth exteriors and "planks" of Energy Conversion Army that even as overtechnology in practice it was only applied to the mechs for Zentradi and not their ships.

Most of them, anyway.

The "new giant carrier" type was an original development by the Varauta forces late in their conflict with the Macross 7 fleet, and Gigile's assault ship is indicated to be something developed from the Varauta standard battleship so that may also be an original design of theirs.

Exactly what they looked like before has of course never been revealed, but all things considered it seems likely that many of them were transitional designs used after the First Space War but before the introduction of the classes we're familiar with accompanying 3rd Generation and later emigrant fleets.  Varauta 3198XE was discovered and settled by the Megaroad-13 and its accompanying fleet in 2025.  (Soon, isn't it?)  As far as we know, they didn't have any factory satellites until the colony was taken over by the Protodeviln eighteen years later in 2043.  Building ~500 hundred new warships between 2025 and 2043 while also building up colony infrastructure and exploring other worlds in the system strikes me as a bit much for the ~80,000 people of the colony to do.  That they departed Earth with most of those ships strikes me as a lot more likely, since Earth DID have the manufacturing muscle to casually build something the scale of the Varauta fleet flagship... one of the largest human-built ships in the setting.

 

11 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I'm not sure if it's said that the Standard Battleline Battleship was said to be particularly expensive. If anything Chronicles infers that costs are kept low as a mass production type, and the performance is comparable to the average UNG ship of its period. Though I suppose compared to the insanely optimized and inexpensive design like the Guantanamo it would be more costly by comparison.

Macross Chronicle notes that mass-production of the standard battleship made it economical to produce, but that suggests that the individual unit cost is probably quite high if the only way to do it economically is in bulk.

It's also a much more complex design than the Guantanamo-class Advanced ARMD, given its combination of battleship and carrier functions.

 

11 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Though it is true, it's a battleship first and foremost...Which does kinda make me wonder if the hull designations of these things under UN control if they'd have the same moniker as the big ships like BB-61 USS Iowa.

Given that the Earth UN Forces and New UN Forces use a hull classification symbol system that's either a direct continuation of, or heavily inspired by, that of the pre-war United States I would agree that it's likely that the battleships would be BB-something under the Spacy's system.

Older lore had the ARMD-class ships interchangeably using ARMD-## and SCV-##.  Macross 7-era lore has revised that to ARMD-## and CV-##, with other carriers shown to use CV-## and frigates shown to use FF-##.  Frontier-era screencaps show that they've started sticking mission letters onto them too.  The Northampton-class ships are marked with FFM-##, while the Guantanamo-class ships are CVR-## and the Uraga-class CVS-##.  Those don't have a clear interpretation.  I doubt those frigates are minelayers, which is what the now-disused M mission letter normally meant, though it would make sense for the Guantanamo-class ships to be considered part of the fleet's radar picket.

 

11 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I'm more convinced it's more to ferry Battroids and other equipment to one place to another, something more analogous to the Quiltra Queleual Landing Ship Tanks. Seems to me that considering the Flagship Carrier Gepelnitch decided to make his home not only was designed to wipe out a small scale Zentradi fleet, but to also dock 30-40 frigates as well as 6-8 bigger ships within its interior docks, I'm assuming that it was going to do much of the grunt work when it comes to sending many VFs at a time when push comes to shove. A 500 variable fighter capacity is nothing to scoff at in the slightest, probably more than some entire fleets and planetary defenses alone through that.

That wouldn't really make it analogous to a Quiltra Queleual-class ship.  The Quiltra Queleual is basically an aircraft carrier for reentry pods.  It has the means to move the very many battle pods stored in it around and get them to the target.  The Varauta battroid carrier doesn't seem to have that, to the extent that it's described as being inferior as a carrier to all the other Varauta ships, which are already noted to be pretty bad in that regard.

The Varauta flagship is a whole different kind of beast.  It's made to be something equivalent to a Battle-class, with the firepower to engage an enemy fleet solo and the fighters to back it up.  It's built to be a carrier, and a mothership to smaller warships similar to a Zentradi mobile fortress.  It's also so big it can't rapidly move into or out of combat, making it unsuitable for raiding.

[TehPW]

 I'm having a lazy Saturday night, my wife & minion & The Pants are out & about and I'm listening to random and subscribed YT stuff, when I'm not playing DDO. This YT is renown for his F-14 RIO knowledge and tonight's topic on when the F-14 program got DFCS installed made me think: Has anyone done a proper, actually took the time to think 'Can It Fly?' look at the VF-1 (maybe the VF-0, which looks more like a design that would fly... like a brick) on DCS or similar? I'm not talking video games, which do NOT replicate flight characteristics (just X/Y/Z axis on a static image) but the various popular flight sims that gained traction and functionality in the past 5 years...?

[Seto Kaiba]

37 minutes ago, TehPW said:

I'm having a lazy Saturday night, my wife & minion & The Pants are out & about and I'm listening to random and subscribed YT stuff, when I'm not playing DDO. This YT is renown for his F-14 RIO knowledge and tonight's topic on when the F-14 program got DFCS installed made me think: Has anyone done a proper, actually took the time to think 'Can It Fly?' look at the VF-1 (maybe the VF-0, which looks more like a design that would fly... like a brick) on DCS or similar? I'm not talking video games, which do NOT replicate flight characteristics (just X/Y/Z axis on a static image) but the various popular flight sims that gained traction and functionality in the past 5 years...?

With enough thrust, anything can be made to fly.

Flying well or controllably or stably... now that's another matter.

Can it fly?  Yes.  Absolutely it can.  It's actually got almost 18% more wing area to play with than other fighters in its size class (e.g. the F-16).  Its aerodynamics are reasonably good, though like the YF-23 it uses a combination of a V-tail and thrust vectoring in place of elevators.  Not counting overboost, its engine power is very close to that of the F-22 Raptor while weighing 11 metric tons less at standard takeoff weight.  It's not going to be super stable, as noted in Macross Delta by Mirage Jenius, but that's partly intentional since high mobility and instability are essentially two sides of the same coin (and are why digital flight control systems exist to take some of the burden of maintaining stable flight off the pilot).  

People have modeled them in immersive flight sims and they DO fly... though not well.  Without the various technological cheats (all of which exist in the real world) that the VF-1 uses to fly well, the end result tends to be somewhat uninspiring.  Most "realistic" sims have limited or no support for thrust vectoring or ruddervators (being designed around the needs of more conventional civilian aircraft) and often don't bother at all with unglamorous or highly specialized systems like blown flaps or boundary layer control or strictly experimental ones like vortex flow control.

Both Western and Japanese fans have built and flown model VF-1s as well, though a consistent theme is that they typically don't even try to do the ruddervators or thrust vectoring and instead use the beavertail as an ad hoc elevator to achieve more traditional attitude control.

[jvmacross]

10 hours ago, TehPW said:

 I'm having a lazy Saturday night, my wife & minion & The Pants are out & about and I'm listening to random and subscribed YT stuff, when I'm not playing DDO. This YT is renown for his F-14 RIO knowledge and tonight's topic on when the F-14 program got DFCS installed made me think: Has anyone done a proper, actually took the time to think 'Can It Fly?' look at the VF-1 (maybe the VF-0, which looks more like a design that would fly... like a brick) on DCS or similar? I'm not talking video games, which do NOT replicate flight characteristics (just X/Y/Z axis on a static image) but the various popular flight sims that gained traction and functionality in the past 5 years...?

 

[TehPW]

yes, someone who is into civilian model flying planes created mockups of the VF-1... but that still does replicate the real thing... with all the bells whistles that Seto mentioned, these miniature planes still dont fully replicate the flight. No front slats no proper flaps that extend, no aspects in how those upper inlets affect flight (do they actually close in flight?)

these are concepts i wonder if anyone has done in Wind Tunnels? I look over my shoulder to a anime wall scroll i bought back when i was working/living the Ventura area in the early 2000s, of a VF-1J looking at it from the Pilots 5 oclock (sans the UNSPACY Kite) and that art IS flying...

IDK. I guess I'm having Old fart moments...

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

24 minutes ago, TehPW said:

yes, someone who is into civilian model flying planes created mockups of the VF-1... but that still does replicate the real thing... with all the bells whistles that Seto mentioned, these miniature planes still dont fully replicate the flight. No front slats no proper flaps that extend, no aspects in how those upper inlets affect flight (do they actually close in flight?)

Quite a few of those bells and whistles would be difficult to replicate on a scale model like that... the slats, the double-slotted fowler flaps, the ruddervators, the wingtip verniers used for attitude control, the boundary layer control system, etc.

The dorsal sub-intakes do remain open in flight.  Like most things on the VF-1's design they fulfill multiple purposes but the two main ones are serving as an intake for the VF-1's boundary layer control system (which is used for laminar flow control to reduce parasitic drag and minimum airspeed and increase the usable angle of attack the aircraft) and as an inlet for one of the Valkyrie's heat exchangers that's used to vent waste heat in atmospheric flight.  The sub-intake is shuttered in Battroid mode and in space flight, since heat can be exhausted from the exchanger directly upwards and there's no air for passive cooling in space.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie volumes 1 and 2 describe another use case for the intakes specific to Valkyries operating in space.  Essentially, the intakes don't serve any functional purpose on their own in space but they are a substantial cavity in the airframe in close proximity to the engines... making them an ideal place to install an optional set of propellant tanks.  The intake spaces are filled in with a set of soft plastic fuel bladders containing supplemental propellant to extend the Valkyrie's range in space.

Master File also asserts that later models, like the VF-19 and VF-25, would go on to add more functionality to the sub-intakes including:

• As an inlet for a Slush and Liquid Air Cycle System (SLACS), a system which allows a VF to harvest propellant from atmospheric gases in flight via compression and cooling of air passing through the sub-intake.
• As an intake for airflow to be used in blowing Flow Control on the aircraft's control surfaces (incl. both the wing and tail).
• As a supplemental propulsion system, turning the heat exchanger in the sub-intake into a de facto engine nozzle to provide thrust in GERWALK mode.  (It's implied this is part of why the VF-25 and VF-31 don't have a visible large engine nozzle for forward thurst in GERWALK mode.)

 

24 minutes ago, TehPW said:

these are concepts i wonder if anyone has done in Wind Tunnels?

There can't be very many fans out there who have access to a wind tunnel... and fewer still who have access to one meant for scale aircraft testing.

I'd assume I'm one of very few who has access to a wind tunnel at all, and that's a MGP system meant for automobiles.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 12/15/2024 at 1:44 PM, pengbuzz said:

I also wonder what role RCS thrusters play in them flying in atmosphere? I would assume they take over for the missing horizontal stabilizers and whatnot in the animes.

Just realized I never answered this... sorry!

The main atmospheric use-case for a VF's verniers described in official materials is using the verniers mounted in the wingtips to supplement the ailerons in the wing to allow the craft to roll faster and with greater precision than it could with control surfaces alone.  (It's not normally animated, but we see these thrusted used prominently during DYRL? and especially in Macross Delta's third episode when Hayate is training in the VF-1EX.)

The main design feature that replaces horizontal stabilizers on VFs is the use of thrust-vectoring nozzles to control the aircraft's pitch, supplemented by outward- or inward-canted vertical stabilizers that function like a V-tail with "ruddervators".  Master File also asserts that the rear of the tail block (nicknamed the "beaver tail" on the F-14) is also configured as a movable panel to assist in pitch control, though its mobility is very limited.

[RangerKarl]

I'm surprised that the fanon of the VF reclaiming fuel/remass from the atmosphere has been acknowledged in a fashion. I guess they were saying the same sort of thing over there.

[Master Dex]

12 hours ago, RangerKarl said:

I'm surprised that the fanon of the VF reclaiming fuel/remass from the atmosphere has been acknowledged in a fashion. I guess they were saying the same sort of thing over there.

I don't think that's fanon, it does use atmospheric air for propulsion, in atmosphere anyway. In space it doesn't do this of course and switches to what I'd call uneconomic mode and uses full fusion energy for propulsion instead of just to heat the free remass of the air.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Master Dex said:

I don't think that's fanon, it does use atmospheric air for propulsion, in atmosphere anyway. In space it doesn't do this of course and switches to what I'd call uneconomic mode and uses full fusion energy for propulsion instead of just to heat the free remass of the air.

That's not what he's referring to.  He's referring to the Slush and Liquid Air Cycle System (SLACS) described in the VF-19 and VF-25 Master File books.  It's a system connected to the VF's sub-intakes that allows it replenish its internal propellant tanks (literally) on the fly by condensing, compressing, and cooling atmospheric gases passing through the sub-intake.

The SLACS can only replenish propellant, not reactants for the compact thermonuclear reactor, so it's mainly useful for VFs operating in a planetary defense role since they can be launched from the ground and collect propellant on the way up or for VFs carrying out operations planetside and then returning to space, relieving some of the pressure on fuel conservation.  (Since the same tanks feed the verniers, this also allows more liberal use of the verniers in atmospheric flight as a supplement to control surfaces.  It's also noted to be useful for the not-actually-an afterburner, which injects propellant slush into the engine's exhaust stream where it is flash-heated back to gas and expands violently.)

 

15 hours ago, RangerKarl said:

I'm surprised that the fanon of the VF reclaiming fuel/remass from the atmosphere has been acknowledged in a fashion. I guess they were saying the same sort of thing over there.

Apparently so, though it's presented as one of the new technologies first incorporated into the 4th Generation VFs like the VF-19 rather than something that's been present all along.

[Seto Kaiba]

58 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Maybe in a future VF they can do atmospheric refueling for their main tanks, but apparently only for maneuvering propellant right now.

Now that much would probably be unnecessary.

Even the humble VF-1 Valkyrie carries enough fuel to keep its compact thermonuclear reactors running for weeks.  The number most consistently cited is 700 hours, which is a bit over 29 days.  Far in excess of the physical endurance of any pilot and probably exceeding the recommended maintenance intervals for several key systems.

If the likes of the YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31 Custom Siegfried/Kairos Plus are any indication, a more likely progression would be to do away with the thermonuclear reactor entirely and adopt a fold dimensional energy converter to provide the fighter with an unlimited supply of energy from higher dimensions.  Humanity first saw this technology in use in the Birdhuman in 2008, and saw it again in 2045-2046 in the Protodeviln.  As of 2059, they've managed to construct a rudimentary version of the same technology as part of the fold wave system used in the YF-29.  

Given enough time, systems like thermonuclear reaction turbine engines would likely give way to fold dimensional energy converters and gravitic propulsion similar to what was used on the Birdhuman or on various Vajra forms.

 

58 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

On a related note: never fails to impress upon me how much of a disadvantage the SDF-1's fighters were at having to fight out in deep space, where they had to rely on all their internal fuel reserves.

Yeah, fortunately the VF-1s from the Macross's airwing didn't have to go very far from the ship most of the time.  They had some stopgap solutions like optional fuel bladders that could be inserted into the intakes, but the problem wasn't really solved until they started to field the Super Pack en masse.

[JB0]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Maybe in a future VF they can do atmospheric refueling for their main tanks, but apparently only for maneuvering propellant right now.

It probably wouldn't be worth it. While I can't speak for the colony worlds, Earth's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. And while nitrogen CAN be fused, it is significantly harder than the traditional hydrogen or helium.

On the other hand, it's much easier to get your hands on nitrogen.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Actually, hydrogen has a lower cooling point than nitrogen, so it wouldn't be too hard to fractionate the two gasses. The Nitrogen would condense first and could be discarded, while the hydrogen would be ported off to holding/ storage tanks.  

It does, though it takes considerable pressure to get hydrogen to a liquid state never mind the slush state that's reportedly used for fuel storage.

It'd probably also require some unusual fuel transfer lines, since the SLACS in the wing glove area can dump propellant directly into the wing tanks while the fuel for the compact thermonuclear reactor is stored in the engine nacelles (legs).

 

Actually, that's one detail I should elaborate upon because it's something I missed (or if you prefer, an error I made) when I was doing a piecemeal translation of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 and Vol.2.  The tank capacities given in Vol.2 are strictly for the propellant used in space flight and in the vernier thrusters.  Vol.1 mentions in one small section that it has a separate set of (much smaller) tanks in the engine nacelles (legs) specifically for the reactants used in the compact thermonuclear reactor.  So there's quite a bit of complexity with reactant tanks vs. propellant tanks, with most of the onboard tank space being for dedicated propellant according to Master File.  There's even a bit that talks about using the stabilizers as supplemental propellant tanks and the complexities of transferring propellant around the airframe.

 

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

*takes notes on fold energy convertors for VF-113 project*

Probably worth noting that, as far as we know, you need ultra-high purity fold quartz to pull that off.

No word on if the Master File-exclusive YF-29C with its ultra-high purity fold carbon can do it.

 

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

On the bright side:

  Reveal hidden contents

At least they didn't go the Neon Genesis Evangelion routine...

 

I'm not even sure what that implies... I haven't seen Rebuild of Evangelion, do they go to space?

[JB0]

8 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Actually, hydrogen has a lower cooling point than nitrogen, so it wouldn't be too hard to fractionate the two gasses. The Nitrogen would condense first and could be discarded, while the hydrogen would be ported off to holding/ storage tanks.

I guess that'd work, but you won't get much hydrogen. 0.5 parts per million hydrogen.

As an aside, looking this up led me to looking at stellar evolution, and apparently there's a lot of energy loss due to neutrino production when fusing heavier atoms.

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

One of the EVA's ends up in space permanently, IIRC.

And what I'm implying: at least they didn't use extension cords for the valkyries like the EVA's used!

Oh, yeah... in End of Evangelion.  

They did eventually solve that problem for the mass production type, though, with something nearly as broken as the fold dimensional energy converter.

 

8 hours ago, JB0 said:

As an aside, looking this up led me to looking at stellar evolution, and apparently there's a lot of energy loss due to neutrino production when fusing heavier atoms.

Yeah, and it makes sense to look to that for guidance since Macross's thermonuclear reactors work very much like stars given that the force compressing the fuel and maintaining plasma confinement is gravitational rather than magnetic.

Official setting publications generally avoid mentioning what fuel is used in Macross's thermonuclear reactors.  Instead, they often mention that those reactors can use a variety of potential fuels including ones that would not be considered usable in conventional reactors due to their use of GIC systems to start and control the reaction.

Master File names several suitable fuel materials in its various volumes, though they're all the Usual Suspects like hydrogen, deuterium, helium-3, and lithium.  

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur's discussion of the FF-2500 and FF-2550 series thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engine suggests that the preferred fuel early on was a mixture of deuterium and helium-3 (the same combo used in Gundam's UC) for the abundance of charged particles (free protons) the reaction produced that could be used by the engine's MHD generator.  It then goes on to suggest that the New UN Forces later switched to a single-fuel deuterium process due to a combination of supply chain issues and advances in thermoelectric conversion technology that reduced dependency on reactions rich in charged particles.

Given the use of intense gravitational pressure and the very low fuel consumption rate, it's very unlikely that any of these reactions were single-stage.  (Deuterium fusion produces helium-3, for instance.)

[JB0]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, and it makes sense to look to that for guidance since Macross's thermonuclear reactors work very much like stars given that the force compressing the fuel and maintaining plasma confinement is gravitational rather than magnetic.

Official setting publications generally avoid mentioning what fuel is used in Macross's thermonuclear reactors.  Instead, they often mention that those reactors can use a variety of potential fuels including ones that would not be considered usable in conventional reactors due to their use of GIC systems to start and control the reaction.

Seems like the fuels we look at in modern terrestrial fusion are actually still the most suitable, though. Stars burn a bunch of stuff that is pretty inefficient as a fusion fuel. Not just hard to fuse, but they get less energy out of it too.

So it makes sense the usual suspects are still what Macross uses in practice even if they can technically use other fuels.

...

And I still wonder what Back to the Future's  "Mister Fusion" was ACTUALLY doing.

[Master Dex]

Iron had been called star poison as it takes too much energy to fuse that it gets less out, which causes the balance of the star to collapse. Usually it's the core of stars that get into heavier elements in the red giant stage and when it reaches that you're basically at end of life and things are gonna either peter out or get really exciting really fast.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Actually, Stars are mostly Hydrogen (with Red Giants beginning to burn Helium); their novas throw out a lot of the materials such as oxygen, iron and such that compose other celestial bodies (such as planets).

The fusion processes are heavily dependent on the size of the star.  Smaller stars will go through the proton-proton chain which fuses hydrogen into helium, while larger stars with more mass will continue that reaction into the CNO cycle which produces carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and larger stars will continue into other chains that produce even heavier elements.  

They all start with hydrogen, but how far they go with it depends on the mass of the star.  

Macross's thermonuclear reactors use intense artificial gravity to sustain a fusion reaction, suggesting their processes probably resemble stellar fusion reactions, though the type of reactions they pursue are based on other requirements since they can create gravitational fields of arbitrary intensity and size.  As noted previously, Master File asserts that the earlier engine types preferred fusion reactions that produced a large amount of charged particles while later models preferred reactions that ran hotter.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

On that note: would that mean then that part of engine maintenance would be removing by-products of the reactions such as carbon and iron?

Thus far, I haven't seen any detailed commentary about engine maintenance procedures in the master file books, and there isn't any an official sources as far as I know. 

If I had to guess... and I would stress that this is only an educated guess based on what master file, as a non-official setting source, has to say about how the engines work... my guess would be "No".

Fusion products produced by the reactor's operation would almost certainly be expelled from the aircraft as part of the exhaust flow. This is because the main mechanism by which the engine creates thrust is by introducing plasma from the reactor into the propellant flowing through the engine body. Contact between the superheated plasma and the propellant (whether that's air or liquid from the internal tanks) flash heats the propellant stream causing it to expand very rapidly. So whatever is being produced in the reactor in terms of elemental products of the fusion reaction is probably being thrown out the back of the engine as a part of the exhaust flow when it's used to superheat propellant.

Edited December 27, 2024 by Seto Kaiba

[aurance]

So - valkyries have a lot of very thin and pointy bits, e.g. things that are probably control surfaces in flight mode. When they're in battroid mode, assuming they get into some sort of hand to hand combat, wouldn't those surfaces get subjected to tremendous torsion or other stresses if, say, a battroid falls down? Are those surfaces designed to bend to absorb stress (other than the weird wing material we see with YF-21)? Do they just snap?

[JB0]

1 hour ago, aurance said:

So - valkyries have a lot of very thin and pointy bits, e.g. things that are probably control surfaces in flight mode. When they're in battroid mode, assuming they get into some sort of hand to hand combat, wouldn't those surfaces get subjected to tremendous torsion or other stresses if, say, a battroid falls down? Are those surfaces designed to bend to absorb stress (other than the weird wing material we see with YF-21)? Do they just snap?

I think the official answer is overtechnology makes them durable enough that it doesn't matter.

Battroid mode in particular is noted to be more durable due to having spare juice from the reactors to power the very hungry energy-converting armor systems that make the machine MUCH more durable. (Historically, this isn't active in fighter mode since the engines are busy throwing the plane forward and have less power available, hence why they can beat on a battroid all day but a fighter folds like paper-mache)

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, aurance said:

So - valkyries have a lot of very thin and pointy bits, e.g. things that are probably control surfaces in flight mode. When they're in battroid mode, assuming they get into some sort of hand to hand combat, wouldn't those surfaces get subjected to tremendous torsion or other stresses if, say, a battroid falls down?

Yep... and many such areas are also subject to enormous stresses during transformation and high-g maneuvering as well.  Even relatively simple acts like walking or running can put joints and panels under a considerable amount of stress.

 

8 hours ago, aurance said:

Are those surfaces designed to bend to absorb stress (other than the weird wing material we see with YF-21)? Do they just snap?

Like the rest of the Valkyrie, parts that you would think of as thin and potentially fragile are made from ultra-durable overtechnology materials (OTMat) far stronger than armor-grade steel.  The structural frame is the super-durable spacemetal/hypercarbon and the composite armor skin covering the airframe is made of the same/similar materials and further reinforced with energy conversion armor.  It takes an extraordinary amount of force to bend or shear that material, but subjected to enough force it will bend or break.

Variable Fighter Master File, of course, goes into more detail.  It naturally confirms the hypercarbon frame material is extraordinarily strong and that the composite armor skin of Valkyries contains hypercarbon itself and is reinforced with energy conversion armor that greatly increases its structural strength.  One detail that Master File offers which is not explicitly repeated in official setting materials is a statement in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1's general discussion of energy conversion armor.  Therein, it says that one area where Humanity adapted the alien overtechnology beyond mere imitation of the technology they found was by applying energy conversion armor as both an armor enhancement and a momentary structural reinforcement system.  Essentially, what it describes is the Valkyrie's control AI dumping additional energy into the energy conversion armor in moments of anticipated mechanical stress like transformation or high-g maneuvers to make the fragile parts under the most stress momentarily more durable. 

This is also mentioned in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix as something that can be done in response to events like a collision or a fall.

Master File also describes the incredible durability of the "space metal" frame and composite armor as a bit of a double-edged sword.  The incredible rigidity of the hypercarbon frame and functionally graded composite armor means that, if warping of structural members does occur, the material's incredible strength can actually prevent repair and make complete replacement of parts the only option.  (How much of a problem this is varies from aircraft to aircraft, but is noted to be especally severe on the VF-25.)  The VF-1 book also notes that this makes Valkyries hard to dispose of when they're retired from service.  The structural materials are so durable that physical destruction of the aircraft is very difficult, and recycling the multilayer functionally graded composite of the armor is extremely expensive.

In a way, the VF-1 Vol.1 book turns the explanation of armor strength into a backhanded explanation for why so many old-model VFs stick around and end up in civilian hands in the franchise.  They're built so tough that normal boneyard methods aren't viable, so the military is stuck keeping them in mothballs until they can be properly diassembled and recycled... making selling disarmed old models off to civilians an attractive alternative disposal option.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Seto,

I read at the Macross Mecha Manual's Macrosspedia that "The use of space metal frames may have been abandoned/replaced in the post-2012 era of the Macross chronology. Almost no mention of space metal is found outside of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982-1987) era." (http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrosspedia/macrosspedia-index.html) If that's the case, what would NUNS have replaced it with (if any sources mention it) and why would they discontinue it?

It wasn't replaced so much as renamed.

The name is a nod to Gundam's Luna Titanium, but from the outset the term "space metal" never referred to one specific substance.  The original explanation of the term from the 80's is that "space metal" is an umbrella term for a broad assortment of OTM-based alloys and composites that were manufactured in space.  It's called "space metal" because it's metal that's made in space. 🤔 Cunning wordplay, no?  Macross's creators hadn't coined any names for specific super-materials yet, and wouldn't until DYRL? where Hikaru name-dropped "hypercarbon" for the first time. 

Official setting materials tend to stick to vague and generic terms like "super alloy", "structural materials incorporating OTM", and so on.  Those generic explanations have gotten gradually more specific as time has gone on, with Macross Zero mentioning "carbon composite based on nanotechnology".  They occasionally namedrop specific materials like hypercarbon and herculite, but not very often.

Dedicated technical material like Master File, of course, wants to be more detailed and will name specific materials and such and it's those materials that have described VFs as specifically using hypercarbon composites for their structural frames.

Master File also offers a meta sort of explanation for why the term "space metal" fell out of use after the original series era.  Usage of the term in-universe fell off because "space metal" stopped being exotic after the First Space War.  Most manufacturing was being done in space, and those advanced composites and alloys were being used in many basic everyday objects, so it was no longer exotic enough to warrant being treated as a separate category of materials.  The same reasoning is applied to the diminished usage of the term "overtechnology".  After enough time, the advanced technology reverse-engineered from alien technology was no longer special or exotic or beyond comprehension the way the term implies.  It was simply "technology".  

[Seto Kaiba]

Mind you, I should note that even "hypercarbon" has since come to be an umbrella term for a whole family of specific carbon nanomaterial-based super-composites in material like Master File.

[aurance]

Nice, that’s a lot more detail on this topic than I was aware of. Thanks.

Edited January 10 by aurance

[Seto Kaiba]

One detail I should probably check with toy collectors on... the name of the company that was responsible for "space metal" development and production in the oldest lore is, I think, a nod to a toy manufacturer or toy line from the 80's: Dyna-Metal.

[Areoborg]

They seem pretty tough even without the energy conversion armor.   In Frontier's episode 12 (I think) Alto and Ranka crashed when an energy pulse knocked out power to the VF-25 and it came crashing to the ground.   It was undamaged, and he was able to fly it around in GERWALK mode before another pulse caused it to crash again.   Despite 2 unpowered crashes in 2 different modes, the VF-25 was still fully functional once the power came back.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Areoborg said:

They seem pretty tough even without the energy conversion armor.   In Frontier's episode 12 (I think) Alto and Ranka crashed when an energy pulse knocked out power to the VF-25 and it came crashing to the ground.   It was undamaged, and he was able to fly it around in GERWALK mode before another pulse caused it to crash again.   Despite 2 unpowered crashes in 2 different modes, the VF-25 was still fully functional once the power came back.

Yeah, as I noted a few posts back, the overtechnology materials (OTMat) used in a Valkyrie's structural frame and armor are incredibly strong all on their own.  Initial-generation OTM composites are said to be around 200 times as strong as conventional alternatives in the oldest versions of the technical materials.  Enough so that those same materials describe the (pre-energy conversion armor) VF-1 as "lightly armored" yet able to effectively laugh off fire from any conventional weapon.  The example weapon the text cites as ineffectual against the armor is a cannon so laughably huge it has no real world equivalent.  The armor material is so tough they needed to invent new kinds of armor-piercing ammunition and high-energy explosives to defeat it.

 

Spoiler

A remark that actually, oddly enough, actually justifies key aspects of the old Palladium Books "Mega-Damage" system used for the Robotech and Macross II RPGs.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

On 1/12/2025 at 7:41 PM, pengbuzz said:

Something also to keep in mind: even with how strong all these materials are, the Zentradi pulverize countless VF-1's, with Britai making a mess of Hikaru's BARE-HANDED, and forcing him to eject in one particular episode of SDFM.

Scary when you think about it, eh?

Not s'much.  After all, the few times we see a Zentradi on foot disable or destroy a Valkyrie it's one of the larger, stronger, and more durable Zentradi command types doing it.  The kind of soldier who is a monster even by Zentradi standards.

The few other times we see Valkyries taken down hand-to-hand by Zentradi, they're usually doing so with the benefit of a battle suit's mechanical strength like the few we see in the OVA Macross II: Lovers Again.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 1/10/2025 at 6:20 AM, pengbuzz said:

Seto,

I read at the Macross Mecha Manual's Macrosspedia that "The use of space metal frames may have been abandoned/replaced in the post-2012 era of the Macross chronology. Almost no mention of space metal is found outside of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982-1987) era." (http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrosspedia/macrosspedia-index.html) If that's the case, what would NUNS have replaced it with (if any sources mention it) and why would they discontinue it?

I went a little further down the Overtechnology material science rabbit hole on this one today between loads of laundry, and it's gotten even messier.

The term "space metal" is actually still used in several more modern sources including Macross Chronicle, but it's one of like five terms that are used semi-interchangeably to refer to the same broad family of exotic supermaterials derived from overtechnology:

• Space metal
• Space alloy
• Dynametal
• OTMetal
• OTMaterial

... and that's not counting the overtechnology-derived composite materials that incorporate conventional metals, those (and other) exotic metals as well as exotic non-metallic materials like hypercarbon, reinforced hypercarbon-carbon, hypercarbon fiber, hypercarbon nanotubes, etc.  Like an exasperated zookeeper cleaning out the primate house, all I can say is "This sh*t is bananas."  Hypercarbon seems to be especially versatile, being used in practically any kind of composite arrangement you can get carbon fiber into nowadays like carbon-carbon, reinforced polymer, and metal matrix composites.

 

There's one unrelated section I found while down that particular rabbit hole in Master File that talks about how fold carbon is synthesized and refined and then pivots twice into the subject of how studying Zentradi reactors and fold systems that a film of fold carbon particles was a near-ideal radiation shield, and then into how that was subsequently adapted into a next-generation radar-absorbent material that can be dynamically controlled to absorb specific frequencies using fold waves.  (That and the explanation of how the 3rd Gen active stealth system works is a trip too...)

[Seto Kaiba]

12 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I wonder if one of those frequencies is infra-red (heat)?

No such luck, it seems.

Both in official setting materials and in Master File, infrared emissions seem to (realistically) be the one area where Valkyries continue to struggle when it comes to stealth.  There is a level of unavoidable infrared emissions simply because the engines exist.  Thrust is produced by heating propellant.  Whether it's using fusion plasma, lasers, electrical arcs, or even combustion, the end result is shooting hot gas out of an engine nozzle in order to move and that's going to produce detectable infrared. 

Valkyries have been noted to use the same basic techniques for reducing infrared emissions that real world stealth aircraft like the F-117, B-2, and F-22 do.  They can mix bypass airflow back into the exhaust stream in the engine in order to reduce the exhaust temperature at the nozzle, and they can use their fuel tanks as heat sinks.  They still have to have ways of radiating waste heat to keep a variety of other systems cooled, so there are various radiators and heat exchangers scattered across the airframe including the sub-intakes and wing glove.  In space, the wings and fuel tanks therein are used to store heat during combat and then radiate that heat away to cool the aircraft outside of combat.

The fancy new Radar Absorbant Material that Master File describes as having first been tested on the VF-17 before becoming the standard on the VF-19, VF-22, etc. which it calls FAM or EFAM (Electromagnetic radiation Fold-wave Absorbant Material) seems to be bad with heat in general.  It's not mentioned as being effective at mitigating infrared and the stuff is actually described as heat-sensitive.  It becomes less effective when it gets hot and as a result basically stops working when the VF is using its wings to vent waste heat.

(I did find it very interesting to read about nevertheless, since between that and the "preview control active stealth" system description that explains how 3rd Generation active stealth differs from the previous generations feels a bit like foreshadowing of the Mirage Package on the Sv-303.)