evil flying aircraft carriers from space?

[Keith]

You don't remember it that way because Keith made that up. There wasn't anything even remotely close to that ANYWHERE in SDF-Macross.

Bite my shiny metal ass! It's clearly stated there, now go actually watch something instead of wasting everyones time by mindlessly arguing.

[Keith]

In "Global's Report", Global states that the SA's old software caused ship-wide malfunctions.

Maybe I missed that part just now. Do you remember when in the episode he says that?

Episode time: 4m:17s.

According to your technical analysis, the unexpected firing of the main guns affected all of the ship's systems.

It's an ambiguous phrase (computers didn't exactly have the amount of attention in 1980 as they do now...) since it could me circuit board or software. But in either case, a program had to have interpretted the sensor readings as hostile and such, overrided a manual overide. So there has to have been some software running.

Exactly, the very nature of the booby trap was the Macross firing its cannon at the Zentradi. How did it do such a thing? Automated response. How did the cannon know to fire? A leftover program.

Though all the technology was new, there's no reason to believe that the crew was massively inept in using it. A conflict occured between the new & the old, causing massive shipwide havoc.

[JB0]

In "Global's Report", Global states that the SA's old software caused ship-wide malfunctions.

Maybe I missed that part just now. Do you remember when in the episode he says that?

Episode time: 4m:17s.

According to your technical analysis, the unexpected firing of the main guns affected all of the ship's systems.

It's an ambiguous phrase (computers didn't exactly have the amount of attention in 1980 as they do now...) since it could me circuit board or software. But in either case, a program had to have interpretted the sensor readings as hostile and such, overrided a manual overide. So there has to have been some software running.

I interpreted it to mean the Macross' power grid was fluctuating.

The main gun wasn't fired "properly", so various systems were not reconfigured for the massive energy discharge, and the subsequent sag and spike upset stuff.

So the grav generators weren't charged properly and failed to generate a large enough field to lift them AND their surroundings, and then the fold generator was overcharged and generated too much field.

And succeeded in generating enough of a warp to drop itself permanently into hyperspace and rip a nice little hole in the fabric of reality while it was at it.

...

I wonder what all can be powered off those rifts, anyways. The barrier system is, obviously, but can they do anything else with it? Hyperspace cannon, or something.

[Boxer]

Is it possible perhaps for Supervision army drives to act differently from Zentreadi counterparts? What if their fold engines were configured differently to allow for simultaneous transport of a number of ships?

I don't think the Zentreadi mention anywhere the surprise of seeing a spherical fold. Perhaps this is because all Supervision army fold clusters work this way and have been modified from Protoculture designs. This suggests that though the idea of space-folding is more or less universal to interstellar races, the implimentation is different.

In the arguement of why this system isn't used in later series, I think the reason we never see a spherical fold deployment again is because the fold drives of the SDF-1 were never fully studied or had been deformed during the crash. Either that or study schematics of the rebuilt engines were discarded when the origional fold around earth was botched. Thus all subsequent Fold clusters were derived from (Reliable) Zentreadi fold engines.

----

Another idea is that the engines were unknowngly deformed in some way unknown to the humans, so that their repair efforts did not correct the flaw in the fold cluster or the Omni-directional barrier (Connected to the fold system).

An idea I just cooked up now is the possibility that the Fold system itself is a boobytrap set by the Supervision army. It would have displaced a large group of vessels surrounding the captured ASS-1 and put them on random fold co-ordinates in the hopes of perhaps jumping them into more of the fleet to cause a lot of damage.

Meh, speculation is fun:)

I interpreted it to mean the Macross' power grid was fluctuating.

The main gun wasn't fired "properly", so various systems were not reconfigured for the massive energy discharge, and the subsequent sag and spike upset stuff.

Either that or the blast of the cannon was too much for the unrestored/insufficient power connections that were weakened by the landing or were designed for a much, much lower power flow rate.

Edited March 16, 2004 by Boxer

[Keith]

What are you talking about? spherical folds are seen used all the time. When a ship is stationary before a fold, that's the type seen. When a ship is moving and goes into a fold, that's when you see the warp style.

[JB0]

Another idea is that the engines were unknowngly deformed in some way unknown to the humans, so that their repair efforts did not correct the flaw in the fold cluster or the Omni-directional barrier (Connected to the fold system).

The barrier systems were human-developed, as I recall. An ingenious application of the energy released from their "dimensional rift."

An idea I just cooked up now is the possibility that the Fold system itself is a boobytrap set by the Supervision army. It would have displaced a large group of vessels surrounding the captured ASS-1 and put them on random fold co-ordinates in the hopes of perhaps jumping them into more of the fleet to cause a lot of damage.

Meh, speculation is fun:)

I like that one.

Guess our heroes were lucky it wasn't mis-calibrated to scatter the folded party across several kilometers of open space instead of in one nice solid chunk. Or to fail in transit so that no defold operation happened.

I interpreted it to mean the Macross' power grid was fluctuating.

The main gun wasn't fired "properly", so various systems were not reconfigured for the massive energy discharge, and the subsequent sag and spike upset stuff.

Either that or the blast of the cannon was too much for the unrestored/insufficient power connections that were weakened by the landing or were designed for a much, much lower power flow rate.

Also possible.

[Nied]

What are you talking about? spherical folds are seen used all the time. When a ship is stationary before a fold, that's the type seen. When a ship is moving and goes into a fold, that's when you see the warp style.

Impossible. A ship can not simply be stationary, it can only be motionless in relation to it's surroundings. The Macross may have been stationary in relation to the surface of the Earth, but the Earth's surface was moving at about 1,000 mph (IIRC that is the rotational speed of the Earth), while the Earth moved rather rapidly around the sun, which itself was orbiting the center of the mily way, I could go on like this. The point is that a vessel can not simply be motionless, nothing can. It's one of the most basic tenets of reletivity.

[JB0]

What are you talking about? spherical folds are seen used all the time. When a ship is stationary before a fold, that's the type seen. When a ship is moving and goes into a fold, that's when you see the warp style.

Impossible. A ship can not simply be stationary, it can only be motionless in relation to it's surroundings. The Macross may have been stationary in relation to the surface of the Earth, but the Earth's surface was moving at about 1,000 mph (IIRC that is the rotational speed of the Earth), while the Earth moved rather rapidly around the sun, which itself was orbiting the center of the mily way, I could go on like this. The point is that a vessel can not simply be motionless, nothing can. It's one of the most basic tenets of reletivity.

Another of the basic tenets of relativity is nothing can go faster than light.

As a hyperspace fold does exactly this, I think we can accept that folding is NOT constrained by relativity.

[Nied]

It seems that folds only bend the FTL rule, they don't break it.

[Akilae]

What are you talking about? spherical folds are seen used all the time. When a ship is stationary before a fold, that's the type seen. When a ship is moving and goes into a fold, that's when you see the warp style.

Impossible. A ship can not simply be stationary, it can only be motionless in relation to it's surroundings. The Macross may have been stationary in relation to the surface of the Earth, but the Earth's surface was moving at about 1,000 mph (IIRC that is the rotational speed of the Earth), while the Earth moved rather rapidly around the sun, which itself was orbiting the center of the mily way, I could go on like this. The point is that a vessel can not simply be motionless, nothing can. It's one of the most basic tenets of reletivity.

Another of the basic tenets of relativity is nothing can go faster than light.

As a hyperspace fold does exactly this, I think we can accept that folding is NOT constrained by relativity.

Funny, I always envisioned "folding" and "hyperspacing" to be complete different... here's how, according to what basic physics I know.

Hyperspacing (or Warping?): You go FTL, travel takes time, but you run into A LOT of problems, mainly energy, mass, and the entire issue of time.

Folding: A more "elegant" solution. You don't travel in the typical notion. Closest thing I think would be akin to opening up an artificial wormhole to your destination ("folding" the fabric of space and time), go through the wormhole, either using conventional drives or other methods, and appear on the other side almost instantaneously. There's the problem of how to open up a wormhole, and where you open it to, but from what I've read, it does seem to be more feasable than FTL travel (or hyperspacing). You also circumvent the entire time-space issue.

[dedalus001]

if the prometheus and daudelus could be refitted for space, maybe all of their battle ships could..

perhaps they are thought of as space craft that land in the water, hence they need to look like ships, same way the space shuttle looks like an airplane. the shuttle doesn't need to look like a plane for anyother reason than it is designed to fly in space and in the air.

a ship that floats in space and rests in oceans would do well to be ship like. just an idea.

thats actually an interesting concept that they followed up on in m7 with the Uraga carriers.

but all this folding business--

i haven't seen any ship besides the sdf-1 in the series fold with a "sphere" taking outside elements with it. it seems that every other zent/varauta ship has an independent fold system. when fleets fold to a destination, they individually fold to a similar destination. so what the macross did was a mistake which i assume was corrected after the conclusion of SW1. fortunately, it was a lucky mistake, but i would probably agree with both theories presented: upon firing the reflex cannon, the macross caused something of a power overload resulting in a hardware compatibility problem. it makes more sense for both to cause the gravity generators flying off, and it makes up for the ship "over folding"

[The_Major]

Well the spherical fold or what i call "Fold Field", in my opinion is cause because of the ship was in the atmoshpere, thats why its as visable as it, is it reacted with the atmosphere, i mean look at DYRL? when britai's ship begins to fold all the attacking meltran Bolt, and when hikaru got close again the ostrich got caught in the field and flung at earth, due to the elongation of the filed because of the ships relitive velocity and due to the vacuum of space the field remains pretty much invisable except for on the surface of the ship. So i have concluded there is such a visible Sphear because of the atmosphere.

Okay now im done, procede with the verbal beating

[Agent ONE]

I thought that the entire carrier in space thing was dumb, including the Deadelous and Promethius...  Glad they corrected the mistake in DYRL.

I don't think it was that bad.

I liked how the human's inexperience led to them dragging most of South Ataria island and the two carriers out to Pluto with the Macross.

Since there were no ARMD's around, waste not want want not. Let's attach these perfectly fine carriers instead.

Actually, it wasn't inexperience at all. All the shipwide problems, including the massively miscalculated space fold, and the gravity engines ripping away from the ship, were caused by a conflict between the newer ship's software, and the supervision army software that was re-actived by the boobytrap (see Global's Report)

That's not how I remember it.

You don't remember it that way because Keith made that up. There wasn't anything even remotely close to that ANYWHERE in SDF-Macross.

As has been stated already, you are wrong, Global Report DOES have something similar to that in it.

Now apologize.

Nope, I am right, Az is just protecting Keith because Keith is a weak little girly-man and he crys easy.

[the white drew carey]

Once again- Inexperience.

You've all made your explanations and, in the meantime, inadvertantly backed up my statement that it was inexperience that led to jhalf of South Ataria Island, the Daedalus and the Promethues being dragged along to Pluto with the Macross.

If the humans KNEW what they were doing, this wouldn't have happened.

But they didn't understand and/or take into account the possibilty that the ship's fold might yank along some extra baggage.

Hence, once again, INEXPERIENCE.

Also, this was Mankind's first fold.

First times usually always suffer from... INEXPERIENCE.

They had no clue exactly what was going to happen, only an idea which was probably based on the analysis of data garnered from the ASS-1's emergence into the Solar System 10 years beforehand, and computer simulations based on the understanding of the ASS-1's technology.

I'm not saying, as several of you (especially Keith) that the crew is stupid, just that they weren't completely sure of what to expect.

[ewilen]

But TWDC, that's not what Global says in his report! I don't know where people are getting this software stuff from, but Global explicitly blames all the problems on the firing of the main gun.

Maybe he was just covering his ass for all the bad decisions he made in episode 3...

Edited March 16, 2004 by ewilen

[ewilen]

What are you talking about? spherical folds are seen used all the time. When a ship is stationary before a fold, that's the type seen. When a ship is moving and goes into a fold, that's when you see the warp style.

Impossible. A ship can not simply be stationary, it can only be motionless in relation to it's surroundings. The Macross may have been stationary in relation to the surface of the Earth, but the Earth's surface was moving at about 1,000 mph (IIRC that is the rotational speed of the Earth), while the Earth moved rather rapidly around the sun, which itself was orbiting the center of the mily way, I could go on like this. The point is that a vessel can not simply be motionless, nothing can. It's one of the most basic tenets of reletivity.

True. Velocity is relative to a frame of reference. But acceleration is absolute--albeit indistinguishable from being in a gravity field.

Which means that the fold of an accelerating ship might look the same as the fold of a ship in a gravity well.

Not sure if this correlates with what what see in Macross.

[ewilen]

It seems that folds only bend the FTL rule, they don't break it.

They do. (This is also in reply to Akilae.) The easiest way to see this is to note that the Theory of Relativity indicates that information can't travel faster than the speed of light. If Proxima Centauri blew up, there's no way we could know about it until 4.3 years after the event. But if you use a hyperspace fold, you could be 1 light year away from the star, observe the nova, and then fold to the Solar System and tell everyone about it before it became visible on Earth.

[azrael]

Nope, I am right, Az is just protecting Keith because Keith is a weak little girly-man and he crys easy.

I don't know where people are getting this software stuff from, but Global explicitly blames all the problems on the firing of the main gun.

But something had to have been there in order for the main guns to fire. My guess is that a program still existed in Macross that they overlooked. But that still goes back to me saying we don't know. Everything happened after the fact. As far as they knew, everything was peachy and ready to go for actual testing. Who would know that the main guns would fire automatically, then have your grav generators rip themselves out of the hull, then have your fold drive act funny and ditch you around Pluto all in a day? Something must have set off the chain of events.

[Gumper]

I think what Agent One wants is for Keith to admit that there was no dialogue that mentioned anything about Supervision army software conflicting with Human software...I think thats what he wants anyways...

Myself, Ive never seen SDF: Macross (I know poor me! Let the donations begin! LOL)

As for the spherical fold thing and the SDF taking surrounding objects with it when folding above the island. We never see any Zent ships doing this, and in DYRL when Hikaru is caught in the trainer with Misa, he gets pushed away from the fold. In the earths atmoshphere I dont think we see any of the carriers, or even the water getting pushed away. So either the atmosphere did something to the fold by calming it I guess, or there are different types of folds...

Still, its a pretty interesting discussion so far

Now Ill go back to the shadows and watch

[ewilen]

Nope, I am right, Az is just protecting Keith because Keith is a weak little girly-man and he crys easy.

I don't know where people are getting this software stuff from, but Global explicitly blames all the problems on the firing of the main gun.

But something had to have been there in order for the main guns to fire. My guess is that a program still existed in Macross that they overlooked. But that still goes back to me saying we don't know. Everything happened after the fact. As far as they knew, everything was peachy and ready to go for actual testing. Who would know that the main guns would fire automatically, then have your grav generators rip themselves out of the hull, then have your fold drive act funny and ditch you around Pluto all in a day? Something must have set off the chain of events.

I agree that it's reasonable to infer that the SA had left a hidden program in the Macross which caused the main gun to fire. But I don't see anything to indicate that the SA software directly caused the various malfunctions. Instead, Global blames all that stuff on the firing of the main gun.

Edited March 17, 2004 by ewilen

[Keith]

Let's break it down.

-Macross is all peachy ready for its test launch

-Zentradi fold into orbit.

-Macross main cannon heat's up & prepairs to fire.

-Bridge crew attempt to deactivate cannon, finding they're fully locked out of the system.

-Cannon fires at Zentradi

-All major systems of the Macross which were previously thought to be peachy horribly malfunction.

While the specifics of the "booby trap" program are arguable, its doubtful that the firing of the main cannon itself, or rather, the act of the cannon firing was the cause of the problem, as that too would have been one of the pre-checked ready to go systems. To take it a bit further, considering that the cannon was repeatedly fired through out the series without such damaging effects, its safe to assume the problem was indeed with the program that caused the "booby trap," not the cannon's firing.

Now regarding folds, there are obviously too types shown through out the series. The type in which a ship is motionless & surrounded by a fold (this type being the style in which we see the ship pop directly between two points), and the type of fold where a ship is seen using its own propulsion to move into the fold (this type being the style we see fold space, my personal theory of which being it's used to travel a greater distance by only "partially" folding space, and using the ships conventional engines to make up the rest of the gaps. This would also conserve on fold energy charge).

The spherical & motion folds are both shown to work inside & outside of an atmophere (say Max folding on Varuta to launch the reaction weapon at Gepernitch would be a good example of a motion fold), and even the Zentradi are shown using both (Bodozla's fleet folding into Earth orbit used the spherical motionless point to point kind).

[azrael]

But I don't see anything to indicate that the SA software directly caused the various malfunctions. Instead, Global blames all that stuff on the firing of the main gun.

True, but how do we know it didn't? All he said was the analysis indicated that when the guns fired, it caused ship-wide malfunctions. Were they mechanical or program problems that caused the malfucntions? All they could figure out was, after the main guns fired, the ship turned into a engineering mess. We really don't know what that SA trojan program did because everything happened after the main guns fired.

It's also coincidental that these systems are linked so again, what was the cause (main guns connect to the fold drive which connects to main power, without the fold drive, they couldn't fire the main guns, hence the need to transform to connect the guns to main power)? Once you get past the main guns firing, it can go lead to both mechanical or program failure. All the problems go back to the main guns.

[JB0]

What are you talking about? spherical folds are seen used all the time. When a ship is stationary before a fold, that's the type seen. When a ship is moving and goes into a fold, that's when you see the warp style.

Impossible. A ship can not simply be stationary, it can only be motionless in relation to it's surroundings. The Macross may have been stationary in relation to the surface of the Earth, but the Earth's surface was moving at about 1,000 mph (IIRC that is the rotational speed of the Earth), while the Earth moved rather rapidly around the sun, which itself was orbiting the center of the mily way, I could go on like this. The point is that a vessel can not simply be motionless, nothing can. It's one of the most basic tenets of reletivity.

Another of the basic tenets of relativity is nothing can go faster than light.

As a hyperspace fold does exactly this, I think we can accept that folding is NOT constrained by relativity.

Funny, I always envisioned "folding" and "hyperspacing" to be complete different... here's how, according to what basic physics I know.

Hyperspacing (or Warping?): You go FTL, travel takes time, but you run into A LOT of problems, mainly energy, mass, and the entire issue of time.

Folding: A more "elegant" solution. You don't travel in the typical notion. Closest thing I think would be akin to opening up an artificial wormhole to your destination ("folding" the fabric of space and time), go through the wormhole, either using conventional drives or other methods, and appear on the other side almost instantaneously. There's the problem of how to open up a wormhole, and where you open it to, but from what I've read, it does seem to be more feasable than FTL travel (or hyperspacing). You also circumvent the entire time-space issue.

A Macross-style fold DOES take time, though. Remember when Hikaru, Misa, and Kakizaki were captured and taken back to Bodolza's ship? And time seems directly proportional to trip length, which wouldn't be the case with wormholes, though it would with the more useful hyperspaces.

What's even more signifigant is that fold time is slower than real time. Either they move at relativistic speeds, or they drop into a diffrent space with a seperate set of physics rules(commonly referred to within sci-fi as hyperspace).

...

Which doesn't discount the possibility that it's a hybrid technology. They may use a combination of hyperspace AND "folding". Assuming both technologies are available, it's a optimum solution.

Rambling elaboration...

As I understand things, wormholes are great for going to the other side of the galaxy, but suck at only going a few light years, because they rely on the natural curvature of space, which doesn't put relatively close points on an adequate curve for a really useful wormhole. It's like tunneling in a straight line from Florida to California instead of Florida to Austraila. Sure you save some distance, but not a whole lot.

I'll grant the power to punch a hole through space, but I have a hard time suspending reality enough for them to reform the entire curvature of space.

The way hyperspace is typically conceived, it works better for short hops than long trips. Rather than "dropping through" into the other side of space, you drop into a nearby, but diffrent, universe where the "normal" laws of physics are not applicable.

The best example I can think of showing how radically diffrent hyperspace can be is in Crest of the Stars, where "hyperspace" is a 2D plain instead of the 3D space of the "normal" universe.

Typically, the most signifigant diffrence is more mundane. A higher or non-existant "speed limit", and lower energy levels required to get there.

Obviously, this requires your nearby universe to have appropriate laws of physics for your purposes, and your hyperspace drive will probably have to protect you and your ship from them somehow.

If hyperspace is "laid out" diffrently than normal space, a wormhole may get you to a place in hyperspace that's close to your destination when a wormhole in normal space wouldn't. So that's even better.

You can drop into hyperspace, open a wormhole to another part of hyperspace, then pop out of the new part of hyperspace at your destination. You've saved yourself a large part of your trip through hyperspace. and skipped the need to alter the curvature of the universe.

...

Assuming, of course, that your hyperspace is compatible with wormholes.

Edited March 17, 2004 by JB0

[ewilen]

I don't have a problem with Keith's interpretation of why things malfunctioned--or Azrael's, which in its latest incarnation sort of bridges the difference between what Keith says and what JB0 said about energy spikes and whatnot. But again, Global's verbatim quote in "Global report" is "The unexpected firing of the main gun affected all of the ship's systems, including our Fold system." Getting from that to saying that an underlying software incompatibility (or similar phenomenon) directly caused the malfunctions requires quite a bit of supposition. It isn't necessarily wrong, but the evidence to support it--and to discount all other possibilities--isn't really there.

I'm happy this was brought up, though, because I learned something new about the events in episode 3. As I mentioned above, I find it far more satisfying to know that the antigrav generators tore out of the ship's hull due to an anomoly related to the "boobytrap", than to think that the reconstruction engineers and/or Global were too dumb to realize that the antigrav system shouldn't be used in Earth's gravity.

[dedalus001]

this is why any topic which i start is synonymous with the word of gord.

[God]

this is why any topic which i start is synonymous with the word of god.

Methinks that might be just a TAD blasphemous?

[bsu legato]

Ok...God posts here now?

Hey God, what did you think of The Passion, and in future film biographies would you like to excercise greater creative control over you life story?

[God]

You seem to have me confused with my son.

And I haven't actually watched the movie yet anyways.

[dedalus001]

oh well, i shouldn't be talking...

[Max Jenius]

Wow.. 4 posts and banned already.

You're treading on dangerous ground too dedalus001...

[dedalus001]

im banned?

what?

i know nothing of forums, this is the first one i have really used.

so am i banned?

wha?

[buddhafabio]

looks like the mods have the rings warmed up

[JB0]

Ummm, yah.

Was an IP ban REALLY necessary?

Especially for something that was, to my knowledge, in violation of no rules whatsoever.

[Opus]

Ummm, yah.

Was an IP ban REALLY necessary?

Especially for something that was, to my knowledge, in violation of no rules whatsoever.

Your's is not to question why, your's is but to do and die.

[the white drew carey]

Ummm, yah.

Was an IP ban REALLY necessary?

Especially for something that was, to my knowledge, in violation of no rules whatsoever.

It might be because someone created a new member name, in this case "God", in order to further the joke.

Having more than one member name is against the rules, although I'm not sure if it's written down.