Seto Kaiba
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Certainly containable... you might find it interesting/enlightening/helpful to read about the VF-11 Thunderbolt Interceptor over on the Macross Compendium wiki. The internal weapons bays are a thing on two VF-11 models (the MAXL and -C type, the latter being a screwup in the animation that got canonized post-facto), and so too is sticking more powerful engines into the VF-11 (the FF-2099A engines used by the VF-16 seem to be particularly popular for this purpose, and offer 45% greater output than the VF-11's standard FF-2025G's). That's about the only part I don't think is really workable... the in-universe evidence for the viability of up-scaling a VF suggests that it's unwise, and prone to introduce mechanical problems (such as on the VF-3000, an upscaled VF-1, which suffered issues with its joints slipping). The VF-14 Vampire is big, yes... but a larger airframe is advantageous for a space fighter. It offers more room for fuel, for a larger and more powerful engine (roughly 85% greater output than the VF-11's), for internal weapons storage, and for upgrades or other optional equipment. It might've lost the Project Nova competition to the VF-11, but it enjoyed a fair bit of popularity... the 13th Long Distance Emigrant Fleet used them as their main variable fighter, and it's also said to have been extremely popular with the survey and emigrant fleets throughout the 2030s and 2040s. Size-wise, the VF-11 is actually quite small for a variable fighter... the VF-14's size is more typical, of postwar VFs in general and AVFs in particular. Considering the Protodeviln wanted to take prisoners... yeah, it IS exactly who you want to own a 240 gigaton bomb, because you know they'll never USE it.
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Yep... if it helps, it's said that the miniaturized GIC used in reaction engines and weapons is using the physics of super dimension space (specifically the super-dense matter therein) to provide the effect. The principles involved aren't that different from how a super dimension energy cannon works. The missile it's attached to... is a 24 warhead anti-fleet reaction missile used on the command battle-carrier that was constructed to protect the Varauta system (and subsequently ended up in the Protodeviln's hands). Eh... Kawamori said that about the shows. The Master File books themselves, on which Kawamori consulted, actually outright state they're not part of/reflective of the official Macross setting on their credits/acknowledgements page at the back of each volume. The books have had some details incorporated into unambiguously official setting material like Macross Chronicle though, but it's kinda hit-and-miss.
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Live Long and prosper Mr. Spock RIP
Seto Kaiba replied to 505thAirborne's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
We had a moment of silence for Mr. Nimoy here at the lab... sci-fi has lost a great man today. -
Pretty much... instead of burning refined hydrocarbons to provide the "bang", they're flash-heating the air by exposing it to heat from a tiny sustained thermonuclear reaction. Overtechnology materials are some pretty tough stuff... though Master File takes rhapsodizing about it to the ludicrous extreme of even talking about how it influenced threaded fastener design. (Yes, overtechnology SCREWS... I had a hard time taking that one seriously.) The old Sky Angels book asserts that the VF-1's skin/armor was equivalent to 100x its thickness in RHA, and that stuff handily stood up to reentry temperatures even while damaged. Per Master File, they're using a miniature gravity inertia control system to catalyze and control the thermonuclear reaction inside the engine's reactor... crushing the reactant past the fusion point with extradimensional forces. Terrifying would be a better word for it... as Macross Chronicle describes it, thermonuclear reaction warheads work on pretty much the exact same set of principles. They're hydrogen bombs where the fission trigger has been replaced by the miniaturized GIC, so they no longer contain radioactive material and thus don't produce any long-term radioactive effects in the target area. (Never mind that it also seems to have made it easier to scale the warheads... the highest-yield one mentioned in Chronicle was a whopping 10 gigatons.)
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Ironic, then, that its original name (and in-universe nickname) is "Siren"...
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That'd be kind of wasteful and needlessly complex, wouldn't it? You'd need separate tanks for reactant and propellant, and in space you'd need to expend energy from the power system to convert the propellant into a plasma for the MHD plasma ion engine system to accelerate. In atmospheric flight, you wouldn't be able to generate much thrust using a purely electrically-driven turbine without any heating of intake air... it'd just be an elaborate and inefficient propeller. The approach diagrammed and discussed in the technical manuals like Sky Angels and Master File is a fairly efficient way to go about it. You only need tanks to carry reactant (slush hydrogen), because the reaction provides power to run the MHD engine AND an on-demand plasma stream for the MHD engine to use for propellant. Having the reactor right there inside the engine also makes transferring heat from the reaction to intake air a convenient way to cool the reactor and provide functionality like a conventional jet engine without having to worry about combustion efficiency and with minimal fuel consumption. (That's how VFs pull off the "nearly unlimited" flight ranges in atmospheric service.)
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Nothing like a technological jumpstart of a few thousand years, eh? Mind you, that's not to say that VFs were entirely reliable in their formative years, or even now. Macross's creators like to throw those little touches of realism in here and there with various issues in design and operation... like how the VF-19 got pulled from widespread deployment because of loss-of-control issues, the initial burst turbine designs in the YF/VF-19 and -21/22 having serious overheating problems in atmospheric flight, the joint slippage issues that occurred on the VF-3000 when they tried to scale up the VF-1 design, or, my favorite, the dedicated space fighter VF-X3 from their early non-canon games that turned out to be an uncontrollable mess because its kitbashed avionics package wasn't up to the job... The cutaways in various books like Master File always show them as being something not too dissimilar from a normal axial-flow turbofan engine... albeit one with a rather small compressor stage, because of the separate superconducting compressor on the other side of the ducted knee joint. The thermonuclear reaction power system is presented as a largely self-contained module situated around the turbine shaft, and either directly behind or partly inside the compressor stage, where it can transfer heat (and/or plasma) to the high-pressure air in what would normally be a turbine's combustion chamber.
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VF-2SS Valkyrie II... ... ... ... ... which surprises nobody.
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I'm not... mainly because the default location for the engines, to facilitate transformation, has always been the legs. The VF-22 did something different, but the design got a fair bit more complicated as a result. I'd imagine redundancy in the power system is also a factor. On a single-engine VF, if the engine is damaged and the reaction power system has to shut down, you're strapped to the inside of a statue. On a twin engine VF, you've got a second engine to maintain operating power so you can limp away (literally or figuratively). In the air, losing the engine on a single-engine fighter doesn't prevent you from at least having a good ol' college try at making a getaway... but on the ground, in a robot, the sudden loss of motive power means you're a sitting duck. Technically we've also seen a six-engine VF... if we count the VF-4's rocket boosters. It had a pair of thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, a pair of ramjet engines in the wings, and then the two rocket boosters in the engine nacelles. We don't know exactly what method they're using, but they're using a heat-exchange process to divert heat from the reaction to the interior of the engine. For space flight, the way the engines operate is described almost exactly like Star Trek's impulse engines... using plasma siphoned off the reaction as propellant in an ion engine powered by that same reaction. Slush hydrogen is described as being the VF fuel of choice in the Master File books... though the canon definition of thermonuclear reaction suggests that VF engines are actually multifuel-capable and can run on fuels that would not normally be considered fuel to run an ersatz-fusion reactor. (Which might also account for differences in exhaust color throughout Macross... different fuels being used in the engines produces different-colored exhaust because of the elements in the plasma.)
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We actually know what occupies most of those slots from various descriptions scattered in art books and so on... it's about a 50-50 split between prototypes and low-profile or economized production models. There are a few numbers that aren't assigned, but most of the "gaps" are filled by: VF-X-2, which was a rival prototype to the VF-1 that adopted more overtechnology, but was passed over for production. VF-X-3, rival prototype to the VF-X-4 which was lost in the Zentradi's orbital bombardment, with nothing remaining except a picture and one part that had been contracted out to a plant in space. VF-5, a production model light VF for space warfare built from 2015 to 2023 and used on some of the Megaroad emigrant missions, notably has sea landing capability. VF-6, a production model light VF for planetary defense designed to be inexpensive to produce. VF-7, same general profile as VF-6. VF-X-10, a prototype for what became the VF-9 Cutlass. Originally from Kawamori's Advanced Valkyrie design series, adopted into the Macross 'verse in Macross Chronicle. VF-15, a production(?) model VF which was the first design to incorporate a biological anti-g boost system. VF-16, a production(?) model VF, the engines of which were appropriated for the VF-11MAXL and Thunderbolt Interceptor. YF-26, a Project Triangler prototype (VFMF) developed by Macross Olympia, and subsequently rejected in favor of the VF-25. That leaves only 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, 20, 23, and 28 as "empty" numbers in the fighter sequence... and I'd wager 8, 12, and 13 were assigned to prototypes from around the Project Nova period, when it seems like Shinsei and General Galaxy were releasing a new fighter every few years. 18 was probably reserved for a rival design to the VF-17 (or perhaps the complimentary fighter that the SW-XA1 non-canon-ly was). 20 was probably reserved for a further refinement of the YF-19 if development required it. 28 was probably another fleet's YF-24 derivative. That just leaves 23 hanging out there without an explanation or a probable explanation... stuck between the first and second generations of AVFs. Yeah, he does seem to be modeling things on the 1962 tri-service designation system...
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Not as fuel, per se... a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine uses intake air as propellant (and coolant) in atmospheric flight. Instead of burning hydrocarbons, the reaction turbine engines use heat from the thermonuclear reaction power system to heat intake air and provide thrust. In space flight, the engines bleed off plasma from the reaction and use it as propellant in an ion engine system (which will seem awfully familiar if you're a Star Trek fan). Thus far, I believe all we've seen of the VF-16 is the usage of its engines in VF-11 variants... the VF-11MAXL, MAXL Custom, and Thunderbolt Interceptor supposedly all use VF-16 engines.
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The fighters with thermonuclear reaction burst-turbines and stage II thermonuclear reaction turbines on AVFs, VF-16, and VF-17D and later all seem to have no difficulty reaching orbit swiftly and efficiently. The dangling question is whether the VF-14's engines, which are normal thermonuclear reaction turbines almost as powerful as the VF-17D's FF-2100X burst turbines, are can achieve the same feat without eating their entire fuel supply. (Whether it's a raw thrust thing or an efficiency thing.) (If the Variable Fighter Master File series is any indication, fuel weight on a VF is actually close to negligible... the books assert reaction engines use hydrogen slush for fuel, which weighs roughly 85 grams per liter. Volume 2 of the VF-1 book asserts a VF-1 fuel volume of 1,410 liters, which comes out to a hair under 120kg, or about 264.5 pounds. Even with the massively expanded Super Pack tanks, the VF-1's still only carrying 455kg/1000lb or so of fuel.)
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Got a couple copies of that one kicking around, but I've never focused on whole-page scans... just selected art pieces. You won't find it there, friend... the few pages from that issue on that page are all concerned with the model kits. There's nothing there from the key article.
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We don't really know what the first VF to be capable of reaching satellite orbit unassisted was. The original VF-17[A,B,C] probably couldn't, since its engines are a LOT weaker than the FF-2100X engines that the VF-17D and later variants got... but there are other, earlier designs that also had AVF-level engine power. The VF-14 was only 750kg heavier than the VF-17D, and the VF-17D's engine thrust was greater by only about 5%, so it's not inconceivable that a VF-14 could've done it. We don't know what the VF-16 weighed, but it had engines with an output of over 400kN (at least 50% greater than a VF-11's), which were orbit-capable when installed in a specially-reinforced VF-11MAXL (Mylene's).
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Yes, the VF-19 and VF-22 were the first production AVFs. The VF-14 is a contemporary of the VF-11... it was the competing design that lost out to the VF-11 in the selection of the next main fighter. That didn't stop it from getting a fair bit of use, though. There's something that looks like a VF-14 visible in the background at New Edwards in Plus, and the Varauta system's UN Forces used the VF-14 as well... until the Protodeviln took over and it became the basis for the enemy fighters in Macross 7. It was HUGE compared to the VF-11, and it had engines that were on par with the AVF-level engines in the VF-17D. (IIRC, Max also flew one in Macross M3).
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Yeah, I honestly don't recall seeing any VF-1S's besides the Skull 001. Mostly -A's, a couple brownie -D's and -J's here and there... but none of the -S.
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Yeah, but for the period (in Macross history) it's appropriate enough... the Project Super Nova designs, the genesis of the Advanced Variable Fighter, were both trying to internalize their armaments as much as possible in the interests of stealth. Later advances in active stealth technology loosened the impact of external ordinance, but that didn't stop most of 'em from stacking on the internalized armaments. My concern, relative to airframe size, was more about getting the additional systems that are part of the AVF technological "tier" into the airframe and the more limited fuel capacity. Since most of the emigrant fleets would be principally concerned with space combat, operational endurance for patrols and combat would definitely be a high priority. Depends what fighter you're talking about there... without resorting to Super Packs, several of the larger AVFs can equal or exceed the carrying capacity of the VF-11 and similar small VFs when it comes to ordinance just using their internal bays. The VF-14 and VF-22 are both on that list... partly due to their relatively large size leaving room for significant amounts of ordinance to be jammed in there.
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Er... yes and no. We actually see both sides of the coin in Macross Plus. On Eden, the UN Forces at the New Edwards test flight center are shown testing the YF-21 against a dedicated, purpose-built target drone. Macross Chronicle literally identifies it ONLY as "target drone". Earth, on the other hand, is shown testing the Ghost X-9 against unmanned VF-11's (I vaguely recall reading somewhere that all those drones were the initial VF-11A type that had been produced in very limited numbers). I'd imagine the dedicated target drones are probably a lot cheaper, and therefore a lot easier to find, than drone-converted VFs (which are surprisingly rare in the setting). That its size is similar to the classic VF-1 is probably an argument against it being an entirely viable AVF upgrade candidate. It's said (in connection with the MAXL variant) that the VF-11 needed to have the airframe strengthened to take the additional thrust of new engines about 2/3 as powerful as what's on most AVFs, and being so darn small would make its armament rather lighter than what most AVFs carry. It wouldn't have nearly as much staying power or carrying capacity as your average AVF (and, IIRC, something about pinpoint barriers is said to screw with the VF-11's sensors on the Thunderbolt Interceptor). If one thing can usually be said for AVFs, it's that they're quite a bit bigger than the designs of the first space war and its aftermath. I'd think the logical choice would actually be the VF-14 Vampire. The airframe's stressed for about twice the engine power that the VF-11's was (in the same ballpark as the VF-17D), and it's said to have a LOT of free space inside the airframe that can be used for upgraded or optional hardware.
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Unless, of course, they've got a decent amount of foresight... one reason the VF-25 was built as an all-regime fight rather than space optimized like the VF-19F. Eh... that depends on what kind of orbit you're talking about. Even the VF-1 Valkyrie was able to at least the edge of space over an Earth-type world without resorting to cheats like an escape booster. Boosters are all about getting the fighters up into space quickly and efficiently without having to ferry them up on a ship. The VF-11 is the last fighter stated to need booster assistance to get into a satellite orbit, but exactly which fighter was first to be capable of doing it unassisted is a great big unanswered question. Most fighters seem to have the capability from thermonuclear reaction burst-turbine engines like those of the AVFs, VF-16, and VF-17 variants starting with the VF-17D. The VF-14 may have possessed the capability as well, considering its engines are almost as powerful as the VF-17D's and their thrust-to-weight ratios aren't that far off. Pretty much every VF in the Macross Frontier-era seems to be orbit-capable, and the VF-171's initial type DOES have a similar engine to the VF-17.
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When distances of a few hundred light years are apparently no more troubling than an international flight is today, odds are that the economy isn't THAT unfamiliar. From what Kawamori has said in interviews, many of the emigrant fleets and worlds are producing their own currency and are more or less self-sufficient economies, internally. "Cultural" exports like music and other media happen over the Galaxy Network (a fold communications analogue to the modern internet), and goods are shipped to and fro by interstellar shipping concerns like Tachyon Express and Birla Transport Co. Ltd. After all, we're told point-blank that Strategic Military Services (SMS) was started by Richard Birla to protect his interstellar shipping business... and Luca rather bluntly tells Leon Mishima that he thinks the reason Birla is fascinated by the Vajra is because he plans to use fold quartz in his shipping business, and gain a virtual monopoly on interstellar shipping with a fleet of ships which can travel through fold faults. That wasn't actually his ulterior motive, but his interstellar shipping business was what gave him the riches that let him bankroll his private army (SMS) and the Frontier fleet. Each emigrant ship is supposedly a unique city-state in space... with its own layout, architecture, and so on. They're built off of the same basic design, but many of the ones we've seen have had their own distinctive touches added to the design, both in terms of architecture and technology. Macross-5 had Zentradi aesthetics and tech everywhere, for instance, while Macross-11 seemed to have a lot more highrise buildings and those massive heat fins on the side of the main dome. As far as the types of emigrant fleet... there's not really a "medium" there. We know, from Kawamori's interviews and some print sources, that there were 100 or so short-range emigrant fleets that used Zentradi and other ships to locate and settle worlds that were discovered within a couple hundred light years of Earth. The long-distance emigrant fleets were on a much larger scale, for exploration thousands of light years from Earth... those are the fleets we actually see, built around Megaroad and New Macross-class ships with millions of civilians. Whether the fleets know where they're going... that's something for the advance scouts to sort out, which is what the SDFN-type mass-production Macross-class ships were originally for, though later fleets used frigates and other ships. They don't know the destination they'll one day reach, but they at least know what's ahead of them so they aren't sailing blind.
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Depends... what time frame are we talking about? Maybe 20 years after the first space war, I could see some less affluent emigrant fleets or planets using the service life extension program variants like the VF-1P and VF-1X, probably alongside similarly old VF-4's. After 40-50 years, I think the VF-1 would probably have been completely retired by the military and relegated to civilian usage... like the VT-1C in the Macross Dynamite 7 OVA or the VF-1C in the novelization of Macross Frontier. I think the last thing we saw them being used for by the UN Forces was for shipbuilding circa 2047, not counting special forces variants.
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Not quite... the EX-Gear control system works more or less the same way as the controls on earlier models of VF, it's just a more precise version. The pilot isn't controlling the mecha's limbs directly with the throttle, joystick, pedals, and eye-tracking system, a sophisticated AI-based avionics package is then interpreting the various joystick-waggles and so on into a desire to "move in that direction" with a particular posture, and sorts out all the kinesthetics needed to make it happen. Manually controlling a limb for a particular maneuver is a delicate and rather complex business, as we saw in the original series and Frontier. The system uses a learning computer in the EX-Gear to make the controls as smooth and intuitive as if the pilot were wearing the fighter. On the Arm Slaves of Full Metal Panic!, the semi-master slave motion trace system has the mecha replicating the motions of the operator's limbs inside the cockpit. The pilot's limbs are encased in armatures that record the motions of their limbs, and all that measured data goes to an assisted motion management program that translates the relative movements of the pilot's limbs into positioning commands for the mecha's limbs by amplifying them by a pilot-specified factor (the "bilateral angle"), so the pilot can move the mecha's limb a lot without having to make a similarly extreme gesture in the cockpit. (The preferred BMSA for an "ace pilot" in the series was 3.5, meaning every motion made in the cockpit is amplified by 3.5x... so if Sousuke raised his arm up 10 degrees, his M9 would raise its arm 35 degrees. That's why it's a "semi" master slave system... a full master slave system with a BMSA of 1 would be the Mobile Fighters in G Gundam.) Yep... and they allegedly (non-canonically) selected the VF-1 as the basis for it because of an abundance of practical performance data. It didn't pan out, however. Yes, but the Variable Fighter Master File books are not part of the official setting, and tend to be at least a little at odds with what's actually down in the animation-related materials (e.g. what the VF-19E is). That particular tidbit could still be true, in light of what's shown about the Macross Galaxy fleet using 'em in Macross the Ride tho... they produce their own locally "improved" version (the VF-19C/MG21) as a sort of "Take that!" aimed at Shinsei, which is used by Pegasus squadron. Er... you're probably thinkin' of the New UN Government there. The Galaxy Network was the inter-fleet and inter-planetary fold communications network that handled personal and business communications, mass media, etc. Earth was still the de facto figurehead world of the New UN Government, though the government itself had become decentralized and Earth was deliberately withholding certain technological advances from the emigrant fleets and planets to maintain an edge. All told, the fleets seem to have had a pretty free hand in choosing how to arm their local New UN Forces garrisons... they could either produce (under license) the latest and greatest toys used by the central forces back on Earth (or monkey models thereof) which their factory ships could produce (the VF-19s and VF-22s in Macross 7); or they could use those blueprints to jumpstart a development program for a custom variant (VF-19C/MG21, VF-19EF) or an all-new fighter (VF-25, VF-27, YF-30). Admittedly, international (interplanetary?) law requires them to disclose the existence and specifications of those weapons to the central New UN Government... which the Macross Galaxy heads decided to forego by deploying a fake prototype and keeping all their advances in the actual VF-27 secret.
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AFAIK, it was originally an episode produced for broadcast that was dropped...
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Not s'much the ISC, but its less powerful sibling... the Inertia Vector Control System, which from what's been said about it could take about 7G off the airframe at maximum power. The ISC pulls 27.5G off the airframe, a huge improvement. Survey says "Yeah, probably". The Macross Frontier VF-19EF Caliburns in Macross the Ride that were built for SMS and the NUNS in 2058 were built with EX-Gear cockpits, though that may have partly been because they were using them to evaluate equipment for the YF/VF-25 as on the VF-19ACTIVE Nothung. That said, the VF-171 Nightmare Plus variant in use in 2059 was an AVF as well, but did not possess EX-Gear until it was retrofitted to accept it in the VF-171EX upgrade. EX-Gear is a sort of improved cockpit system... it uses a combination of a learning computer and monitoring of electrical impulses in the pilot's muscles to greatly improve the precision and ease of control of a VF, supposedly to the extent of providing a control feel almost like "wearing" the VF. It's also got some survival kit features like a simple cold sleep function, small medical kit, and distress beacon, while also functioning as a sort of "self-rescuing" ejection seat that turns into a flight-capable powered suit. I think the way one of my friends put it was "It's a core fighter you can wear".
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That's... something else entirely. The thing in Battlecry was based on an animation error in the original Macross series and used to pad the game out. Macross's Refined Valkyrie predates it by about 10 years, and is much cooler lookin: (Exemplar is Komilia's VF-1SR, third pic shows VF-1JR, VF-1SR, and VF-1AR head configs). Well, there were a variety of reasons behind the VF-171 being adopted over the VF-19 in most regions... one of the big ones was loss-of-control issues when they were in the hands of inexperienced pilots. Isamu's VF-19EF/A (also sometimes known as VF-19 ADVANCE) was sort of a special case, and was financed privately for Isamu's use with only two units produced. Macross the Ride, Macross 30, and the novelization of Macross Frontier all depict limited numbers of VF-19s in SMS's hands, but mostly they're the dumbed-down "monkey model" units. I think the largest number mentioned in connection with adoption of the VF-19 is the 154 VF-19EF Caliburns the Frontier fleet built for its NUNS forces and SMS in the 2050s. In general... they're usually "monkey model" variants produced locally by one particular emigrant fleet or planet for their own use, such as the Frontier fleet's VF-19EF Caliburn family or the Galaxy fleet's VF-19C/MG21. Others, like Aisha Blanchett's VF-19E, Isamu's VF-19 ADVANCE, and Chelsea Scarlett's VF-19ACTIVE Nothung are proof of concept machines, one-offs, or generally encompassed under the umbrella of "Ace custom". (If there are any specific variants from sketchley's site you want sourced or would like more info on, he or I can happily do that for you.) 's not actually a new technological development in Macross... the Inertia Store Converter is just the Queadluun-Rau's/YF-21's/VF-22's inertia vector control system on steroids. Tech's been in the setting for ages. Supposedly the ISC's backwards compatible with the VF-19 too, but wasn't adopted on such due to economic concerns.
