Master Dex

In that case you did very well with that cleanup process, it looks like a new image rather than an existing one. Very nice.

Continuing the chain on quoting you. Both the other two are technically right. Plasma is the fourth state of matter after Solid, Liquid, and Gas. You heat Solid, it goes to liquid, more heat, you get gas, even more heat, you get plasma. Technically fire is a type of plasma. Thermonuclear is a word used to describe a certain type of nuclear reactor, specifically one which not only fissions but fuses material (though in the future we should have pure fusion without fission, which is a lot safer and gives more power). The reactor most likely fuses hydrogen into helium or something to that extent and the resulting fusion creates immense energy which powers the valk. At the same time the heat from the reaction heats up air that is collected inside the valks engines. By super heating the air, which is in a gas state, the particles will move faster and will become what is known as plasma. The plasma will then be thrust out the back of the engine by path of least resistance most likely, plasma is very energetic, it needs somewhere to go and in a close engine the best way to go is out the exhaust port, same thing on any conventional rocket. As for refueling, in an atmosphere the valkyrie will always have air it can suck it, heat up and thrust out for propulsion, so it doesn't run out of "engine fuel" technically. However it can run out of reactor fuel which is the afore mentioned hydrogen or whatever element that is being fused in the reactor to create the energy/heat that is turning the air into plasma in the first place, and also what is powering the valkyrie. This really isn't that much of a problem though, you can get a lot of energy and heat from fusing small amounts of hydrogen, and you can carry a large enough supply on board the reactors probably to last you a good long while, so you could probably fly the valk in an atmosphere for a very long time. In space, things are different. The Reactor fuel bit is the same, with the hydrogen or some such fusible material. However you can't suck in air for propellant as there is none. In this case valks probably have an extra on board supply of some type of inert gas that can be heated up into plasma to be used for propulsion. The difference between this system and conventional jet engines is one of energy, power, and safety. Nuclear reactors provide so much more energy (in the common form of electricity) than burning fossil fuels like gas, and that means more power. It is also cleaner for the most part. The only unclean part is the byproduct of radiation which is abundant from nuclear fission, but in fusion there is very little to no noticeable radiation as a result. The downside is even nuclear reactors can't be fool proof. Instead of sitting on a gas fueled turbine that could malfunction and explode in a big cloud, you are now sitting on a nuclear furnace that if malfunctions, could result in what we know as a nuclear bomb. The chance of the nuclear reactor malfunctioning and causing a chain reaction resulting in a nuke is not much, and is much more highly unlikely with fusion that fission but it is possible, however still much safer that the current jet engines. Anyway, there is my short version of how a supposed thermonuclear reaction engine works... yes, that's the short version. Remember kids, science is fun.

Er... Wow.... I'm not quite sure what to think of that.

Everything I've heard says 26 episodes.

Isn't Mikhale's sister supposed to be alive, I thought it was said we were see her in the show.. unless that meant we see her in a flashback showing how she died... well I guess we'll find out in a week.

I would assume that is standard uniform for female NUNS officers, perhaps whoever Mikhale is visiting at that gravestone was in the military, and we were seeing a flashback or something. Just speculation of course.

Wow... why are people getting so worked up, its just a frakking prototype image, it's not like there is something on the page saying "That's it, all we need to do is color it and it's ready to go!" Maybe I'm biased since I think like an engineer but it looks fine to me, for a prototype. I've seen things where the picture guy mis-transforms something all the time, especially in the case of the pictures on a Transformers toy box when it really transforms fine and according to instructions, but the person taking the photo didn't follow instructions and just winged it. You know Bandai may actually be listening to what we were saying, before these pics showed up everyone was talking about how they wanted so badly to see pics of a VF-25 toy, even in production. Well it seems Bandai has decided to show you an early pic indeed, even though it's not done. I bet if they waited to show anything until they were done with the design and sculpting of the figure and had a full colored mass production model then it would look fine, and despite the fact there is always someone who will be unhappy I bet there would be a lot less complaining. I've seen endless cases, and not just with toys but tv shows too, of things were in the beginning it looked iffy and people shouted out negative things saying it was going to be the worst thing ever and then the finished product comes out and it turns out to be very decent if not very good and all the nay sayers either admit they were jumping the gun or they just don't say anything anymore. Give Bandai a chance guys, let them finish the damn figure before you go saying it's the worst thing you've ever seen and you'll never buy it. Even that hinge is probably due to being an early prototype, they put a simple hinge design for the prototype while they make sure the figure works then they make a better less obtrusive cockpit mechanism for the final product, simple as that. Now of course I don't know for fact that the finished 1/60 DX VF-25 will turn out good, maybe it will maybe it will not, but until I see the final product that is going to be on the shelves I will not judge it. However if I were to give an unofficial opinion based on that picture, my opinion of the prototype is... that's not bad.. for a prototype. That's my word for now, I'll give my official opinion on it when it's done.

Hahaha, no you are the first in this topic to catch that reference. Good Job, for when you notice the references of others, others will be more likely to reference you. I couldn't resist.

On that note, even though the Wii is region locked they tend to release 'adapters' for the Wii remote to connect to for different playability. So the same could be done.... however the Wii and Nunchuck combination can easily work for that situation so there wouldn't be much point, except maybe to add more buttons. As for the region locked problem for the Wii I'm sure someone will find a way around in, like the Freeloader program for the Gamecube. Basically you insert the Freeloader disc into your American or non Japanese region coded Gamecube first, it tells you to then insert the other region game and it will play it fine, and you didn't have to modify the Gamecube at all. Granted you had to insert the freeloader disc everytime you played a game that was different region encoded, but you could do it is the point. I can imagine a similar program could be made for Wii, perhaps the company that made Freeloader can do it as well (I still have my GC Freeloader disc, I should find the manufacturer and see if they are planning this).

Good, I was actually wondering where in that area the booster is, that makes sense, I'll go back and check it out sometime. I knew it was there of course as I've said, I just didn't know where exactly. Your right that is kind of small, but then again none of the 'backpack' areas have really had large engines or anything (excluding fast pack usage).

My computers do in fact have names, and I am not ashamed of that. My parents old 5 year old Dell was named Hal (no there wasn't a lot of imagination put into it), so that prompted it's sister computer, my desktop, which is also a close to 5 year old Dell to be named Sal (since it was mirroring the other computer, it seems a little more imaginative). Hal is no longer active, it just got replaced by a new computer, but it was old anyway and had some problems. Sal is running in good condition surprisingly (now that I think about it that is oddly similar to the Hal and Sal of the Odyssey stories) and runs XP. I also have a relatively new laptop that runs Vista Home Premium that I named Vector Sigma after the Cybertronian mega computer that can grant life to Transformers through its connection to the Allspark. As far as I know my laptop cannot do that though. I sometimes call my laptop Vic though, which normally stands for Victor, my reasoning comes from that Victor and Vector sound similar. I don't usually name my TVs for whatever reason, but I named my Wii Jarvis inspired mostly by the AI in the 2008 Ironman movie which itself was inspired by Edwin Jarvis, Tony Starks butler in the original Ironman comics.

The opening narration was just talking about Wait... no one else names their machines? That isn't normal....?

I agree that military are probably looking into mech systems for practical use and someday we may see mechs. I certainly can see a valkyrie style mech usable, the gerwalk for the VTOL function you mentioned, the battroid still needs more reason, but some of the stuff that article said makes sense. Although the stuff in that article makes sense, and I think mech experimentation and research may exist and we may one day have stuff like that, I think that picture at the top and that the military is that far on anything is probably fake. I doubt we would have anything that can be photographed on picture, and that photo looks like of CG, just fuzzied up in attempt to look real.

If you think the recoil hurt the ship, if it fired just floating in space it would have been launched back quite violently. I don't think the KM has the thruster power to stay stationary in space while firing all that, enough to move in space of course, but that is a lot of reactionary force to overcome.

Well Valkyries in the shows are powered by thermonuclear reactors as well. The engines in their legs are basically compact nuclear reactors (which heat up air/gas to a plasma state and thrust it out for propellant). A monster probably would need/has in the show a bigger reactor or reactors.

I see, very well then, I didn't know there was an official explanation, but that actually makes sense, and probably is simpler than my idea. Thanks for the info.

Nice Mr March, I've always liked this site, keep up the good work.

Yeah it wasn't my favorite episode plot-wise, I think the animation looked so bad because I was watching it on keyhole, maybe it's better in it's HD raw form. I'll download it anyway though, then I can apply the gattai .ass file when it comes out, and it's still part of the show, so I'll even get the Shinsen sub when that comes (which will probably be a while from now, but they can take all the time they need for subbing of that quality).

That looks like you drew it, is that true? If so amazing job, same even if it is computer rendered, certainly something I can't do. Can you do other things like VF-25 with the super packs instead of armor, maybe some pics in gerwalk and battroid too? Do as you wish of course, I just think it would be cool to see those.

Well the back piece and wings are sort of like a backpack. There is definetly some type of booster in there because you can see exaust from that area in gerwalk in episode 2 after Alto saves Ranka (the shot that infamously shows the VF-25 with arms after they were blown off).

It's not for everyone, but science is everywhere in my life and I love it. I'm not any aspiring scientist though, I am an aerospace engineering student (hence the engineering quote in the sig) so you can imagine this kind of stuff is just right up my ally, big space ships, small ones, even the valkyries are just amazing works of engineering I think. Besides of lack of technology I think the only thing that'd keep a valkyrie from existing in real life is that there really isn't a good reason for a battroid... unless we meet some giant aliens sometime soon. However that doesn't mean I can't dream... and draw up rough design sketches that I may someday use .

Most likely, for ep.7 we didn't get a good raw until Friday (USA time) after the episode was re-aired. So we may have to wait till tomorrow to get a good copy.

I agree that the FTL methods are similar, but I think I can find the differences (this is what I do, I get to the bottom of how things work in Sci-fi ). The way I see it, the hyperspace jumps in Galactica are basically the same as a space fold, but in Galactica they seem instantaneous whereas in Macross they seem to take time fold from one location to another (giving off the appearance of a tunnel like hyperspace or wormholes). The fact of the matter is though, wormholes is exactly what it is, because that is all wormholes are, folding space. So I see the 'Jump' technology of Galactica and the fold space technology of Macross to be artificially folding space which is just basically temporary wormholes. As for the reason as to why the jumps are instantaneous in Galactica and take travel time in Macross, there are two possible reasons. - The first, and IMO most likely, is that in Galactica they don't have the power to do long distance jumps so they do short jumps. These jumps are short enough that you wouldn't see the tunnel effect and the jump/fold would be almost instantaneous, but still technically a wormhole of some type (I'm not sure if these sci-fi space folds would constitute an Einstein Rosenbridge, which is a type of theoretical wormhole). In Macross perhaps because of overtechnology they have the power to do longer folds so you see them in a sense of taking time and traveling within the tunnel. - The second reason I can think of is kind of the opposite of above, which is assuming Galactica doesn't have power for long jumps but in Macross they do. Supposedly if you are going to travel say 20 lightyears you can do that taking more time with the tunnel and the traveling, or with more power you can make the fold tighter, as in the entrance and exit points are closer together so the fold would be quick and seem instantaneous. So perhaps in Macross they don't have the power to do instantaneous long range jumps, so they do long distance folding that takes a while to pass through the tunnel. Both theories can actually be true, it depends on if Galactica is doing short or long jumps, and I assumed in Macross they do longer range as the get to places near the center of the Galaxy which is quite far from Earth. Another possibility is that the long tunnel-like fold in Macross is composed of many jump-like folds in Galactica linked in a chain, which would fit well with the first theory actually. There is my sci-fi examination of the day, I do this kind of thinking all the time so feel free to ask me stuff that I might have thought about. And yes, Galactica should have Bridge Bunnies .

People like to nitpick about things like that (especially me), but that doesn't mean that the line doesn't work. Is that the offical explanation of the Nuclear Reaction Engines? That's not the idea I had about them. What gases then do the engines heat up for thrust when in space then, some type of hydrogen or something the valkyrie has on board? My theory on it, and this is just the idea I got in my mind, is that since they are nuclear reaction engines I thought it was something like hydrogen* (stored on board somewhere I figured) was fused (I figure they would have good fusion capabilities then and wouldn't be using fission anyway) into helium and the resulting energy from the reaction not only powered the craft but was 'somehow' channeled into thrust (perhaps as well with the resultant helium) in the form of some type of plasma. Granted that idea of mine relies on that 'somehow' to get the immense energy/plasma from a fusion reaction to be propelled out of the engine, but it made sense in my mind. If any of that method sounds familiar it's because that is how impulse engines in Star Trek create thrust, it is the plasma directed from fusion reactions in the impulse fusion generators on the ship (whereas the warp core/matter-antimatter reaction assembly powers most of the ship as well as the nacelles for warp). *Although Hydrogen is the most likely element to be used in a fusion reactor, helium-3 is also a likely candidate as it is believed easier to fuse, but there isn't much of that on Earth but the Moon has a ton of it.