[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Scherzo09

Well the obvious answer is the Kirishima did the same thing and looked the same way in the original. It doesn't seem like they bother to hand wave it, but if I were to I guess you could say there's some sort of rudimentary EM Levitation, like Minovsky Craft System in Gundam; something that doesn't enable FTL or Artificial Gravity but would allow to get into orbit from flying horizontally. Again it's still Handwavium but for this universe I think it'd work.

That makes sense, since the show doesn't seek to explain it, we'll just have to make an "educated" guess and assume some type of levitation and/or gravitational control (albeit very primitive).
Or just a McGuffan to move the story along.

What I probably would've had them do is exit warp near Pluto, then warp again. Sort of like the Yamato itself, Jupiter's gravity messes up the jump and that's what sets it on a collision with Mars.

That certainly would be interesting, but why not just take a different route into the solar system to avoid the large gas giants altogether?
I realize the scene near Neptune was meant for dramatic effect, but why have Sasha travel past any of the heavier astral bodies at all and not just have her go straight to her destination?
Anyhoo, they did it the way they did, and it still looks cool.

Well again, it also was something from the original they wanted to reference. I'm certain you could handwave a reason why it wouldn't work. Plus I don't think they knew the Sun lacked a bow shock when they made that episode.

I gathered that was the case.
However, perhaps they could have made it the last transmission they could send before warping out of range for Earth's communications systems in lieu of the heliopause idea?

Sorta related to what I was saying though; you agree that FTL comms is something that only came about after Yamato, right?

We agree that there were no FTL communications devices in the possession of Earth prior to the delivery of the Isandarian techology, yes.

It'd probably still be highly theoretical before the Wave Motion Engine; producing the exotic particles necessary for generating a warp field would still be a pain in the ass and more than a bit prohibitively expensive.

Most likely it would, but when the survival of the human race is at stake methinks that economics would take a pass and high-risk projects would take center stage.
No doubt whatever primitive FTL they tried would probably have been based on captured parts of the Gamillas ships since they did destroy some of them at Mars according to the story.
We aren't really told how much technology they managed to cannibalize from the wreckage of the Gamillas ships they destroyed.
Perhaps they didn't have any FTL drive prior to their contact with Gamillas, and after they destroyed the first force of the alien ships, they managaed to 'boost' their understanding of the alien technology and thus create improved systems such as antigravity, and primitive FTL.