Heavy Object - Old Anime Discussion Thread

[Heir of the Void]

Originally Posted by The One Above God

Episode's pretty good. Better than the first two, actually. On a side note, I wonder how well these objects would fare against the kaijus of pacific rim?

They're sort of in a different weight category. Pacific Rim has absurd violations of physics to make the Jeagers work as a humanoid weapons system. In comparison, an Object is to physics as a D&D Sphere of Annihilation is to everything; When moving at 500 kph (not quite top speed), they would be losing enough energy to air resistance to melt about twenty tons of steel per second, and heating their (steel) hull armor to a similar degree.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Don't we have vehicles moving even faster than 500kph in real life?

[Five_Overs]

The point Heir of the Void is making is that the laser propulsion system is not 100% efficient (no machine is). Some energy used to move the Object will be released as waste heat. Since the Object is huge, it creates a lot of drag compared to say a jet, thus more energy needed to maintain top speed. As a result, The heat produced will melt the Object.

Let's just say that laser tech has advanced such that its close to 100% efficient and the material used has a ridiculous high melting point and a ridiculously good heat sink is developed and call it a day. The bottom of the Objects do get melted though and is replaced periodically. (the water strider needs to replace the legs twice per day)

Let's just treat the top speed as just that: top speed and not a speed that the Object can maintain for long.

[Botan_TM]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Don't we have vehicles moving even faster than 500kph in real life?

But their shape is a little more optimal than just a ball. I expected air resistance to be pretty big, but not as much. I may make some calculations tomorrow.

[Heir of the Void]

Originally Posted by Five_Overs

The point Heir of the Void is making is that the laser propulsion system is not 100% efficient (no machine is). Some energy used to move the Object will be released as waste heat. Since the Object is huge, it creates a lot of drag compared to say a jet. As a result, The heat produced will melt the Object.

Let's just say that laser tech has advanced such that its close to 100% efficient and the material used has a ridiculous high melting point and a ridiculously good heat sink is developed and call it a day. The bottom of the Objects do get melted though and is replaced periodically.

Actually, I did not include the laser propulsion system in that number. Its just air resistance, nothing else. Also, how do you go about 'detonating the air' with a laser? Thermal explosions are certainly a thing, but air is transparent to all light above 200 nanometer wavelength, which is everything but gamma rays and high-energy x-rays, but the air is so dense that you need an insane level of radiation to produce heating (that's how atomic bombs work), and very little of it will heat air anywhere near your craft.

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Don't we have vehicles moving even faster than 500kph in real life?

Almost exclusively aircraft (and some really really insane cars), but this is where something called Aerodynamics comes in. Essentially, an F-22 can maintain speed because it 'cuts' through the air, presenting a relatively small cross-section to the air on its axis of travel compared to its size. This can be summarized in its Drag Coefficient; pretty much every aircraft has a drag coefficient below 0.1, a fighter is going to be <0.05

Comparatively, if an Object is abstracted into just the spherical main body, its drag coefficient would be at least .5, give or take. That's what I used to calculate 5 GW of drag. In actuality, the drag coefficient would be much higher, the various weapons protrusions would make the flow lines resemble a plate of spaghetti, and probably have a lot of other bizarre (and negative) effects on airflow.

Also, an Object is traveling at or around sea level, whereas supersonic aircraft are generally more than ten thousand meters up; the much lower air density at that altitude is good for cutting down drag.

[Five_Overs]

Originally Posted by Heir of the Void

Also, how do you go about 'detonating the air' with a laser?

I read up a bit and some space shuttles use lasers to "create a region of high temperature" and explosively expand the air and create thrust. I don't know the details of how it work though.

[Heir of the Void]

Originally Posted by Five_Overs

I read up a bit and some space shuttles use lasers to "create a region of high temperature" and explosively expand the air and create thrust. I don't know the details of how it work though.

Actually, that Laser Launch Technology, and its a real thing. Most of the feasible designs work by using a laser on the ground to blast a target of ablative material (ceramic, probably) into plasma, which then explosively expands to propel the vehicle. There are a few designs that don't involve starting with a solid-state fuel target, but they generally use something to capture the heat of the laser to expand working gas contained in the craft.

[Five_Overs]

Originally Posted by Heir of the Void

Actually, that Laser Launch Technology, and its a real thing. Most of the feasible designs work by using a laser on the ground to blast a target of ablative material (ceramic, probably) into plasma, which then explosively expands to propel the vehicle. There are a few designs that don't involve starting with a solid-state fuel target, but they generally use something to capture the heat of the laser to expand working gas contained in the craft.

In vacuum, the space craft can't make use of air and is forced to make use of materials onboard. it should work in the atmosphere. Maybe if the lasers are repeatedly shot and reflected around and concentrated to heat up the air, it might work.

[Heir of the Void]

Originally Posted by Five_Overs

In vacuum, the space craft can't make use of air and is forced to make use of materials onboard. it should work in the atmosphere. Maybe if the lasers are repeatedly shot and reflected around and concentrated to heat up the air, it might work.

Actually, they use the ceramic from start to finish, except in the proposals where a chemical rocket is used to clear the launch pad.

Certainly, you could force it to work, but the end product would be horrifically inefficient AND result in either

1: A continuous firestorm and Hiroshima-grade thermal flash around the object or

2: A somewhat less impressive firestorm, and an object that posed a severe radiation hazard to every living thing (and sensitive electronic device) above the horizon.

My design would basically be a Plasma Jet Engine. Air is drawn in from filtered intakes (at speed you could use the forward motion of the object to smash the air through a nano-scale particle filter, if you feel that would be beneficial) and pumped to a reaction chamber where a carefully controlled amount of plasma is injected. The plasma super heats the air, expanding it and then uses that expansion for thrust.

The drawback of this scene is that it would require an 'engine' with a defined 'front' and 'back', and a single vector of thrust. Though with a centralized pump system and multiple apertures...

Primary weapon would be a free-electron laser optimized for the middle-UV range, intended to target and destroy enemy orbital assets, which would shift to an x-ray spectrum beam (Because you can do that with a FEL) to engage Objects. The other primaries and secondary would all be intended for maximum trolling; neutron beams to transmute the enemy's armor into radioactive isotopes, railguns with slugs desigined to crush a small sphere of plutonium to super-critical mass with their impact force, stelth drones to draw on the faces of the enemy's support crew, that sort of thing.

[Yu Ominae]

@chaos

- Should be fixed now. Image worked prior to sleeping last night.

[Patriot's Blade]

i was expecting Qwenthur to be a jackass when trying to render all the spare turbine useless by poking each every of them as fast as possible if it weren't for a conveniently placed maintenance log just left there in the room by a dumbass staff member

[Yu Ominae]

Reposting again since I was able to get this image up and running, but realized that it was far away for peeps to see it:



For these 8x8 IFVs, I first thought that they could be BTR-80s/90s. I realized that the front hatches were different, but the designs do resemble those made in Western countries.

Then again, this may be just a fictional APC made for the show. Perhaps the same for the autocannon/HMG setup.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by Patriot's Blade

i was expecting Qwenthur to be a jackass when trying to render all the spare turbine useless by poking each every of them as fast as possible if it weren't for a conveniently placed maintenance log just left there in the room by a dumbass staff member

It would be pointless to even try because there was no wait to guess which Turbine would be used next within 1 min.

Originally Posted by Yu Ominae

For these 8x8 IFVs, I first thought that they could be BTR-80s/90s. I realized that the front hatches were different, but the designs do resemble those made in Western countries.

Then again, this may be just a fictional APC made for the show. Perhaps the same for the autocannon/HMG setup.

Considering it's in a 'distant but unstated' future, it would probably be some fictional model base on what we currently have.

[Dengar]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

I'm not sure what you're talking about. She told them to shut up and evacuate while the princess occupied the enemy's attention. Q-boy said 'fuck that, what sort of asshole abandons someone like that, and besides it probably won't work' and went off on his own without his commander saying another word. Havia just showed up later without any explanation, but with the implication that he'd followed because he felt guilty. Nowhere did it say that they had permission to be out there at all. However-the-hell-you-spell-her-name just didn't stop them because she had more important things to do, and there was always the possibility that they might actually be able to distract the object for at least a little bit longer, but she never ordered nor gave them permission to do so within the scope of the anime.

I guess we're watching different shows then.

[Yu Ominae]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Considering it's in a 'distant but unstated' future, it would probably be some fictional model base on what we currently have.

Could be right. Closest one I can think is with those APCs/IFVs produced by Romania and Turkey.

----

I got this page up in IMFDB. Of course I may get some things wrong. I'm not perfect after all.

[jcdietz03]

Complicated and implausible propulsion systems aside, don't you think the self-destruct mechanism needs to be redesigned? Or maybe scrapped entirely? They lost their billion-dollar (or maybe more) equipment due to a wrongly designed self-destruct system. It should prompt upgrades in that area.

Today's weapons have self-destruct systems that destroy the data stored inside of themselves- that's it. Warships, our most expensive weapons, don't even have those because mother nature will destroy the data for us if the ship is ever destroyed.

It also to me seems implausible that objects could be piloted by just one person. For a warship, which has like 3-4 different kinds of weapons onboard (same as object), it takes a team of 6 people to operate the weapons and sensors, and another team of 3 people to move the ship around. For a fighter plane, it takes only one person. Not sure why that is. I guess if there's only one enemy unit and your one unit is invulnerable to most things, things get a lot simpler.

Pilot-chan is a little too young to be piloting. I think you can pilot if you're 18 in today's US military; it's probably the same in Japan; she is not even that old yet. It also takes ~18 months of training (US military) to become a pilot.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by jcdietz03

Complicated and implausible propulsion systems aside, don't you think the self-destruct mechanism needs to be redesigned? Or maybe scrapped entirely? They lost their billion-dollar (or maybe more) equipment due to a wrongly designed self-destruct system. It should prompt upgrades in that area.

Today's weapons have self-destruct systems that destroy the data stored inside of themselves- that's it. Warships, our most expensive weapons, don't even have those because mother nature will destroy the data for us if the ship is ever destroyed.

It also to me seems implausible that objects could be piloted by just one person. For a warship, which has like 3-4 different kinds of weapons onboard (same as object), it takes a team of 6 people to operate the weapons and sensors, and another team of 3 people to move the ship around. For a fighter plane, it takes only one person. Not sure why that is. I guess if there's only one enemy unit and your one unit is invulnerable to most things, things get a lot simpler.

Pilot-chan is a little too young to be piloting. I think you can pilot if you're 18 in today's US military; it's probably the same in Japan; she is not even that old yet. It also takes ~18 months of training (US military) to become a pilot.

Destroying data might not be enough because each of them could potentially carry unique technologies to their particular machine, especially the 2nd gen models. Take the Water Strider's Turbines which could generate twice the output of the Object's main guns. Judging by the characters' reaction that's probably not something common to have.

Think of each of them as a Gundam rather than the mass produced mobile suit.

As for the pilots, we'll leave that for a later time.

[Anh_Minh]

They still should make the self-destruct a lot less trigger happy. It was only one damn leg! As long as the reactor at least one main gun function, you're still in the game.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Images

Princess Figurine

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Frolaytia Figurine

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Fun for the whole family, only slightly NSFW

[Heir of the Void]

Originally Posted by jcdietz03

Complicated and implausible propulsion systems aside, don't you think the self-destruct mechanism needs to be redesigned? Or maybe scrapped entirely? They lost their billion-dollar (or maybe more) equipment due to a wrongly designed self-destruct system. It should prompt upgrades in that area.

Today's weapons have self-destruct systems that destroy the data stored inside of themselves- that's it. Warships, our most expensive weapons, don't even have those because mother nature will destroy the data for us if the ship is ever destroyed.

It also to me seems implausible that objects could be piloted by just one person. For a warship, which has like 3-4 different kinds of weapons onboard (same as object), it takes a team of 6 people to operate the weapons and sensors, and another team of 3 people to move the ship around. For a fighter plane, it takes only one person. Not sure why that is. I guess if there's only one enemy unit and your one unit is invulnerable to most things, things get a lot simpler.

Pilot-chan is a little too young to be piloting. I think you can pilot if you're 18 in today's US military; it's probably the same in Japan; she is not even that old yet. It also takes ~18 months of training (US military) to become a pilot.

I think they might have mentioned Princess's eyes being engineered to use the laser interface system, and that might be the tip of the cybernetic iceberg. I think its entirely possible she's more machine then meatbag at this point.

Axs for the point about crew: yes, this. Even if the pilots were psionic extraterrestrials, they do not use a direct mind-machine interface, so even if the pilot had the raw processing power AND the multitasking ability to preform all of the necessary tasks (and the two are very different capabilities), the control would still be a severe bottleneck. I think the only way this setup could work is if the Object is essentially an autonomous robot with the Elite Pilot being an overseer and strategist who happens to be inside the robot, giving it commands to execute rather than using it as an extension of himself. Otherwise, they'd probably need to go as far as using the pilot's nostrils as command interfaces to get enough bandwidth.

As for how fighters can have a single pilot, classically it's because fighter weapons are almost universally on a forward-fixed mount, so flying the plane is aiming the weapons, and later because getting a missile lock was about getting the enemy in your (forward facing) missile lock zone long enough for your computer to lock on to them.

Interestingly, in a lot of ways, a modern (Fifth-Gen) fighter is almost an autonomous robot with the pilot being an overseer and strategist who happens to be inside the robot, giving it commands to execute rather than using it as an extension of himself. For example, most modern fighter aircraft are intentionally unstable, then stabilized by precision computer control to allow extreme agility in combat. This has the downside of making them practically impossible to fly without the computer.

Admitadly, I think I could by the Objects easier if they had even one to two dozen crew; at that point, I could think of them as warships rather than funny-looking Gundams.

And that's not even getting into the psychological effects of giving that power to one person. If you weren't a psychopath before you started piloting...

And as for the age... they have an 18-year-old with the rank of Major in command of a Weapon of Mass Destruction. By U.S. Army standards, the sum of the time-in-grade requirements to reach Major is 8 years, and it usually takes considerably longer than that.

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Destroying data might not be enough because each of them could potentially carry unique technologies to their particular machine, especially the 2nd gen models. Take the Water Strider's Turbines which could generate twice the output of the Object's main guns. Judging by the characters' reaction that's probably not something common to have.

Think of each of them as a Gundam rather than the mass produced mobile suit.

As for the pilots, we'll leave that for a later time.

True. I suppose this wold uses XCOM logic for reverse engineering.

But seriously, the self-destruct command system is shit. It should be manual-only as long as the pilot is alive and capable of commanding the craft; the automatic detonation should be active only if the pilot is dead, the pilot has ejected, or the pilot is alive and the ejection system is non-functional.