Macross SEED

[M Fnord]

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All of the following is, as usual, referenced from the ever-useful Atomic Rocket Project.

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Ah yes, the source of all knowledge for the wannabe rocket scientist. ^_^
Using Nyrath's transit nomogram, I decided to lay in the Macross, just to see how badly off the poor thing was.
Here's the results. Since your guesstimate of Macross' dry mass went off the charts, I handwaved that a combination of Alien Alloys and Fancy 21st Century Composites kept the total mass down (!) to 1000 kilotons. That said, using the best real-world option for the drive, the mighty IC Fusion torch, nets us a grand acceleration total of about... just slightly more than a hundredth of a G. And, just to be funny, the total delta-v needed for it to get back from the misfold (a transit time that completely broke the nomogram) ranges around 1.25Mm/s. Ouch.
Now, that's pretty pathetic for an alien gunboat that's racked up its share of Zent cruisers. So, I decided to give the Macross an edge with "quantum tap" thruster systems that produce 2 billion Newtons of thrust, giving the ship the grand and stately total possible acceleration of 2m/s^2. Not enough to lift off from Earth, but enough to return from Neptune in the somewhat reasonable time of 4.75 weeks using a totally unreasonable delta-v of 6Mm/s.
Then, just for the hell of it I decided to max out the scale and see what a total thrust of 100 billion Newtons got us. At max thrust, that could lift off from Tinian at 10G, and make the voyage home from Neptune in under a week. Of course, the delta-v requirements are up in the 40Mm/s range, but...
And frankly, let's not get started on mass fractions. Running the numbers on the delta-v nomogram get me things like .1 or worse mass ratio numbers. That's just not gonna work. @_@
Just going through the numbers, one thing's perfectly clear; we're going to have to use antigrav or Super-Handwavium to reduce the ship's overall mass, otherwise the Macross is going to be a very large lawn ornament sitting on Tinian for the rest of eternity.---
Mr. Fnord, interdimensional man of mystery.
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

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