Pluto to Earth - the SDF-1's journey

[taalismn]

Okay...One fan timeline I found on line has the SDF-1 engaging the Fold drive March 2010 and arriving back at Earth in April of 2011....

[tobefrnk]

The official timeline at robotech.com has the SDF-1 folding to Pluto on February of 2009 and landing in the Pacific Ocean on March 2010.

[ShadowLogan]

Lisa states that the time between Ep1 and her briefing to the UEDC in Ep. 15 is 12-1/2 months.

[Armorlord]

The old RPG timeline put it close to two years, or at least 2009-2011, I'll have to double check for the months.

[avollant]

The whole SDF-1 Journey from Pluto's orbit to Earth is quit a feat by itself! Think about it! The distance is huge nad they also manage to do two stop along the way (Mars and Saturn). To make it in less than 2 years.... Wow! it's... Darn impossible! The acceleration require must be close to 2 G constant.

There is also the slight problem of Supplies... even with recycling, 70 000 peoples do take a lot of resources! The primary are foods and water, sure, but there are also the cleaning supply, medical supply, clothing, stationary, Entertaiment, etc. Today, most cities goes through with a month of supplies; Macross Island, because it IS an island must had about 6 months... that plus what the SDF-1 had on hand during the initial engagement... I still think it is hard to beleive they could make it in less than 2 years without support.

But it is anime... so reality has a tendency to take a walk.

[Lt Gargoyle]

The whole SDF-1 Journey from Pluto's orbit to Earth is quit a feat by itself! Think about it! The distance is huge nad they also manage to do two stop along the way (Mars and Saturn). To make it in less than 2 years.... Wow! it's... Darn impossible! The acceleration require must be close to 2 G constant..

Well they are using alien technology, so to compare it to our technology is not going to work.

There is also the slight problem of Supplies... even with recycling, 70 000 peoples do take a lot of resources! The primary are foods and water, sure, but there are also the cleaning supply, medical supply, clothing, stationary, Entertaiment, etc. Today, most cities goes through with a month of supplies; Macross Island, because it IS an island must had about 6 months... that plus what the SDF-1 had on hand during the initial engagement... I still think it is hard to beleive they could make it in less than 2 years without support.

But it is anime... so reality has a tendency to take a walk.

If you remember in the series, the people talk about being on rations. I realize that it may seem impossible, but they had a large section of the ocean that surrounded the island. THe stop at mars was to gather supplies. So even if they had limited supplies they could still manage to make it home if they enforced the rations. If you would like more join the UEDF. But then if all else fails you can say its Animie

[ShadowLogan]

The whole SDF-1 Journey from Pluto's orbit to Earth is quit a feat by itself! Think about it! The distance is huge nad they also manage to do two stop along the way (Mars and Saturn). To make it in less than 2 years.... Wow! it's... Darn impossible! The acceleration require must be close to 2 G constant.

By current propulsion technology yes, but there is theoretical stuff that could do it.

They travel from "Pluto" to Saturn in about 2months, but afterward their speeds drop off on the Saturn-Mars leg, afterward there are several course corrections. Still they get to Earth in 12-1/2months.

And no they where not accelerating at 2Gs, if they had been traveling at 1G (IIRC) they would have been able to travel Earth to Pluto in 2weeks.

[Armorlord]

There is also the slight problem of Supplies... even with recycling, 70 000 peoples do take a lot of resources! The primary are foods and water, sure, but there are also the cleaning supply, medical supply, clothing, stationary, Entertaiment, etc. Today, most cities goes through with a month of supplies; Macross Island, because it IS an island must had about 6 months... that plus what the SDF-1 had on hand during the initial engagement... I still think it is hard to beleive they could make it in less than 2 years without support.

But it is anime... so reality has a tendency to take a walk.

If you remember in the series, the people talk about being on rations. I realize that it may seem impossible, but they had a large section of the ocean that surrounded the island. THe stop at mars was to gather supplies. So even if they had limited supplies they could still manage to make it home if they enforced the rations. If you would like more join the UEDF. But then if all else fails you can say its Animie

The important thing I point out is that a lot of the supplies and support for those people would have been out of the Macross Island shelters. Shelter built after a time a war with real concerns of terrorist and anti-unification attack, plus the fear of alien attack, that was build to house the entire island's population with it's own air supply, and likely stores to last a group that size through nuclear scenarios. So that is where I would say the bulk of those support resources for the population came from, beyond those recovered from the city and ocean themselves.

[taalismn]

Also gotta figure they weren't traveling straight-line, since they manage to visit Saturn and Mars inbound....and contrary to what some people might believe, the planets don't line up like they do on the school charts....
So their speed is even more impressive...
But that's the power of Robotechnology for you...Slow by Star Trek impulse speeds, but still pretty damn impressive....

[Colonel Wolfe]

has anyone know how to track the planets, and see if the SDF-1's trip is even possible?
to land near pluto, and pass by the planets it goes by assumes they are all in a strait line to earth... but the planets revolves around Sol at diffrent speeds and may or may not be in a line.
even more, that pluto may be on the opposite side of Sol form earth at any moment, meaning they may have to pass the sun, or wait near the earth rotation for her to come back around.

[Cybermancer]

I'm not an astronomer but I did find this website. If I understand it correctly, the SDF-1 would have to zig zag between Pluto to Saturn to Mars to Earth.

A more or less straight trajectory may have brought it relatively close to Mars, depending on speed. And again, I'm hardly an expert so I may be grossly mis-interpreting this.

http://www.rasnz.org.nz/SolarSys/09Orbits.htm

[Oberoth]

Hello. After reading theses posts I had an idea

I decided to simulate the SDF-1's trip using Orbiter: A free space flight simulator.

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

I have played this game for years and it is quite realistic. Here is what I have discovered.

My first attempt to simulate the trip was using a Hohmann transfer (slow connecting arch). This is the type of trajectory that we are currently limited to due to the power and efficiency of our current technology. The trip from Pluto to Saturn took years! Obviously the SDF1 would have better tech so my second attempt was using a direct transfer (Point and shoot) to Saturn. After some calculation and some experimenting, I discovered that only a 25 hour acceleration period at one gee (9.81 m/s/s) was required to get me to Saturn in a two month time frame (Constantly accelerating for half the distance then decelerating for the other half got me there in two days!). It should be noted that while passing by (Through the rings) of Saturn it took mere minutes to pass by Saturn. So there would not have been time to launch Veritech fighters and have a space battle in that time frame. Also, although Saturn has a huge gravity field, it had an imperceptible effect on my ships trajectory due to the high velocity flyby. It was clear to me at that point that they wouldn't have needed Saturn to slingshot the SDF1 to mars.

The trip from Saturn to mars was more troublesome than the trip from Pluto to Saturn due to the before mentioned fact that mars was constantly moving in its orbit and it took multiple course corrections to get there. (The orbits of Pluto and Saturn are huge and they do not change that much relative to each other. But the orbits of Saturn and Mars are quite different.) This leg of the trip took 13 months! to get to a stable low orbit of Mars. The last part of the trip also required multiple course corrections and took 6 months to get to a stable low Earth orbit.

Time line:

Wed July 15 06:13 2009. Leave Pluto.

Wed Sept 16 22:43 2009. Saturn flyby.

Sun Nov 7 04:04 2010. Stable low orbit around Mars.

Tue May 17 16:54 2011. Stable low orbit around earth.

What did I learn? The Saturn flyby was unnecessary. They could have been to earth within a matter of months given the technology of the SDF1's Protoculture Reflex engines.

A two year time line is reasonable considering the story.

[Lt Gargoyle]

I think this is great. But remember the time frame in which this was writen. Remember Star Blazers? The floating continent inside of Jupiters upper Atmosphere was a possiblity for the sci-fi and science community.

[ShadowLogan]

Also gotta figure they weren't traveling straight-line, since they manage to visit Saturn and Mars inbound....

Well the faster one travels the straighter the trajectory can appear.

With regards to the trajectory of the SDF-1, people are forgetting a few things:
-Mars was the result of a course correction due to the signals they where picking up (IIRC it was like 16deg. off their current course, but it was not on their current course)
-From a propulsion standpoint there was no reason to go to Saturn, but Gloval had hatched a battle plan to deal with the Zentraedi and in order to carry it out would have had to slow down at Saturn to carry it out. IIRC though Saturn was on their projected course.
-They did not travel from Mars to Earth directly, they made atleast two course corrections after leaving Mars for Earth (one away from Earth and then again toward Earth, possibly more)

While we know the start location (or there abouts) and their goal (Earth) they chose to take some detours onlong the way which can make reconstruction of their actual path a bit difficult.

has anyone know how to track the planets, and see if the SDF-1's trip is even possible?

http://rdfhqcommunicationscenter.yuku.c ... -2009.html

Given a powerful enough propulsion system just about any trip path is possible though. Even without the Fold Drives, the SDF-1 demonstrates it has a powerful propulsion system.

decided to simulate the SDF-1's trip using Orbiter: A free space flight simulator.

IIRC I've tried it with MS Space Simulator (DOS program) years ago. It has an autopilot feature for a variety of manuevers (launch, orbit, rendezvous, etc). About the only problem I had with the autopilot was controling the acceleration since it tended to use full acceleration (most selections top out at 3-4G, with a 9G option).

[Oberoth]

Well the faster one travels the straighter the trajectory can appear.

This is 100% correct. During my simulation, as I was passing Saturn, the graph of my trajectory was a straight line. If you zoom out and look at it from a larger perspective it would be curved. There is no such thing as a truly straight path through space/time.

-From a propulsion standpoint there was no reason to go to Saturn, but Gloval had hatched a battle plan to deal with the Zentraedi and in order to carry it out would have had to slow down at Saturn to carry it out.

I agree. I will simulate that next time.

Just so you know: There is no autopilot for direct transfer in orbiter. I had to do the entire trip manually. To make things easier and more realistic I created my own spacecraft with the basic characteristics of the SDF1; specifically it's mass which was easily obtained from the books.

MASS=16329325320 Kg (18000000 tons)
MAIN THRUST=160190681389.2 Newtons

These were just numbers to make things easier for the simulation. The main thrust was calculated with F=Ma to give an acceleration of 9.81 m/s/s at full thrust. This could be more or less but was used so I didn't have to adjust the throttle all the time.

I also adjusted the ships ISP (Fuel efficiency) to a impossibly high number; so the fuel wouldn't noticeably decrease and therefore change the mass of the ship thereby changing the acceleration.

[avollant]

What did I learn? The Saturn flyby was unnecessary. They could have been to earth within a matter of months given the technology of the SDF1's Protoculture Reflex engines.

Well, There may be another reason why Gloval decided to go to Saturn: Water! Despite all of the technology, water need to be replace from time to time and Saturn was probaly the best stop.

Also, I remember years ago, that I came up with a Solar System simulator to help calculate the panets' position for amateur Astronomer (you guest it it was before PC) and When I set it for 2009, the planetary position matched the SDF-1 journey. Coincidence?

And Last, In space, you NEVER travel in a straight line, all the trajectory will be parabolic because a spaceship doesn't want to go where a planet is now but where the planet will be in "X" amount of time. A parabolic trajectory is the best fuel/efficacity journey.

Cheer.

[Wildfire]

I am no science geek so I say for the distance to earth it was the benifit opf the tech from the SDF-1.
as for supplies, they could have some water purificatioon devices that turn urine into clean water or that de-salinated the ocean water on the now cool Iland moon of pluto
also if there was 1 giant tuna there would be more 50 foot tunas
thats alot of Dim Sum for Lynn Minmay's family resturant.
also they could have a really cool hydoponics bay to grow food.
I am not sure of this but if you prep the food and freeze it you could leave it in a hold that is not heated and is say right beside the edge of the SDF-1 or on the promeatheous or dedalous (however you spell them)

just my 2 cents

[Oberoth]

Well, There may be another reason why Gloval decided to go to Saturn: Water! Despite all of the technology, water need to be replace from time to time and Saturn was probaly the best stop.

I think the SDF1 already had plenty of water. The emergency fold operation that was executed took a large amount of water with them. In the anime they crashed into it just after the fold. They may have had a tactical reason to go there as mentioned previously.

And Last, In space, you NEVER travel in a straight line, all the trajectory will be parabolic because a spaceship doesn't want to go where a planet is now but where the planet will be in "X" amount of time. A parabolic trajectory is the best fuel/efficacity journey.

Cheer.

Not sure if this was directed to me but it was already covered by myself and others.

Well the faster one travels the straighter the trajectory can appear.

This is 100% correct. During my simulation, as I was passing Saturn, the graph of my trajectory was a straight line. If you zoom out and look at it from a larger perspective it would be curved. There is no such thing as a truly straight path through space/time.

[avollant]

Of course, the SDF-1 crew couldn't take all of the surounding water with them... Probably due to cargo space limitation. I also found other use for that water... Aside of Hydroponics, Sanitary, and human consumtion, theire was also the case of Hydrogen Fuel for the verytech and air productions.

Did you notice the amount of air the SDF-1 loses during its transformation? That air needed to be replaced.

Also, do you remember the pipe Rick busted for minmei's shower? it was hot water... meaning this water was use for cooling something; the SDF-1 engine perhaps.

In any case, Water must have been a constant preoccupation by the crew of the SDF-1.

[Peacebringer]

OK, so with my modern understanding of space, the SDF was in big trouble. One, it's cold at Pluto's orbit, so cold methane freezes. Colder than anything known. I doubt the SDF-1 could have been manufactured to operate at that level of temperature. The human adding components would probably break down, like weapons, hatches etc. The SDF-1 reactors probably heated the inside of the ship.

Saturn has an intense magnetic field and massive amounts of trapped radiation in it's belts around the planet. Any Veritech pilot out around Saturn would die soon of radiation.

[Oberoth]

I disagree. The SDF-1 was a space ship before it crashed on earth. True, humans modified it but we aren't a bunch of poo slinging monkey's that don't know how to design spacecraft for deep space missions. The SDF-1 was made to travel in all conditions space provides. This includes life support for long durations, heat, radiation and dust/partical deflection and propulsion. Considering the advanced power source the SDF-1 is powered by(Protoculture), I see no reason why it couldn't sustain itself that far out.

The Veritechs were also designed to travel in space(Though they are not trans atmospheric) and would have radiation shielding built in already. Much of the harmful radiation out there can be deflected/stopped by cellophane.