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Choedan-Kal β Macross Island
Published: 2010-10-01 02:25:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 5544; Favourites: 87; Downloads: 114
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Description
Pencil sketch colored in Painter X using digital oils and a WACOM tablet. Iβve posted several pieces of Robotech fan art, but nothing from the Macross Saga. I honestly couldnβt tell you which saga I prefer. They all have their good points, but I will say that the SDF-1 is probably the coolest ship ever, and Booby Trap remains one of my favorite episodes.Here we have the SDF-1 prior to launch, with Rick Hunter approaching in his fanjet. I tried to emphasize the shear size of the SDF-1 by reducing Macross city to just a colorful blob as the given dimensions (1.2km ha!) of the ship fall woefully short of that needed to contain the 50-70k civilians housed in a reconstructed city within the bowels of the great ship.
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Comments: 20
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I don't see enough Macross stuff. I like this
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i could see something like this actually happening.Β
But to actually live inside Macross, i can see how those negotiations go.
"You will live in a city which gets destroyed/damaged every time we transform into battle mode and you'll only be allowed to repair when in cruise mode."
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Oh, Rick... You have NO idea what awaits you when you land. <_<;
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Been absolutely forever since I saw some sort of Robotech show. c.c'
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I think they are all on Youtube now 
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Yay! I love Robotech!
1.2km seems really small for the SDF-1. I always thought it was a whole lot bigger. All those large hangers, some that people couldn't even get access to... I always figured it was several miles long.
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Well, it is a "Super Dimensional" Fortress
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I thought that starblazers interdemesional spacebatatleship Marbutibin..a..n... or something or other...
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Remember: many of the 10's of thousands of the inhabitants of maccros island have found themselves readjusting their standard of living down by moving into condominiums......(narrative description here).
Robotech narrator fan!
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Well, you have to remember that it was designed by Japanese and given their population density, especially in Tokyo, that may have seemed a reasonable number of people for a 1km area. 
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You just had to bring up my favorite soapbox 
This isnβt knock against the series. I love Robotech, but also itβs clear that no one bothered to do the math to see if the shipβs dimensions were even remotely believable. The SDF-1 is stated to be about 1200m long and thus, 400m wide, but thatβs only at the widest point. Most of it is thinner, so that if you look at the actual projected area, its about 60% of a 1200x400m rectangle, or a total of 0.48 km^2 or 0.11 square miles, which gives you a total average density of about 625,000 people per square mile. This exceeds the density of any city on Earth. To put this into perspective, this is about 25 times the density of Tokyo (based on the core urban areas).
And this if we can use every inch of space β i.e. we havenβt left any space for engines, reactors, supplies, life support systems, weapon magazines, factories or mecha storage. Once we factor those in, it only gets worse, but I think the point is pretty clear: Even using the all the available space on the ship, Macross City requires a level of urban development that vastly exceeds and is utterly inconsistent with what we see in the TV series.
I should note that although Iβm analyzing this based on area as opposed to volume, population density implicitly includes a vertical residential component. Thus, counterarguments about stacking city blocks still fail because the SDF-1 has limited vertical clearance β i.e. you canβt solve the problem of having to account for over 10 times the density of Manhattan by trying to stack 10 levels of Manhattan style development into a hull that is only 90 to 300 meters high.
Sorry,I just love to talk about this
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Heh, well, I always figured it to be a lot bigger than just 1km in length, but even were it twice that size, the city, as shown in the series, just wouldn't fit. I can only assume that they were only concerned with telling an exciting, dramatic story without really giving a crap if there was even a hint of realism to it. Besides, we all know that in the 80s, anything was possible.
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Yep - and of course, when I was a kid, I used to think Macross Island was Australia, because the SDF-1 was just that big O.o
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Sad thing is that, if you think about it, the series clearly showed SDF-1 sitting in the middle of the city and it certainly couldn't have been more than half the size of it, so... pretty obvious it wouldn't all fit.
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