Mobile Suit jumping and landing on earth

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MythSearcher
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Re: Mobile Suit jumping and landing on earth

Underrated GM Custom wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 2:56 pm Oh agreed, in universe I do think the legs can take it but I also think they have some massive dampeners in their legs otherwise the vibration mechanics up and down the legs would have an awful deleterious effect on all their fasteners. Those poor deck mechanics. While I love the skipping jumps in 0083 I think the hesitation in 08th is the most realistic portrayal of launching a 60+ ton machine through the air and hoping it can still walk afterwards.

My point about the car was that they're designed to go forward, but if they were to suddenly go sideways at the same speed a lot of internal components would have a shear failures. Can you design around that? Absolutely, as long as you don't break the limits of materials science you can over-engineer that car to move in a way it's not supposed to and be just fine.
Yes, but most cars aren't really built for being hit sideways either.
My point is that anything out of the realm of just a basic jump shouldn't really be the responsibility of the design engineer, its a military machine and if you take fire or somehow the enemy hits you, whether or not you are in a jump or not, you are very likely in trouble anyway.
Now let's consider that from a Gundam perspective and an engineering economics perspective. Let's say in-universe materials science would allow for a MS to take that sudden transverse force and it's internals don't snap in half but in doing so would require a considerable cost increase. Would it be worthwhile to design around having locomotion casualties?

Hard question to answer without knowing costs of course. If this engineering change would require a 5x increase to the Zaku II's cost, most likely not. But what if it was a 2x increase? Is it a worthwhile cost to have a MS can that be knocked to the ground after a catastrophic landing then get back up, or is it better to have twice as many suits. Tough question eh?
Ah, their magic material likely can withstand strange direction impacts as well.
Considering the tanks in-universe are at least 1/3~1/2 weight of a MS, and the MS somehow can still kick them around like football...
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Re: Mobile Suit jumping and landing on earth

MythSearcher wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 3:02 pm Yes, but most cars aren't really built for being hit sideways either.
Precisely!
My point is that anything out of the realm of just a basic jump shouldn't really be the responsibility of the design engineer, its a military machine and if you take fire or somehow the enemy hits you, whether or not you are in a jump or not, you are very likely in trouble anyway.
I'd have to disagree with you there. Since Anti-MS combat is a fact of life I guarantee the government put something in their RFP to Anaheim that the MS needs someway to recover if they slip on the terrain or get knocked down by the enemy. If DARPA requested bids today on a powered exo-skeleton they wouldn't accept any machines that have broken components on non-standard jumps, the designer would need to plan for non-standard landings. MILSPEC is after all quite rugged.

I must concede my initial argument is a moot point. I approached this from a modern machine design perspective but Seto Kaiba pointed out they seem to have super nuts and bolts that resist shear forces so in-universe I'm sure all the internals have the same magic material to let them land however they want.
Considering the tanks in-universe are at least 1/3~1/2 weight of a MS, and the MS somehow can still kick them around like football...
You know I really loved that scene until one day I looked up how much a MS weighs and how much the tanks weigh.

Back to OPs question. In the 0083 opening we see crashed debris in their training area that looks like a beautiful still taken straight out of Macross. Presumably these are crashed colony pieces that are partially embedded into the crust. I would hazard a guess the piece we see is at least 2,000ft in height. Might be more, might be less it's hard to tell based on the perspective shown.

In one frame we see the Zaku's easily jump to the halfway point, in another when it's blindsided by the Powered GM it looks as though the Zaku is about to clear the top of the structure, but it could also represent it clearing the side of the structure. Either way that's quite a distance!
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Jameedaark
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Re: Mobile Suit jumping and landing on earth

Thank you all for the interesting comments. The purpose of my post was to understand if actually with the official data (for example the zaku ) it was able to make the jumps that are seen in the various anime starting from 0079. It is obvious that the animations are deliberately exaggerated especially in certain scenes, to dramatize. But it is interesting to try to calculate in terms of simple physics, how much a robot 18 meters tall and 60 tons heavy could jump. Clearly I don't want to go into the engineering of materials. We are talking about fiction, so it is assumed that in the year 0079 mobile suits can be built and that they have certain performances. Understand what can be this performance was the purpose of my post. Trying to be reasonable, in the light of the gundam anime, data and a minimum of common sense.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Mobile Suit jumping and landing on earth

Underrated GM Custom wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 3:27 pm

I'd have to disagree with you there. Since Anti-MS combat is a fact of life I guarantee the government put something in their RFP to Anaheim that the MS needs someway to recover if they slip on the terrain or get knocked down by the enemy. If DARPA requested bids today on a powered exo-skeleton they wouldn't accept any machines that have broken components on non-standard jumps, the designer would need to plan for non-standard landings. MILSPEC is after all quite rugged.

Well, I'd say if a tank is being run into sideways by another tank, or being fired upon, it is much more problem than the designers can design for.
I mean, the fired upon is pretty much a non-issue because most likely the round will punch a hole in every direction other than the front, where most of its armour is. So a MS, when in a jump got hit by enemy fire, anything coming from the front is just slowing it down, making it easier to land if it did not just puncture like what killed Mikail in 0080. Anything on the sides or back is likely going to make it crash land in the most horrible way. even if it didn't puncture. So It would be pretty hard to say that its the designers fault. The pilot shouldn't really be jumping in the first place...
And if run into on the sides, or back, it is also right in a battle and I don't even think it will be able to land on its legs most of the time if this happens. Usually the enemy will be holding a heat or beam weapon if being that close range and ram into you. So landing is likely least of your concern now.

We can also look at it this way. I doubt the MS will just be utilising frontal jumps.
We see them jumping sideways, not as far as full boosted jumps, but at the same time they do not enjoy the full thrust to slow them down as well. So I doubt the legs aren't designed for a side landing.
Considering the jump won't be using the full capabilities of the legs(safety factor aren't 1
in military vehicles), the landing should also be less then the full capabilities of the legs. So a "standard jump" is well within the designs and anything not standard will really be dependent on the situation but I think regular bumps and loss of balance, etc. should be well within the realms of the designed specs.

However, that is also likely why the ground pilots are also required to be able to do certain level of maintenance, checks and minimal repairs after a fight. A loose nut might be fatal in your next jump.

Also, thinking of which, the MS should be designed to take the landing when fully loaded.
Most of the time they won't be landing when fully loaded because they must have expended propellant.
Thus having constant thrust, the downward acceleration will become less and less during the jump since the thrust to mass ratio is now getting higher and higher with the mass decreasing. At some point when the thrust to mass ratio is above 1, the legs can be taking even less force than running or maybe walking without thrust.
I must concede my initial argument is a moot point. I approached this from a modern machine design perspective but Seto Kaiba pointed out they seem to have super nuts and bolts that resist shear forces so in-universe I'm sure all the internals have the same magic material to let them land however they want.
And they also have really big nuts and bolts.

You know I really loved that scene until one day I looked up how much a MS weighs and how much the tanks weigh.
Because I know the weights before hand, I hated the scene from the beginning. It makes very little sense not only in the durability of the vehicles, but also in terms of Physics of action and reaction.

Its like they think making the MS moving slow makes them look big and heavy and realistic so they love to do so, but their artistic license doesn't give them the slightest sense of how heavy a real military vehicle made with metal is or should be, and just think of them as balloons.

Even if they have a more reasonable weight for the MS, more like a 75kg person wearing a 25kg full plate armour instead of a skinny 55kg guy like me without armour, kicking a football made from iron isn't going to be sending it flying like a normal football while the man is still standing there like kicking a regular football.
Back to OPs question. In the 0083 opening we see crashed debris in their training area that looks like a beautiful still taken straight out of Macross. Presumably these are crashed colony pieces that are partially embedded into the crust. I would hazard a guess the piece we see is at least 2,000ft in height. Might be more, might be less it's hard to tell based on the perspective shown.

In one frame we see the Zaku's easily jump to the halfway point, in another when it's blindsided by the Powered GM it looks as though the Zaku is about to clear the top of the structure, but it could also represent it clearing the side of the structure. Either way that's quite a distance!
Well, the 0083 MSs are modified after the OYW and do have higher thrust to mass ratio.

There is also this idea I have. For ground units, they can well replace the thermo-nuclear rockets with thermo-nuclear jets(or hybrid ones with chemical fuels), and just use air as propellant, thus reducing the propellant mass and giving them even higher thrust to mass ratio.
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Re: Mobile Suit jumping and landing on earth

MythSearcher wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 5:17 am Also, thinking of which, the MS should be designed to take the landing when fully loaded.
That's a great point I hadn't considered, standard MS typically have more weight bearing capacity than what they typically sortie with.
Well, the 0083 MSs are modified after the OYW and do have higher thrust to mass ratio.

There is also this idea I have. For ground units, they can well replace the thermo-nuclear rockets with thermo-nuclear jets(or hybrid ones with chemical fuels), and just use air as propellant, thus reducing the propellant mass and giving them even higher thrust to mass ratio.
That makes sense, I believe the Gundam's corefighter used hybrid engines in Earth's atmosphere if I recall. It's been a minute since I read up on thermo-nuclear rockets / jets, for anyone else reading that wants a refresher here's the thread that I use: https://www.mechatalk.net/viewtopic.php?t=17395
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