Topic: Starship Operators: AKA Ender's Game the Anime
Blayne Bradley
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Starship Operators is a 13 episode anime series by animation studio J.C Staff, which is about how military cadets upon learning that their home planetary-nation of Kiba has surrendered without putting up a fight and their instructors and senior officers have abandoned the ship (the Ameratsu) decode to take the ship and fight a one ship guerilla war against the "Kingdom" (the enemy alliance), but in order to get supplies they sold the broadcasting rights of their struggle to a broadcasting tv company turning it into something akin to a reality tv show.
The anime is surprisingly extremely on the "hard" end of the Mohs Scale of Scifi Hardness, as in space is huge, weapons engage at ranges of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, gravity is generated through centrugical spinning and sections that dont spin the crew will "float" around in, no mecha, each battle can take roughly hours to days to resolve pretty much the only "soft" aspect is that they use FTL "warp drive" for interstellar travel everything else seems easily within our theoretical capability.
While not quite Ender's Game it is stylistically very close with some genius cadets manning a warship against overwhelming odds relying on their ability to outthink the enemy rather then using brute force and earns points from using the navy trick of "looking for an absense of noise*" to find an enemy state of the art "stealth" ship (an actual real life trick used by the Russians to locate British and American subs).
*Noise in this case defined as ambient radiation, electromagnetic signals, UV/Infrared etc etc, the trial and error methods they used to find it in the end were fairly clever and logical.
The animation (when they glide in low g especially) seems a little stiff and the voice acting sounds a little bland to me but considering I just finished watching Tenga Toppa Gurren lagann everything will sound bland to me now.
The focus on tactics, technical detail and later on diplomacy and politics very much give me the impression of "Ender's Game/Shadow Puppets could be made like this." So if you liked Ender's Game you will probably like Starship Operators.
I definitely recommend giving it a look.
Also don't bother me about making a blog, I'm working on it, it's a work in progress it will happen eventually.
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That's not Ender's Game IN ANIME, it is "The Star Fox" IN ANIME. And 'an absence of noise' would not work unless the ships are the size of a planet.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled non-nitpicking.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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It could work but would be astronomically difficult, in story they took 12 people and had to manually check 256 subsections of the area of space each, this being the "narrowed down" area they they predicted based on the "point of entry" and what their best known intelligence on the ships maximum speed was, the trick in the end was to detonate 50 some odd 'torpeedos' in a grid pattern using the flash of light to for an instant illuminate the target ships silhouette for their telescope to see it.
Also I think your vastly under estimating how easy it is to spot energy sources even in a solar system, from my readings you could easily spot the maneuvering thrusters (the kind on the space shuttle) as far out as Jupitor (the enemy ship had accelerated to maximum speed before warping out/in and thus was coasting on its already built up acceleration).
Star Fox is an arcade air warfare game not something that that clearly gets its inspiration from that calculus based space combat simulation tabletop wargame.
Edit to add: Another thing I like is that the warship in question also seems designed to be like an actual warship, it has THREE bridges (conning, fire control, and the main one) and ALL are cramped, the show is heaily skewed towards realism.
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"they use FTL "warp drive" for interstellar travel everything else seems easily within our theoretical capability."
This is just a nitpick, I know, but... how? The speed of light isn't like a speed limit sign. You can't just go faster. It's kind of a hard limit.
I mean, it's fine for science fiction, it's no big deal. But even if it was theoretically possible, which I'm not gonna give you... it would be really, really hard.
Edit: More importantly, nothing in your description of this show sounded anything like Ender's Game, save that kids are doing something in it. That's your own description I'm talking about.
Not saying it's bad or anything like that! I haven't seen it. I am glad you enjoy it. But the Ender's Game reference seems... overstated.
Also, this is a perfect blog post. Have you finished making that blog you were talking about?
Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Blayne Bradley
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Actually ftl travel IS possible (or at least plausible) but right now the most comprehensive theory to allow it is the alcubierre warp drive which require huge amounts of exotic particles; the point is that at some point it is plausible that we could one day figure out a way to travel faster than c, only that accelerating faster than it is impossible.
However I think you missed what I meant "ASIDE from the FTL everything is within our theoretical capability" is what I meant, which is what I meant via "everything else".
quote: Edit: More importantly, nothing in your description of this show sounded anything like Ender's Game, save that kids are doing something in it. That's your own description I'm talking about.
The show reminds me stylistically of Ender's Game, I am unsure of how to better explain it, but the focus on viable tactics and logical technical solutions (as opposed to technobabble), on having a young crew of cadets taking on impossible odds, the fact hat its fairly hard science fiction and the way its presented just reminds me very much of Ender's Game or at least something that Ender's Game fans would like adding to my confidence that an animated Ender's Game would be the best choice.
It just the WAY the show FEELS is very Ender's Game-ish.
quote: Also, this is a perfect blog post. Have you finished making that blog you were talking about?
quote: Also don't bother me about making a blog, I'm working on it, it's a work in progress it will happen eventually.
No it isn't. You demonstrate your ignorance of the classics of the Golden Age.
quote:It could work but would be astronomically difficult
Astronomically is the correct word, yes. Twelve people and 256 subsections is ridiculous. At any sort of realistic distance, an enemy starship is going to subtend a solid angle covering millionths, if not billionths, of the sky. Consequently you need to check millions, if not billions, of subsections; and some of those are going to be quiet by sheer chance, quite without having enemy starships in them.
quote:"they use FTL "warp drive" for interstellar travel everything else seems easily within our theoretical capability."
This is just a nitpick, I know, but... how? The speed of light isn't like a speed limit sign. You can't just go faster. It's kind of a hard limit.
Come now. Blayne says that everything that isn't the FTL drive seemed theoretically reasonable, and you object that the FTL drive is unphysical?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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In fact, let's consider an enemy warship the size of the Earth's Moon, and at a distance of 1.5 lightseconds; that is the size of the Moon's orbit, and essentially spitting distance. It covers about 0.00048% of the sky, according to the Wiki. In other words, you can fit about 200k of these warships into the 4pi solid angle surrounding you. That's how many subsections you'd need to check for the case of finding the Moon, assuming of course that it is stealthed. Now try it with a realistically-sized warship at the same distance. Oh, and what's the probability that none of the 200k subsections are silent anyway, without having a stealthed warship in them?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Blayne? I misread your statement about FTL. I apologize, for that was really the only nitpicky complaint I had with anything you said. Everything else is just fine, though it still doesn't sound like Ender's Game.
Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
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It's BSG/Sunshine in Anime.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Actually ftl travel IS possible (or at least plausible)
No.
Google up the Alcubierre Drive, its a process that uses negative energy to compress space-time infront of the ship and expands it behind the ship to achieve superluminal velocities, in fact it was even covered within "Physics of the Impossible" by Michiu Kaku.
quote: No it isn't. You demonstrate your ignorance of the classics of the Golden Age.
I distinctly remember the first startfox from the NES being you in a fighter in whats essentially a rail shooter, no complex space warfare tactics involved amd definately not consistent with Project Rho's suggestions on writing handwavium free scifi.
Basically I look at Starship Operators and find aside from "the one big lie" is VERY consistent with Project Rho.
quote: Astronomically is the correct word, yes. Twelve people and 256 subsections is ridiculous. At any sort of realistic distance, an enemy starship is going to subtend a solid angle covering millionths, if not billionths, of the sky. Consequently you need to check millions, if not billions, of subsections; and some of those are going to be quiet by sheer chance, quite without having enemy starships in them.
This however isn't taking into account broadband scanning/detection suites that we could reasonable assume they have to quickly and efficently scan the sky and narrow it down. Remember at least in the context of the episode they knew exactly where it entered the star system and since things like acceleration and g forces are also handled realistically and e know for it to remain stealthy it has to "coast" along on its pre-established speed this further narrows down what their looking for, presumably in universe they have the technical ability and information we don't have that lets them narrow it down further (and apparantly the AI of a fairly advanced AI though its not a character).
There was three parts to this, firstly they took 10 second interval snapshots of each section they're scanning presumably to find movement, secondly they searching for the absense of whatever ambient radiation/noise/em field/photon emmisions etc that would show up normally but would be absent because of their known intelligence on how the stealth mechanism works.
They aren't trying to comb the whole sky or an arbitrary distance of depth of the sky but roughly know which cube of space to be looking in.
Lastly the above method actually didn't work on its own in universe, they used it to confirm the location of the 'boat' once they got its rough coordinates through throwing the equivilent of a flashbang near it thus allowing them to spot its' silhouette. (Which wouldn't have worked either if they weren't lucky, as had the torpeedos detonated infront of the sub they wouldnt be able to spot it, they HAD to get it right behind the sub)
It's not like they only have 1 telescope, they clearly had advanced tools to speed up/narrow down the process.
Also normal warships are easily spotted, I can't really tell if the jargon is anything close to realistic but something about "neutrino emmissions" pretty much if you enter a star system with the warp drive they'll know your there instantly (figuratively), I just think of it the sameway they do it in the Haloverse with the cherenkov radiation that comes off of ships carrying nukes exiting slipspace.
Presumably they have some kind of 'radar' that detects whatever it is ships normally radiate that is different from background noise. I can't recall if in the first episode if they detected that mobile railgun platform first or if the railgun shot at them first giving away its position.
Here we go
quote: Wargames like GDW's STAR CRUISER describe interplanetary combat as being like hide and go seek with bazookas. Stealthy ships are tiny needles hidden in the huge haystack of deep space. The first ship that detects its opponent wins by vaporizing said opponent with a nuclear warhead. Turning on active sensors is tantamount to suicide. It is like one of the bazooka-packing seekers clicking on a flashlight: all your enemies instantly see and shoot you before you get a good look. You'd best have all your sensors and weapons far from your ship on expendable remote drones.
Well, that turns out not to be the case.
The "bazooka" part is accurate, but not the "hiding" part. If the spacecraft are torchships, their thrust power is several terawatts. This means the exhaust is so intense that it could be detected from Alpha Centauri. By a passive sensor.
The Space Shuttle's much weaker main engines could be detected past the orbit of Pluto. The Space Shuttle's manoeuvering thrusters could be seen as far as the asteroid belt. And even a puny ship using ion drive to thrust at a measly 1/1000 of a g could be spotted at one astronomical unit.
quote: And if you are hoping to lose your tiny heat signature in the vastness of the sky, I've got some bad news for you. Current astronomical instruments can do a complete sky survey in about four hours, or less
Note: In series I have never seen a single engagement take less then 5 hours "in universe" to resolve, one had lasted 3 days.
Clearly finding a single decently sized ship isn't that hard afterall, the stealth ship in the series was fairly reasonable, its probably similar to the Normandy from Mass Effect, it stores heat inside it for as long as possible, coasts on the acceleration from prior to entering warp so it doesn't need its engines, painted black so you can't see it and shielded from sensors.
Thus all it needs to do is coast along until its in range of you, fire its main weapon but then again first shot tends to win.
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I have asked a theoretical physicist, and he thinks it's nonsense. Even Alcubierre himself never said it was "plausible". He published a highly speculative paper. Over 15 years ago.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Blayne Bradley
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Michiu Kaku had actually had Alcubierre as a guest on his show (Scifi Science: Physics of the Impossible) and they talked about the drive certainly not with the tone "this isn't possible" but clearly "this is plausible direction for ftl travel".
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