Subject: Re: Mrowr?
From: Daniel Pawtowski
Date: 10/1/1996 10:15 PM
To: kats@maxie.com

Lessee...  "laser" stands for "light amplification by simulated
emission of radiation," if I remember the acronym properly.  All

I think others have covered that already, the word "radiation" in that
acronym refers to non-ionizing radiation like visible light, infrared,
ultraviolent, etc.  Uranium gives off ionizing radiation, which has 
nothing to do with lasers.


Picking nits:  what exactly *is* the "speed of heat"?

Razor did call it the "Speed of heat turbine enhancement" the first time.
My guess is that it's an engine modification, possibly some sort of
super-afterburner.  From what we saw in "Mutilor", it gives both
increased thrust and higher altitude.  Which could be either an altered
inlet geometry that lets it take in more air, or a setup that involves
injecting an oxidizer that enables the engines to burn hotter than
normal.  The latter fits better with the word "heat" in the name, and
also allows operation in space.


  Admittedly, the episode is unclear about whether or not "Speed of Heat"
was used for space flight.  When they boarded the ship, it could still have
been in atmosphere.  At the end for the true space combat, they used
"Sub-Orbital Mode", which involved an extra set of engines (Geez, where
does Razor find all that _room_ in his airframe :-), presumably pure
rockets.
  Curiously enough, the deployment of the "Sub-Orbital Mode" rocket 
engines out on the ends of long poles away from the fuselage makes a 
lot of sense for a space fighter.  The same logic is why the EA-23
Starfury space fighters from Babylon 5 have a similar engine
configuration.  Although I suspect that, in the case of SWAT Kats, it 
was just something that the artist thought looked cool.
The reasoning in question is that, since your aerodynamic control
surfaces are useless in space, you get more maneuverability if you place
your engines in a symmetric pattern far away from the center of mass of
the ship.  When you add in some engineering concerns, the best alternatives
work out to be three engines in a "Y" formation, or four engines in 
a big plus sign or a big "X" (as used by both Starfuries and the TurboKat).


have managed to find holes in them.  Yet given the quality of the 
stories *and* the animation, *especially* compared to H-B's earlier
work, the Kats were definitely an improvement over what H-B put out
in the 70s and 80s.

  That sort of thing is often the sign of a producer or creator who
_wants_ to produce a cartoon show that's for a broad audience, but
is limited to kiddee stuff by his bosses who mostly want to sell
toys.  Witness "The Real Ghostbusters" and the battles JMS had with 
the DIC executives who wanted it dumbed down.  You generally have to
end up slipping in bits to entertain adults without the network
execs noticing.

                                             Daniel Pawtowski
dpawtows@vt.edu