How do Pacific Rim Helicopters work?

[Archinist]

Just asking how they work? I've never actually watched the film, but I thought it was about modern-day USA with giant robots and generic godzillas?

[Tribble]

IIRC they work a lot like real-world heliocpters, except they are much more powerful than real-world ones as 8 of them were shown carrying a Jaeger at one point (either that or Jaegers are a lot lighter than expected).

Edit: Here is a wired article as to how may regular helicopters would likely be needed to accomplish the same feat:

https://www.wired.com/2013/07/how-would ... cific-rim/

For general info about helicopters, see here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter

[Archinist]

IIRC they work a lot like real-world heliocpters, except they are much more powerful than real-world ones as 8 of them were shown carrying a Jaeger at one point (either that or Jaegers are a lot lighter than expected).

For general info about helicopters, see here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter

I know what a helicopter is, I'm just asking how they can carry thousands of tons of equipment without any negative side effects.

[Sea Skimmer]

Probably using the same bullshit field generators that make the mecha work. Though those mecha must be fairly light for their size, or else they'd have ripped up the roads much more. That guy on wired basing the weight on the human form is illogical.

[Tribble]

Movie physics, we don't have any helicopters that remotely approach that kind of carrying capacity. The wire article speculated that the helicopters would have to be ~1000x more powerful than existing designs for 8 of them to lift the Jaeger. Of course, given that we are talking about giant robots fighting Godzilla type monsters...

The reason why I mentioned the general article is that I'm not an engineer or scientist by any standpoint, and I wonder if it's possible to build a helicopter that size with that kind of power, physics-wise. Would there be limits to what can of life you could expect based on the blade-length, no matter how powerful the engine is?

[Tribble]

Probably using the same bullshit field generators that make the mecha work. Though those mecha must be fairly light for their size, or else they'd have ripped up the roads much more. That guy on wired basing the weight on the human form is illogical.

The point being though that sci-fi physics are at work since real-world helicopters would not be able to life the thing.

I

[Batman]

1. How do you know Jaegers weigh thousands of tons? Sure, using real world physics they should, but what's your canon information they do? Especially as you already admitted to not even having seen the movie?
2. There wouldn't BE any negative side effects, they'd just plain not be capable to ever lift the thing off the ground. Cables are attached to Jaeger, helicopters try to lift it, fail, and give up.
3. Since that's obviously not what happens the helicopters are apparently able to deal with the mass of a Jaeger SOMEHOW. Mass reduction, repulsors, the Jaegers being made of balsa wood, something enabled the copters to deal with it. (out of universe that something is' because Hollywood doesn't give a damn about (and probably doesn't understand) physics' but that approach isn't very popular around here). Without knowing the nature of that 'somehow' it's impossible to tell what, if any, negative side effects there would be.

[Archinist]

1. How do you know Jaegers weigh thousands of tons? Sure, using real world physics they should, but what's your canon information they do? Especially as you already admitted to not even having seen the movie?
2. There wouldn't BE any negative side effects, they'd just plain not be capable to ever lift the thing off the ground. Cables are attached to Jaeger, helicopters try to lift it, fail, and give up.
3. Since that's obviously not what happens the helicopters are apparently able to deal with the mass of a Jaeger SOMEHOW. Mass reduction, repulsors, the Jaegers being made of balsa wood, something enabled the copters to deal with it. (out of universe that something is' because Hollywood doesn't give a damn about (and probably doesn't understand) physics' but that approach isn't very popular around here). Without knowing the nature of that 'somehow' it's impossible to tell what, if any, negative side effects there would be.

Well I would assume they would weigh more than your average M1A2 tank, at the very least. As I said earlier, the only bits of PR I've seen are the uber-powerful helicopters and the part where the same humans that can build TARDIS-grade helicopters also build a big stone wall with no active defenses.

[Lord Revan]

basically it's that movie logic I keep mentioning, a giant ass mech being carried by helicopers looks cool, so the movie bends the "rules" a bit for the sake of a cool scene. It's not like Pacific Rim is all that realistic to begin with going more for the style of a classic giant robot anime in live action then a realistic depiction.

sometimes you just have to accept that certain scenes aren't 100% rational if you think about them too hard

[Lord Revan]

(out of universe that something is' because Hollywood doesn't give a damn about (and probably doesn't understand) physics' but that approach isn't very popular around here)

in this case that approach is wrong though because they knew about the physics but thought that having a cool visual was more important then being 100% physically accurate they discuss about in the blue-ray extras (I know as I own the film on blue-ray). So it's not that didn't give a damn but rather they thought that giving an entertaining film was more important then one that was 100% scientifically accurate (especially since it's not of a super realistic style anyway).

[Tribble]

1. How do you know Jaegers weigh thousands of tons? Sure, using real world physics they should, but what's your canon information they do? Especially as you already admitted to not even having seen the movie?

There was promotional material stating that Gypsy Ganger weighed 7,080 tons:





I also believe there was some dialogue which gave a mass-range, but I can't remember it off the top of my head, I haven't seen it since I first watched it.

2. There wouldn't BE any negative side effects, they'd just plain not be capable to ever lift the thing off the ground. Cables are attached to Jaeger, helicopters try to lift it, fail, and give up.

Sorry, I should have been more clear: is it possible to build a real-world physics helicopter that size that can carry that much? I wasn't trying to suggest that there would be some kind of danger involved.

3. Since that's obviously not what happens the helicopters are apparently able to deal with the mass of a Jaeger SOMEHOW. Mass reduction, repulsors, the Jaegers being made of balsa wood, something enabled the copters to deal with it. (out of universe that something is' because Hollywood doesn't give a damn about (and probably doesn't understand) physics' but that approach isn't very popular around here). Without knowing the nature of that 'somehow' it's impossible to tell what, if any, negative side effects there would be.

Likely some kind of exotic tech was involved if we were to treat the promotional material as canon.

[Batman]

''We did it because it looked cool and damn the physics' still sounds like 'don't give a damn about the physics' to me.

[Simon_Jester]

I know what a helicopter is, I'm just asking how they can carry thousands of tons of equipment without any negative side effects.

That is a very good question, with no good answers except "they can't, real helicopters could never carry more than the tiniest of tiny fractions of that much weight."

See, this is an example of why we encourage people to NOT make impossible assumptions or portray totally impossible things because "it will be cool." Years later, people are still making fun of those helicopters.

[Sea Skimmer]

Even if they could lift the weight, anything like a real Chinook configuration would not be able to formation fly like that without very low speeds, and even then oh like 90% probability of mission failure is still in play. This is an aircraft not known for agility. At high speed the downwash of the leading aircraft would become massive turbulence for the trailing aircraft.

Honestly I bet someone in the production office wanted to make a big WIG aircraft for the movie, which would be a far more viable approach to high speed deployment of big objects, but got told it was either too expensive, or the classic 'the audience will be confused' excuse.

[Joun_Lord]

Clearly its a scaling issue. Those helicopters are bigger then the mech. Sure they look like bog standard Chinooks but in reality they are embiggened variants closer to helicarriers. The cockpit is an entire command center, the cargo hold is actually a flight deck carrying dozens of fighters and the rotor blades bigger then a skyscraper.

Really though in universe there could be several handwavey ways to explain the choppas carrying the mech. They are modified with some fancy anti-grav generator because it was cheaper to retrofit existing designs then build whole new hover copters. The jaeger has a anti gravity field and the helicopters are just maneuvering it rather then actually carrying it. Could be made of some stupid sci-fi exotic material that weighs as much a soap bubbles while not having the same level of protection.

I think its impossible for the helicopters to carry something so huge and tough without some bullshit handwave. As someone already said, its the rule of cool, it looks cool so normal rules like physics and mass and the lifting capacity of existing hardware can be ignored.

[Q99]

Really just a handwave/rule of cool thing.

Honestly I bet someone in the production office wanted to make a big WIG aircraft for the movie, which would be a far more viable approach to high speed deployment of big objects, but got told it was either too expensive, or the classic 'the audience will be confused' excuse.

I wouldn't bet on that, largely because Pacific Rim tends to RL-looking stuff outside the Jaegers. It wasn't aiming to look like a SF future, but the near-future, plus robots.

[Simon_Jester]

I would just like to underline how the tendency to do things that can only be justified with handwaves...

This tendency backfires a LOT. You can get away with it in a very, very glorious story if there are enough genuinely interesting things happening. But it's not easy.

[Sea Skimmer]

I wouldn't bet on that, largely because Pacific Rim tends to RL-looking stuff outside the Jaegers. It wasn't aiming to look like a SF future, but the near-future, plus robots.

Well the Caspian Sea Monster first flew in 1966, so this is hardly calling for a sci fi future. Nobody builds them because their is no real way to make them safe enough for use as transports, and no real life military role that demands them where you might accept a realtively high peacetime loss rate for. But once unlimited money scenarios take hold as is explicit in Pacific Rim, they have an awful lot of direct utility.

Also with the huge waves they'd look great on screen. But I'm sure doing that kind of effect well would turn into a couple million dollars of CGI, and avoiding non story important extra stuff like that is how you stay a 200 million dollar movie and not a 250-300 million dollar movie. The helicopters as I recall don't look too good. Seems to me Emphasis was on the Jaegers looking good first and everything descending from that point.

[Q99]

Fortunately, Pacific Rim *mostly* limits the handwaves to giant robots and giant monsters, and if you're the type of person interested in the genre, those are a given to begin with.

(Other stuff: The drift, which is a cool thematic tool. The wall, which informs the sense of desperation and giving up. The helicopters, which are there for cool airdrops).

Well the Caspian Sea Monster first flew in 1966, so this is hardly calling for a sci fi future. Nobody builds them because their is no real way to make them safe enough for use as transports, and no real life military role that demands them where you might accept a realtively high peacetime loss rate for. But once unlimited money scenarios take hold as is explicit in Pacific Rim, they have an awful lot of direct utility.

Also with the huge waves they'd look great on screen. But I'm sure doing that kind of effect well would turn into a couple million dollars of CGI, and avoiding non story important extra stuff like that is how you stay a 200 million dollar movie and not a 250-300 million dollar movie. The helicopters as I recall don't look too good. Seems to me Emphasis was on the Jaegers looking good first and everything descending from that point.

Good to know! Hm, still, it can't do the kind of entrance shots helis can, of dramatically lowering Gipsy in (... from a distance it could've walked anyway ^^).

[Borgholio]

Would have been cooler (since we're doing a lot of hand-waving anyways) to have the Jaegers use rocket backpacks to get around instead of helicopters. That could allow for equally dramatic entrances and make a bit more sense than lumbering whirlybirds.

[Elheru Aran]

So.... considering the size of the load they're moving... you're okay with laying waste to half a city when they take off?

[Sea Skimmer]

The bigger problem might be explaining how this notional backpack of Saturn F-1 engines does not get used to burn the monsters alive with. Heck why not just make the backpack into a drone...and have it hover around frying them massively while they cannot reach to punch back. Or drop proportional scaled barbells on its head for that matter.

[Q99]

The bigger problem might be explaining how this notional backpack of Saturn F-1 engines does not get used to burn the monsters alive with. Heck why not just make the backpack into a drone...and have it hover around frying them massively while they cannot reach to punch back. Or drop proportional scaled barbells on its head for that matter.

I mean, we even see that Gipsy has the 'vortex turbine' in it's chest used for both thrusting and burning a monster alive, so we *know* it'd work (and we also know that it pretty much zeroes Gipsy's power supply).


While a lot of people's suggested 'easy kaiju fixes' aren't that easy, "flying jaeger-sized precision rocket jets," really is one that'd work for everything but maybe the underwater stuff.

Hm, come to think of it, this is Super Mechagodzilla, isn't it? Merged with a backpack that split off to serve as a flying assault vehicle.

[Sea Skimmer]

If we're designing Mechagodzilla now, then I'd also like a front rocket pack, this will balance better overall and now we can have TWO detaching robots. Also with the packs fitted Super Mechagodzilla will now have reactive armor against monster punches. Monster punches, fuel tank explodes at it back out the puncture!

Notionally nothing should stop the rockets from being able to fire underwater, at least down to a couple thousand psi of back pressure. The way to do this is have magazines of solid fuel starting cartridges to pressurize the we'll assume for maximum movie, liquid fuel engines, engines on demand. It would only cost money, and weight, and size.

Also for the love of god we will at least give our Special Fail Defense Force troopers at least a few Artillery Divisions of sixteen inch howitzers for weapons. Being blindly coastal attacked by a big battleship seems more net threatening then at least the the low rank monsters.

[Feil]

1. How do you know Jaegers weigh thousands of tons? Sure, using real world physics they should, but what's your canon information they do?

Jaegers don't float.