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Astro Technical Facts ...

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2014 12:11 am
by Tetsuwan Penguin
Astro has a turbine jet engine in each of his lower legs that can also be operated as a rocket engine (he has tanks of both Jet/Rocket fuel and Oxidizer somewhere in his body). When flying on Jet power, the engines are air breathing. The air intake for the engines is funneled through Astro's body from his mouth to his legs, so he must keep his mouth open while operating his Jet Engines.

Astro's twin machine guns are mounted in his hips, though the way he is often drawn they appear to project from his buttocks. Each gun carries 250 rounds of 5mm parabellum cartridges. The shell casings vaporize when ejected at high speed from the guns. The guns can fire at a maximum rate of 1000 rounds per minute, so he can use up that ammo in a quarter of a second! (Wonder how many times Tezuka ignored that fact!) We never see him being reloaded either!

Astro runs on liquid atomic fuel, usually specified as being deuterium (which would actually imply that his atomic power cell uses the fusion process rather than fission or atomic decay). He was often shown in the manga being refueled 'enema' style, however in the anime more often uses a socket inside his chest cavity. There are also references to electric power recharging as well. In reality, Astro would need replenishment of Atomic fuel, Jet/Rocket fuel and oxidizer, as well as reloads of Ammo.

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2014 3:16 pm
by Earthshine
Where was this taken from exactly? I don't doubt this but I just can't remember reading these technical breakdowns anywhere. :confused:

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2014 10:31 pm
by Tetsuwan Penguin
"Earthshine" wrote:Where was this taken from exactly? I don't doubt this but I just can't remember reading these technical breakdowns anywhere. :confused:


The bits about his jets and hip guns came from the "Let's draw Manga, Astro Boy" book. The part about 'refueling' is just my observations from the various Manga and Anime I've seen and mentally collected.

Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2014 2:42 am
by diehard67
I like the idea that he runs on fusion power, it is much safer, fusion reactions have to be maintained or they just stop, fission reactions have to be rained in or they run away.

he would need to store the helium from the fusion reactor, he could make some money selling that stuff.

I would think he would also have batteries for backup power and maybe a hydrogen fuel cell to get him powered up if the batteries don't have enough power left to start the reactor, how many times did he almost run out of power or did run out and came back after adding some fuel.

the batteries would also be used to handle load spikes, the reactor would have some delay adjusting to changes in load and the output voltage depends on the load, traditional generators like the ones used in nuclear power plants connected to the steam turbines to maintain the voltage when the load changes you have to change the speed of the turbines.

supercaps could also be used to help with load changes.

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:00 am
by Reid958
This might be a hard qrestion, I was thinking how much in percentage, of how much Astro uses up his energy, like useing his energy power for his rockets, or powring on his search lights. Maybe for example, his eye lights are simpler to cars head lights, but abit more powerful I suppose. But lf you don't get my meaning, I'll explain another way.
It's just I'm bad at understanding in Kinowatts and other maths facts, evening Technical stuff. But I stil understood this thread. ^^
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlamp