Mobile Suit G-Forces in the Cosmic Era

[bowspearer]

I'm currently in the middle of researching a few things for a video on the Cosmic Era and I was wondering what the maximum G-forces were that a pilot of a mobile suit, specifically a high mobility suit like the Aile Strike Gundam, would be expected to endure and therefore what kind of force and pressure the flight suit and pilot seat would be required to offset.

If anyone has any ideas, knows anyone who has worked it out, or can point to any similar examples in other continuities, I'd appreciate it, as I seem to have hit a dead end with this part of my research.

[John-Luck Pickerd]

There is no real concrete number on g force, other than that Justice's thrusters can generate 8g, and Freedom's 7.3g.

[bowspearer]

There is no real concrete number on g force, other than that Justice's thrusters can generate 8g, and Freedom's 7.3g.

Thanks for that, although that's more of a ball park that no idea at all, and I think it gives us a fair bit to work with. The Freedom has over 4 times the power of the Strike. That's established in cannon. The question is though, does that apply to speed and in which form. If it applies to speed, is it limited to the Sword and Launcher Strikes, in which case, we'd be talking about 1.4-2Gs in those forms. If that's the case, then could we possibly infer that the Aile, with its more aerodynamic frame and designed for atmospheric flight, was closer in the Gs it could pull to a Skygrasper? I'm trying to work out how much sudden or explosive force the pilot suit, pilot chair and restraints were designed to absorb/cushion. We know that the F-22 can pull a maximum of 9Gs but it's presently potentially too much for the human body to handle with current physiology and technology. We know that Coordinators have more durable bodies (yet interestingly enough, the physical feats they can pull off are nowhere near as impressive as the Zentraedi, who can survive several minutes in hard vacuum), however the pilot suits would also be designed to protect Naturals from explosive decompression and high G-forces as well.

I guess the question is, were the pilot seats and restraints in the nuclear Gundams an improvement on the technology in the Strike. If not, then it stands to reason that they, or something else using them which can pull even more Gs are the benchmark for the force which they are designed to withstand.

I already know that the pilot suits would have had to have been able to endure explosive decompression, but I'm trying to work out if the maximum G-forces the Aile could pull, would be a greater force on the pilot.

And yes, I'm approaching the question of a certain set of claims of plot armour (I define plot armour as something which is unfeasible in universe) from a perspective of actually testing the evidence to see if they hold up to scrutiny - Mythbusters style.

[MythSearcher]

Thanks for that, although that's more of a ball park that no idea at all, and I think it gives us a fair bit to work with. The Freedom has over 4 times the power of the Strike. That's established in cannon. The question is though, does that apply to speed and in which form. If it applies to speed, is it limited to the Sword and Launcher Strikes, in which case, we'd be talking about 1.4-2Gs in those forms. If that's the case, then could we possibly infer that the Aile, with its more aerodynamic frame and designed for atmospheric flight, was closer in the Gs it could pull to a Skygrasper? I'm trying to work out how much sudden or explosive force the pilot suit, pilot chair and restraints were designed to absorb/cushion. We know that the F-22 can pull a maximum of 9Gs but it's presently potentially too much for the human body to handle with current physiology and technology. We know that Coordinators have more durable bodies (yet interestingly enough, the physical feats they can pull off are nowhere near as impressive as the Zentraedi, who can survive several minutes in hard vacuum), however the pilot suits would also be designed to protect Naturals from explosive decompression and high G-forces as well.

I guess the question is, were the pilot seats and restraints in the nuclear Gundams an improvement on the technology in the Strike. If not, then it stands to reason that they, or something else using them which can pull even more Gs are the benchmark for the force which they are designed to withstand.

I already know that the pilot suits would have had to have been able to endure explosive decompression, but I'm trying to work out if the maximum G-forces the Aile could pull, would be a greater force on the pilot.

And yes, I'm approaching the question of a certain set of claims of plot armour (I define plot armour as something which is unfeasible in universe) from a perspective of actually testing the evidence to see if they hold up to scrutiny - Mythbusters style.

Power has no direct correlation to speed. All we can tell is F=ma and W=Fd, but we don't even know how much of said power is distributed to the thrusters(Freedom obviously has much more power hungry weapons) and if any other power source is given to the thrusts.(Whether the thrusters run solely on nuclear power or if they have some kind of hybrid system than has some kind of chemical reaction to it)
Also, g-forces on a MS in space is very simple: the thrust to mass ratio gives you the maximum acceleration and you calculate from F=ma.(that and the turning rate of the unit but since they cannot turn faster than a human and the cockpit is usually along the rotation axis, nothing you cannot take) In the atmosphere though, the wings will give you lift, and increase the acceleration according to many other factors(like the speed you are at when you turn). With that much drag on that shape, it is hard to imagine the MSs can go into a few times Mach speed. Very likely just somewhere around Mach 1 will create so much shock waves and vibrations that is VERY uncomfortable and with very high drag that the thrusters will have a hard time to coop with. Once pass the Mach line, the drag increases very fast with even just a slight increase in speed, so having 4 times the power isn't going to give you 4 times the speed.

[bowspearer]

Power has no direct correlation to speed. All we can tell is F=ma and W=Fd, but we don't even know how much of said power is distributed to the thrusters(Freedom obviously has much more power hungry weapons) and if any other power source is given to the thrusts.(Whether the thrusters run solely on nuclear power or if they have some kind of hybrid system than has some kind of chemical reaction to it)
Also, g-forces on a MS in space is very simple: the thrust to mass ratio gives you the maximum acceleration and you calculate from F=ma.(that and the turning rate of the unit but since they cannot turn faster than a human and the cockpit is usually along the rotation axis, nothing you cannot take) In the atmosphere though, the wings will give you lift, and increase the acceleration according to many other factors(like the speed you are at when you turn). With that much drag on that shape, it is hard to imagine the MSs can go into a few times Mach speed. Very likely just somewhere around Mach 1 will create so much shock waves and vibrations that is VERY uncomfortable and with very high drag that the thrusters will have a hard time to coop with. Once pass the Mach line, the drag increases very fast with even just a slight increase in speed, so having 4 times the power isn't going to give you 4 times the speed.

A speed of Mach 1 makes sense but I hadn't considered the drag and the vibrations that that would cause and that actually adds something interesting into the equation. We're talking really about a cockpit which is designed to handle explosive decompression with the pilot suit, but with the seat and restraints, the inertial dampening and shock absorption in the seat itself would have to be high enough to nullify those effects and allow for precision movements. It's another interesting factor to consider with one of the incidents I'm looking at.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm currently in the middle of researching a few things for a video on the Cosmic Era and I was wondering what the maximum G-forces were that a pilot of a mobile suit, specifically a high mobility suit like the Aile Strike Gundam, would be expected to endure and therefore what kind of force and pressure the flight suit and pilot seat would be required to offset.

If anyone has any ideas, knows anyone who has worked it out, or can point to any similar examples in other continuities, I'd appreciate it, as I seem to have hit a dead end with this part of my research.

If you're looking at g-force limits in terms of what the pilot can physically tolerate, that's going to vary depending upon what direction those g-forces are incurred in.

For "vertical" g-forces that occur parallel to the spine, your average untrained human without a g-suit is good up to around a sustained 5 g. Trained fighter pilots using g-suits and the g-strain maneuver can sustain around 9 g before having to worry about greying out or suffering g-loc. Negative g-forces are more injurious and problematic as they can't really be compensated for properly. The limit there is -2 g to -3 g depending on the person. Most MS's aren't going to incur "vertical" g-forces except in flight. (This is why the Tallgeese in Wing was such a beast... as it was capable of subjecting pilots to 15 g in this direction, more than enough to cause loss of consciousness or even severe injury to even seasoned pilots.)

"Horizontal" g-forces occur in axes perpendicular to the spine, and the limit there is a lot higher. Potentially as high as 25 g as long as it's only for a second or two. The current record for survivability is Indy driver Kenny Brack's 2003 crash at the Texas Motor Speedway, which clocked 214 g, about twice what's normally conceded to be fatal in most cases.

The pilot suit doesn't really do anything to reduce g-forces on the pilot. Its job, apart from the basic survival stuff like breathable air, is to help the pilot cope with the physiological consequences of high vertical g-forces. G-suits provide variable compression on the pilot's extremities (mainly the legs) to restrict the amount of blood which can pool in the extremities during high g-loads, reducing the amount of blood that's able to flow out of the brain under those high g-loads.

The pilot seats in the CE Mobile Suits don't seem to have any anti-g measures built into them that I can see.

[bowspearer]

The pilot suit doesn't really do anything to reduce g-forces on the pilot. Its job, apart from the basic survival stuff like breathable air, is to help the pilot cope with the physiological consequences of high vertical g-forces. G-suits provide variable compression on the pilot's extremities (mainly the legs) to restrict the amount of blood which can pool in the extremities during high g-loads, reducing the amount of blood that's able to flow out of the brain under those high g-loads.

I partially disagree with this. One function of G-suits and yes, I reallise this is inferring from UC but I don't see it being that much of a stretch, is that G-suits would need to be able to protect pilots from the effects of explosive decompression - and by extension, sudden changes in pressure.

The pilot seats in the CE Mobile Suits don't seem to have any anti-g measures built into them that I can see.

Yeah, to be clear, I was more viewing the seat and harness as being what offset G-forces. My interest here is trying to work out how much explosive force could be absorbed by the Pilot's suit, seat and harness, by looking at things like explosive decompression the suit was meant to absorb and how much in the way of vibrations and g-forces which the cockpit seat and harness are meant to absorb.

[Seto Kaiba]

I partially disagree with this. One function of G-suits and yes, I reallise this is inferring from UC but I don't see it being that much of a stretch, is that G-suits would need to be able to protect pilots from the effects of explosive decompression - and by extension, sudden changes in pressure.

... that doesn't have anything to do with the g-forces the pilot is subjected to, though.

That the pilot suit functions as a mechanical counterpressure suit in space is basic survival functionality. Mind you, unless you've got serious plot armor if something penetrates the cockpit odds are the pilot is VERY dead either as a result of flying shrapnel or whatever penetrated the cockpit in the first place. No spacesuit is going to save a pilot from ending up as a beam saber-grilled Bernie Burger. At that point, the pilot's zoombag just contains the worst of the mess that the recovery team would have to mop up... if they're lucky. (If they're unlucky, they're cleaning up a human 7-10 split like Kudel Cadel.)

Yeah, to be clear, I was more viewing the seat and harness as being what offset G-forces. My interest here is trying to work out how much explosive force could be absorbed by the Pilot's suit, seat and harness, by looking at things like explosive decompression the suit was meant to absorb and how much in the way of vibrations and g-forces which the cockpit seat and harness are meant to absorb.

... that's not how those things work, though. They don't counteract the g-forces or diminish them in any way. The pilot suit functioning as a g-suit helps cope with the consequences of high g-force loads in very specific conditions, but it cannot reduce the g-forces the pilot is being subjected to. There's no mention I can find of any g-force related features in the pilot seats of CE Mobile Suits. The linear seat in UC Mobile Suits doesn't cancel out g-forces, it's just a shock absorber that isolates the pilot seat from frame vibrations and adjust the pilot's posture relative to the direction of movement to help mitigate the effects of high g-force loads.

The only Gundam setting I can recall having technology to actually offset g-forces is the Mobile Suits of the Post Disaster timeline (Iron Blooded Orphans). Their Ahab reactors produce particles that affect gravity in their vicinity, one of the uses of which is to cancel out g-forces in the mobile suit's cockpit.

[bowspearer]

I partially disagree with this. One function of G-suits and yes, I reallise this is inferring from UC but I don't see it being that much of a stretch, is that G-suits would need to be able to protect pilots from the effects of explosive decompression - and by extension, sudden changes in pressure.

... that doesn't have anything to do with the g-forces the pilot is subjected to, though.

That the pilot suit functions as a mechanical counterpressure suit in space is basic survival functionality. Mind you, unless you've got serious plot armor if something penetrates the cockpit odds are the pilot is VERY dead either as a result of flying shrapnel or whatever penetrated the cockpit in the first place. No spacesuit is going to save a pilot from ending up as a beam saber-grilled Bernie Burger. At that point, the pilot's zoombag just contains the worst of the mess that the recovery team would have to mop up... if they're lucky. (If they're unlucky, they're cleaning up a human 7-10 split like Kudel Cadel.)

The problem I see with this argument is that you're applying contemporary technology to it, not technology contemporary to the universe of the series. The fact is that when you look at things like normal-suits or g-suits, the technology by today's standards is seemingly impossible, but then technology always is to standards of technology that are more primitive to it. This is where plot armour arguments can fall into the trap of being pure fallacy.

The fact is that when you look at normal suits, what you essentially have is a skin tight suit that is essentially the thickness of a parker at most, which is designed to protect the pilot from explosive decompression, prolonged exposure to solar radiation, high velocity small-sized pieces of space debris and g-forces. To be clear, I am viewing the suit as something which dampens these effects rather than magically negates them. The same is true of the pilot seat and restraints. How much static or dynamic force are they designed to dampen? How much of a rate of change of force are they designed to dampen? Is any of this going to protect a pilot from becoming a beam-saber charred shish-kebab? Hell no!

However is it going to be enough to protect a pilot either in hard vacuum, or in atrmosphere from a conventional explosion (bear in mind that survive doesn't mean that they're not critically injured? Also is it a one off, or are there multiple examples of this happening?

What is the medical technology available? Things like stasis capsules and cybernetics for example, are going to massively change the survivability of such explosions as well and like futuristic transatmospheric flight suits, they are all perfectly acceptable mainstays of science fiction.

The pilot suit functioning as a g-suit helps cope with the consequences of high g-force loads in very specific conditions, but it cannot reduce the g-forces the pilot is being subjected to.

I'm well aware of that, however you seem to be missing the forest for the trees here. I'm sure you would agree that subjecting a pilot in a pilot suit to some kind of kinetic force at say, 5Gs of force, is different to subjecting them in that suit to the same level of kinetic force when they are effectively at rest.

That's what I'm looking at with this particular situation (when the Aegis self-destructs to be exact, which is similar to the LaGowe - with the exception of the lack of protection from the cockpit seat and restraints). You have a pilot suit at rest, at sea level, when the pilot suit, cockpit and restraints are all designed to dampen a specific maximum level of force, pressure and a specific maximum rate of change in force and pressure. The question becomes, when a pilot is subjected to the explosion of the power cell of a mobile suit exploding (or to a lesser extent, a self-detonation device but a drained power cell), are the pilot suit, cockpit and restraints, enough to keep the pilot alive pending immediate medical care (including medical care which is far beyond present day medical technology) even if they are rendered incapacitated, unconscious and in a critical condition.

That's why I'm looking at maximum tolerances of pressure and explosive force that the pilot suit and cockpit seat and harness can dampen.

[Seto Kaiba]

The problem I see with this argument is that you're applying contemporary technology to it, not technology contemporary to the universe of the series.

Nope... the technology in Gundam is, in many cases, explicitly not much more advanced than the real world stuff that inspired it. There are some improvements in material science and that various advancements from the exotic particle du jour, but it's mostly pretty conventional stuff per the official publications.

The fact is that when you look at normal suits, what you essentially have is a skin tight suit that is essentially the thickness of a parker at most, which is designed to protect the pilot from explosive decompression, prolonged exposure to solar radiation, high velocity small-sized pieces of space debris and g-forces.

I'm curious why you're so hung up on explosive decompression? That's something that any space suit will protect against. It's not a specific design feature of pilot suits or normal suits. A space suit's job is to help maintain the pressure on your body that you depend on to function in an unpressurized environment. It's nothing sci-fi. The whole idea of a skintight space suit isn't exactly sci-fi either. Gundam got the idea from a NASA space suit prototype called the Space Activity Suit that was showed off to the public in 1971.

Moreover, normal suits and pilot suits DON'T provide any meaningful protection from debris. We see all too often that they tear very easily, which is why every suit comes equipped with adhesive patches to repair rips and tears during EVA. The suits are fragile enough to be severely damaged by something as simple as a fencing foil.

With the exception of the Post-Disaster timeline, there is no technology in Gundam that protects a Mobile Suit's pilot from g-forces. All pilot suits do is function like a modern g-suit. They help mitigate the effects of a high g-load on the pilot by compressing the legs to prevent blood from pooling there and causing g-loc.

To be clear, I am viewing the suit as something which dampens these effects rather than magically negates them. The same is true of the pilot seat and restraints. How much static or dynamic force are they designed to dampen? How much of a rate of change of force are they designed to dampen? Is any of this going to protect a pilot from becoming a beam-saber charred shish-kebab? Hell no!

The suit can't negate or reduce the g-force load on the pilot... it just helps mitigate the consequences of those high g-forces to prevent the pilot from losing consciousness.

As for the seat and restraints... the linear seat used in the Universal Century is a glorified shock absorber. It isn't designed to provide protection against sustained g-forces. All it does is spread the impact of short, sharp shocks like the shock absorbers on a car. How severe is not said that I can find, but it's probably not much given that in the UC most mobile suits aren't really inclined to more than about 2 g's of acceleration and really fast ones start topping out below 5 g. That particular technology doesn't seem to exist in the Cosmic Era though. The vaguely similar cockpit structure seen on the Freedom Gundam etc. is not attributed to linear seat-like ride quality improvements, but improving the structural rigidity of the cockpit itself by taking on a more spherical shape (according to Gundam Perfect FIle, anyway).

However is it going to be enough to protect a pilot either in hard vacuum, or in atrmosphere from a conventional explosion (bear in mind that survive doesn't mean that they're not critically injured? Also is it a one off, or are there multiple examples of this happening?

Pilot suits aren't protective garments in that sense... they're quite fragile. They wouldn't offer any protection in an explosion, at least in terms of the pressure wave and any shrapnel that might be thrown up.

What is the medical technology available? Things like stasis capsules and cybernetics for example, are going to massively change the survivability of such explosions as well and like futuristic transatmospheric flight suits, they are all perfectly acceptable mainstays of science fiction.

Gundam in general tends to stay away from the more advanced sci-fi technologies in favor of "15 minutes into the future" type setting.

"Performance enhancing" medical technology seems to be pretty destructive overall in all of Gundam. The cybernetics we've seen are mainly nervous system enhancements meant to confer superhuman response times to baseline humans, and tend to have rather destructive consequences for their mental stability. In the AD era the space-dwelling humans used nanomachines to address the consequences of long-term living in microgravity but they didn't seem to have any other effects. Medical cybernetics to replace lost limbs appeared in Thunderbolt but were VERY crude (little better than today's prostheses), and the ones in Iron-Blooded Orphans were more advanced but were also socially taboo. Nothing like Ghost in the Shell-tier high-end prostheses with superhuman performance.

Several Gundam timelines have had cryogenics technology. It was used fairly casually as a population control measure by the Moonrace in Turn A Gundam and in one of the Wing mangas it was shown to have some negative consequences for a person's memory. We don't know anything about the cryogenics tech that was used on Judau Ashta's colony-turned-generation ship in the late UC though.

I'm well aware of that, however you seem to be missing the forest for the trees here. I'm sure you would agree that subjecting a pilot in a pilot suit to some kind of kinetic force at say, 5Gs of force, is different to subjecting them in that suit to the same level of kinetic force when they are effectively at rest.

Only in very specific circumstances... vertical g-forces, where the suit would help reduce the risk of g-loc. In the vast majority of conditions, there would be no appreciable difference. 5 g's of acceleration is beyond what most mobile suits can achieve too, and is well within the tolerances of a trained pilot.

That's what I'm looking at with this particular situation (when the Aegis self-destructs to be exact, which is similar to the LaGowe - with the exception of the lack of protection from the cockpit seat and restraints). You have a pilot suit at rest, at sea level, when the pilot suit, cockpit and restraints are all designed to dampen a specific maximum level of force, pressure and a specific maximum rate of change in force and pressure. The question becomes, when a pilot is subjected to the explosion of the power cell of a mobile suit exploding (or to a lesser extent, a self-detonation device but a drained power cell), are the pilot suit, cockpit and restraints, enough to keep the pilot alive pending immediate medical care (including medical care which is far beyond present day medical technology) even if they are rendered incapacitated, unconscious and in a critical condition.

That's why I'm looking at maximum tolerances of pressure and explosive force that the pilot suit and cockpit seat and harness can dampen.

That's a completely different topic... that's not g-forces, that is a pressure wave. Neither the pilot's seat nor the pilot suit are designed to protect against THAT. The pilot suit is designed to protect the pilot against a lack of air pressure in space, and the seat doesn't really protect against anything except maybe a sore arse.

The detonation of the Aegis Gundam's self-destruct system seems to have been pretty weak given that Athrun is only a hundred feet or so from the Aegis when it blew up and the worst injury he sustained was a broken arm... quite possibly sustained in the fall rather than the actual explosion. Kira, on the other hand, was mostly behind still-active phase shift armor that no doubt saved him from the worst of the blast, and the injuries he sustained don't seem to have been all that severe either. (I'm told that, in the manga, the damage to the Strike's cockpit wasn't caused while Kira was in it, but occurred after he bailed out.)

[bowspearer]

It's not that I'm hung up on any particular force per se. It's that I'm looking at the Aegis self-detonation explosion, looking at every single temperature, force and pressure dampener and seeing if on the balance of evidence, the pressure suit and pilot seat offer enough force and pressure dampening to keep the pilot alive - even if they're in a critical condition. And yes, I was already factoring in that the phase shift armour would act slightly like a vaccum where the explosive force at the edges of the hole in the cockpit are concerned (PS armour appears to act like a localised dampening field for low energy density attacks).

The other reason that I'm looking at it is that it's not isolated as you also have Waltfeld surviving the LaGowe, on far more the critically low power, having the power cells explode due to an electrical fault from when one of the armour schieders impaled the cockpit. Waltfeld, at the least, lost an arm (as evidenced by the cybernetic left arm he has by Destiny) and possibly other limbs. However he wasn't protected from the pressure wave by his seat and harness as he'd left it, unlike Kira when that pressure wave hit. Also, from how the Astray manga reads, DaCosta wasn't able to get to him as quickly as Lowe Gear got to Kira (Aisha clearly didn't survive the explosion), it appears he was in a stasis capsule for weeks on end and was given medical treatment a lot later than Kira was.

Even with Kira, we know that he was unconscious and immobile - possibly even comatose - for 10 days. He was then bedridden for another 4. This was in a society where advanced surgeries we haven't yet figured out, advanced cybernetics and advanced biotech are all standard, at least for the rich, and Kira's treatment was the best that the outgoing PLANT Supreme Council Chairman could afford - at least on the quiet.

So my question isn't whether he'd be able to survive from a state of a critical condition. Stasis capsules and a mix of medical technology available and the fact that money was clearly no object at the time, means that's clearly doable. Coordinators were also created to at minimum have more durable bodies with better healing and immune systems as their creation was in response to Type-S Influenza. So the question is are we talking about the explosion being dampened enough that a human with superior immunity, endurance and healing, would be left alive, but in a critical condition from it.

[MythSearcher]

About g-force reduction technology, Not sure if this applies to g-forces or not, but in 00, the GN Drive can reduce the mass of the machine, this might also be able to affect the g-forces sustained by the pilot because it is essentially controlling gravity. Similar applies to SUMO, Turn A and Turn X, they all have an operation weight LOWER than their original. So gravitational technology must be present.

Another thing of note, in late UC, the V2 had a 20g thrust to mass ratio as stipulated in the settings, there must be some type of g-force reduction technology on it to not kill the pilot in prolong uses of full thrust. Also, this number is likely a software limit because adding equipment(i.e. mass) to the unit does not reduce the 20g number as seen in the A, B & AB equipments.

[Seto Kaiba]

It's not that I'm hung up on any particular force per se. It's that I'm looking at the Aegis self-detonation explosion, looking at every single temperature, force and pressure dampener and seeing if on the balance of evidence, the pressure suit and pilot seat offer enough force and pressure dampening to keep the pilot alive - even if they're in a critical condition.

Ah, I see. Well, the bad news is that neither the pilot's seat nor the pilot suit offer any protection from the shock wave, shrapnel, etc. produced by an explosion and the suit would only offer negligible protection from the blast's heat.

I did some digging in a number of official art books like Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: CE Mechanics & World, the Gundam SEED MS Encyclopedia, and the Dengeki Data Bank books, and the consensus among the books is that Kira's life was saved by an "emergency shutter". Apparently the Strike Gundam's designer wasn't all that convinced of the phase shift armor's invulnerability and included an additional collapsible armor plate that was intended to deploy to protect the cockpit in the event of the phase shift armor protecting the cockpit were holed or the phase shift armor lost power. Kira survived not because of any property of the seat or suit, but by dint of being behind a nice sturdy sheet of conventional armor plate in addition to the compromised PS armor when the Aegis detonated.

And yes, I was already factoring in that the phase shift armour would act slightly like a vaccum where the explosive force at the edges of the hole in the cockpit are concerned (PS armour appears to act like a localised dampening field for low energy density attacks).

Based on the descriptions I've found in the above-listed books and Gundam MS Bible, the Phase Shift Armor technology in Gundam's Cosmic Era is an electroactive smart material that reversibly changes its molecular structure to become more resilient when electrically charged. It doesn't absorb the energy from attacks, it's just very hard metal armor.

(Conceptually, it's similar to the Energy Conversion Armor in the Macross franchise, albeit much more limited in its defensive ability.)

Even with Kira, we know that he was unconscious and immobile - possibly even comatose - for 10 days. He was then bedridden for another 4. This was in a society where advanced surgeries we haven't yet figured out, advanced cybernetics and advanced biotech are all standard, at least for the rich, and Kira's treatment was the best that the outgoing PLANT Supreme Council Chairman could afford - at least on the quiet.

Somehow, I doubt his injuries were THAT severe given that Athrun wasn't much farther away from the blast than he was and didn't have the benefit of armor to hide behind, and his only noteworthy injury was a broken arm.

[MythSearcher]

Somehow, I doubt his injuries were THAT severe given that Athrun wasn't much farther away from the blast than he was and didn't have the benefit of armor to hide behind, and his only noteworthy injury was a broken arm.

What injured him anyway? With a thick steel plate in front of him blocking most of the debris and likely shock wave, and he is pretty clearly not burnt or anything looking like his skin denatured because of heat.
Even considering inverse square law, I am pretty sure Athrun wouldn't take much less energy than he does because of the steel plate.

I'd say his coma and later bed ridden is likely just because of psychological issues of having to fight to the death with his best friend.

[Seto Kaiba]

What injured him anyway? With a thick steel plate in front of him blocking most of the debris and likely shock wave, and he is pretty clearly not burnt or anything looking like his skin denatured because of heat.

Probably the interior of his Mobile Suit.

Kira was protected from the direct effects of the Aegis's self-destruct sequence by the Strike's phase shift armor and the emergency shutter protecting the Strike's cockpit, but the blast was still enough to do significant damage to the Strike. The injuries he sustained aren't consistent with an explosion. There are no evident burns, no damage to his respiratory system from the shockwave, and no shrapnel wounds. He's clearly in pain, but all we see are some plain cloth wraps on his head and ribs. To me, that says restraint-induced injuries from the blast or the impact when the remains of the Strike and Aegis fell over. He probably had a concussion from his helmeted head bouncing off either the headrest or something else in the cockpit and some broken or at least bruised ribs from being thrown against the four point restraint harness on the pilot seat. (Essentially the same commonplace injuries seen in auto accidents.)