How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

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Mafty
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How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Are Space Colonies/Lunar Cities supposed to be permanent settlements, or are they only temporary (in relative terms) settlements? The Hathway's Flash trailer shows a number of in universe news articles dealing with the Federation and colony issues, one of which says that older colonies are showing signs of dangerous disrepair. So are space colonies meant to house humanity forever or just a couple of centuries until Earth recovers/ Terraforming other planets is perfected?
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Mafty wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:45 pm Are Space Colonies/Lunar Cities supposed to be permanent settlements, or are they only temporary (in relative terms) settlements?
They are meant to be permanent settlements.

Some of them, the ones that are well kept-up, can last for centuries or even millennia.

AFAIK, it first really comes up explicitly in the mid-90's in the Mobile Suit Victory Gundam: Outside Story manga and in Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam. Crossbone Gundam, of course, featured the circumstances of the Jupiter Empire which is entirely dependent on space colonies. Outside Story featured Judau Ashta (acting with the alias Grey Stoke) working on converting a space colony into a generation ship intended to evacuate its population of newtypes to the Proxima Centauri system. It's noted at the end that Dandelion colony successfully made it to and colonized Proxima Centauri in UC 0653 after a 500 year flight.

It comes up a LOT more in Turn-A Gundam and Gundam: Reconguista in G, where almost any settlement in space has been around for at least a thousand years.

The Moonrace in Turn-A Gundam have been living in settlements on the moon for over 2,500 years at the time the series takes place.

In G-Reco, the whole photon battery supply chain is at least a thousand years old and probably more. Venus Globe, where the photon batteries are manufactured, is of unclear age but dialog in-series implies that it's been a major force in post-UC rebuilding for at least a millennium. Towasanga, the space colony nation that's responsible for charging photon batteries with its massive solar arrays on the moon, occupies the site of the former Side 3 and is said to have a history going back over 2,000 years. Capital Tower, the space elevator that brings photon battery shipments to Earth, is noted to have been constructed during the Universal Century over a millennium ago, which puts the age of the Under Nut (orignially a separate structure), Capital Tower itself, and the space station Sankt Porto on the tower's other end are at least 1,014 years old and still in apparently immaculate condition. Cyrano-5 is also implied to be a space colony constructed during the Universal Century, making it over 1,014 years old.


Mafty wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:45 pm The Hathway's Flash trailer shows a number of in universe news articles dealing with the Federation and colony issues, one of which says that older colonies are showing signs of dangerous disrepair. So are space colonies meant to house humanity forever or just a couple of centuries until Earth recovers/ Terraforming other planets is perfected?
It's a symptom of the Federation government's corruption in the early UC 0100s.

One of the big plot points in Hathaway's Flash is that the Federation leadership are essentially trying to turn Earth into a private residence for the political and social elite and those who directly serve them, and are forcibly deporting less privileged people to the colonies in service of that goal. Presumably they don't care about keeping the space colonies in pristine condition because space colonies are for poor people... which, of course, is why the anti-government group Mufti gains a lot of support from spacenoids.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Mafty wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:45 pm Are Space Colonies/Lunar Cities supposed to be permanent settlements, or are they only temporary (in relative terms) settlements? The Hathway's Flash trailer shows a number of in universe news articles dealing with the Federation and colony issues, one of which says that older colonies are showing signs of dangerous disrepair. So are space colonies meant to house humanity forever or just a couple of centuries until Earth recovers/ Terraforming other planets is perfected?
All of the in-universe reasons are given by Seto Kaiba so I am not going to repeat those.
I will give you out-universe reasons.

Originally in the 70's O'Neill does design the colonies thinking they are permanent.
The main reason is the Science at that time assumed space is this clean vacuum ahem, space. Where you have no erosion and corrosion. So large things built up there only need minimal maintenance that is caused by normal mechanical wear and tear.
Mobile Suit Gundam's Universal Century colonies of course also took that view in 1979.

The problem?
Science marches on.

We now know that the radiation actually cause erosion to things in space. You have solar wind and other cosmic rays that keep bombarding the outer walls of the colonies.
(Well, O'Neill do know about the radiation, but only thought that it affects humans so you can see his lunar settlements tries to cover the living modules in lunar soil to shield off some of the radiation)
The radiation either directly damages the structure(like a continuous sander) or ionising it.
The first part is simple, just apply new layers or coating on top after a while to keep the thickness.
The second part is hard. It can make the shell of your colony radioactive and give out its own radiation, while it should be protecting you from radiation.

In a more ideal situation, the colonies can maybe last up to 200 years if well repaired. If not, they may not even last for a few decades.

I have not read the original novel, so I do not know if this is written in it, but from the publication date, If Tomino did include mention about colonies falling into disrepair, it is likely that he read some new studies at the time about what I just said and incorporated it into his story.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

That makes sense that the colonies would actually need constant repair like any infrastructure; come to think of it some of the mobile suits do have colony repair properties: For instance the Sandhoge from Victory Gundam, plus in F91 Seabook's father works as a welder working on the outside of the colony. Plus there's also the factor of space debris or meteorites impacting the colony (Gundam Seed even mentions this), also numerous colonies are damaged in Mobil Suit Battles, so that also probably has an effect on their structure.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

MythSearcher wrote: Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:42 am The problem?
Science marches on.

[...]

In a more ideal situation, the colonies can maybe last up to 200 years if well repaired. If not, they may not even last for a few decades.
Though, from an in-universe perspective, it seems a safe bet that science continued to march ever onwards and space colonies in the UC and other timelines are made from more robust materials than anything we have today and/or enjoy the benefits of better protective measures against space debris and radiation. (Like how the A.D. Gundam timeline's orbital elevators and solar collector ring are protected by some kind of energy shield in the Gundam 00 series.) IIRC, Capital Tower in G-Reco had some kind of electromagnetic shield too, and it's implied Venus Globe was just straight-up capturing most of the cosmic radiation for energy generation. Ships, MS's, and such had special nanomaterial protective paints in the PD timeline to protect against everything from micrometeorite impacts to weapons fire.

IIRC, a few UC titles have since established that early Mobile Suits were made for colony maintenance work.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Seto Kaiba wrote: Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:47 pm

Though, from an in-universe perspective, it seems a safe bet that science continued to march ever onwards and space colonies in the UC and other timelines are made from more robust materials than anything we have today and/or enjoy the benefits of better protective measures against space debris and radiation. (Like how the A.D. Gundam timeline's orbital elevators and solar collector ring are protected by some kind of energy shield in the Gundam 00 series.) IIRC, Capital Tower in G-Reco had some kind of electromagnetic shield too, and it's implied Venus Globe was just straight-up capturing most of the cosmic radiation for energy generation. Ships, MS's, and such had special nanomaterial protective paints in the PD timeline to protect against everything from micrometeorite impacts to weapons fire.

IIRC, a few UC titles have since established that early Mobile Suits were made for colony maintenance work.
That brings back memory of an early NASA study of electromagnetic shielding in the 70's I read on Twitter.
They knew it wouldn't directly work if they simply add a magnetic field because no matter which charge they use as the outer layer will accelerate the opposite charge particles and cause more damage. They devised a trick using double layers, the first will accelerate the electrons but block the positive charged particles, and the second will block the slightly accelerated electrons, which are easier to stop. They do make Star Trek references about it.
UC definitely has the technology to deploy this kind of shielding, but the study will not be available to Tomino at the time.(Probably it is not available until pretty recently.)
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Another factor is the timeline of the Universal/Reguild Century (this is going to get confusing). As Turn A Gundam showcases all of the different timelines of Gundam are tied in together (somehow). If you take that into account then the colonies could have all been destroyed and then rebuilt in an advanced more long lasting format(ie Gundam X wipes out almost all of the colonies, so a later timeline may have built newer ones as the population grew again).
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Mafty wrote: Mon Mar 29, 2021 7:07 pm Another factor is the timeline of the Universal/Reguild Century (this is going to get confusing). As Turn A Gundam showcases all of the different timelines of Gundam are tied in together (somehow). If you take that into account then the colonies could have all been destroyed and then rebuilt in an advanced more long lasting format(ie Gundam X wipes out almost all of the colonies, so a later timeline may have built newer ones as the population grew again).
Sort of? As I understand it, the whole schtick with the Black History is that most, or all, of Gundam's alternate universe stories are actually in the same timeline as the Universal Century but are different historical epochs where humanity had to start from zero technologically because some jackass always digs up a mobile suit equipped with a Moonlight Butterfly system and history does a hard reset. No two people involved in it ever seem come up with the same answer as to how far apart they are, but it's pretty clear that they're not building back better each time. The Moonlight Butterfly system basically catapults them back to zero technologically and it's said to be something along the lines of like 10,000 years before they get their sh*t back together and colonize space again only to do it all over again.

They're really annoyingly inconsistent about where G-Reco falls in it too... it's quite annoying.

But the longer each timeline seems to run, the better humanity seems to get at space colonies before they end up turned to dust by nanomachines.

(If you buy the original line about G-Reco instead of Tomino's later correction, Towasanga effectively is a successor state to the Republic of Zeon in the most literal sense... having effectively survived for thousands of years.)
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Mafty wrote: Mon Mar 29, 2021 7:07 pm Another factor is the timeline of the Universal/Reguild Century (this is going to get confusing). As Turn A Gundam showcases all of the different timelines of Gundam are tied in together (somehow). If you take that into account then the colonies could have all been destroyed and then rebuilt in an advanced more long lasting format(ie Gundam X wipes out almost all of the colonies, so a later timeline may have built newer ones as the population grew again).
https://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/201012 ... c02819.JPG
This is how the timelines are like in the officials mind.
Every one of them are different worlds, only merging to CC at the end of it, not stacked together.
At the time of this picture, CE was still airing, but later they also add it into the CC continuum in the Turn A manga. As of now, basically all different worlds are parallel worlds until they are merged, maybe with the exception of RC, but RC sounded more like a part of CC, which is that big circle loop you are seeing in the picture that has no beginning or end.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Hermine65 wrote: Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:06 am
Hello,
Could someone explain to me what spacenoids mean?
People living in space.

Likewise, Earthnoids means people living on Earth.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

MythSearcher wrote: Wed Mar 31, 2021 5:07 am People living in space.

Likewise, Earthnoids means people living on Earth.
That's an adbot, mate... look at the quote. It inserted a malware link into it.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Seto Kaiba wrote: Wed Mar 31, 2021 11:08 am That's an adbot, mate... look at the quote. It inserted a malware link into it.
Looking at the timestamp of my reply, 10 mins before I get off work.
Yeah, I didn't read that long quote and simply replied the question without thinking. :lol:
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Does this link still work for anyone else? It seems to be giving errors (DNS PROBE NX DOMAIN) for me.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

SonicSP wrote: Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:04 pm
Does this link still work for anyone else? It seems to be giving errors (DNS PROBE NX DOMAIN) for me.
Working for me as well, but just to be on the safe side, I saved and reuploaded the image. You can try that if it's still not working for you.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Actually, it is also available here:
https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/File:Cor ... meline.jpg

My original uploads to Wikipedia was deleted, even after I redraw and translated the whole thing and the translated file should have no copyright issue as the deleters claimed, which is located here:
https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/File:Cor ... glish).jpg

And someone obviously saved the files to wikia before that.
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Re: How long can Space Colonies/Lunar Cities last?

Seto Kaiba wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 4:06 pm One of the big plot points in Hathaway's Flash is that the Federation leadership are essentially trying to turn Earth into a private residence for the political and social elite and those who directly serve them, and are forcibly deporting less privileged people to the colonies in service of that goal. Presumably they don't care about keeping the space colonies in pristine condition because space colonies are for poor people... which, of course, is why the anti-government group Mufti gains a lot of support from spacenoids.
Kinda sets the scene for Cosmo Babylonia to establish itself as the aristocratic counterweight to Earth's political elite.
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