The Official Gundam 00 Mecha Thread Unit 7

[ShadowCell]

30 pages, new thread, etc etc etc. Please tag spoilers, don't post random crap with no backing or source, and refrain from being jerks, please.

However, the design once again raises the question as to what the true size of a GN drive is, because if it is indeed more than just the cones (such as the large cylinder ejected by the Virtue/Nadleeh), the extra mass is missing from both the 00's drives.

those cones are just emitters the real drive is most likely in the chest (I think I see a curved part in the space between the blue and gray plates; that MAY be where the GN drive is located)

[Rudy A Winchester]

Off tangent:
This is why I believe that Ribbons (Livonze) is likely to be really REALLY old, based on him being the 0 Gundam's (only) pilot. He was likely created specifically for operating it. Perhaps because using a human operator was either too risky or impossible.

Where is this stated? I don't recall this information, so I assume it was stated in 00F?

[Homeless]

No, it wasn't.

Unless I'm out of the loop it is supposedly very loosely implied in the novel, but it is never stated that Ribbons was 0's pilot.

[VentZX]

The Ribbons as the pilot of the 0 Gundam is wishful thinking and speculation by fans at this point. The Amuro and RX-78-2 connection would make it great, but we have no way of knowing at this point.

Anyway, Royaldonkey posted a nifty flow chart of the Exia's line in the last thread. I made a similar chart with all the Gundams (sans the Thrones)

So we know there will be more than one new Gundam next season. I'm wondering if these new ones will also be logical progressions in the other lines.

[SNT1]

Bit late to the party here.

Besides missing the circular chest, it's also missing the body panels for Transam. I guess one wouldn't need a speed power-up (with consequences, to boot) when you have two drives to begin with... :>

[Rudy A Winchester]

Unless I am mistaken, we aren't supposed to assume that the 00 Gundam has two GN drives. First of all, the shoulder cones aren't the GN drives. We've seen that that actual GN drive for the third-generation Gundams actually lies in the chest, and that the cone on the back of the Gundams were thrusters. It's clear that there isn't enough room to put GN drives in the shoulders, as we've seen the size of one, when Tieria ejected his. So I assume that the GN drive for the 00 Gundam still lies in the chest, and simply that the two shoulder cones are a different way of routing the thrust.

Second, at the very end of Gundam 00 S1, when they are talking about the 00 Gundam, they mention that it needs a GN drive. They don't mention that it runs on two GN drives. They simply say they need to find a GN drive that fits (apparently the 0 Gundam's didn't, and they were going to try the Exia's). So I assume that the 00 Gundam, like all other Gundams, runs on one GN drive. And since it's been stated that the GN drives have a near infinite amount of energy, there's no reason to have more than one. Even the problem with the Trans-Am operational time has nothing to do with the power of the GN drives; it is simply limited by the amount of GN particles that the Gundam can store/buffer at one time. I assume that the 00 Gundam has better GN capacitors (that's what they are called, right?) to allow for better storage, along with more effecient GN power lines.

[Arsarcana]

If those shoulder cones (actually they look like they attach to the backpack directly and just happen to hang over the shoulders) are thrusters then the 00 should have even more insane maneuvering ability than the previous Gundam generations. Since it still seems like the 00 only has one GN Drive, looks like the nature of it's name remains up in the air and they want it that way. Can't wait to see this thing animated.

BTW, I take it I'm not the only person wondering why the forearms seem a bit bulky? Chalk up one more entry under 'Reasons for October to hurry up already'.

[OutLawSuit]

BTW, I take it I'm not the only person wondering why the forearms seem a bit bulky? Chalk up one more entry under 'Reasons for October to hurry up already'.

It looks like to me that the 00 Gundam has 2 Astraea style weapon plugins on each wrist. So I'm thinking instead of something like a beam rifle or a GN Sword, it could support something much bigger. They could certainly be something different too, perhaps beam sabers and/or beam guns which would also be very cool.

[Meteoid]

Bit late to the party here.

Besides missing the circular chest, it's also missing the body panels for Transam. I guess one wouldn't need a speed power-up (with consequences, to boot) when you have two drives to begin with... :>

I'm asuming your reffering to the grey-blue bits, are they essential for Trans-Am? I thought they were conduits for GN particles.

Unless I am mistaken, we aren't supposed to assume that the 00 Gundam has two GN drives. First of all, the shoulder cones aren't the GN drives. We've seen that that actual GN drive for the third-generation Gundams actually lies in the chest, and that the cone on the back of the Gundams were thrusters. It's clear that there isn't enough room to put GN drives in the shoulders, as we've seen the size of one, when Tieria ejected his. So I assume that the GN drive for the 00 Gundam still lies in the chest, and simply that the two shoulder cones are a different way of routing the thrust.

Second, at the very end of Gundam 00 S1, when they are talking about the 00 Gundam, they mention that it needs a GN drive. They don't mention that it runs on two GN drives. They simply say they need to find a GN drive that fits (apparently the 0 Gundam's didn't, and they were going to try the Exia's).

I think your betting Solar Furnace and GN drive mixed up, I remeber it being stated, perhaps in the old thread, that the Solar Furnace was the power source for the GN Drive, which was the cone. They stated that the 00 Gundam needed a specific Solar Furnace which would make sense if it had to power two GN Drives.

[Rudy A Winchester]

Bit late to the party here.

Besides missing the circular chest, it's also missing the body panels for Transam. I guess one wouldn't need a speed power-up (with consequences, to boot) when you have two drives to begin with... :>

I'm asuming your reffering to the grey-blue bits, are they essential for Trans-Am? I thought they were conduits for GN particles.

Unless I am mistaken, we aren't supposed to assume that the 00 Gundam has two GN drives. First of all, the shoulder cones aren't the GN drives. We've seen that that actual GN drive for the third-generation Gundams actually lies in the chest, and that the cone on the back of the Gundams were thrusters. It's clear that there isn't enough room to put GN drives in the shoulders, as we've seen the size of one, when Tieria ejected his. So I assume that the GN drive for the 00 Gundam still lies in the chest, and simply that the two shoulder cones are a different way of routing the thrust.

Second, at the very end of Gundam 00 S1, when they are talking about the 00 Gundam, they mention that it needs a GN drive. They don't mention that it runs on two GN drives. They simply say they need to find a GN drive that fits (apparently the 0 Gundam's didn't, and they were going to try the Exia's).

I think your betting Solar Furnace and GN drive mixed up, I remeber it being stated, perhaps in the old thread, that the Solar Furnace was the power source for the GN Drive, which was the cone. They stated that the 00 Gundam needed a specific Solar Furnace which would make sense if it had to power two GN Drives.

While I don't think it's official yet, I think the terms GN Drive and Solar Furnace are, for all intensive purposes, interchangeable. I assume that the Solar Furnace is what sits inside the GN Drive, while the GN Drive is the Solar Furnace along with the container to holds it, allows the power to be distributed, et cetera. But I think the terms can be safely (for now) used interchangeably. If I had to look even deeper, I would say that the Solar Furnace is the power source that allows the GN Drive to produce GN Particles.

For instance, when the Nadleeh has its GN Drive released, it's not referred to as a Solar Furnace. It is stated that Nadleeh "has released it's GN Drive." So the generator that resides in the chest of the Gundams is referred to as the GN Drive for sure. The cones have been stated to be simply thrusters, as they have changed design in all three generations of Gundams.

[toysdream]

I'm asuming your reffering to the grey-blue bits, are they essential for Trans-Am? I thought they were conduits for GN particles.

That's correct, and with the development of the Throne series and the GN-X they appear to have been rendered obsolete. From the HG Throne Zwei kit manual:

In order to reduce weight, the Throne's body uses its torso mainframe as part of the GN Drive itself, giving it a very different silhouette from previous Gundams. Meanwhile, the GN particles are distributed to each part of its body via the frame structure, rather than through cords. Thus, when the coating on the surface of the frame is stripped away, luminescence can be seen due to the effects of these particles. The same kind of system is used even in the frame within the cockpit.

I think your betting Solar Furnace and GN drive mixed up, I remeber it being stated, perhaps in the old thread, that the Solar Furnace was the power source for the GN Drive, which was the cone. They stated that the 00 Gundam needed a specific Solar Furnace which would make sense if it had to power two GN Drives.

All the published material so far, including the kit manuals, indicates that the terms "GN Drive" and "solar furnace" (or "solar reactor") can be used interchangeably. The device that the Nadleeh ejects in the final episode is referred to by both terms in the animation, spinoff comics, et cetera.

Most likely, the cone-shaped thruster and the core device are both parts of the GN Drive since they can't really be used without each other. The GN Drive Tau, however, seems to consist only of the cone, and its functions are limited to converting energy to GN particles rather than generating the energy itself. Perhaps the equivalent space inside the chest of the Throne series is just a big old battery.

-- Mark

[SNT1]

I'm asuming your reffering to the grey-blue bits, are they essential for Trans-Am? I thought they were conduits for GN particles.

I really don't know. Just pointing that this new design just doesn't have those.

Oh, GN Drive or thrusters or whatever, I'm also not going to assume that the 00 Gundam have those just for show. If they were to take a page from the last few AU's with second-half MSes, they're almost always faster, if not among the fastest units in the show.

[toysdream]

Oh, and one more thing that occurs to me. If you want to see what the combination of core engine plus thruster looks like, just take a look at the Gundam Plutone's core fighter, which is built around the mobile suit's GN Drive.

The Plutone's GN Drive uses the same "three thruster" design as the other second-generation Gundams, whereas the third-generation machines featured in the anime reverted back to the cone-shaped device used in the original O Gundam. However, the second-generation machines used by Fereshte are apparently powered by the O Gundam's GN Drive (this single drive is switched from one Fereshte Gundam to another depending on the mission). This indicates that any given GN Drive can be modified between the cone and three-thruster types.

One other thing I notice about the Plutone. Unlike most of the other Gundams, it doesn't have a big round GN Capacitor in the center of its chest, because that space is taken up by core fighter mechanisms. Presumably the GN Capacitor attached to its butt, and connected to its limbs by cords, serves the same function.

-- Mark

[Omega]

Does anybody besides me see room for improvement in the Alvaaron?

[Recon 5]

It may seem like a stretch, but might the two cones actually be full Tau Drives? We've seen what just one can do to a lowly Flag, so it might make sense for two to be used to supplement or amplify the power of the 00's existing GN Drive.

[Janx_Dolaris]

Since the drives seem to have green bits on them, i think they're running off the normal particles as opposed to the Tau particles. The Tau Drives were also built by different people, people who likely DONT want there to be 00. Having the 00 shoot out red particles would make it look kinda evil too.

[OutLawSuit]

What I'm curious about is the limitations of a single GN Drive. If I recall in those 00V MSVs is that GN drives can only put out so much power. Like the Avalanche Exia has a limited operating time and the Throne Turbulenz requires a second GN Tau Drive. The series never indicated the limitations of the GN drive except with Nadleeh which I remember was something different; the series only showed the limited operation time for the GN Taus. So by that logic, if the 00 Gundam has two GN drives, it'd only be necessary if it has a ton of optional equipment or uses GN particles in excess with shields, higher mobility, and some probably new applications.

In all honestly, I expect to see something like an Avalanche 00; if not in the series, as an MSV.

[Laevatein]

That'd be about right... while true GN Drives do have unlimited operational lifespans, they do have a maximum limit to their output, which is why Gundams have to delegate the appropriate amount of GN Particle output to whatever system needs it most. And if you use up more GN particles than the Drive can spit out, then you end up dead in the water - aka Trans-AM.

A second GN Drive would allow a Gundam to use more more power on alot more systems for far longer than usual. Although with the rarity of GN Drives as they are, it'd be much better to simply upgrade a single GN Drive to provide improved output, rather than have a single Gundam hog two GN Drives and thus deprive yourself of another operational Gundam.

[toysdream]

The limitations of the GN Drive have more to do with the quantity of GN particles you can accumulate. All the Gundams are equipped with GN Condensers (in other words, capacitors) that store the particles emitted by the drive until they're needed for weapons, propulsion, et cetera. When they want to activate a system that consumes huge amounts of GN particles - such as the Virtue's GN Field - they have to make sure they're fully charged beforehand, and that their GN Condensers are full. Likewise, after the Gundams expend all their stored particles, it takes a while for the GN Drive to replenish the supply; we can see this after the Virtue fires its GN Bazooka in "burst mode".

This is the logic behind the Avalanche Exia. Most of the Avalanche's extra equipment consists of additional GN Condensers, allowing it to enter battle with a larger supply of stored particles. It takes an hour for the Exia's GN Drive to charge up all these condensers, and only ten minutes of high-speed operation to use them all up. The Exia doesn't just shut down when its condensers are emptied - its GN Drive still works just fine, and it can continue fighting at a normal level - but there's no way it would be able to recharge its particle supply before the battle is over.

The GN Drive Tau is an entirely different matter. Its energy supply, and thus its ability to emit GN particles, is relatively limited. Once its supply is used up, the mobile suit and its drive are little more than an expensive paperweight.

-- Mark

[ironscythe]

It's already been established that the immense power and capabilities of a GN Drive are because of Topological Defects (high-energy phenomena relating to the Big Bang and grounded in Unified Field Theory). We know that GN Particles have a number of properties, relating to both gravity and electromagnetism (i.e. levitation under Earth-normal gravity, disruption of all wave-based communication and detection systems, deflecting and/or absorbing energy from beam and projectile weaponry, etc.).

What I keep coming back to while thinking about this is the Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson is a theoretical force-carrying particle that combines the electromagnetic force with the weak nuclear force, and, through interaction with other particles, creates the property known as "mass", which is the key factor in gravity. One would think that, by somehow manipulating these Higgs Bosons, such phenomena as antigravity could be a possibility. I'd imagine it would also interfere with radio waves.

So, yeah, just a thought. I'm hoping to see if they shed some more light on the workings of the GN Drive in the next season.