You know Char's plan in CCA is actually kind of stupid.

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

Wait, just how many colonies did zeon gas or nuke in the opening week of the one year war?

They gassed essentially the entirety of Sides 1, 2, and 4 during the first few days of the war -- roughly three billion people, in total. Here's the post that Amion mentions, where we discussed it. Zeon attacked Sides 1, 2, and 4 first, then dropped a colony on Earth in Operation British. Together that comprises the "One Week Battle" that opened the One Year War, so-called because... well, it took about a week total (though most of that was travel time of the colony heading toward Earth). The only other major event was the Battle of Loum about a week later; Zeon tried to attack Side 5 (aka Loum) to drop another colony, but the EFSF intercepted them. There was a major fleet battle within Side 5 itself, and the crossfire (which including the use of nuclear weapons on both sides) ends up destroying pretty much everything. Most of both the Zeon and the Earth Federation fleets are destroyed, as is the entirety of Side 5, taking another billion people along with it.

[MythSearcher]

Mythsearcher...you're still wrong and you're only beating a dead horse at this point.

Here's a few more reasons (some I said in the above post) why air loss is not the big issue you try to make it out to be:

1. You described air locks COMPLETELY wrong. When accepting a ship to dock, you open the gate facing space first and not the gate facing the atmosphere. Unlike underwater conditions, there's no reason to "flood" the gates. Opening the gate to space first, then sealing, then opening the gate to the atmosphere reduces air loss to negligible quantities. This is never animated in Gundam IIRC but is often shown in sci-fi (and makes sense). Obviously, you're also wrong about them not being able to pump out all of the air from the air lock when ships are exiting - that's completely ridiculous to assume that they forgot how to make pumps/vacuums work but can operate space colonies.

2. Gundam asks viewers like us to assume "technology has figured it out" when it comes to things like sustainability. Otherwise, how would the Macross colonies survive those interstellar trips? Given that we "primitive" technology like fuel cells which produce hydrogen and oxygen as waste products (and from that we can derive water and air once the correct procedure is applied) then we are already on the way to accepting the "magic" sustainability systems in Gundam as realistic - sometime in the future at least

3. The Zeon colonies were cut off from Earth and could not have been receiving supplies as frequently (why would the Federation allow that?) however they did not suffer from starvation/suffocation

4. The Zeon colonies on Mars in F90 and F91 were even further removed from the Earth sphere and ALSO did not suffer from starvation/suffocation

5. The Lunar base is also noted to be somewhat sustainable

6. The colonies have the option of harvesting resources from Mars, Venus and the asteroid belt

Air loss really isn't the problem that you make it out to be. If it was then the colonies used in Gundam are a flawed design - which does not bear fruit since they lasted for so very long and continued to be built using the same design (which is based on a long-established design for colonies from I-don't-remember-which-book)

Even if there was the calamity that you assume, we know that the brilliant scientists in Gundam who can make long-range mind-control machines, psychic amplifiers, manipulate human mental capacities and even colonize entire asteroids would be able to pool their resources to resolve such an issue especially when it's something so-easily-understood as air supply

Sigh, you are not giving this a thorough thought.

1) You think ships entering the air lock can save air from escaping?
Given 2 gates of the air lock, A and B, A being the one facing space and B the one facing dock.
When gate A opens, air trapped in between A and B leaves to space, you cannot stop that from happening.
How do you plan to remove the air between the two gates?
You assumed the space in between stays a vacuum forever, which is never the case, you simply ignore the fact that when you open gate B, the air inside the dock will enter.
So the next ship coming in or a ship going out, when you have to open gate A again, air leaves.

The space between gate A and B HAS to be big enough for the ships to stay in, so you can close both gates when the ship is inside.

And you are refusing to learn anything you are not familiar with, or simply refuse to read anything longer than a few sentences, since you did not read things I had written.
No, I did not say they did not know or forgot how to make pumps, I am saying pumps got their limits, and you simply cannot make a high vacuum in such a short time.

2) No, Gundam did not ask us to believe in the sustainability of the colonies, in fact, like I said, the EF government KNEW they are not sustainable and THUS they NEED to have enough people on Earth to provide ALL the RESUPPLIES.
Macross is a different story, they have OTM for crying out loud, and they don't have a setting taking about humans needed to stay on Earth for resupplying the fleets.

3) You obviously ignore the fact that Zeon was not completely cut off, they are under an economic sanction, sanction does not mean completely cut off, it means economic logistics are limited. Air and Water is quite obviously humanitarian necessities, and it would be ridiculous to think that they are not given any at all.

4, 5) You are not reading anything I had written, have you? I talked about the reason for air and water loss for the artificial gravity colonies, not the colonies on the Moon or Mars, because they do not create a centrifuge to spread things out.
The Moon bases got more problems, and likely they also have resupplies, but the Mars colonies? Do you think they needed to have large ships going in and out on a daily or hourly basis? They are isolated from the rest of humanity to begin with, why do they need that much travelling?
Also, they are much closer to the Asteroid belt, more likely to get supplies from the Jupiter fleet from their midway stations.

6) Name one place other than Earth and Jupiter that got abundant supply of Nitrogen that is closer than Jupiter.

You are the one beating the dead horse for not reading what I have been telling you.
You never even tried to care why the EF stopped the space migration in 0051.

Yes, you can claim I am wrong all you want, but I am talking about Physics, the official settings, and you base your argument on purely your own imagination and wishful thinking.

Island 3's are based on G.K. O'Neil's design in the 70's, and he did not know a lot of things we know today to begin with, but not air locks.
We have since then faced a lot more problems in space, a lot more leaks and a lot more experiments on self sustained habitats, and we now even know a certain mixture ration of concrete absorbs oxygen.

[domino]

1) There also needs to be enough time for de/re-pressurization and de-contamination if we're being realistic about it while ships are entering/exiting the space ports. Gundam makes it seem like a vent just opens but that's not how it would work in reality. We both understand that. Realistically, the air would be pumped out (during exit) and re-cycled.

2) Yes it does. Gundam also asks us to accept the feasibility of 50 metre-tall robots conducting urban warfare and giant mirrors reflecting sunlight to create a laser that can obliterate huge chunks of an asteroid base. Like I said, Gundam ignores other research/facts such as the proven side-effects of prolonged life in space.

3) I said they didn't get "as frequently". Eitherways, if it was the issue you made it out to be then it would've been brought up in a sidestory or novel. Now, unless someone can chime in to say that it was mentioned then I'll stick to "Gundam and general space sci-fi expects us to accept it as possible/realistic in UC)

4,5) I've read everything you said but you're making a lot of assumptions and basing equations off of those assumptions to create a calamity that will not necessarily occur (and if it did then Char was right for reasons I said above).

Your point about the moon/mars bases receiving supplies from the Jupiter fleet only reinforces my point that the colonies do not need to depend on Earth (if it did become inaccessible) because they'd either improve colony tech (hence making Char right that humanity would finally evolve and work together to live in space instead of fighting) or they'd relocate the colonies (which is an understood activity as shown in 0083) so they can receive supplies more easily. See? No air supply problem.

6) I don't need to - given everything else I've said however I'll encourage you to consider the amount of resources that reside within the asteroid belt.

I'm not claiming you're wrong. I'm telling you that your assumptions do not represent fact especially since you're only backing them up with more assumptions.

Those are my final words on this....I've engineered facilities for commercial & industrial complexes more than a few times so I *might* be using more than my imagination. If you can present facts to back up your assumptions that'd be nice but the topic was about Char's plan and not an imagined air-supply problem.

[MythSearcher]

1) There also needs to be enough time for de/re-pressurization and de-contamination if we're being realistic about it while ships are entering/exiting the space ports. Gundam makes it seem like a vent just opens but that's not how it would work in reality. We both understand that. Realistically, the air would be pumped out (during exit) and re-cycled.

2) Yes it does. Gundam also asks us to accept the feasibility of 50 metre-tall robots conducting urban warfare and giant mirrors reflecting sunlight to create a laser that can obliterate huge chunks of an asteroid base. Like I said, Gundam ignores other research/facts such as the proven side-effects of prolonged life in space.

3) I said they didn't get "as frequently". Eitherways, if it was the issue you made it out to be then it would've been brought up in a sidestory or novel. Now, unless someone can chime in to say that it was mentioned then I'll stick to "Gundam and general space sci-fi expects us to accept it as possible/realistic in UC)

4,5) I've read everything you said but you're making a lot of assumptions and basing equations off of those assumptions to create a calamity that will not necessarily occur (and if it did then Char was right for reasons I said above).

Your point about the moon/mars bases receiving supplies from the Jupiter fleet only reinforces my point that the colonies do not need to depend on Earth (if it did become inaccessible) because they'd either improve colony tech (hence making Char right that humanity would finally evolve and work together to live in space instead of fighting) or they'd relocate the colonies (which is an understood activity as shown in 0083) so they can receive supplies more easily. See? No air supply problem.

6) I don't need to - given everything else I've said however I'll encourage you to consider the amount of resources that reside within the asteroid belt.

I'm not claiming you're wrong. I'm telling you that your assumptions do not represent fact especially since you're only backing them up with more assumptions.

Those are my final words on this....I've engineered facilities for commercial & industrial complexes more than a few times so I *might* be using more than my imagination. If you can present facts to back up your assumptions that'd be nice but the topic was about Char's plan and not an imagined air-supply problem.

1) Like I said, air pumping out does not magically happen, and pumps are not what you think to be. They are not magical devices, they have limitations.
You can't recycle 100% of the air, air particles are left behind so you don't waste hours of time in the air locks waiting for it to depressurized.

2) MSs are more or less 20m tall, not 50.(or 60feet)
All the things that you think they ignored? Mentioned in Gundam Century, Officials and other publications.
So no, they don't do things magically.

3) Like I said, you don't need it to be THAT frequent. 200t a day for each colony is just a Ball full of Nitrogen. 1000t a day is just a bit larger tank.
But you don't want to wait 4 years for a big supply, since the pressure in the colony will drop by a lot till that point.

4) You are obviously ignoring what I have said then, or not understanding it.
These are valid assumptions, along with actual settings stating the EF government left behind people to supply the Colonies. So how do you make the assumption that they are completely self sustainable?

5) No, I am saying the Mars colony, which is much closer to Jupiter than Earth L points, got supplies from the Jupiter fleet, because they do not have that much demand to begin with and the travelling time between them and Jupiter is much less.(Also, the 2.7% in Mars' atmosphere is much easier to gather for them)
The moon colonies still need resupplies from Earth, just less because they are not spinning to spread all its mass out to space, but deep underground.

6) Yes, I have considered that, in fact, I had tried to locate Nitrogen in the Solar System pretty long time ago when I wanted to write a world setting for a collaborative project.
The answer is, either you get if on Earth, on the 6th moon of Saturn, or get ammonia on Jupiter and Saturn and convert it to Nitrogen.
So, sorry, the asteroid belt is NOT a feasible option, and Jupiter is taking way too long to travel.

I've told you the fact for a few times already, the EF leave people behind for this in the settings, this alone already is more than enough than anything I've said. What I am telling you here is why, but the establish fact of the UC time line is fixed, the colonies are NOT self sustainable, as said in Gundam Officials, you need supplies from Earth to help them live their lives. This is what all my "assumptions" been based on.
If you want a specific reference, it is P.88 of Gundam Officials, under the entry 宇宙世紀(Universal Century).

Also, my major is Mechanical Engineering AND my senior elective is Spacecraft Design, been working on a NASA funded project for 2 semesters, built a micro-satellite, and a huge fan of space technology, also, I took classes during my master degree in applied physics that 1 of them are specifically about creating a vacuum, 2 of them needed a vacuum to do all the solid state work about nanotechnology and keeping plasma in a vacuum. That is why I am not doing mere assumptions from thin air, but telling you what actually is involved here about vacuums.

You can make the argument that it is not air they need from the Earth, but other than nitrogen, you can really get almost every other thing you need to stay alive in space, and this does not help your argument, because the fact is the colonies CANNOT sustain themselves in UC, supported by official documents, and Char's action will kill all of the spacenoids since it cut off supplies.
For the sake of it, even all the way to Jupiter, the Jupiter Empire was relying on Earth to send them supplies in UC0133, and living poor lives that they need to ration everything including food, water and air. Not saying that's realistic(other than food, air and water can be gathered right next to them on Jupiter), but that's the fact in UC.

[Kratos]

Doesn't Full Frontal state that the Colonies are more-or-less self-sufficient, to the extent that they could lead a separate political existence from the Earth?

Regardless of what those "official sources" say, animated works supersede all. It may very well be the case that the Colonies could, in fact, survive without constant resupply from the Earth.

[MythSearcher]

Doesn't Full Frontal state that the Colonies are more-or-less self-sufficient, to the extent that they could lead a separate political existence from the Earth?

Regardless of what those "official sources" say, animated works supersede all. It may very well be the case that the Colonies could, in fact, survive without constant resupply from the Earth.

The problem here is, Full Frontal is just an empty shell being manipulated by a politician, highly unlikely that he know anything about colony survivals.

Also, being self sufficient with a more or less healthy Earth next to you is different from being self sufficient with a nuclear winter Earth next to you.
Politically speaking, you can establish a trade route to buy Air from Earth, there's nothing stopping you from doing so.
Just like countries buy fossil fuels(which is pretty much a necessity nowadays) from other countries, its called trading.
You don't need to be politically dependent on that.

And no, we don't believe everything they say in the anime, just like you won't believe Al stating he saw a EFSF MS which is black, or that Bernie had 4 kills and needed 1 more to be an Ace, or even listened to Char about dropping Axis is better for human kind.

[ShadowCell]

well, i guess if you want to set out to interpret every character as an idiot, there's no stopping you.

but then, that makes all your interpretations suspect.

[MythSearcher]

well, i guess if you want to set out to interpret every character as an idiot, there's no stopping you.

but then, that makes all your interpretations suspect.

Gundam Officials is supposed to be written by an expert in UC, and it is official.

And BTW, I have never heard of Sunrise stating only anime is canon, except in the English community. Never heard of it in the Chinese and Japanese community.
Also, Bandai owns Sunrise, and the one who owns the copyright is Sotsu agency, so Sunrise does not even have the say here.

[Kratos]

Gundam Officials is supposed to be written by an expert in UC, and it is official.

And BTW, I have never heard of Sunrise stating only anime is canon, except in the English community. Never heard of it in the Chinese and Japanese community.

The written materials are constantly revising, rewriting, and contradicting information established by one another. There's not really any reason to "trust" one over any other.

As to the second point, we've had like a million threads on anime's dictation of what's official, and no offense or anything, but I kinda take the word of Mark Simmons over yours.

Anyways, to clarify my points regarding Frontal and this particular debate:

...being self sufficient with a more or less healthy Earth next to you is different from being self sufficient with a nuclear winter Earth next to you.

Fair enough. And that would be all well and good for this discussion, except...

Politically speaking, you can establish a trade route to buy Air from Earth, there's nothing stopping you from doing so.
Just like countries buy fossil fuels(which is pretty much a necessity nowadays) from other countries, its called trading.
You don't need to be politically dependent on that.

Full Frontal's entire plan isn't to just create a separate economic bloc - it's to create one that excludes the Federation ENTIRELY. His scenario didn't sound like the sort that would involve any sort of trade. He doesn't just want independence, he wants complete and total severance so that the Earth will decline and the Federation will collapse completely.

The problem here is, Full Frontal is just an empty shell being manipulated by a politician, highly unlikely that he know anything about colony survivals.

Is that a novel thing? I was going by what we know of Frontal in the anime, where he doesn't seem to be under any sort of service to anybody but, well, himself (and in his mind, the greater desries and dreams of the Spacenoid people, but that's hardly a tangible authority that could be pulling his puppet strings). And even if he were, this mystical political puppetmaster is still making this call. Unless Frontal is being manipulated by a bunch of Titans, why would they trick him into something that results in the death a bunch of Spacenoids?

And no, we don't believe everything they say in the anime, just like you won't believe Al stating he saw a EFSF MS which is black, or that Bernie had 4 kills and needed 1 more to be an Ace, or even listened to Char about dropping Axis is better for human kind.

The thing is, though, Frontal was being (or seemed; I guess it could always turn out that he has some Double-Secret Plot up his sleeve) completely sincere. There's no reason not to believe him, and if his plan is to create an economic bloc that completely excludes the Earth as mentioned above, I'm sure he's considered and looked into the ability of the Colonies to survive without Earth. I don't think he's lying or bluffing, and he's not an idiot. His whole plan hinges on it. He's being written like he knows what he's talking about.

With all this in mind, yes, the Colonies could be self-sufficient in the event of Char's nuclear winter, at least according to Unicorn - which is the only animated word that we have on the matter, and thereby the one that we should be looking to for answers.

[toysdream]

And BTW, I have never heard of Sunrise stating only anime is canon, except in the English community. Never heard of it in the Chinese and Japanese community.
Also, Bandai owns Sunrise, and the one who owns the copyright is Sotsu agency, so Sunrise does not even have the say here.

I first noticed this rule of "only filmed works are official" in a roundtable discussion of game-original mobile suits in Dengeki Hobby Magazine (helpfully posted online over here), but it's pretty widely known in the Japanese fandom. If we can take Wikipedia as an indicator of "what the Japanese fan community thinks," this rule is cited in the articles on the Universal Century and Gundam Century. In the latter case, the footnotes source this claim to the same Dengeki Hobby Magazine article I mentioned. Links:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/宇宙世紀#.E6.AD.A3.E5.8F.B2
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ガンダムセンチュリー ... 1.E9.9F.BF

So clearly the Japanese fans have heard of it!

As for the Bandai versus Sunrise thing, like I said, I've been working with these guys for 15 years, and any time a question comes up the answer is "ask Sunrise". Bandai doesn't concern itself with managing Gundam continuity - that's the studio's job.

Finally, who made Gundam Officials "official" in the first place? Sunrise. The first item in the credits list on the final page, listed even above Minakawa's name, is "Supervision: Sunrise". The acknowledgements at the end thank a variety of Sunrise staff by name for their help in checking the contents; the Bandai folks are just thanked for providing things like kit manuals and model sheets for game-original mobile suits. On page 893, there's a helpful note that the contents of the book are based on Sunrise's setting as of December 2000. Etc etc.

Minakawa's afterword has some more discussion of the "stance" the book takes, as opposed to Sunrise's stance of giving precedence to the animation. But there's no question that the credibility of the book comes from Sunrise's direct involvement - not Bandai, not Kodansha, not even Minakawa.

EDIT: If you're genuinely interested in this, here's a discussion on the subject between Yuka Minakawa and Sunrise's Koichi Inoue, who Minakawa describes as "Gundam's guru".

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

I first noticed this rule of "only filmed works are official" in a roundtable discussion of game-original mobile suits in Dengeki Hobby Magazine (helpfully posted online over here), but it's pretty widely known in the Japanese fandom. If we can take Wikipedia as an indicator of "what the Japanese fan community thinks," this rule is cited in the articles on the Universal Century and Gundam Century. In the latter case, the footnotes source this claim to the same Dengeki Hobby Magazine article I mentioned. Links:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/宇宙世紀#.E6.AD.A3.E5.8F.B2
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ガンダムセンチュリー ... 1.E9.9F.BF

So clearly the Japanese fans have heard of it!

As for the Bandai versus Sunrise thing, like I said, I've been working with these guys for 15 years, and any time a question comes up the answer is "ask Sunrise". Bandai doesn't concern itself with managing Gundam continuity - that's the studio's job.

Finally, who made Gundam Officials "official" in the first place? Sunrise. The first item in the credits list on the final page, listed even above Minakawa's name, is "Supervision: Sunrise". The acknowledgements at the end thank a variety of Sunrise staff by name for their help in checking the contents; the Bandai folks are just thanked for providing things like kit manuals and model sheets for game-original mobile suits. On page 893, there's a helpful note that the contents of the book are based on Sunrise's setting as of December 2000. Etc etc.

Minakawa's afterword has some more discussion of the "stance" the book takes, as opposed to Sunrise's stance of giving precedence to the animation. But there's no question that the credibility of the book comes from Sunrise's direct involvement - not Bandai, not Kodansha, not even Minakawa.

EDIT: If you're genuinely interested in this, here's a discussion on the subject between Yuka Minakawa and Sunrise's Koichi Inoue, who Minakawa describes as "Gundam's guru".

-- Mark

I've been reading the first few lines of that, and it does not say "Only" animated works are official, it said animated works are official and settings can be separated into 3 stages, white(=official), grey and black(=lies).
柴原：現在、数あるＯＭＳの中には公的、私的に「認めたくない」ものがあるはず。今回はそれらについて語っていただきます。その前に“オフィシャル”の定義はどうなっているのでしょうか。
堀口：“フィルム化されたもの”がオフィシャル。
渡辺：設定は大まかに白(＝オフィシャル)、グレー、黒(＝嘘)の３段階に分けられますね。

This is very different from what seems to be the general consensus here, which is "Only animated parts are official".

And What I am talking about Gundam Officials being written by an expert in the UC timeline, I am talking about Gundam Officials supposed to be written and published in the UC0100 time frame, by a historian called Minaka Junkers(well, and discovered in CC2001 in a mountain cycle)
Who should be much more knowledgeable than Char or Full Frontal.

Bandai uses the ask Sunrise tacticas for long, yes, but the fact is that they have been publishing books for the continuity for a really long time now, so they are involved in this much more than you usually think.

[toysdream]

Don't mean to derail the thread - maybe this is an opportunity for the mods to split this digression off? But it's kind of an interesting topic anyway.


On the role of Sunrise, it seems in the space of one post we've gone from "Bandai owns Sunrise [...] Sunrise does not even have the say here" to "but Bandai is more involved than you think." So I guess we've settled that Sunrise is the arbiter of what's official, then.


Anyway, there's a six-page afterword in Gundam Officials in which Minakawa discusses the Sunrise "stance" in great detail, and how this was interpreted in Gundam Officials. Here, the Sunrise policy is described as "depictions in the films have priority." In Minakawa's opinion, this is a natural stance for an animation production company, and Gundam did begin as a filmed work, but much of Gundam's charm comes from its multiple layers of setting, so taken literally it would limit the appeal of the films. Minakawa calls that "a reversal of cause and effect."

Minakawa goes on to explain that, as presently expressed, Sunrise's stance doesn't necessarily deny everything outside the films. Rather than "maintaining its shape by pruning leaves and branches like a bonsai," the Gundam world takes its shape from "the trunk called film". So Minakawa feels this policy can be interpreted to mean that Gundam is developed through various media, with the films laying the foundation.

The afterword goes on for several more pages, but that seems to be the mission statement. It's interesting that Minakawa feels the need to reject the extreme version of the Sunrise policy, which would hold that everything outside the filmed works is actively rejected, but we're still left with the fact that the filmed works are meant to take precedence over other sources.

As for the word "official", there's some interesting discussion of this in the conversation with Sunrise's Inoue. It kind of sounds like the title was for marketing reasons - Inoue says "I think it was chosen so that it would be taken seriously," and that the book couldn't have been published without it. Sunrise felt that it was okay to call it "official" because they were checking the whole thing. Nonetheless, the book takes a more all-inclusive approach than Sunrise does, and Inoue makes the point that they called it "Officials" rather than "Official" because it gathers together a variety of material.

All of which sounds pretty characteristic to me. These are the same kinds of reasons why we were asked to use the name "gundamofficial.com".

-- Mark

[ShadowCell]

there's even a long thread on that here

[toysdream]

Yep, although I think the interview link there is busted; you can now find the Dengeki Hobby Magazine roundtable transcript over here.

I note that, a couple of lines down from the bit MythSearcher posted, the DHM moderator asks about Sunrise-supervised materials: "But does 'supervised=official'?" To which Shindosha's Toshihiro Watanabe replies, "There's 'supervised' and 'authorized', but I think the standard is filmed works, no matter what."

(And Watanabe should know; he's the co-writer of most of the Entertainment Bible and Data Collection books, the MS Encyclopedia, etc.)


None of which really helps us address the question of air leakage from colonies, or the viability of Char's crazy scheme. In theory, I think you could obtain oxygen from water ice, which shouldn't be too hard to obtain in space. But if the colonies are dependent on regular air shipments from Earth, it kind of calls the whole sustainability of space colonies into question! For better or worse, most of the Gundam setting is predicated on the notion that the colonies don't depend on Earth for anything, including food.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

Yep, although I think the interview link there is busted; you can now find the Dengeki Hobby Magazine roundtable transcript over here.

I note that, a couple of lines down from the bit MythSearcher posted, the DHM moderator asks about Sunrise-supervised materials: "But does 'supervised=official'?" To which Shindosha's Toshihiro Watanabe replies, "There's 'supervised' and 'authorized', but I think the standard is filmed works, no matter what."

(And Watanabe should know; he's the co-writer of most of the Entertainment Bible and Data Collection books, the MS Encyclopedia, etc.)


None of which really helps us address the question of air leakage from colonies, or the viability of Char's crazy scheme. In theory, I think you could obtain oxygen from water ice, which shouldn't be too hard to obtain in space. But if the colonies are dependent on regular air shipments from Earth, it kind of calls the whole sustainability of space colonies into question! For better or worse, most of the Gundam setting is predicated on the notion that the colonies don't depend on Earth for anything, including food.

-- Mark

I kinda disagree on the last point.
If they are completely independent, Zeon wouldn't need to have trades with other colonies, they can be on their own, and economic sanctions will be completely useless.
Other sides will also have little reason to stick with the Feddies, it's completely useless, you only need to ignore the Earth Government, and get your own gov, since you don't rely on anything Earth's providing, and they don't really need protection from the EFSF, and the EF does not seem to be that aggressive in the shows as well, they are very lax in doing stuff, always appearing a moment too late, won't start a fight unless you start one with them(they don't even mind yourselves fighting each other)
Titans is the only aggressive pact of EF, but it is created pretty much to respond to an aggressive attack from Delaz.

So they must be dependent on something to prevent them from all following side 3's footsteps, which EF seems to be unable to stop anyway.

[toysdream]

I guess one thing I've seen mentioned as a scarce resource due to Federation embargoes is rubber. According to the Gundam Fact File series, the prototype MS-01 had rubber-soled feet, but they had to drop this feature because they couldn't get hold of petroleum products.

This seems to make sense; basic elements like hydrogen, helium, oxygen, iron, etc are relatively abundant in space, but complex organic compounds like petroleum can only be found on Earth. If we look at the regions of Earth that Zeon occupied and began strip-mining, they're generally going after petroleum, gold, diamonds, and other substances that are hard to find in space. They may have been air-mining as well, but that would be harder to see.

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

For what it is worth, in CE we are told that PLANT is largely independant from Earth, except for food, which is because the Earth refused to make them completey independant. This eventually leads PLANT to make back deals with some nations on Earth in order to obtain enough supplies to be able to produce their own food in the colonies, which eventually they do and turn many colonies into agricultural colonies, just like Junius 7.

In AW, the colonies do seem to have remained self-sufficient during the 15 years prior to the 8th Space War.

Also, the colonies of CC leave Earth, so they most have also become self-sufficient.

So these do seem to be cases of colonies becoming self-sufficient.

In UC the closest example we have is probably Axis after the OYW, though they probably still managed to receive supplies somehow.

Regarding what Mark said, I think it makes more sense to think that the embargo of the EF was to prevent Zeon from building up their military forces.

It would also be interesting to know if the original Gundam settings still considered petroleum as a main source of rocket fuel/propellant, or already considered other alternatives. In the first case, the embargo of all petroleum products would mean that before the Minovksy fusion reactor and derived engines were widely available to Zeon, their available propellant supplies for ships could have been greatly restricted and controlled by the Federation.

According to Mark's timeline, the first Jovian Energy Fleet deployed by Zeon to collect Helium 3 launches on October of U.C. 0070. Zeon's first combat deployment of the Zaku I is on July of U.C. 0077. Considering that we are told that the entire trip to Jupiter takes 7 years, it would appear that the return of the first Jupiter Energy Fleet could have been a decisive factor to begin military actions against the Federation. Who knows, maybe before their return, Zeon had produced a large amount of ships and MS that were not operational until the arrival of the Helium 3 supplies.

Also, MythSearcher, a friendly piece of advice: consider not including the entire quote of the previous message, it clogs the thread when you do so with large posts and multiple times in the same page . I'm sure there are times when it it justified to incldue the wole quote, but in many cases you could either just indicate who you are responding to or just quote the particular sentence you are refering to.

[toysdream]

Most of the older publications indicate that, before everyone switched to nuclear thermal rockets, the main methods of propulsion were plasma rockets and chemical rocket engines (basically running on liquid hydrogen and oxygen, like the space shuttle). Not super-efficient, but also not dependent on terrestrial ingredients. Even helium-3 can, in small quantities, be extracted from lunar soil.

-- Mark

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

If they are completely independent, Zeon wouldn't need to have trades with other colonies, they can be on their own, and economic sanctions will be completely useless.

Two different things, there; we're saying that they can survive indefinitely entirely on their own, not that they can provide absolutely everything they might want entirely in-house. Luxuries (like foods not well-suited to production in space) and certain industrial materials (like the aforementioned petroleum products) may only be available from Earth, but no one in a UC colony is going to starve, suffocate, or dehydrate to death if shipments from Earth stop.

[Tangerine]

Same thought occurred to me as well.

Luxuries good not found in space is the issue. It's not about food, water or air. It's about small things that make life easier or happier. Call it luxuries good, but it's not always in form of gold, silver or diamonds. It could be spices for cooking, salt, seafood or maybe exotic stuff like Wagyu Beef. It would be really off if colonies still in dire need of the basic necessities like air, water and food in large quantity on daily basis. Rocketing that many stuff from Earth on a daily basis is a logistical nightmare, especially thinking before OYW there are so many Sides with their own colonies to think about.