Size of ships and LARGE objects

[toysdream]

You'll note that the gun turrets and other features of the Archangel are waaaay bigger than the corresponding parts of the Izumo class and the Girty Lue (which doesn't seem to be included in these charts). The originally published length of the Archangel - 345 meters - made a lot more sense, but it seems to have been completely supplanted by the 420 meter figure, which does make the Archangel enormous compared to most other ships in the Gundam Seed series.

-- Mark

[Erisie]

You'll note that the gun turrets and other features of the Archangel are waaaay bigger than the corresponding parts of the Izumo class

Nice observation, Mark, since they are supposedly the same weapon (Mark 71 225cm high-energy beam cannon, "Gottfried")

Another thing is that the Girty Lue-class, unlike its predecessor, does not include a positron cannon (although the Minerva has one), replacing that with six Gottfried cannons --for some reason...--, plus the larger MS hangar.

and the Girty Lue (which doesn't seem to be included in these charts).

Didn't include it, nor the Minerva, because my focus was SEED proper, not Destiny.
I did that with Powerpoint for a personal project I'm working on (note there's no Eternal) and it's supposed to complement a second chart with more sensible measurements.

The originally published length of the Archangel - 345 meters - made a lot more sense, but it seems to have been completely supplanted by the 420 meter figure, which does make the Archangel enormous compared to most other ships in the Gundam Seed series.

If you don't mind asking, where did that number (345 meters) came from?

[toysdream]

If you don't mind asking, where did that number (345 meters) came from?

The first place I remember seeing it was in the first volume of the Gundam Seed novelization (page 24, in the middle of chapter one). It caught my eye because, at that point, there weren't any published specs for the Archangel.

Later on, some of the publications listed two lengths - for example, the Gundam Seed Official File: Mecha Edition Vol.4 had it as "overall length about 420m (hull length 345m)". But after that, everyone seemed to standardize on the bigger figure, giving us the lumbering monster Archangel we know today.


Oh, and just to change the subject, here are a couple more ship-related data points...

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... wazine.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... wazine.jpg

Two shots of Char's Zanzibar parked next to Kycilia's Gwazine, from the TV series and the Gundam III movie respectively. I think this gives us clear evidence that the Gwazine class was always supposed to be much bigger than the 255-meter Zanzibar, and the animators maintained that size relationship when they re-animated this scene for the movie.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... rison2.jpg

Now that the General Revil's length has been officially established at 630 meters, where does that leave the Dogosse Giar? It's hard to match them exactly, since the proportions of key features are somewhat different, but it looks to me like the Dogosse Giar would be either the same size as the General Revil or slightly smaller.

Since the Dogosse Giar model sheet includes an Alexandria for scale, this gives us a chance to estimate the Alexandria's size as well. As I discussed at numbing length on the second page of this thread, there are a lot of conflicting claims about this ship, but this comparison seems to support the idea that it's about 300 meters long - roughly 50 meters shorter than V Gundam's Gaunland, which has an extra catapult deck in back.

This would also mean that the Alexandria's main gun turrets are the same size as those of the Salamis Kai, assuming the Salamis Kai is 288 meters long, so this chart may be pretty close to the mark.

-- Mark

[Erisie]

Now that the General Revil's length has been officially established at 630 meters, where does that leave the Dogosse Giar? It's hard to match them exactly, since the proportions of key features are somewhat different, but it looks to me like the Dogosse Giar would be either the same size as the General Revil or slightly smaller.

Since the Dogosse Giar model sheet includes an Alexandria for scale, this gives us a chance to estimate the Alexandria's size as well. As I discussed at numbing length on the second page of this thread, there are a lot of conflicting claims about this ship, but this comparison seems to support the idea that it's about 300 meters long

My theory is that the length differences are negilible, considering the General Revil is nothing more than a refitted Giar with extra catapults. My bet is same as yours, and the difference is more a thing of the Revil being larger in displacement than length, in the same way the Nimitz-class has a heavier displacement than the Enterprise (100,000 long tons in the Nimitz v. 93,000 of the CVN-65), while the Enterprise is 10 meters longer than the Nimitz.

[Gelgoog Jager]

I'm still having a hard time thinking that the Salamis Kai (288m) is bigger than the Endra (270m as discussed in the other thread), especially considering the Endra's spacious MS hangar.

By the way, after watching the comaprison chart I came to realzie that the Endra's useless double barrel turret (in the arc between the MS hangar and the engine/cargo bay) seems to be of about the same size as the Musai's double barrel turrets.

[toysdream]

Yes, that does make the Endra relatively tiny. Then again, the third Zeta movie does make it look pretty small compared to the Gwanban, and we should bear in mind that the next generation of Neo Zeon ships are apparently pretty small. The consensus claim is that the flagship Rewloola is only 250 meters!

For what it's worth, though, the 1/144 ship display at Gundam Front Tokyo lists the Rewloola at 350 meters. Here's a new version of that comparison graphic, with the Gundam UC version of the Rewloola scaled to 350 meters; I think it actually looks pretty plausible alongside the Ra Cailum, Gwanban, and Endra.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

Yes, that does make the Endra relatively tiny. Then again, the third Zeta movie does make it look pretty small compared to the Gwanban, and we should bear in mind that the next generation of Neo Zeon ships are apparently pretty small. The consensus claim is that the flagship Rewloola is only 250 meters!

For what it's worth, though, the 1/144 ship display at Gundam Front Tokyo lists the Rewloola at 350 meters. Here's a new version of that comparison graphic, with the Gundam UC version of the Rewloola scaled to 350 meters; I think it actually looks pretty plausible alongside the Ra Cailum, Gwanban, and Endra.

-- Mark

Ah, the Rewloola is one of the bugs, it is way too small to be a battleship, I can hardly believe something that size actually can have fire power and armour defense against the Ra Cailum, or even the Clop.

Also, if Dorgosse Giar is 600 or so, that will make about that size as well, which actually makes more sense that way.

BTW, I still maintain my view that the size of Salamis is 228m, not 288m, most of the newer data use 228m.

[toysdream]

If we go with 350 meters for the Rewloola, as per Gundam Front Tokyo, then it's bigger than a Magellan (and bigger than Gundam Officials claims the Gwazine is), and not much smaller than the Nahel Argama. That seems reasonably big for a battleship.

In the "Gundam Unicorn Katoki Hajime Mechanical Archives" book, there's a comment - from Katoki, I think - that even though the Rewloola is said to be about 250 meters long, when he was redesigning it, he considered it to be bigger than the Ra Cailum. Perhaps the 350-meter length could be considered a compromise?

As for the Salamis, there's a similar range of claims - as we've discussed, these go from 187 meters (MSV Collection File) up to 288 meters (Roman Album, implied by Zeta Gundam comparison chart). Again, the current consensus figure of 228 meters (implied by old 1/1200 kit, first printed in Gundam Officials) seems like a compromise.

To me, the one common-sense requirement is that the hull of Zeta Gundam's Salamis Kai should be tall enough for a standing mobile suit. But since there aren't a lot of "official" side-view drawings of the Salamis, it's hard to measure that out.

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

I'll be willing to consider that even if they look identical, the Salamis Kai from Zeta could be bigger than the regular Salamis from the OYW and the Salamis Kai from 0083, after all we already have the precedent among Federation's vessels of the Dogosse Gear and Birmingham, which have very different total lengths despite sharing the overall same proportions on their hull design.

To provide an example, check the profile of the Salamis at the MS Igloo site. It includes images of GMs standing on top and below a Salamis, which seem to point out that the hull of the Salamis is of about the same height as a GM, which would make it quite difficult for a GM to be able to fit inside the hull in standing position (plus ceiling and floor).

For comparison purposes, check the image in the third post of this thread, which shows how much larger a Salamis Kai from Zeta is than the Nemo launching from it, which confirms that at least the Salamis from MS Igloo is indeed a smaller model.

Also, in the MSV-R thread you pointed out that the Nelson-class would need to be 288m long in order for their catapults to be high enough (20m) to fit a standing GM.

I do would like to point out that the front end of the catapults are smaller than the actual hangars, so I suppose it could be technically possible that as long as the hangar itself is high enough for fitting MS, the catapult could be a bit smaller, somethign that would require the GMs to launch with their knees slightly closed for them to clear the catapult's height. Upon returning, the MS would have to avoid standing up until they have crossed the catapult and reached the hangar itself.

Either way, what stands out the most is that the opening of the catapult (excluding ceiling and floor) seems to be of the same height as the front of the Salamis hull, which would indicate that the front hull is not high enough to fit a GM inside, even if the height of the front end of the catapult was 20m.

[toysdream]

I think they hedged this a little in the case of MS Igloo by giving the Salamis a disproportionately tall hull. In one of my Igloo books, there's a side view (CG) of the Salamis, which indicates that the front section of its hull is roughly 10.8% as high as the ship is long. (I'll scan it so we can precision-measure.) That comes to about 23 meters, based on the MS Igloo length, which is just about enough for a standing mobile suit.

Other renditions of the Salamis indicate different proportions. The side-view lineup from Zeta Gundam shows the forward hull as being about 9% of the ship length - roughly 26 meters, since the Salamis seems to be 288 meters in this lineup. And the side view in the Gundam 0083 comparison chart, which seems to be vertically squished, leaves the forward hull about 7% of the ship length, which means that the Salamis couldn't carry mobile suits no matter how big it is!

One more data point: The schematics for the old 1/1200 kit, which is the only source prior to Gundam Officials that supported a 228-meter length for the Salamis, show the forward hull as being 8% of the ship length. In other words, since the kit is 192mm long, the hull is about 15mm high; in scale, that's 230m long and 18m high.

Putting all these together, we can say that it's just barely possible for a Salamis to carry mobile suits inside its forward hull even if it's 212 or 228 meters long. It's definitely a more comfortable fit at the longer size, though.

-- Mark

[Deacon Blues]

I don't think the IGLOO series did a very good job in the 'realistic size' category when they animated it. There were some instances where a MS came up on a ship and the ship was like a matchbox car compared to it.

[MythSearcher]

I don't think the IGLOO series did a very good job in the 'realistic size' category when they animated it. There were some instances where a MS came up on a ship and the ship was like a matchbox car compared to it.

In fact they did a really poor job.
According to its own specs in Igloo, the Salamis should be 71.4m high overall.
The superstructure of the Salamis is hardly half of the ship's height, which means the front hull should be at least 35+m, but in the show it is more like half of that, which is 18m.(just about the height of a MS, or little more than 1.5 times of a Ball. Just like in the above linked official site.)
And the Igloo version gives a 212m overall length, So it is indeed a shorter, taller and slimmer version.
The listed proportions of various Salamis in the Ship & Aerospace plane Encyclopedia:(overall L, W, H in metres)
Salamis(MSG): 228, 63.8, 61.3
Salamis(Igloo): 212, 62.2, 71.4
Salamis Kai(0083): 198, 75, 58
Salamis Kai(0087, AEUG Mont Blanc): 198, 75, 58
Salamis Kai(0087, EFSF Salamis Kai, Brunei): 198, 75, 56
The poorest Salamis must be the super upgraded Beam Shield version in V Gundam (0153), it was not mentioned at all, so no specs for you, my dear.

Oh, right, Salamis(pre0001): 70

It is fun to note that the 0087 version is usually seen as the same as the 0079 version, but this book used the 0083 version's length.

Why I don't agree with the 288m figure? Well, it is simply too large compared with the Clop.
Yes, Clop is 292m, if we only look at the numbers.
But one will see how unfittingly small the hangar of the Clop class would be, if the Salamis is indeed 288m only 4m less than Clop.
http://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/201203/ ... aac282.JPG
This image is not quite to scale, the Salamis is no way only 4m less than the clop.
(But it is also obviously not 228:292)
The Salamis's hangar is already visibly larger than the Clop's(red portion)
Even if we take more towards the end of the hull(part under the bridge, all the way to the engine nozzle, which will be very dangerous for the bridge clew if a returning MS blown up in the hangar) a 288m Salamis will still have visibly larger hangar than the Clop, which is, well, unconvincing. Even if the Salamis is rescaled to be somewhere between 288 and 228, like in this picture, the Clop is still going to be not a very convincing replacement for the Salamis Kai.
For those who wants to question if the Salamis Kai's hangar go all the way to the back, there are side structures that accommodated the turrets, which was originally placed directly on the side of the hull, and people who are familiar with warship designs will know that the turret got a lot of substructure under it for turning and does quite deep(to lower the moment of inertia you need a deep structure and not a wide and fat one) so they did free a lot of empty space there for the hangar.


Also, I read the previous ship discussion about the Columbus class's MS cap, it is not strange to have a 50 or maybe even 100 MS stored in it, the size is quite enough, consider the Columbus did not have all the cooling equipments for resupplying the MSs(0080 and 08MS retcon), so it did not need to bring that much spare parts for the MSs, it simply just bring the MSs to the battlefield, instead of being the mothership of the MSs. The Columbus Kai in Sentinel are modified and spot a longer thruster part, along with actual resupply functions that minimized the capacity. Also, if we use the 0083 version columbus, it is actually longer than the Sentinel version, where the Sentinel version only got two blocks of compartment, the 0083 version got 3.
I'll use the 0083 specs 145, 110, 55 for the following calculations.
For reference:
Original: http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/msgundam/columbus.htm
0083: http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/0083/columbus.htm
Sentinel: http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/sentinel/columbus.htm
Since the length of the original is the same as 0083's, but with only 2 blocks, I will estimate the original's and the Sentinel's block size to be 145m/3=48.33m
So the compartment length of 2 blocks in the original and Sentinel is about 96m overall, and the 0083 blocks are 145m/4=36.25m, and the compartment length of 3 blocks is 108.75m
(The 0083 version should be slower since it got a smaller engine)

There was a long discussion in a taiwan site:
http://forum.gamer.com.tw/G1.php?bsn=00109&parent=6972
And I had calculated the size required to store an MS, and to actually use an MS.
A regular MS standing takes about 20X7X10 m^3 of space, 25X21X24 m^3 for all the moving and repair space with industrial robot arms to move about.
If the MSs in a Columbus are packed in such a tight configuration, you can fit 8 rows of MSs,
4 on each side, in a 田 configuration.
For a 55m height, you can easily fit two rows, top and bottom.
For the approximately 50m across, you can easily fit two columns.
So you got 4 on a side.

For 50 MSs, divided by 8, you got aroung 6.25 MS in each row, given this image:
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj14 ... /041-1.jpg
48 regular and 2 for substitute, so 6 on each row and 2 stuff in way back in the hangar
Which takes up a length of 7X6=42m, which is hardly the first block of the Columbus.
You can even give them 7m of space in between each other, and you still have 50 standing there in the 2 blocks without any problem, taking up only 84m, you still have 12m in the back(or front) for scramble preparation. You get more in the 0083 Kai.
You can actually fit 100 GMs in the Columbus with no problem other than supplying, but as I said, during OYW, the EFSF didn't bother about resupplying the MSs, and the Columbus don't have the ability to do so according to Gundam Officials anyway.
MS surface armour reaches a couple of hundred degrees after 10 mins of battle, and before resupplying, you need the right cooling facilities to cool it for around 30 mins to do so(retcon 0080, Barnie's Zaku is still too hot to touch after battle), and the supply ships don't have the facilities to do so, thus most will only carry RB-79s(retcon 08MS).
Even if you want to do resupplies, you can pack most of the MSs in the tighter configuration(14m apart), 6 rows of 7 MSs, and 2 rows with 5, than you get about 25X26X24 m^3 for 4 MSs at the same time. Similar applies to the 100 MS configuration, especially for the 0083 3 block version.

I think they hedged this a little in the case of MS Igloo by giving the Salamis a disproportionately tall hull. In one of my Igloo books, there's a side view (CG) of the Salamis, which indicates that the front section of its hull is roughly 10.8% as high as the ship is long. (I'll scan it so we can precision-measure.) That comes to about 23 meters, based on the MS Igloo length, which is just about enough for a standing mobile suit.

Other renditions of the Salamis indicate different proportions. The side-view lineup from Zeta Gundam shows the forward hull as being about 9% of the ship length - roughly 26 meters, since the Salamis seems to be 288 meters in this lineup. And the side view in the Gundam 0083 comparison chart, which seems to be vertically squished, leaves the forward hull about 7% of the ship length, which means that the Salamis couldn't carry mobile suits no matter how big it is!

One more data point: The schematics for the old 1/1200 kit, which is the only source prior to Gundam Officials that supported a 228-meter length for the Salamis, show the forward hull as being 8% of the ship length. In other words, since the kit is 192mm long, the hull is about 15mm high; in scale, that's 230m long and 18m high.

Putting all these together, we can say that it's just barely possible for a Salamis to carry mobile suits inside its forward hull even if it's 212 or 228 meters long. It's definitely a more comfortable fit at the longer size, though.

-- Mark

BTW,
http://space.uwants.com/attachments/201 ... 21wll7.jpg
198 VS 228 VS a bunch of MSs.
I used the RX-78-2 (ver. Ka) as 1(18m), the 0083 Salamis Kai is 11(198m) and 0087 Salamis Kai is 12.5(225m)
So I don't think thats a real problem.
Fitting 6 RX-78-2 in 0087 version without craming together and blocking the elevator is easy. 2 in front of the elevator, and 4 in the back. You still have plenty of space to fit accommodations and repair parts, for a modification of an old ship, this is already pretty good.
The 0083 cannot carry MS, so its fine to be sharp.

I created this to show how big(and silly) the FAZZ HMC is.(to justify its "few ten thousand kilometres" shooting range.)

EDIT: please use the edit button instead of double posting. thanks.

~ShadowCell

[toysdream]

Thanks for all these diagrams! It's pretty fun trying to dissect these guys, isn't it?

Personally, I'm not inclined to put too much stock in the Ship & Aerospace plane Encyclopedia. I feel like a lot of this is just lazy copy-and-paste; for example, they just copied the specs for Gundam 0083's Salamis Kai over to the Zeta Gundam version, giving us a Zeta version that's 30 meters shorter than the original.

Likewise, I think it's silly to assume that the 0083 version of the Columbus is exactly the same length as the original, when it's clearly the same ship with an extra cargo block inserted in the middle. (Comparing the line art makes this very clear.)


On to specifics! First, Salamis Kai versus Clop. In the original model sheet for the Salamis Kai, there are written notes saying that the MS hangar only extends as far back as the elevator; everything between the elevator and the main hull (the narrow "neck" of the ship) is a "factory block". So the Salamis hangar wouldn't really any bigger than the Clop hangar in this comparison.


As for the Columbus, I don't think you could really fit two layers of mobile suits on top of each other. The 55m height given in 0083 doesn't match the line art, and in fact, every time the Columbus shows up in the animation it's made very clear that its cargo compartments are about the same height as the MS hangar of a carrier ship. For example:

http://ultimatemark.com/gundam/images/f ... umbus1.jpg
http://ultimatemark.com/gundam/images/f ... umbus2.jpg

Here, the compartments actually line up perfectly with the White Base's hangars, which seems like a sensible design choice. Thanks to the extensive set of blueprints we've been given for the White Base, we know its hangars are about 25 meters high.

Likewise, in Gundam 0083 a Columbus pulls up next to the Albion (there's a very nice model sheet image of this - I'll scan that for us), and in Gundam UC one parks in front of the Nahel Argama and its cargo compartments line up with the ship's side and center catapults. This gives us a fairly clear and consistent sense of how big the Columbus and its compartments are.

It's been a while since I mathed out the dimensions of its floor space and compared these to mobile suit space requirements, so I'll defer to your numbers, but I do think it would have to be a single level.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

Thanks for all these diagrams! It's pretty fun trying to dissect these guys, isn't it?

Personally, I'm not inclined to put too much stock in the Ship & Aerospace plane Encyclopedia. I feel like a lot of this is just lazy copy-and-paste; for example, they just copied the specs for Gundam 0083's Salamis Kai over to the Zeta Gundam version, giving us a Zeta version that's 30 meters shorter than the original.

Likewise, I think it's silly to assume that the 0083 version of the Columbus is exactly the same length as the original, when it's clearly the same ship with an extra cargo block inserted in the middle. (Comparing the line art makes this very clear.)


On to specifics! First, Salamis Kai versus Clop. In the original model sheet for the Salamis Kai, there are written notes saying that the MS hangar only extends as far back as the elevator; everything between the elevator and the main hull (the narrow "neck" of the ship) is a "factory block". So the Salamis hangar wouldn't really any bigger than the Clop hangar in this comparison.


As for the Columbus, I don't think you could really fit two layers of mobile suits on top of each other. The 55m height given in 0083 doesn't match the line art, and in fact, every time the Columbus shows up in the animation it's made very clear that its cargo compartments are about the same height as the MS hangar of a carrier ship. For example:

http://ultimatemark.com/gundam/images/f ... umbus1.jpg
http://ultimatemark.com/gundam/images/f ... umbus2.jpg

Here, the compartments actually line up perfectly with the White Base's hangars, which seems like a sensible design choice. Thanks to the extensive set of blueprints we've been given for the White Base, we know its hangars are about 25 meters high.

Likewise, in Gundam 0083 a Columbus pulls up next to the Albion (there's a very nice model sheet image of this - I'll scan that for us), and in Gundam UC one parks in front of the Nahel Argama and its cargo compartments line up with the ship's side and center catapults. This gives us a fairly clear and consistent sense of how big the Columbus and its compartments are.

It's been a while since I mathed out the dimensions of its floor space and compared these to mobile suit space requirements, so I'll defer to your numbers, but I do think it would have to be a single level.

-- Mark

Well, I'm not giving much credit for that book, but I used it for fast checking.
I am sticking to 228m for the 0087 Salamis Kai.

For the 0083 Columbus, I actually think it is longer, but the 145m figure is correct, if we compare it to the Sentinel longer engine version. However, I normally use the less possible data in my analysis to illustrate that even with such data, it is still possible. So the origin Columbus would be like 25% shorter than 145m, around 108.75m, still quite long enough for 50 suits.
For the height, do you remember the 0083 comparison picture?
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... arison.jpg
If using 20m as our MS height, 45m still have 5m of space left, even if you got a 1m thick hull, you still have 3m of space. And given the nice 18m GMs, you got 7m of space.
Stacking them a bit slanted will give you more space in height, and I used a 7m figure as packed because I was compensating for later MSs with big backpacks, while the GMs got really small ones and are hardly 7m in depth so we got a lot of room to spare.
So instead of a | standing pose, you get a / standing pose, which is not uncommon in official pictures.

Those images in MSG are really out of proportion, the WB arms are only around 25m in height max, and no way it can be that big next to the columbus, well, even with this figure, the boxes seen in this pic
http://ultimatemark.com/gundam/images/f ... umbus2.jpg
is still about 20m in length and width, thus can easily fit 2 MS in them without any problem.
And in this pic, you can image fitting 4 with 3 in depth, of these side by side inside a block, giving you 12 of these boxes, and around 24 MSs in just the first block.
I know it is a sensible design choice, but the height of the Columbus is not necessarily the same as WB's arm, since you only need the width of the belt to match WB's arms, and the two compartments' be the same distance apart. The Columbus can be much taller than the WB.
Think of the Albion, which got a larger arm, and can still fit with the Columbus.


For the Salamis Kai vs Clop, don't forget the Clop would also need a factory block as well...
I can understand the factory block as the repair and resupply portion, you can still have 4 in there in the "bed", while 2~4 standing in the hangar in a pretty packed way, two on each side facing each other.

[Deacon Blues]

For what it's worth, Thunderbolt has mobile suits launching and landing rather vertical from either of the four bays on the ship. However, it should also be noted that the Columbus-class shown in this manga series seems rather gargantuan compared to ships of the past... :/

[toysdream]

Okay, here goes with a bunch of line art and comparison graphics!


First, here are schematics of the White Base from the original model sheets. Subsequent diagrams, model kits, etc have stuck very closely to these blueprints. There are rival claims for the White Base's overall length and dimensions, but the 250-meter length and associated dimensions from the MSV books, Entertainment Bible 1, and the 1/400 Gundam Collection model kit are a better fit for the schematics. If you really prefer the Roman Album length of 262 meters, then feel free to plus every measurement up by 5%.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... cale01.jpg

Based on these schematics, the White Base's hangar decks are 31 meters high by 19 meters wide, and separated by a gap of 42 meters. If the Columbus is designed to line up with these hangars, as the TV animation indicates, then we have a good basis for analyzing the Columbus as well.


It's harder to make direct comparisons with the Salamis. But here's a profile view of the MS Igloo version, specifically the Ball carrier type, from one of my MS Igloo books. It turns out the height of the forward hull section is about 9.5% of the overall length. If the ship is 212 meters long (as per MS Igloo), then that's 20 meters.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... lamis2.jpg

And meanwhile, here's the Salamis Kai model sheet from Zeta Gundam, showing exactly where the MS hangar and "factory block" are located.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... lamis2.jpg


And now, some comparisons of old and new ship types. This graphic shows the original Salamis and Zeta Gundam's Salamis Kai, as well as the original Columbus and Gundam 0083's Columbus Kai. I did my best to scale the old and new versions to the exact same size, so we can compare common features.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... rison1.jpg

As we can see here, the forward top turret has been eliminated on the Salamis Kai, and the forward side turrets are moved slightly back so that they overlap the factory block. (As Mythsearcher noted, these turrets would require a lot of support mechanisms, so they'd probably cut into the available space for the hangar if they hadn't moved them.)

I think the direct comparison should also make it pretty clear that the Columbus Kai is flat-out longer than the original Columbus. The third container section is inserted in the middle, extending the hull length, and there are also thruster nozzles sticking out of the back. On the underside, you can actually see the same three circular vents in both versions, and the Kai has an extra panel that covers the extended part.


Now let's put this together with the White Base schematics. If the Columbus hatches line up with the White Base's hangar decks, then they should be either 80 meters from side to side, 42 meters apart, or some combination of those. As it turns out, the proportions work out the same either way.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... rison2.jpg

In this markup, we can see that if the hatches of the Columbus are 80 meters across at the bottom - like the White Base's hangars - then they're separated by a gap of about 40 meters, also like the White Base. The apparent height of the hatches varies from image to image, but is generally 25-30 meters. If we take the top pass of the original Columbus as our reference point, then the hatches are 30 meters high, which is pretty much a perfect match for the White Base hangars as per the animation.

What about the other dimensions? Well, based on this scaling, the container section of the original Columbus would be about 100 meters wide by 40 meters high. This meshes pretty well with Gundam 0083's overall width of 110 meters for the Columbus Kai; the overall height, though, would be barely 45 meters once we factor in the structures on top of the ship.

Finally, how long are the cargo containers? Based on the profile view of the Columbus Kai from the Gundam 0083 ship comparison, we can see that these compartments take up a little more than half the ship's overall length. (Rather than 3/4, as per Mythsearcher's estimate - we have to factor in the bridge structure, the engine nozzles, etc.) I measure 78 meters, but we'll round it up to 80 to be generous.

All in all, then, the available floor space in the Columbus Kai should be about 20 meters x 80 meters x 2 compartments. The two boxes of the original Columbus seem to be a bit longer than the three of the Columbus Kai, so I might be inclined to put its floor space at 20 meters x 60 meters x 2 compartments. If we're allowing 10 meters x 10 meters of floor space for each GM - which literally puts them shoulder to shoulder, with 3 meters of space between each row - we could cram in a maximum of 12 GMs on each side, for a grand total of 24 GMs in the original Columbus.

...which meshes nicely with the claim in Hobby Japan's Gundam Mechanics series, that the Columbus can hold 20 GMs or 50 Balls.


Hopefully, all this hatch-measuring also serves to confirm that the Columbus's containers simply aren't high enough for two layers of mobile suits. After all, the hatches don't extend the full height of the ship! But if we need more convincing, here's a model sheet from Gundam 0083, showing the Columbus Kai alongside the Albion, with a conduit running directly from its container to the Albion's hangar deck.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... lumbus.jpg

-- Mark

[Deacon Blues]

Hm... 24 mobile suits for something of that size, yet you have a behemoth of this size that only holds 24 suits. The size is considerably larger than a Columbus yet it has the same shape of sorts...

[toysdream]

Nice! I guess it's basically a double-layered Columbus, with some extra compartments added to the length as well. It's possible that, in the two-page spread, it's simply closer to us than the other ships - you can never be sure until you see them overlap. From the color image, the compartments look about 25-30 meters high, which is just right for a Columbus-class.

Once we start sticking Columbus compartments onto existing ships, naturally I'm reminded of the Trafalgar class...

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

Mark, do you have an estimated MS capacity for the Jotunheim?

I would also like to know if you have any numbers on the MS capacity of Zeon's HLVs.

Regarding the Trafalgar class, I suppose we can keep our fingers crossed and hope that MSV-R will eventually dedicate it a volume. After all, MSV-R already gave us the Nelson-class and even the obscure G87 Luna Tank.

[REMecha00Q]

Actually, if 24 GMs can be crammed into the columbus, then that would mean a max of 60 Balls (30 each side) can be crammed in as well ( 1 GM = 2.5 Balls).