Mass Drivers?

[Mafty]

So is there any kind of geographical importance to a mass driver? The Orbital Elevators in Gundam 00 are located in various specific regions, so is that necessary for the mass drivers? Or can they be built anywhere? Also is it ever stated how many mass drivers there are in the UC? We see the mass driver on the Moon, One in Hong Kong, One at Mount Kilimanjaro, one in Gibraltar and one in Norway, are there any others?

[John-Luck Pickerd]

rocket launch IRL tends to happen near equator for a few reasons, I guess the same should be true for mass drivers as well. High altitude like on a mountain is probbly beneficial too, but the logistics of building and operating what is essentially a space equivalent of airport might not be very easy up there.

[Seto Kaiba]

So is there any kind of geographical importance to a mass driver? The Orbital Elevators in Gundam 00 are located in various specific regions, so is that necessary for the mass drivers? Or can they be built anywhere? Also is it ever stated how many mass drivers there are in the UC? We see the mass driver on the Moon, One in Hong Kong, One at Mount Kilimanjaro, one in Gibraltar and one in Norway, are there any others?

The orbital elevators in Gundam 00 are located at equidistant sites on the equator to provide the necessary stability to the artificial ring of solar collectors they anchor.

UC-era Gundam doesn't have any cheats for reactionless flight, so mass drivers are ways to assist in launching craft to orbit by providing an initial acceleration externally to save onboard propellant. Orbital mechanics being what they are, you usually want your launch sites near the equator for best/most efficient results. You also usually want the launch facilities away from urban areas due to noise, the need to be away from normal aircraft flight paths, and the risk that things will explode violently if something goes very wrong.

[Mafty]

Makes sense. It's interesting to see that the concept for Orbital Elevators are about as old as the ones for space colonies. Indeed being a rocket launch it makes sense that you would want to keep them as far away from cities as possible (ie the Norway and Kilimanjaro Mass Drives) though it's still a bit strange that both Gibralter and Hong Kong have Mass Drivers close to the city.

On another note if there are no mass drivers in Gundam 00, how exactly do they get ships into Space? I know celestial beings ships can travel through the atmosphere, but that doesn't seem to be the case with many other factions ships, and unlike UC, there don't seem to be that many space colonies...

[SonicSP]

Presumably they build them in space since a lot of them are supposed to be space-use only. The atmosphere-only GN Ships are presumably built within Earth.

Ptolemaios 2 is the only ship we see that operates in both space and atmosphere (and sea), and it can break escape velocity with Trans-Am to go back to space.