Gundam 00 Mecha, Weapons, and Technology
 

As the title suggests, the purpose of this thread is to discuss the Gundam 00 Mecha, Weapons, and Technology

Please keep discussion about plot and storylines in the relevant Episode Discussion threads, not here. It's also a good idea that this thread discuss things that have shown up on the show or the manga - discussion of things that have only been announced should stay in the news thread.

Note that because of the nature of this thread, there may be spoilers for non-anime Gundam 00 works. Please keep such spoilers to a minimum, and use well-titled spoiler tags whenever possible.
[spoiler=title]Don't forget to use a title to let everyone know what you're spoiling![/spoiler]

Be polite to your fellow forum members and try and keep the discussion on topic and above all, enjoy.

-blows a raspberry at 4Tran, then walks in and plops down-

Gotta go and ruin all my fun by creating this topic and expecting me to use it... -grumble grumble-

Hmm... new thread,great!!!.:D

Now all the GN-Drives and Drive Tau thats been discussing in other threads can continue here XD

I always think AD technology is more resembles our current world, its the same timelime after all.

Orbital elevator is possible right?

GN Science 101
 

Anyways, onto the GN Drives themselves, sometimes refered to as Solar Furnaces or Reactors in the dialogue. That said, we have to look at the GN Drives in the terms of a 'Reactor.' The Solar Furnace may be a reference to part of the reaction catalysts or environment, but calling it a Drive is a non sequitur, other then the fact that it 'drives' the suit's systems.

What information we have been given on the GN Drives, states that they "harnesses the photon and positron discharge of the non-evaporative decay of baryonic matter as an energy source." GN Particles are a byproduct of this process. Now, I will say it's disappointing, surfing the web and finding people supposing that simply because the dialogue, in reference to GN Tau Drives states that they are required to 'recharge' after certain period of time is likely inaccurate by translation. More accurately, it's likely 'refueled.' Stop and think about it. Why would you 'charge' a generator in any electrical generation system? And make no mistake, that is what we are talking about; an electrical system. Generators typically produce electrical power, not require it to run. Otherwise it's nothing but a glorified battery. And GN Drives, like any reactor, would require 'fuel.' In this case, in the form of some type of non-specified baryonic matter to be used in whatever reaction takes place within the core GN Element.

But we need to get away from this misconception that the Gundams and other GN Mobilesuits are powered by GN Particles. Yes, GN Particles are a major component in many of the operations of these suit's systems. But by and large, most of the systems are run by the Electricity produced by the GN Reaction. GN Particles are either used to reinforce armor, jam communications and sensors, possibly aide in the impulse propulsion systems of the suit, aswell as the weapons systems, for either shooting or cutting. There are any number of other systems, like computer, sensors, communications, bipedal drive locomotion, ect that run on electrical power, and electrical power alone.



... -grumbling- Alright, I'm going on 20 hours awake, so my focus is kinda lax... But I guess this is all a start for the thread, eh?

If there gonna be Orbital elevator on our world,we all probably be dead by that time.:D It could be done with more country cooperated on its development.

I think Japanese scientist are working on that project. Wikipedia has stated Japan scientist are working on weapon or defense system that use Dragoon-like system.
Maybe right now they build gundam-like mecha in their underground facility.:D

On the use of GN particles in weapons. What's not really clear to me is if the various weapons are tapping directly into the suits generator thus having an almost infinite source of particles or are they stored in battery line devices (UC = e-caps). Now we did see the GN Flag have it's beam saber linked via cable to it's GN drive (ala Epyon).

It's a minor point but limited ammo was one thing that made the previous gundams feel more "real type" instead of "super robot".

Well, I'm not quite sure about the GN Flag. But for the other suits, I'm fairly confident that the Gundams for instance, would use their GN Particle Capacitors / Resevoirs as a type of buffer between the Drive itself and the weapon. It provides a more immediate, direct and steady source of particles instantenously, while the Drive itself might have to power up further in such cases such as Virtue charging it GN Bazooka for Burst Mode.

We have to remember, that these GN Drives are pepetual reactors. Even though they might be set to an idled state, drawing little from the GN Reaction, they're always producing power and GN Particles. Those particles either have to be stored, or vented. But we've also seen the GN Reaction magnified during extreme use, such as Exia in Moraillia and Virtue blowing the stuffing out of the Asteroid durring Operation Fallen Angels. Just because there's a type of GN Battery between the drive and the weapon, doesn't mean the flow from one to the other is slowed down simply because the battery is there. But from an engineering standpoint, you'd want that capacitor there to smooth the transfer and prevent overloads.

Gundam that use GN Drive Alpha has unlimited operation time but their pilot don't. Maybe the pilot make the gundam in 00 series a "real robot" instead of "super robot".

Many people say SFreedom is "super robot",hopefully someone crazier than Rau Le Cruset own it in Seed movie.:heh:

Question: What exactly is it that the Twin Drive system squares? :confused:

I would assume the reaction, therefore it squares both the Electrical and GN Particle output aswell.

It'd be hilarious that if the Twin Drive System makes the 00 Gundam literally weightless in any environment, considering what GN-Particles do to the frames of the Gundams.

Is that confirmed that they actually affect the mass of an object? I've read that before in speculation, but never canon source. I thought that it had more do with them being used in a set of inertialess / reactionless drives.

Yes, its canon that they reduce weight. It was labeled in the spec sheets included with the models.

Dragoon-like! That must be awesome. I hope they don't go overboard and do something like Project G or Genesis.

Did anyone ever think if they mounted a reactor on a suit small enough to power a Tau it would give almost the same effect as a real gn drive.Just not sure if they r able to do that in this universe.

Nuclear power is a big no no in a world where clean energy sources like solar power exist.

Besides, why would the Federation ever want mobile suits to be able to act independently? It's far better to control the spread of the new generation of mobile weapons by controlling 95% of the energy that would be necessary to power the units.

maybe so but to compete with more powerful units with stronger weapons n operation times u need to draw a line sumwhere:heh:

there's only 4 of them, and the higher ups don't really care much for human life, so plenty of fodder to throw at them.
(Federation office A: "Hey! Lets make deathbots that are programmed to kill every living thing they come across with high caliber automatic weapons!"
Federation officer B: "Brilliant!")

In other words, you can always deal with lower operational time by having standby units, and deal with a single powerful enemy by having multiple weaker units. So the Federation has no real need to make the weapons more powerful by putting themselves in the dangerous position of making the weapons autonomous.

Also is it ever explained why nuclear power is such a nono?

If you have high efficient Solar what good is nuclear power? No need to worry about disposal of waste, leakage, and although this isn't widely said Nuclear reactors need a LOAD of water to cool.

IIRC there was some kind of nuclear disaster that made people ban the use of the technology, of course is was (partly?) monitored by CB, along the lines of Aeolia's plan, to favor the Solar Energy System.

Really, good. That makes that scene where Exia takes off and Wang Liu Mei is watching make a heck of a lot more sense. When I watched that scene I figured the GN Drive has to do something funny to the weight of an object as otherwise she and Hong Long should have been sent flying.

Well yes and no. We have the technology necessary to develop a working elevator but we don't have the technology to produce the tether that the elevator needs in order to actually go up or down. What we have right now (as far as tether material goes) is something darn close (carbon nanotubes), but we have no method for rapidly producing them in sufficient quantity and in the appropriate configuration (nice, incredibly long strands) so it's still something just on the drawing board. As our facility with nanotechnology improves, we will hopefully be able to actually make nice ropes out of the carbon nanotubes. Then we can begin taking them up into orbit and essentially dropping them down to the ground. After that you start constructing the actual elevator on the tether.

And of course, if and when such a material is produced, it would be a simple matter to convert the tech to armor technology. That's why everything in 00 is armored with C-Carbon; metal alloys and ceramic composites were superseded as a result.

On that note, the Tieren Katars are made of carbon too. Metal swords simply won't do.

It seemed that during that operation to capture all 4 gundams the Chinese were heavily critizied for choosing that "ancient relic of the past" site for it. Even the American president noted it.

Nuclear power seems to be something they locked into the desert and threw the keys away.

GN Drives. . . Why do they provide limitless energy?

Maybe they can regenerate through natural means.

Watch MSG, Victory and Turn A then you'll know :)

Basically, if you are not skilled enough to blow up a MS by shooting or cutting the right parts you'll get a nuclear explosion in your face :cool:

It is Sci-Fi. Everytime a character in the series figures it out and is about to tell us how it works, will die during the process ^^. So it will always be mystery

Which doesn't make sense. In the real world, just shooting a nuclear reactor with a missile or something, doesn't suddenly create a nuclear explosion. Quite the opposite. Active measures need to be taken in order to create a nuclear reaction. Just shooting a reactor won't do it.

Nuclear power actually is a clean energy source, especially if they have fusion power, which I suppose they don't. As for your second answer, I think that's really just rationalizing. The real reason is because the anime wants to put the focus on the gundams, and not the hordes of faceless mobile suits that are usually killed by the thousand.


But the real question shouldn't be about the reactors, but rather, why do any of these mobile suits have legs? 00 seems to skip over the whole walking mech thing, and go straight to the flying robot thing right from the start. Most of the other gundam series have a slow progression from walking mechs to flying mechs, but right from the start, 00 had flying gundams. *shrugs* To confound things, their flying device, the gn drive, is mounted on the back (or the shoulders). No need for thrusters in the legs at all. The legs just seem to be dead weights as far as I concerned.

Becuase they are Gundams.
Thats about as good an explanation I think we're ever gonna get XD

Well Gundam isn't Hard Science Fiction. It's a TV-show that uses with consistency the following tropes:
-humanoid robots are superior to conventional weapon: if it weren't for this trope, most Mecha-Anime wouldn't exist...
-vehicles are explosives, especially when powered with a power source including that includes in its description the word "nuclear".
-nukes are like very powerfull dynamite sticks: remember in Turn-A when
-and numerous other...

If you don't accept these and start nitpicking details as if it was hard science fiction, you'll spoil yourself the entertainment, as I did myself when Wing was airing 10 years ago in my country (WTF! beam-SCYTHES!!!!!! That's way too far unrealistic!!! :twitch:) ;)

Yeah,damn right.
It is a clean energy source & it also can be use as a weapon. That why in our world there are few country that had nuclear capability.

You would still have radioactive fallout.

Ypu still have the problem of the radioactive waste and the fact that nuclear combustible is not infinite.

I think I'll just copy this from TV tropes, about the Minovsky Particle:

Also, about beam scythes? Its not nearly as unrealistic when you take into account how beam melee weaponry works in the Gundam universe: Its nothing more than a magnetic field shaped into a bladed weapon, containing the energy that makes it a beam weapon. When the magnetic field makes contact with something, the field is disrupted, releasing the energy to do its work and melt through whatever the MS is attacking.

Therefore, changing the magnetic field to form a scythe blade instead of a saber blade wouldn't be that hard to imagine--it can be done for virtually any kind of melee weapon.

Just wondering, 00 Gundam is actually the successor to Gundam Rasiel not Exia right?

In pilot, color scheme, and payload, 00 Gundam is the successor for Gundam Exia. Gundam Rasiel is, I think both a prototype to 00 Gundam and half of the testbed for the GN-Arms, thanks to the GN-Sefer.

Pilot and payload, yes. Rasiel also has the same color scheme as 00 Gundam. But I meant design wise. Rasiel first has 2 GN Verniers and the GN Sefer looks much more like O Riser than GN Arms. The other 3 Gundams were built to be improvements of their predecessors but Exia wasn't around to have a direct successor.

Exia didn't need to around. CB should have it's design specs on file.

Actually, I think the color scheme for Rasiel is different (lighter blue, and more blue than white; Exia and 00 match). And I'm not too sure that it is a prototype for 00 Gundam. What sets the 00 Gundam apart from the others is the Twin Drive system, and I believe its been said that the GN-Verniers aren't the cones: Rasiel has two verniers alongside a single cone, while 00 has two cones. Contradictory. I'm not sure where the whole Rasiel 00 prototype connection came from, but mainly because I haven't been paying attention to the side stories. So I can't be too sure on the matter.