How feasible are PLANTs as a colony design?

>>14694555
I'm no scientist but it looks like too much of a hassle. Less area than an O'Neil and bigger size. It seems like it would require less materials though.
A big problem is that the space port is at the center and the energy requirements for the elevator would be quite big.

God awful.

Fucking hourglasses. We should nuke all of them.

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>>14694711
For the preservation of our blue and pure world!

>>14694555

Looks like a lot of volume for such little habitable surface area. Also, the space elevator starts off at the bottom under 1g and ends at near 0g at the center, then back 1g as it reaches the other side.

In an cylinder, the entire center line would be near 0g, so you could travel from one end to the other under virtual weightlessness the whole time. Far more efficient for moving crap around.

>>14694555
It's not an impossible, some of O'Neill's designs look similar, but it is pretty wasteful and inefficient. Not enough usable surface area, and the big park at the center is useless for sustaining life. Which is kind of emblematic of the PLANTs, isn't it? They complain about how they're tethered to the founder nations because they're forbidden from growing their own food, when they couldn't grow enough food to support their people anyway. It's things like that which remind you that the Coordinators aren't some oppressed minority, they're out of touch rich people who would die within months if the masses stopped indulging them.

Technically they could work, but they are enormously wasteful of space, extremely vulnerable, and making the walls entirely transparent is a god awful idea. The UC cylinders or AC ring colonies are superior designs.

>>14694769
For all that coordinators are supposed to be really smart and advanced I always saw them more as idiot savants. They are really really good at a couple areas, but are suddenly super stupid and incompetent outside that field.

Their colony designs are the perfect reflection of this. Smart enough to build a colony, but dumb enough to use one of the worst of the designs they could have picked.

>>14694791
Well, remember, like I said they are a bunch of wealthy dilettantes. They don't know how to do practical design. So while the technical aspects of their creations are incredible, they never stopped to think about whether it was really worth spending the resources on them. They got so excited upon realizing they could do something that they didn't consider whether they should do it. For example, the DINN. Why build flying humanoids, instead of planes? We know how to make planes fly, you're not going to have to invent any new incredible new aeronautical technology to get one of them off the ground.

>>14694555
While I like the unique design of the PLANTs I think the space rings from AC are the most plausible space colony.

They just seem like wastes of resources and space

>>14694813
ZAFT has planes, and calling out ZAFT for something pretty much every other faction in Gundam has done seems a little stupid.

>>14694769
How do you figure they couldn't? I imagine if they projected they could do it...they probably could. Ya know, if their agriculture PLANTS weren't nuked.

>>14694813
Because mobil suits in a Gundam, in any gundam show, are superior machines. No matter if you considers this unrealistic, the premise of each "real robot" show is that this kind of weapons, turn out to be more efficient than the old ones and can redefine the way of doing war.

Looks like a type of colony they wanted to make to distance themselves from other Gundam series for the sake of being different and in the process they make a retarded design that would not be used in real life

>>14694555
LOL no...

Maybe these cost less to make, in resource and time?

>>14694769
>They complain about how they're tethered to the founder nations because they're forbidden from growing their own food, when they couldn't grow enough food to support their people anyway.

Logically speaking, that would be true, but unfortunately the story has never indicated that the PLANTs suffered from any kind of food shortages even after the war began and all they had to trade with was Australia.

The PLANTs are 12 groups of at least 10 hourglass colonies per cluster with dedicated purposes boasted by each cluster; one of the clusters is fully agricultural. The nations later to become the EA rattled their swords because they realized they couldn't suppress the PLANTs with food import threats anymore; take a guess as to the dedicated purposes of the colony that ended up getting nuking.

Of course, they probably had to crank out every last trick in the book to get as much use out of their space. Hydroponics, lab-grown meat, etc.

I still think the colony design is terrible, all the structural pressure is tapered to a single point and one glance says all about their space allocation.

>>14696379
A bit too artistic to be what was essentially a sweatshop until the workers revolted.

>>14696439
>A bit too artistic to be what was essentially a sweatshop until the workers revolted.

The situation wasn't like that. Coordinators were the elite.

If I remember right, am episode about Coordinator history showed that they motivation was to basically show that Coordinators could do anything, things far in excess of what normal humans could hope to achieve.

I'd totally believe that they'd create technological marvels that aren't cheap or efficient.

>>14696956

They were elites in work, not in the socio-political area. They are your next-door neighbor, except with three master degrees, and an invitation to three different big sport leagues. If there were any Coordinator industrial elites/politicians, they probably weren't/never made it high enough to contend with actual members of the social elite or ruling governments in the AF/EF, considering that it was the inaction of the founder nations towards repeated anti-Coordinator actions in the PLANTs that sparked the independence movement by Siegel Clyne and Patrick Zala.

The PLANTs were originally funded by the founder nations as R&D/production colonies. Mounting anti-Coordinator pressure combined with job vacancies resulted in most of these Coordinators moving to space where they could speed up technological advancement, but that gave the founder nations even easier control over the Coordinator populace. If they were really that elite on the social ladder, they wouldn't have been that badly oppressed.

Although seeing as Coordinators probably helped design the PLANTs, and that they ended up building Armory 1 prior to Destiny the exact same way, you're probably spot-on about the technology part.

>>14694779
Come to think of it, how do they simulate night time since they don't have mirrors which can "close"?

>>14694846
>I think the space rings from AC are the most plausible space colony.

Those exist in UC too. The colony that gets blown up in the beginning of Unicorn is the same type just smaller.

The PLANTs being inefficient designs for colonies was due to them originally being built for research facilities iirc

>>14694769
Hi, Azrael

>>14697139

They're not any more efficient for research though.

>>14697754
They would be pretty efficient if it was research into the efficiency of PLANT colonies.

>>14697067
>They are your next-door neighbor, except with three master degrees, and an invitation to three different big sport leagues.

If someone like that existed in real life no one would like them. They should augment everyone, or give everyone access to that option instead of making it a super expensive procedure that the social elite can only afford.

>>14697812

The funny thing is, some people went to the underground facilities where they had the procedure done illegally.

>>14697812

That's a literal impossibility. Procedures need to go through expensive testing on the minority both to iron out the cracks and to make them less expensive for the majority. Very few things start out inexpensive. It's nice to say that it should be cheap and widely avail, but it's a pipe dream with no real hope of happening. It's more likely the procedure becomes cheap through repeated use and the rich both can't stop it because they can't control all aspects of an economy and because doing so aids them anyway, since it creates better workers who can make better products and society for them to enjoy.

>>14697836

Exactly. It was an expensive procedure that the social elite can afford.

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>>14694555
Didn't SEED have O'Neil type colonies?

What made them switch to those hourglass colonies?

>>14697836

The question is how long the social will have it first before it creates a caste system on steroids.

>>14697856

Edit: The question is how long the social elite* will have it first before it creates a caste system on steroids.

>>14697862

In reality they probably won't, because the diffusion of it to poorer people to create better, more able workers who can create better things for the richer first adopters. Hogging it for themselves depends on all of them sticking to a gentleman's agreement to not share it, which is unlikely because it only takes one altruistic defector, and because they make life worse for themselves with less innovation and production if they do.

>>14697852
i don't know if it's correct but the O'neil type colonies were from Orb and the hourglass type were from ZAFT

>>14697868

Not to mention by then generations have past with all those birthing complications and the inability to procreate. You'd be lucky with the huge political and social divide.

I'm done with such simpleton naivete.

>>14697893

In the SEEDverse, the Island 3 design is supposedly outdated and superseded by the hourglass design.

Coordinators. Pff.

>>14697938

Well those birthing and procreation complications wouldn't happen in reality either. I've no idea what naivete you're done with either to be honest. Then again, I've no idea whether we're still talking about real life or life in SEEDverse.

So what's the basis for coordinators having difficulty having children? Other than melodrama?

>>14697993

Melodrama is the basis for pretty much everything in CE.

>>14697993
Lack of genetic diversity due to population numbers, and the problem being made worse by the process behind creating Coordinators reducing diversity even further

>>14698038
So the coordinator process makes them too genetically similar they can't breed, kind of like with cheetahs.

>>14694769
Wasteful of space? Am I seriously reading this? The fucking thing is IN space. Space is the one thing they have in endless abundance.
For vast structures like that your biggest problem is probably structural rigidity, and in this aspect an hourglass shape could have a big advantage at certain scales. It's very efficient with building materials, and requires very little in the way of compression strength

>>14694555
>>14697852

Awhile back on /m/, we had a long discussion over the practically of the hourglass colonies. The then resident scientists and engineers on /m/ did the math, and the PLANT designs turned out to be a practical design.

The real issue though is that the hourglass design was only ever really meant for short-term habitation.

Remember, they were originally constructed as research and development facilities and agricultural facilities before they broke off and became ZAFT, so they were not originally designed with the intention of long-term habitation by anyone other than the Coordinators doing R&D or agriculture. They were meant to produce the stuff, then ship them to Earth or to other nations for further processing and refinement.

Orb on the other hand built Heliopolis with the intention of creating a long-term habitation colony in space, and they used the traditional O'Neil design. Orb wasn't the only one to do so either, Mendel colony was a destroyed O'Neil type, and the EA had several defunct O'Neil colonies cut up and turned into the "barrels" of the Requiem superweapon. In the Astray manga, Lowe and co help strap thrusters to a neutral O'Neil colony that wants to leave the Earth Sphere with the destination being Jupiter.

So if anything, the O'Neil types do exist or had existed early on in CE's expansion into space, but for one reason or another, we rarely ever see more than one that's intact and active. The PLANT colonies are the only ones we see with regularity, as they are the main civilization cluster for the Coordinators, and the EA's many attempts to nuke them.

As well, by the time of Destiny, only one new colony was completed, and that was Armory 1, which was clearly set up as a military production facility from the outset.

>>14698102

I think he means the fact that the vast majority of it's structure is a viewing glass with no secondary purpose, which is wasteful. There's probably 90% or more of each hourglass that is nothing but a big window.

>>14697962
>>14698038

I still don't understand why would anybody want to live in a world where they are genetically outclassed by the economically and social elite. Being laid off for genetically superior workers and left jobless. That diffusion would take decades or even centuries for everyone else to catch to same level of genetics.

Whats kind of fucked up is that this is turning into Brave New World, except you have this one class of elites being great at everything, who are barely going to bother mating outside of their social hierarchy and effectively making everyone else next to useless.

I was initially talking about the SEEDverse because it pissed me off how they treated the oppression of Co-ordinators as the same with racism. They ignored all the political, economical and social implications and just chalked it up to racism. It doesn't help matter that the leads in this shit show are fucking privileged and entitled brats.

As for reality, I don't know much about how mentally or physically superior they are. How far is the technology, anyways?

>>14699087
>How far is the technology, anyways?
There was quite a bit of drama a few months back over scientists announcing that they're able to begin initial genetic manipulation to remove unwanted DNA (genetic disorders), and even more furor when it was announced that some scientists were now able to begin selective DNA alterations so that children could have blue eyes if their parents wanted.

Beyond that, nothing else was publicly mentioned.

>who are barely going to bother mating outside of their social hierarchy and effectively making everyone else next to useless.
The thing with Coordinators though was that due to limited gene pools, they were supposed to breed with Naturals and let their children collectively succeed and exceed both parents. If SEED was a darker story, Coordinators would probably have had secret breeding facilities using captive Naturals, or deliberately kidnapping Naturals, brainwashing them into perfect husbands or wives, then marry them off to certain Coordinators. After all, the series did have have some advanced brainwashing methods used in both the main series and the side stories.

>>14699087

It depends on what you mean by genetic engineering technology. There's certainly no-one designing their baby to match a particular aesthetic as of yet, never mind ensuring they'll have physical or mental superiority - but a lot of pregnancies are terminated because genetic testing reveals that the fetus has a disposition toward terminal diseases or physical ailments. Which is wide spread and has been for years. You'll find doctors testing for and advising based on those results all over the world, from America to Europe, Asia and Australia - even some parts of Africa and South America.

And that's really where it starts and a model for it's adoption. It's never going to just jump straight to babies born faster, stronger and smarter than their contemporaries, because all the technology that leads up to is being skipped in such a scenario as well as the social climates. Lots of kids are and will be born selected so as to minimize their chances of disease and disabilities. Which is accepted, because it's a good thing. Then at some point in the not too distant future, designer babies will be possible, allowing you to shape them to have a particular eye or hair color as well as ensure health. And that'll diffuse down as one complete package spreading through various locations, classes and cultures. And it's only after that point that genetic engineering may allow kids to be born that'll be stronger, faster or more intelligent. By which point you'll already have lots of kids born in to a society that thinks it's perfectly normal and acceptable because their parents will have selected specific traits for them.

>>14699400

And while Richie Rich might be born with a disposition towards physically strength and a genius level IQ anything he thinks of he'd have to do for himself because poorer people are too weak or stupid to do it. So ensuring those people have access to the same advances benefits him because it means he can delegate more work for greater advances in a myriad of technologies and gives him greater luxury and time to enjoy those luxuries. It might take time, but all of it will.

>>14699087
>I was initially talking about the SEEDverse because it pissed me off how they treated the oppression of Co-ordinators as the same with racism. They ignored all the political, economical and social implications and just chalked it up to racism. It doesn't help matter that the leads in this shit show are fucking privileged and entitled brats.

Anon, what do you expect out of SEED? The show flat out ignores the setting lore because that lore would weaken it's message of "fighting is bad."

If there was focus on how ZAFT was trying to become independent and how they were oppressed by the sponsor nations, Lacus would look (more) like a naive idiot when she tells ZAFT they have no reason to fight when the sponsor nations violated the spirit of the UN concerning colonies. Likewise, the EA could be a little more justified if they showed the economic difficulties they were going through from the energy crisis, the loss of their manufacturing centers, as well as ZAFT giving deals to nations that would recognize them.

Then again, the show wants to be Earth vs. Space so we never see ZAFT giving considerations to the nations that recognized them, were conquered by the EA for aligning with ZAFT, and who were also fucked over by the N-Jammer. Man, sucks to be them right? Imagine if we had a character from one of those nations who ended up being anti-ZAFT because of how much they were fucked over.

SEED was meant to be the centerpiece of the Cosmic era, yet it fits in horribly with the rest of the materials.

>>14697139

Well that's the problem right there. They're too much for a research lab and not enough for a colony.

It was very much designed with appearance in mind only.

>>14699087

I just don't get how the conflict can even get to where it was. All naturals have to do is wait the coords out. You can get 3 maybe 4 generations out of them tops before they all come crawling for some natural D.....na

>>14697104
Maybe the glass darkens? Smart glass?

>>14699178
If SEED was a darker story, Coordinators would probably have had secret breeding facilities using captive Naturals, or deliberately kidnapping Naturals, brainwashing them into perfect husbands or wives, then marry them off to certain Coordinators.
Thank you for this.

>>14699965
If one really thought about it, the CEverse is pretty dark.

The Ultimate Coordinator has flawless genetics and is either the ultimate breeding stud or the ultimate brood mare, and is such a big fucking deal when he or she could breed with anyone and their children would be almost as great or even greater than their Ultimate Coordinator parent.

Then there's also Durandal's Plan to forcibly unite the Earth sphere under the Destiny Plan, which in and of itself was spun off of the Mars Plan that was enforced by early Martian colonists to ensure maximum survivability on Mars while they were establishing their colonies. Basically, the mixed group of Natural and Coordinator colonists of Mars deliberately arranged marriages based on DNA in order to maximize the ideal attributes as well as maximize genetic variety. And they did devolve into a caste system in the process, as DNA ruled what station in life the individuals would be raised and trained for. However, they didn't have that Naturals vs Coordinators mindset, and were pretty united as everyone happily fit into their jobs.

Now take that back to Earth, and instead of it being out of necessity, it's being forced upon, with the main intent of "saving the Coordinators" as well as a side of "avoiding heartbreaks like Durandal's and Talia's inability to conceive together due to genetic incompatibility". That's pretty close to Nazi-style breeding facilities, and rape camps. Oh sure, it also assigned people to their jobs based on their DNA, meaning everyone gets a working job, but that would only happen after all resistance was eliminated. There's also the unsaid side-effect that some people might actually be destined to have a set number of wives or husbands because their DNA said so (besides the Ultimate Coordinator).

>>14694555
why would you waste all that material for that tiny workable space?

>>14700895
>However, they didn't have that Naturals vs Coordinators mindset, and were pretty united as everyone happily fit into their jobs.
how much soma where they on?

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>>14700901
they were originally meant to be a giant orbital complex of research labs and bases rather than population housing cities

they still are - each segment of PLANT still specializes in certain technologies and sciences.

>>14700992
Enough to consider scouting out the Earth sphere and create contingencies to deal with them in the event war broke out between the two, or if Mars decided to invade.

All Martian MS and ships use nuclear fission reactors. They also did not realize at first that the materials they mined and shipped to the PLANTs were materials needed to make N-Jammer Cancellers. And the Delta MS got N-Jammer Canellers installed to allow them to operate within the Earth sphere, though once the original unit was destroyed, the Junk Guild built Delta Astray didn't have an NJC or a nuclear reactor.

Mars already has a head-start on unlimited duration units; they just need to start making NJCs to equip them with.

>>14694721

It's only recently I realized how close their slogan is to that of the 1488ers.

>>14700895
>The Ultimate Coordinator

Let's be upfront the whole ULTIMATE COORDINATOR thing is yet another completely contrived way of Kira being the super bestest ever. It doesn't even make sense and it feels really forced that he's it.

>>14700895
>>14701074
In the context of the original SEED though, Ultimate Coordinator simply meant that Kira was made without needing a womb. He was the perfect designer baby, not the perfect being.

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>>14694555
>http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/PLANT
wouldn't a stanford torus be a lot more efficient while being basically the same in principle?

>>14701082
It also meant that he was not affected by any flawed changes to his DNA, so he is what he was created to be; smarter, faster, stronger. The only thing that delayed his development though was not having scientists raise him up to be perfect, kind of like Arnold in the old movie Twins.

>>14701082

It's still feels forced that he's it

>>14694555
What if the design was made to be collapsible? Like, they could build the whole thing and shrink it at the production factory, then ship the compact version to the lagrange point where they could then just open it up and have no problems putting in water, land, etc.

>>14704020

because it's actually easier to build them from scratch in space

>>14694555
I don't understand. Isn't this basically building an O'Neill cylinder but only putting land on the cylinder ends and leaving everything in-between open?

zeekfag here

how are we supposed to drop them? they look so fragile, I don't think we can blow a hole in sydney with that.

bet they don't even go through atmosphere...

>>14704065
Kind of. They're supposed to spin around the center point as well, rather than along the length like the O'Neil cylinder. It is far more wasteful and much more complex for less living area. It's also much more exposed and you need to create entire separate colonies dedicated to things like food production rather than integrating them into a separate but connected section like on cylinder colonies. It's pretty much the worst design you could go with when looking at potentially workable colonies.

>>14704724
>bet they don't even go through atmosphere...

Hahaha

>>14701155
Then the faggots would claim its ripping off Wing.

>>14694555
They're shit. Most of the glass of an O'Neill of the same dimensions, a negligible amount of the living space.

>>14703843
I don't like the guy but it doesn't feel "forced" that the protagonist is the most significant character in the universe.

>>14707605
I think it's more, well look at Kira.

> Only baby to survive the Ultimate Coordinator project.
> His father was the mad scientist who lead said project, as well as created Rau.
> Rau was a clone of Kira's wingmate's father.
> His sister was adopted by royalty, and is now the leader of a nation.
> Said nation is ridiculously super-powerful
> Best friend from middle school was the son of one of the PLANT's leaders.
> His GF holds a questionable amount of power.
> Only person Orb needs to make a Natural-friendly OS.
> Not to mention only Coordinator on the Archangel

Like, there's the protag being the most important character in the story and then there's most of the world revolving around him. Kira is the latter.

>>14699087
One can say that the themes of SEED is too complex for the show and beyond the caliber of the creators of the show.

>>14707650
Wish there was Natural POV protagonist in the story. But then, this is Modern day Japanese fandom we are talking about who would shamelessly indulge in self-insertion fueled escapism.

>>14707605
His existence feels forced. Given that he exists, him being the main character is ok.

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>>14708973
Here you go.