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Gundam Tech Brief 001: Space Colonies by Ben Usually, the design of a gundam colony is pretty typical: a long tube made of metal and transparent, reflective material (I'm reluctant to say glass because I know it isn't glass) with three attached mirror wings that extend out of the colony at 25-30 degree angles. These mirror wings serve a dual purpose: one, to provide natural sunlight to the colony and second to act as massive solar panels to generate electrical energy for the colony. The colonies are generally rounded on both ends, with the end facing away from the sun having the mirror wings protruding outwards. The colony produces artificial gravity by consistently spinning in a clockwise motion. Generally, a cluster of colonies are centralized around a single point, and either referred to as Sides or Clusters. Now having a colony in space alone isn't enough to keep it in space. As with all spacecraft or any body in space, the colonies are subject to the forces of gravity, those from Earth, the sun and the moon most heavily. So how does a space colony stay in orbit? It wouldn't be feasible to have a constant engine going to reposition and hold the colony orbit. In order to minimize the strain on fuel and energy reserves, and still keep a stationary orbit, the space colonies are almost always located at points in space called LaGrange points. These points are areas in space where the gravity between the two strongest gravitational pulls on the colony will be equal. One LaGrange point is dead in between the orbits of the moon and Earth, closer to the moon because it's pull of gravity is less than that of the earth. Another point is between the Earth and the sun, but even though the sun has a stronger pull of gravity, its effect is dramatically lessened due to Earth's distance to the sun. Generally, a space colony is enormous, enough to hold millions of people. They are designed to facilitate all of the standard living that occurs on the earth, and so require a population of similar density. The average colony is capable of supporting more than 3 million inhabitants. That is almost half the population of New York City, which is the most populated place in the United States. Transporting people to the space colonies is something that in our modern world seems almost unfeasible. Our largest passenger jets carry only 500 people, and moving an entire city's population into space is completely unsound, so how did all of those people get up there? Keep in mind another fact, that there are hundreds if not thousands of colonies in the UC era, and they were constantly being created to help shift Earth's outrageous rate of growth. By the beginning of First Gundam, over 9 billion people were living on colonies. Now it is obviously assumed that not everyone was transported. At least two generations of growth have occurred on the colonies since the beginning of the UC. So let's assume even 10% of the initial population was transported. That's still 900 million people to be sent to space by ship. If we go by the cost of space travel today, it takes us a minimum of 50 million dollars to send 50 people into space. That means to send 900 million people into space would cost 900 trillion dollars. That is more than the net worth of every company, government and population on this planet. It also means, assuming that there were ships going every day to the colonies, 49,315 people had to be transported to the colonies daily in order to transport even 10% of the population over by UC 50. In our modern world, It would take 90 of the world's biggest jumbo jets just to move those people by air, let alone space. Now that isn't to say it isn't doable. Hundreds of thousands of people fly around the world daily, so its not something that isn't within the realm of possibility, but with the cost and sheer number of people requiring relocation, and even forgetting the fact that a round trip flight from the colonies to earth probably would take longer than 24 hours, The chances of it happening within even our grand children's lifetime is unlikely at best. How about the colonies themselves? Where do all those materials come from? Certainly not from the Earth. The cost to transport the raw material from Earth to space would be astounding. No, the materials for the space colonies are gathered from one of the most abundant sources of natural building materials in our solar system, the Asteroid Belt. In the UC timeline, the moons of Jupiter have already been colonized and frequently asteroids are equipped with massive engines and send towards earth space for use as building materials. Those asteroids are put into stable orbit and gradually disassembled until there is nothing viable left. A colony generally has a contained atmosphere, but has one major fatal difference from the Earth. Unlike the Earth, which has a self healing atmosphere, a colony is made of metal. It is easily broken and hard to repair, and because it uses an artificial environment, damage to the shell of a colony can cause incredibly dangerous situations for its inhabitants. On more than one occasion, the inhabitants of a colony have been lost or killed because of damage caused during military action, which caused the atmosphere of the colony to escape into space. In general, colonies follow the design formula above, with some notable exceptions in the Alternate Universe timelines, especially Gundam Wing and Gundam SEED. If there is one constant, it is that you love the colonies, hate the colonies, or just want to drop the damn things onto a planet.
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