Headscratchers / Mobile Suit Gundam SEED

• How in the hell did Kira survive after the Aegis clamped onto the Strike and self-destructed? The cockpit was charred to a crisp. There's no way that Kira could've survived that.
  • This one's All There in the Manual - in the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray side story, it's shown that Lowe witnesses the end of said battle and recovers the critically injured Kira from the Strike, bringing him to the Reverend.
  • Simple. He is Kira "Jesus" Yamato.
    • Well, that bug has been squashed.
    • Lowe also mention that Strike's emergency shutter just protect Kira from explosion blast, the heat still KO him though.
    • The heat that burned the entire cockpit? Yeah, Lowe finding Kira really doesn't explain how he survived the blast, just shows how he got help after.
    • In the manga, it shows that the damage to the cockpit is caused by something blowing in it AFTER Kira abandons mech.
    • Lowe is there during Aegis and Strike's sword fight and quickly rush-in once the battle moi is over. Strike's PS went down after he already pull Kira out. You can assume that cockpit wasn't burned until the outside heat creep-in afterward.
  • This may be an example of a Chekhov's Skill; when the Archangel (and Strike) make re-entry, there's a scene where the ship's doctor is explaining to Kira's friends how tough he is. The doctor tells them that the heat in the cockpit would surely have killed any one of them, but Kira was (mostly) okay.
    • Actually this has been briefly explained in SEED and SEED X Astray. The Reverend states that Kira had the SEED gene activated in that explosion so his mortal wounds were reduced to serious ones. It is needed to say that the SEED gene's function are unknown but basing it from the Character Theatre parodies it appears as it enhances the body physically. His wounds are actually the result of Strike suffering some damages and the mobile suit was later repaired without problems and they could even improve it.
  • A large amount of the confusion surrounding Kira's survival is the fault of the animators. Logically speaking, the self-destruction of the Aegis should be nowhere near as violent as portrayed in the actual show. The reason is simple; neither suit is actually powered by a reactor, but is instead fueled by an energy battery with a starkly limited operation time. When the self-destruct system for the Aegis is triggered, it has already expended so much energy that it has been left physically incapable of moving. The Strike on the other hand still has active PS Armor, indicating that it still has at least enough energy to power it's primary defensive system. If you disregard the hilariously over-the-top detonation depicted in the TV show, Kira's survival becomes far more believable.

• During the latter half of Lacus's time on the Archangel in episodes 8-10, why was the whole incident treated as a hostage situation? If ZAFT had kept fighting the Archangel they risked blowing up Lacus along with their target, yet when Natarle informs the Le Creuset team of this they immediately accuse the heroes of taking hostages and resorting to foul play. And the weird thing is that nobody on the Archangel bothers to point this out and defend themselves, they just guilt (or not) about the situation.
  • Well this is Natarle we're talking about here...it's not as if she's known for her...kind ways.
    • In fact, at least in the official Japanese subs, Natarle's announcement to ZAFT that Lacus is on board is a fairly clear threat, considering that what she says amounts to "We rescued her for humanitarian reasons but if you keep attacking us we'll have no choice but to do as we see fit with her," rather than simply pointing out that if the Archangel blows it will take Lacus with it. Which is why Murrue gets upset with her over it.
    • Well, I don't quite remember every detail of this event but it could be 1) They simply didn't know Lacus was there. 2) They did know she was there, and was simply trying to disable the ship, then take her by hand. One or the other explains it.
    • The details are that the Vesalius was looking for Lacus when it happened on a detachment of the 8th Fleet that had been sent to meet the Archangel with supplies. Rau decided to take the opportunity to remove a weak enemy, and then turned on the Archangel when his team was finished. What Natarle did was wrong, and Mu and the others readily acknowledge that, but Mu at least does defend the action as necessary for their own survival, even if it was a war crime. What really bugs me about that whole scenario is that this was while the Vesalius and the Gamow were split up, so three of the stolen Gundams were missing. The Archangel has far, far more firepower than a Nazca, and its point defenses could have shredded most of the enemy's mobile suits, so if they had chosen to fight it out they should have been able to win that battle.
    • Yes, the Archangel could have won against the Vesalius, but what about the next battle? The Archangel was undermanned, alone, and almost running out of basic stuff like water. The crew of the Archangel had to avoid any unnessary fighting against superior ZAFT forces if they wanted to survive and reach the Earth Alliance forces. What Natarle did was as wrong as collecting the water of the destroyed Junius-7 colony, morally questionable, but definitely necessary.
    • Archangel probably wouldn't have won that fight in the first place. Kira was tied up with Athrun and Mu's Mobius Zero had been damaged and the other ships and Mobius's had been destroyed. They were in bad shape, and it's unknown if Archangel could have fought off an attack from 3 GINN's and the Vesalius at the same time especially if Cruset decided to launch in his CGUE as well. Note that while they destroyed two GINN's earlier it was with difficulty and that was in a colony not open space where they have way more room to evade, and while they outgun the Vesalius with their positron cannons they're slow to charge and they only managed to damage it earlier because they got the drop on them. If that battle had continued (especially with Murrue shell shocked at losing the supply fleet and Flay's father) it could have gone badly for them.
  • One thing to keep in mind—from the start Le Creuset's orders have been to capture the Archangel and the Strike, not destroy them. The risk of Lacus dying from anything other than Natarle (given that she's not in one of the gun turrets) is therefore minimal.
    • Their orders were to destroy Archangel before launching (which they attempt by placing explosives at the port though it's not enough to damage to it, they underestimated how tough it was) and steal the Gundams and 4 of the 5 plus the data they contained was considered sufficient. From then on their goal was to destroy Strike and Archangel, which is why they go in with heavy bombing equipment. Athrun does try to capture Strike, as an excuse to save Kira from being killed by Yzak, and if he'd succeeded that he probably would have been praised for getting a bonus but Mu frees Kira and Athrun is chewed out afterwards for not taking the chance to destroy it. So Lacus was very much in danger as they would have destroyed Archangel if given the chance.

• This isn't really anything major, but did Rev. Malchio go blind off screen or something? After the Clyne Faction goes into hiding he's always shown with his eyes closed and sometimes with a cane. I certainly don't recall seeing these attributes before then.
  • Nope, he was blind from the start.

• So Cagalli was actually the princess of Orb and Kira and his friends are FROM Orb, so shouldn't they have, you know, RECOGNIZED her?
  • Well, if I ran into, say, the president's daughters in plainclothes on the street one day, I probably wouldn't recognize them either. As it stands, I don't even know their names. Plus, they were living on a space colony removed from Orb, though I don't know for how long, and might not have been keeping up with the political scene.
    • It's stated that at least one of the children, Kuzzey, was born on Heliopolis, and had never been to Earth in his life.
    • I for one can corroborate that if I saw Malia and Sasha Obama in the street without a secret service detail or some other distinctive marking I would NEVER be able to recognize them.
  • Also, Orb's political situation is a bit more complex than you've seen - there are five major houses. In other material, it's been shown that things like the Astray project were under the auspices of another of the houses, so it's quite possible that Heliopolis wasn't fully under the control of her house.
  • However, Kira's adoptive father is the brother of Cagalli's, making them cousins. While not recognizing each other might be possible in other situations, given the exact structure of their family and its relations, that the two don't even know of each other seems highly improbable.
    • Where is it said that? And even if that is true, both Cagalli and Kira's adoptive parents decided to keep them separate from each other, considering their real origins and ties to the Ultimate Coordinator project. They even say something to the regards of never expecting to meet again when they have to talk about how Cagalli and Kira have met and bonded due to the events so far.
    • This is untrue. There's no stated family relationship between Uzumi and the Yamatos. Also, unless Cagalli is a far more common name in Orb than, say, "Malia", it has always seemed weird to this troper that none of the Heliopolis kids even suspected who she might be. Especially given how Miri later says "she really is the princess" with something far from complete surprise.

• In Phase 4, the Vesalius gives the coordinates as (0,0,0). That means that the blast is either coming from the Earth or from the inside the Vesalius itself.
  • Not necessarily. While the Vesalius or Earth would feel like the most "natural" places to anchor a 0,0,0 coordinate, coordinate systems can be arbitrarily placed anywhere and still work (provided you are careful about what they are stationary with respect to).

• The concept of the N-Jammer and it's ilk. "Yes, this machine magically stops nuclear reactions... despite the fact that not only is that impossible, but a machine that did so would likely interrupt the laws of physics! And it also screws with radio waves, in spite of the fact that this makes no sense whatsoever and has nothing to do with stopping nuclear reactions at all!" I mean, I know Gundam was never built upon realistic science, but at least the technobabble was explained in the older shows. And don't get me started on Mirage Colloid...
  • Unfortunately, if you go all MoHS scale on Gundam, you'll find that very little actually works, especially when you start going at it with thermodynamics. Where are the radiators on the ships (in any Gundam show)? How come anybody's able to dodge particle beams? How on Earth does an I-field repel mega particles, when it's specifically stated that mega particles are electrostatically neutral? If not electrostatic, then what force is repelling the mega particles? And for that matter, why is the most effective form of combat vehicle a 10X mechanical scale replica of a human being? What it comes down to is that in terms of the science of a Gundam show, you should really just relax.
  • The N-Jammer is always going to be handwavium, and I think the creators of SEED did a very smart thing by not trying to explain it, since any attempt to logically explain a physically impossible phenomenon is going to sound stupid anyway. As for the radio disruption having nothing to do with stopping fission, the device may not have been intended to do that. No doubt something like an N-Jammer is a very complex, multi-part machine, and the deafening radio noise, if you will, may well be a result of some other process that helps fuel the fission-stoppage.
  • The N-Jammer's function would require the manipulation of weak/strong nuclear forces. This is generally the answer to others of it's kin. Like above, its a very basic force of reality and physics. This brings the question why they don't use antimatter induced fusion warheads... They do use antimatter like mad... Some lines of thought do indicate that the manipulation of wing/strong nuclear forces would cause disruptions to electronic wavelengths.
  • As far as Mirage Colloid goes, it's actually not all that impossible. The idea of refracting radiation around a vehicle to neutralize active scans isn't so far out, and even rerouting visible light could be done. I realize the idea of using microprisms in a magnetic field is iffy, given the amount of finesse required with the magnetics, but it at least has some kernel of plausibility to it. Now I know about the thermodynamics "where is all the mobile suit's heat going?" issue, and that should have been addressed, but I think that once again we're dealing with the question of whether or not you should try to explain something that can't be explained. All I can say is that in my opinion, so long as they went a good way with science and then said "on the thermodynamics...yeah, just go with us on that", I'm okay with it.
  • To address the questions about Minovsky Physics, I think Minovsky Particles produce a new fundamental force that repulses pretty much any/everything. I think said force is also the reason they form the I-field lattice structure, that's how they balance their internal repulsive forces. It wouldn't be Minovsky Physics if it weren't explained, now would it.

• The characters float around in space, carrying trays of food that don't float.
  • They manage this kind of thing in real life, too. Check out this picture◊ from the International Space Station. The cans and utensils and such are held by the magnets, and I guess the food is viscous enough to stick to the container and to parts of itself rather than float away. Something similar may be happening with the characters' food.
    • That's possible. In general the artificial gravity of the Archangel and other spaceships is inconsistent and just kind of wonky, though.
    • When the show long view shots of the corridors in the Archangel's living sections, you can actually see curvature, which may imply that those corridors use some form of centrifugal force to create artificial gravity, while the active sections of the ship that are used for combat and operation purposes are straight and have a zero-g environment. Although, this doesn't explain how they avoid issues when the ship descends to earth.
    • The Archangel has two distinctive sets of corridors. The blue and gray areas are the zero-g parts, and those are the only places where people float around. The crew accommodations, including the mess hall, have yellow walls, so they're easy to tell apart. These areas do have artificial gravity. When in space, you can clearly see the upwards curvature of the floor of the corridor, indicating a centrifugal gravity system as mentioned above. If you take a look at these same areas when they are on Earth, however, the corridor instead curves to the side, indicating that when they enter the atmosphere the gravity block deactivates and turns on its side so the same facilities can be used on both.

• The Federation put those N-Jammer cancelers into production awfully quick after it got the design. It seems like it should have taken them longer to make enough for all those nuclear missiles.
  • Mass Production. When One thing becomes the priority of something as big as the Planet Earth, they make sure it gets made A.S.A.P. Also, though my details on this is etchy, is there a clear time skip between these things. I mean, i remember at one point in MSG, time intervals in-between episodes were a month long. Gundam is notorious for time skips like this.
  • Specifically, according to the official site the Battle of Mendel takes place on July 12, development of the canceler-equipped missiles begins on July 16, the final attack fleet isn't deployed until September 11, and the Battle of Boaz when the missiles are first used is on September 23. So, there's a few months in there. It's relatively reasonable when you consider that the Freedom and Justice had to have been developed in a mere three months. (The Heliopolis Gundams was stolen on January 25, and the Freedom was stolen on May 5)
  • It's one of the dumber things about Gundam series that we have to accept. In reality it would take a minimum of several months (more likely at least a year) for them to refit factories and train workers to mass produce new machines. For the sake of the plot, Gundam series ignore that sort of thing.
    • It's possible that the Federation uses mechanized factories for things like MS production and outfitting, so they could easily have programmed said factories to rapidly churn out new equipment, and quickly retrofitted older model suits, while rapidly beginning work on new models. Also, it's not like the Federation entirely had to worry about success rate. Even if a few suits failed, they had reserves.

• Doesn't this occur to anyone that at the end of the show, Kira survives his mobile suit almost being completely destroyed by hard Gamma Radiation? Forget the radiation poisoning, how the hell doesn't he even get cancer? Oh, and as he is floating in space, we can see he has a hole in his face plate. It's almost like it's a Refuge in Audacity. It's so ludicrous you just can't find a way to condemn it.
  • Gamma radiation isn't as destructive as you seem to think. The reason nukes are so unpleasant on Earth is that the gamma radiation is absorbed by the atmopshere and largely converted into heat, which causes the explosion and the shockwave associated with nuclear weapons. In space, no atmosphere, no explosion, no shockwave. Sure, it'd still do damage, but it did damage the Freedom. As far as cancer goes, radiation doesn't really work like that. It doesn't make cancerous growths magically appear, exposure to radiation just makes the eventual development of cancer more likely. And in any case, this is a setting with medical technology advanced enough to modify children into genetically enhanced Born Winners while still in the womb — I imagine that they've got cancer well and truly cured. As for the last, I don't remember there being a proper hole in Kira's helmet visor at any point, but cracked or leaking helmets are nothing new in Gundam, and would be survivable even in real life as long as it wasn't a large enough breech to cause explosive decompression — which would effectively require the helmet's entire visor to shatter instantly.
    • Actually ANY laser hitting ANY material would cause a plume of plasma each hit in addition to radiation effects. Gamma radiation however would disrupt electronics horrifically. Its part of the reason nukes are so devastating in atmo. X-Rays and Gamma radiation gets absorbed by atmospheric gasses and causes intense ionization to create an EMP blast. This radiation is only shortrange in space unless focused. If focused however this would be deadly to anyone in it's path. You practically have to have a meter of lead to simply protect you from gamma radiation in space due to the fact you don't have the atmosphere and magnetosphere to protect you.
    • Kira got the Freedom away just in time as GENESIS fired. If there was any (off-screen) contact, it would've been to the legs, which considering the way the shots from GENESIS are shown probably would have disabled the Freedom via electrostatic discharge or radiation surge within the Freedom's reactor, necessitating an immediate shut down. As for Kira's helmet: I do not recall seeing any cracks, let alone holes.
    • The above statement is correct. What we see is Lacus's ring that Kira is wearing as a necklace. It's floating over his face due to the low gravity. It could be mistaken for a hole in Kira's Helmet.

• Given that the Archangel is supposed to fight in space, why did they need to do that wonky maneuver to shoot the ocean targets underneath it. As a space capital ship, shouldn't it have guns on the underside?
  • The Archangel is not only meant to fight in space, it's also an atmospheric ship. Part of the reason there are no guns on the underside is because that is where the wings of the ship generate lift to keep it in the air. There was really no room for them. The real question should have been why they needed the Gottfried's to shoot them when the Valiants should have been able to do it.
    • Have you SEEN how long the Valiants are? By the time you got the barrel aimed anywhere NEAR the (fast-moving) enemy suits, the damn things would be dragging in the water. Not to mention how slow the Valiants are to rotate, and the fact the gunners apparently can't hit the broad side of a Nazca with them, let alone mobile suits.
    • In defense of the gunners, mobile suit combat may take place at close to melee range, but warship combat does not, and there's a powerful ECM in effect during battle, so hitting an enemy ship would be pretty tough.

• What the hell was up with those gunmen who came after Lacus in the theater? I understand she was being hunted for treason, but why did they all wear spy gear (suits, gloves, silencers on their pistols) to find her? We saw earlier that Patrick Zala had no problem sending uniformed soldiers to kill Siegel Clyne, and he had already claimed Lacus an enemy of the state. Was it really necessary to hire a hit squad to take down Lacus rather than just having a military squad on standby in case Athrun made contact? It just seems out of place.
  • Lacus still had a shitload of support among the PLANTs, not to mention having direct contact with most members of the Clyne Faction. The fact that the hit squad didn't shoot first (or bring any snipers) is a fair indication that Patrick Zala DID, in fact, want to take her into custody, drag out the names of her cohorts, then put her through a Kangaroo Court for high treason.
  • Sending the guys in spy gear is also a little less obvious than sending soldiers. Assuming that he was aware of Lacus' support and bodyguards, Patrick wouldn't want to send someone who could be detected so easily.

• How did Kira possibly get in the Freedom Gundam, leave the PLANT, evade ZAFT forces and get to Alaska in time to save the Archangel? Even if we assume the PLANT was relatively close to Earth it should have taken the fastest possible vessel hours^note assuming applied phlebotinum sped him up, if it were realistic it would have been more like days at best to get there. By the time he was shown the Gundam the battle was already close to self-destruct time, they should have been long dead before he even reached Earth's atmosphere!
  • There's nothing specifically saying those two events were taking place simultaneously. For all we know Kira may have been on his way to Earth as the battle was starting, or even before. The reason it's shown simultaneously is likely so that the Freedom could be revealed just before it's big battle debut.
    • There are two problems with that. The first is that no transition of time is shown, so the viewer would naturally assume that the events were happening at the same time. The second problem is that Kira's entire reason for using the Freedom to get to Earth was the revelation that the Operation Spitbreak was actually taking place at that moment and that the target was the Atlantic Federation HQ in Alaska and not Panama. In other words the attack was already occurring by the time Kira found out about it.
    • This is fanon, but it's been pointed out that ZAFT's fleet couldn't have dropped on Alaska if they were already positioned to drop on Panama, so the fleet would either have needed to reposition itself into an inclined orbit or they would have had to approach the Earth very differently before reaching drop altitude. Therefore, they could have known that the target had been changed several hours before the attack began. And since it was a major battle, it would have lasted several hours as well.
  • Well, The Freedom Gundam was designed for very high mobility in both space and atmosphere, being a ZGMF unit and having the HiMAT system. The Freedom alone can move much faster than the various warships in the show, and Kira had no reason to slow down, allowing him to stay at max speed. And since Kira's the Ultimate Coordinator, he can take the physical stress of moving at such high speeds, so he can indeed go that fast and stay in it, since the Freedom has unlimited energy. So on the basis that the Alaska battle was really hours long, like many big battles in war really are, its not a stretch that Kira could have made it from the Plants.
    • To expand on this, the reason it takes so long for real spacecraft to get to the moon is that they basically glide there. And in space it's not so much a matter of speed as acceleration. Since there's nothing to provide drag like there is in the atmosphere, an object can keep accelerating essentially forever (cosmic speed limit excepted). Now, the Freedom can fly, so its thrusters are capable of acceleration of at least 10 m/s^2. Assuming that minimum, it would take 2000 seconds, or about 33 minutes, to accelerate to 20 km/s. At that speed, it would have taken only about 5 and a half hours to get to Earth, and the Freedom is probably quite a bit faster. So yeah, Kira could have made that flight in the time required.
    • Officially, the Freedom theft is stated to have been May 5 and the Battle of JOSH-A May 8. So however fast Kira was going, it still took him three days to get from PLANT (L5, lunar orbit) to Alaska.
    • According to the official timeline, ZAFT revealing it was actually targeting Alaska May 5, which delayed their launching the planned attack until May 8. (The work editing it so it looked like it happed simultaneously was Rule of Drama.) Maybe whatever took their orbital forces so long to adjust their trajectory so they'd drop on Alaska applied to the Freedom (even if it could straight between L5 and Earth in hours it's unlikely the point on Earth it's aiming at will be on that straight line). But more likely Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale.

• The entire sequence where the Kusanagi and Eternal attack Genesis makes no sense whatsoever.
  • First, how on earth did the Phase Shift Armour stop the Kusanagi's Lohengrin Positron Blaster Cannon? It's bad enough that they gave Phase Shift Armor the ability to block beam weapons if you feed in enough power when it was well established that beams ignored the stuff. But the Lohengrin is an antimatter weapon. It doesn't really matter what your armor is made of when half the energy of the blast comes from the electrons in the surface of the armor turning into gamma rays.
    • Phase Shift armor doesn't draw its strength from an alloy: it generates a force field just barely above the physical surface of the armor. The armor's strength is completely dependent on how much power you feed into it to strengthen the force field. It isn't that beam weapons ignore PS armor, it's that a Mobile Suit doesn't have the power output to up the field to the point it can effectively block beams. Genesis had nigh-unlimited power thanks to massive nuclear reactors, thus its PS armor is practically invincible. If the positrons are repelled before they get anywhere near electrons, the Lohengrin loses a lot of its destructive potential.
    • Also, it was never actually stated that beam weapons ignore phase shift armor. Beam weapons are just generally powerful enough to overcome the defense provided. This is most obvious with the Freedom, which took a couple hits to the torso from such weapons on different occasions and still wasn't destroyed.
    • It's well known that Phase Shift offers Heat Resistance, hence why Gundams can survive atmospheric re-entry. So it's not so far-fetched.
  • Second, why didn't they just target the mirror block if they couldn't destroy Genesis. It wasn't armored at least to the same degree and would have prevented the weapon from working until it was replaced if destroyed.
    • The mirror blocks merely focus the blast. Firing Genesis without the block would still result in the same huge amount of gamma radiation getting output, except rather than a coherent beam, it is just sprayed out in all directions. That would still cause quite a bit of damage to Earth, not to mention frying everything else in the surrounding battlefield, including the PLANTS. That outcome is hardly any better than allowing Genesis to fire unhindered.
    • Er, no. A spherical blast at that distance from earth would have ABSOLUTELY no effect on the planet. The energy from a spherical blast is proportional to the square of the distance.
    • Point still stands: even if Earth is unaffected, both fleets of spaceships and the PLANTS would annihilated. Even if the EA higher-ups were willing to sacrifice their entire space fleet to end ZAFT, how many soldiers in the fleet would be willing to follow such an order? (Remember when the EA sacrificed a huge chunk of forces at Alaska, they did so with subterfuge: none of the soldiers there knew they were going to die.)
    • The blast is not spherical, we see it's a beam from the center of Genesis that the mirrors diffuses into into something large enough to be effective as a fleet killer. As for for not attacking the mirror: 1. the mirrors take all of Genesis' blast, any conventional attack wouldn't likely do anything. 2. They had extra mirrors, it would merely delay them while giving the enemy time to counterattack.

• How the hell did the Calamity Gundam survive Mwu's suprise attack with Perfect Strike's Anti-Ship Sword in the Remaster besides plot armor. Yes, they needed him alive, but they could at least have avoided having him shrug off getting blindsided with the strongest melee weapon in the show, right?
  • By blocking the beam part with its shield. Anti-Ship Swords strength come from the physical parts and momentum letting it punch though what a normal beam can't. Mwu lost that momentum the way he stuck Calamity, but not when cutting the shields on the Strike Daggers. The wiki state Calamity has an "Anti-beam Shield" with details suggesting it's tougher than the mass produced Strike Daggers shields.

• Supposedly, Muruta Azrael is against the Coordinators and anything revolving around genetic engineering. If so, then why did he have no qualms relying on the Biological CPUs starting from the battle with Orb and later?
  • Because they aren't genetically engineered. They're on a regimen of drugs that enhance their mental and physical abilities to the point where they can fight Coordinators. Not the same thing as genetic engineering, or at least not in Azrael's mind^note see also religious people who convince themselves that various sexual acts aren't real sex.
  • The CPUS are basically Slave Mooks. Azrael's hatred of genetic engineering and Coordinators seems to stem less from any principle and more from envy. The CPUs drug dependence means they're more or less stuck under Azrael's control. As such they aren't conceptually a threat to him like Coordinators are.

• Can Coordinators get sick? I mean like a common cold or the flu. I've seen various fansites and fanfiction that say no,and while I recall Kira saying they don't get sick it seemed like he meant serious terminal illnesses like cancer. Not to mention Kira himself does get a fever in one episode (and Meyrin Hawke gets an infection at point in Destiny).Therefore is in fact possible for a Coordinator to catch a cold or say the Chicken Pox?
  • Most likely they can still catch common ailments. The human immune system isn't something that can be perfected through some genetic tinkering, though it might be possible to improve it a bit. Genetically-transmitted diseases on the other hand are likely near non-existent in Coordinators for obvious reasons.

• So, here's something that is confusing me about the Skygrasper. Specifically, its missiles. After managing to find an image of them that shows them from different angles, I have found out that they are triangular prisms compared to the cylindrical shape of normal missiles. I just have to ask, is there a point to having missiles shaped like that?
  • I always reasoned that they were that shape to reflect radar waves, similar to the nighthawk stealth plane in the real world. Although given the fact that neutron jammers are a thing in seed this probably would not work too well.

• What is the power source for the spaceships? Is it nuclear? They must have a greater energy requirements than the MS and yet they aren't affected by N-jammers.
  • The series never actually explains this, but I would guess some extremely large batteries charged via solar power. Of course, once N-Jammer Cancellers were distributed, they could resume nuclear power once again, so I imagine that Destiny-era warships would be nuclear-powered.
    • Not really, since in Destiny we are told that both factions signed a treaty to restrict use of nuclear technology in military vehicles, specially the MS. It would be safe to assume that warships fall under that treaty too. So they kept using whatever technology they used before, or they started using hyper-deuterium reactors (which seem to not affected by said treaty, since no-one made a fuss over the Destiny and the Legend using them). This last theory tough seems a little shaky, since the hyper-deuterium reactors were in test phase at that point and only 4 MS had them : Destiny, Legend, S.Freedom and I.Justice.
    • It hyper-deuterion. We've seen the "Deuterion Beam Energy Transfer System" which uses a beam of deuterions to recharge battery powered mobile suits. Even assuming deuterion is deuterium, it's not being used in fusion. And no one made a fuss because no-one was much abiding by then.
  • Episode 2 mentions the Archangel has a "magnetic field chamber and pellet dispenser" when powering up, which suggests it uses nuclear fusion (which N-jammers are stated not to effect). Maybe they're too big to be used on anything smaller. But why then don't they use those power plants to deal with the energy crisis that was caused by N-jammers?
    • 1. It might just be the spaceships engines, which may generate surpluses electrical power, but with too much harmful byproduct (plasma exhaust) to be viable as a dedicated energy sources. 2. Earth's leadership was busy being on the losing end of a war, and once it turned in they're favor they wanted to focus on the energy crisis but Azrael overruled. It was more an issue of political will than anything.

• Coordinators are genetically enhanced humans. Fine. But why are they CALLED coordinators? What do they coordinate?
  • The term was coined in-universe by the first Coordinator, George Glenn, who basically thought that genetically enhanced humans like himself could help push humanity into a new golden age, helping to "coordinate humanity's efforts". The name stuck. Out-of-universe, I always took it to be a reference to their generally enhanced ability to multitask when compared to a Natural human.

• Who is the Freedom originally designated to before Lacus and Kira stole it? It can't be some random schmuck if the Justice is going to be entrusted to Athrun. Perhaps Yzak?
  • Freedom and Justice were originally conceived to be guardians of Plant using the Eternal and Meteors to wipe out any Earth Forces that crossed into their territory. Justice was given to Athrun only after Freedom had been stolen, because he was given a secret mission to destroy or recover it while keeping things on the down low and it was the only thing that could stand up to it being the only other Nuclear Gundam they had at the time. It's unknown who would have piloted them if they'd been able to be used for their original intention. It didn't seem like Zala intended to send them into regular battle, as Freedom had already been completed and ready to go before Operation Spitbreak (since Kira steals it to go intervene in it) but Zala didn't deploy it to participate there even though it would have been a very useful asset.

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