Japan, Canada and Australia get many Mobile Suits (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario everyone in Japan, Canada and Australia receives in the mail a Key with a number on it. Each key has a plastic tag on it which says either MS-06 Zaku-II or RGM-79D GM and a number afterwards.

Outside the cities in Japan and Australia have been placed a number of the MS-06 Zaku-IIs and RGM-79D GM mobile suits. Each one with a typical weapon for its type, but no ammunition. They also have a number painted on their leg as well as a photograph firmly glued to their foot of their owner, which matches the Key Number. If the key is inserted into the machine the device will turn on. They preform as well as they do in the anime, but they don't give off the RADAR jamming Minovsky physics particles.

In addition, Japanese and Australian Factories have been provided with blueprints to provide spare parts.

What happens?

Zor

[Stark]

Why do you always put such a tragic amount of thought into the absurd sideline elements of these threads instead of making actually interesting ones?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Because he's Zor. That's kinda his whole deal.

[khursed]

So we get 3 country filled with impressive suits of armor, that have no ammunition?

How hard would it be to build ammunition for them?

[Stark]

They're 20m tall space fighters with legs. And because it's SDN and Zor the moron handwaved m-particles, their fusion power plants probably don't even work. If they do, hey; free fusion for everyone.

[madd0ct0r]

cool, so what's their power output like?

even if the built one's don't get snapped up by whomever, the factories suddenly have blueprints for house scale fusion plants ( cost? material limits? - don't know gundam)

[Stark]

The Zaku reactor and associated gubbins is about 4x2x1 and generates enough power to run a giant robot around and jump hundreds of meters with rockets. They run on Helium3 and Deuterium in a fictional reaction that probably won't work without the m-particle Zor hand waved away.

But y'know, hundreds of millions of fusion reactors is p cool.

[Darksider]

Would we have enough Helium3 to run that many reactors without the ability to go to Jupiter and get more like they do in the show?

[Stark]

No idea. The reactor charge seems to last for ages (many months), but without a practical source of He3 I dunno how long before the usable population drops very low. They need the Jupiter fleet because of their massively larger use of fusion power, a hundred million MS reactors might run off what you can find on the moon.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Question for Zor: Why Canada and Australia specifically?

[Zor]

Question for Zor: Why Canada and Australia specifically?

Way of balancing this out so it's not just Japan that benefits from these.

Zor

[Darksider]

No idea. The reactor charge seems to last for ages (many months), but without a practical source of He3 I dunno how long before the usable population drops very low. They need the Jupiter fleet because of their massively larger use of fusion power, a hundred million MS reactors might run off what you can find on the moon.

Do we even have the necessary space infrastructure to mine the Moon for He3 though? This whole thing might just give the world some cool toys for a few months until the initial charge runs out, then they can't be used again until someone scrambles to the moon to get more fuel.

[Stark]

Luckily, fusion rockets can be used to reach the moon. :v. No idea if the MS reactors can match the performance of their actual launch vehicle power plants (since no mobile suit can achieve orbit). The 'in space' part of space travel would be trivial now, though.

[Darksider]

maybe someone could cram a whole bunch of MS reactors together to make a rocket?

[Starglider]

Real-world nuclear fusion relies on helium-3 production from neutron bombardment of lithium and heavy water. This isn't trivial but it does scale to industrial quantities with current technology, so I don't think fuel supply would be a blocker. Mining the moon and/or gas giants might well be cheaper for a civilisation with routine interplanetary travel, but not for our current one.

[Stark]

I figured the worst case would be using some of the reactors to produce fuel for the others, and using the ~200M odd reactor pool to keep the output going as long as possible and hopefully replicate it. I'm glad its not really a big deal, though.

Absolute minimum this means generating base of 400TW; probably much more.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Question for Zor: Why Canada and Australia specifically?

Way of balancing this out so it's not just Japan that benefits from these.

Zor

Australia is still a baffling choice given its lack of appropriate infrastructure and well-entrenched anti-nuclear sentiment among its population. Why not the United States, Russia, France, or other countries that can more readily operate and maintain the reactors that come with the suits?

[Darksider]

Look, do you really think he puts that much thought into these things?

[Stark]

He put enough thought into it to have childish nonsense like 'a photo of you is firmly glued to the foot' and 'serial numbers' to avoid the sort of detail quibbling that doubtless hounds his threads on other forums. He doesn't want M-particle interference so he throws it out, even though this almost certainly makes the m-particle catalysed, i-field supported reaction simply not happen.

But hey 400TW is pretty neat, and that's probably only the steady state electrical output.

[Darksider]

That's if the world can organize the use of the Fusion reactor technology for the benefit of all. Remember, these suits aren't automatically showing up in the hands of governments or researchers. I suspect the worlds militaries will need to put more than a few nubars down before we can start to use the tech for productive ends.

[Starglider]

Aside from the fusion reactors, the computers and sensors are probably reusable for other applications, and way ahead of current technology. I don't know the exact specs but millions of ridiculously fast relatively cheap processors (and the ability to make more) will have an immediate major impact on supercomputing, transforming the rest of computing once the factories are understood and reproduced. The sensors are likely immediately useful for conventional military vehicles and ditto capability enhancement in the long term once the factories are running. Also a billion tonnes or so of titanium-ceramic armor plating and probably millions of tonnes of refined rare elements just popped into existence. Regardless of proposed aerospace or military uses of the intact suits, there will be a massive surplus of these things (e.g. all the ones stripped of reactors); the melt/scrap value would be enormous and input costs would go down for a fair amount of advanced manufacturing industry. I don't know what other salvageable useful technology is in there, presumably lots of high power-to-weight actuators, also whatever is used to convert thermal output from the reactor into usable power (MHD? ludicrously efficient thermocouples? whatever it is can probably be retrofitted to existing power plants). I know there are weaponised lasers and particle beams in Gundam but presumably not on these ones, as that would make the ammo restriction moot?

[Stark]

The GMs use 'beam spray guns' (really crap particle guns) that are powered from the internal powerplant. From the OP I imagine they must be 'broken' somehow. It also appears their beam sabres are also missing, although they're just applied reactor technology (I-field from a reactor containing compressed m-particles from a reactor).

These suits are too early to have the 360 degree sensor fusion cockpits, sadly. At least you've got millions of fusion rockets, high energy capacitors, etc. Just the re-usable components are a big deal once you strip a few million of them to the waist to get at the reactors.

Clearly we need to work out how many will instantly be destroyed in piloting accidents.

[Darth Lucifer]

...Australia is still a baffling choice given its lack of appropriate infrastructure and well-entrenched anti-nuclear sentiment among its population. Why not the United States, Russia, France, or other countries that can more readily operate and maintain the reactors that come with the suits?

That's where they come in with plans to assist in the spare parts factories, scientists to further study the technology, offers of alliances and assistance, etc.

[Stark]

The reactors are extremely rugged military reactors designed for crashing and swordfights. They don't require a lot of maintenance, which is what makes it practical to use millions of them to bootstrap a worldwide technological revolution.

[Starglider]

Clearly we need to work out how many will instantly be destroyed in piloting accidents.

I doubt many civilians are even going to get the chance to try. To start with no one knows where their particular mecha is. By the time an Internet directory of number / location can be set up and popularised the parking areas will be cordoned off by police and/or military. Given the danger of people trying to fly these things with no training or even (in most cases) piloting experience of any sort, not to mention the military and technological implications, all three governments could easily justify confiscation of all the keys. A few lucky idiots probably will make it to their mechas before security is established and the resulting spectacular crashes should put popular opinion firmly behind this. Lawyers can argue after the fact about whether items that mysteriously appear in arbitrary locations are actually property of the people who got the keys, maybe they'll eventually formalise it as a compulsory purchase so that everyone in those countries gets a 'mecha dividend' from exploiting the technology.