Just what the heck were they thinking (Gundam)?

[Zinegata]

Extrapolating that certain environments is "better" is fine. But here's the thing though: The O'Neill Colony design was made to resemble the Earth as much as possible. So why would it be logical to conclude that space would usher some kind of new human development?

It's worth noting that Newtype powers seem to manifest in space the most when the person is in a small manned craft while floating in zero-G (preferrably while lots of people are shooting at you). Not really when people are nice, tight, and comfy in a colony.

Still, to me the big issue to me is how Zeon made "Spacenoids are different from Earthnoids!" the defining rallying cry of Zeon, instead of something like "Taxation without representation!". It's because such a line of thinking can be easily twisted to become justification for racism and genocide. It's kinda hard to turn "Taxation without representation" into "The British are an inferior race!", but saying "Spacenoids are superior!" is a bit easier to turn into "Earthnoids must all be killed!"

At the minimum, Zeon planted the seeds of Gihren's genocidal ideology. Much like how Karl Marx founded the tenets of Communism, Zeon founded the tenets of Contolism. And much like how Polpot and Stalin used the ideology to justify genocide, so did Gihren.