After Colony pilots

[Genocide]

The propellant doesn't have to ignite. If it was a pressurized gas/water system, just poking a propellant line would be enough to at least produce an initial thrust, and wouldn't make any boom. And even if he did ignite the propellant, that wouldn't damage the mobile suit at all - after all, causing an explosion and forcing it through a confined space is the basic concept behind combustion engines, and if internal combustion engines were workable a century ago with current metals, then I daresay a mobile suit made of Gundanium alloy would probably be able to handle a boom that small.

I would think that there's a difference between a thrust port specifically designed for producing thrust and a crudely made "hole" for ignited propellant to burst out of. I'm certainly not an expert at this sort of stuff, so I'll take your word for it that it is possible.

You also seem to believe that stabbing himself was unnecessary compared to just turning around and flying away. He may not have been ABLE to turn around and fly away. Looking at the Shenlong and the Altron side-by-side, you can tell just by looking that the Altron has a lot more vernier thrusters, and that therefore the Shenlong must lack verniers in those locations. Maneuverable it ain't.

It was unecessary. Shenlong may not have been as maneuverable in space as Altron, but it was doing decent up to that point. Regardless of the lack of verniers compared to its successor, Shenlong should still have been able to quickly turn around by utilizing AMBAC movement. That's one of the key selling points of mobile suits in space, afterall.

[ORegan]

Something I can actually comment on. Awesome.

The propellant doesn't have to ignite. If it was a pressurized gas/water system, just poking a propellant line would be enough to at least produce an initial thrust, and wouldn't make any boom. And even if he did ignite the propellant, that wouldn't damage the mobile suit at all - after all, causing an explosion and forcing it through a confined space is the basic concept behind combustion engines, and if internal combustion engines were workable a century ago with current metals, then I daresay a mobile suit made of Gundanium alloy would probably be able to handle a boom that small.

the propellant would ignite, since today's gasoline is highly volatile, it's a good bet that the fuel used in AC is too...since they need it to ignite to create thrust. The heat from the beam would cause it to explode.

Like Internal Combustion Engines(ICEs), the explosion will not go in one direction, but instead push in every direction, and not just through the created hole. Unlike ICEs, the punctured hole will not be air tight, and the explosion will do considerable damage. It won't be a contained blast. It will eventually go out through the hole, but mainly as exhaust. It wouldn't work the same way as a jet engine. If anything, the hole would make the explosion less effective.

Now if it was pressurized water, you are correct that it wouldn't combust, because water doesn't have that quality. Instead, it will evaporate from the heat, pressurize, and, if powerful enough, break through and cause damage similar to a balloon popping, or find a whole large enough for it to decompress. Two problems with this though; the first is that there is already a hole there for it to decompress. The second is that today's automobiles, and likely all mobile suits, use Antifreeze because it has a higher boiling point and better cooling qualities. The only way water would be present would be if the Gundam had a hydrogen cell battery, but even then, it'd just be exhaust and be sent out of the mobile suit anyways...so it won't compress either way.

Now, if it was water(even though it's highly unlikely) the decompression will have force going in opposite direction. For every action is an equal and opposite reaction. Unfortunately, I don't think the decompression force would be enough to push the Shenlong back. I forget if it was inside a colony or in space, but either way, the force would be to weak.

Colony: Effects of whatever gravity along with the mobile suit's weight and mass would too great. Think of a tire with a hole in it. How often do you see the car go in the opposite direction?

Space: Even with gravity and weight of the 7 ton gundam no longer an issue, the mass of the suit is simply too great.

[Black Knight]

The incident of Shenlong stabbing itself took place in space, outside of Space Fortress Barge.

Water wouldn't only be present in a mobile suit if it used a hydrogen cell battery, water is one of the common things considered as a propellant when using a fusion reactor as power source; run the water through the reactor to superheat it, and push the steam which results out through the thruster nozzles for propulsion. If water was the propellant of Shenlong, stabbing itself in the fuel tank with a beam weapon would have the same flash-heating effect as the reactor, and the hole created by the blade would be the new exhaust nozzle.

[Kavik Ryx]

About the Shenlong stabbing, yet, the plasma emanating from the beam glave, at least I'm guessing plasma it could have been some high energy particle, created a great risk of combustion. All that a fire needs is two different compounds/elements, and a whole lot of energy. So, if the beam melted through the Gundanium Alloy, odds are it would have triggered some sort of explosion. While, it does make sense in terms of propulsion, it is about as smart and safe as putting thrusters on the other way. If he used the inactive part, he could have used the force exerted from the beam as a thruster, instead he used the energy from the glave to push him. This would work, but it's kind of like launching yourself out of a cannon, a cannon that is loaded.

[Black Knight]

You're still assuming that the thruster propellant is combustible. Water is one of the most popular propellants for nuclear fusion reactors, since it's high mass, (relatively) low volume, and doesn't explode when lit. It's also extremely easy for Gundam pilots to get in quantity on Earth in order to replace expended supplies, much easier than some rare chemical which would be difficult to acquire for resupply on Earth.

[Kavik Ryx]

Though there is a lot more in a MS than just propellant. I am sure that transmission fluid and lubrication are still used in AC 195.

[Black Knight]

Sure; but I'd also expect even someone as generally naive as Wu-Fei to know where to stab his mobile suit without blowing it up.

Plus, anything else which could explode would need not just a spark, but an oxidizer, since the incident happened in the vacuum of space. Will oil or other lubricants ignite without a source of oxygen?

[Gelmax]

It was unecessary. Shenlong may not have been as maneuverable in space as Altron, but it was doing decent up to that point. Regardless of the lack of verniers compared to its successor, Shenlong should still have been able to quickly turn around by utilizing AMBAC movement. That's one of the key selling points of mobile suits in space, afterall.

Shenlong WASN'T doing decent at all. It did terrible in space. I just checked, and it only fought twice in space before getting upgraded into Altron, and both times it was losing to Space Leos. Not Tauruses, but Space Leos. And Shenlong wasn't a "mobile suit in space", it was a ground-type "mobile suit in space". AMBAC's never specifically mentioned in Gundam Wing, although it's clear just by looking at the battle that the principle is there, but I don't know enough to know whether Wufei and the Shenlong's computer would've been able to do it with the right arm blown clean off.


As for the propellant, we don't know if the propellant is explosive or not - and, more importantly, it doesn't MATTER if it's explosive or not, because Gundanium has shown itself to be quite resistant to explosions. If even the Gundam's own self-detonation system can't reliably destroy the suit, then a pansy little propellant explosion isn't going to do much. What matters is that he made a hole and that highly pressurized propellant exited through that hole. We can debate all day long whether the propellant was pressurized because it blew up or pressurized because the mobile suit keeps the propellant lines pressurized, but either way, pressurized propellant was expelled with force similar to that of the mobile suit's main engines.

Now, whether it was wise to do so (getting back to the original arguement) is hard to say, given that that little stunt consumed the majority of whatever fuel he used, and that he apparently didn't have any place to repair and resupply afterward. But since his next appearance was done for the sole purpose of getting captured in the hopes that Oz would upgrade his Gundam for space use, I'm inclined to think that he felt he wouldn't be winning any battles in space no matter what condition the Shenlong was in.

[wing zero alpha]

Not this again...the Dijeh DOES NOT FLY! It is simply a ground combat mobile suit based on the Rick Dias.

Not to beat around the bush since it's already been pointed out, but I'd like to place two facts here.

1.) We never saw the Dijeh off of its sublifter in any of the battles it fought in, so we have no way of knowing whether the suit can fly by itself or not.

2.) And before you say "That's all the more evidence!", then I'd also like to point out that when Jerid was chasing the Audhumla with his Byarlant, a mobile suit we do know is flight capable, he used a sublifter anyway; even ended up getting knocked off of it and unable to recover for some reason.

That said, the Dijeh can still be flight capable, doesn't change what Aegis said it was: a Rick Dias with wings for extra protection.

As for the rest of the thread, I'm sorry but I'm afraid I don't have an opinion on the topic, because it's an age old debate to me. One other thing I'd like to point out on the skill levels of the Wing pilots however, is that you can't really call them "weak" because the battles were clearly aimed toward their benefit; otherwise you'd have to hold the rest of the Gundam franchise in the same judgment.

Remember when Amuro could literally walk through a Zeon blitzkrieg without scratching his Gundam and ravage the Zeon troops thereafter? What about Kamille taking out experienced Titan and Earth Federal Forces aces (a la Lyla) even though he barely spent days if not weeks in the Gundam Mark II? What about Judau and Uso against their respective foes? I could go on, but I believe I've made my point on the matter.

Despite what people tend to believe, Gundam series have always been biased towards the Gundams and the "good guys", even when the said good guys are clearly outmatched by whatever the "bad guys" are packing. Thus my suggestion, which seems to be being followed anyway, is to evaluate the Wingsters by their performance within their series, not compare them to other series. Isn't that why the Colisseum got closed down anyway?

[Recon 5]

I believe that the great improvement that the pilots showed between their starting Gundams and the updated versions was due to the fact that the upgrades made them more suitable for space use, among other things. However, one thing has struck me: Heero's original Wing pretty much got trashed by the Tallgeese. Maybe that could be used as an indication of his skill.

[Black Knight]

I believe that the great improvement that the pilots showed between their starting Gundams and the updated versions was due to the fact that the upgrades made them more suitable for space use, among other things. However, one thing has struck me: Heero's original Wing pretty much got trashed by the Tallgeese. Maybe that could be used as an indication of his skill.

The only time the Wing Gundam fought Tallgeese, the Tallgeese ended up minus an arm, while the Wing Gundam was undamaged.

[Genocide]

Shenlong WASN'T doing decent at all. It did terrible in space. I just checked, and it only fought twice in space before getting upgraded into Altron, and both times it was losing to Space Leos. Not Tauruses, but Space Leos. And Shenlong wasn't a "mobile suit in space", it was a ground-type "mobile suit in space". AMBAC's never specifically mentioned in Gundam Wing, although it's clear just by looking at the battle that the principle is there, but I don't know enough to know whether Wufei and the Shenlong's computer would've been able to do it with the right arm blown clean off.

Ok, two points. First of all, before I made that post I watched the very episode Wufei pulled the stunt in. How you can say Shenlong was doing terrible is beyond me. He got hit serveral times, but in the end he was clearly at an advantage up to the point where they fired the Barge cannon at him (which only took off a single arm).

Second, I wasn't talking about his performance in battle anyway, since the argument brought up was that it was too inconvenient for Wufei to turn around and use his thrusters - which it clearly wasn't. I don't think AMBAC has been mentioned in any Gundam show, but as long as Shenlong could still wave a leg or an arm around, it should still have been able to make a turn. Hell, he made several quick turns prior, so saying that he stabbed himself to produce thrust because he couldn't face the other direction is ridiculous. Again, I'm not trashing on Wufei's skills as a pilot, but his overly reckless tactics certainly isn't a good demonstration of it.

Admittedly, the debate over the propellant is completely moot because unless there's an official word, everything people say is just speculation. And when it comes to Wing, speculation really doesn't get anywhere.

[Gelmax]

Ok, two points. First of all, before I made that post I watched the very episode Wufei pulled the stunt in. How you can say Shenlong was doing terrible is beyond me. He got hit serveral times, but in the end he was clearly at an advantage up to the point where they fired the Barge cannon at him (which only took off a single arm).

Second, I wasn't talking about his performance in battle anyway, since the argument brought up was that it was too inconvenient for Wufei to turn around and use his thrusters - which it clearly wasn't. I don't think AMBAC has been mentioned in any Gundam show, but as long as Shenlong could still wave a leg or an arm around, it should still have been able to make a turn. Hell, he made several quick turns prior, so saying that he stabbed himself to produce thrust because he couldn't face the other direction is ridiculous. Again, I'm not trashing on Wufei's skills as a pilot, but his overly reckless tactics certainly isn't a good demonstration of it.

Admittedly, the debate over the propellant is completely moot because unless there's an official word, everything people say is just speculation. And when it comes to Wing, speculation really doesn't get anywhere.

You need to watch it closely to really follow the action. It looks like he's just cruising in and wrecking stuff, but actually, Wufei was unable to destroy even a single Space Leo. He disarms two with the head vulcans, then leads them all away from Barge and tries to engage them in melee combat, but proves unable to hit them with the beam glaive, and then a bunch of them just start flying around firing at him from different directions while he sits there and takes it while spouting nonsense about OZ's strength. He grabs one with the dragon fang, and then Barge fires, causing him to lose that arm. In other words, Shenlong did extremely poorly in space, and Wufei isn't that bad of a pilot.

As for AMBAC, that's difficult to debate, as Wing's zero-G physics aren't consistent anyway - when the Leos seized the advantage, the Shenlong was being hit by enemy beams and being knocked back by the shots' impact, but only a few meters, after which the Shenlong stopped moving despite no exertion of force on its part and before the next enemy shot hit. Whether he could turn around and flee, or whether it was wiser to turn around and flee, is unknown because we don't know his situation, we don't know how much fuel/propellant the mobile suit had left, and we don't know where the suit's verniers are. Because of that, though, we can't tell whether or not it was wise at all.

And if you're not criticizing his skills as a pilot, what's the point? Everyone was reckless in Wing.