Swimming Lesseps

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Deathzealot
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Swimming Lesseps

Hello All!

I do believe I had talked about this subject before but cannot find the Thread where I did so, therefore had to be on one of the other (Abandoned) Gundam Threads. Anyways moving on.

We all know that the Lesseps is used by Lowe and Company to get to Orb, and therefore can be used on water thanks to this. However after I recently reread my entire Gundam SEED Astray collection, I noticed something. Specifically that the Lesseps has some sort of attachments alongside the ship during the scenes when it arrives at Orb. There are several good shots of these attachments. The question is what are they? They are not on the official Lineart? Are they an attachment that allows the ship to be used on water? (Which is what I am guessing they are...)

Really wanted to do this with images but don't have a scanner to scan the pages I wanted and it appears I cannot find the original Astray Manga to be able to read Online or using Google Image search. /sigh/ Therefore I cannot shown the exact thing I am talking about. Anyways moving on...

Any thoughts on this....
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Black Knight
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Re: Swimming Lesseps

Can you at least provide volume & page numbers for reference? It's been years since I cracked open my Astray volumes, so saying it's when Lowe & friends arrived at Orb doesn't immediately tell me anything other than "Probably not Vol 1".
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Deathzealot
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Re: Swimming Lesseps

Hmmm...Volume Two. My copy doesn't have Page Numbers displayed but it should be right around the middle, when the Lesseps arrive at Orb. Don't have time to count the pages right now. May have the exact page number later.
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Black Knight
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Re: Swimming Lesseps

Volume 2 in the middle was enough.

Yes, there are clearly some cylindrical devices along the waterline of Lesseps which don't exist in the official lineart, or in the depiction of Lesseps in Astray R Vol 2, where it's first discovered by our Junk Guild friends. While these are probably floats, they are clearly far too small, and too much of Lesseps is above the water, for them to be providing the bulk of the floatation. They don't seem to be helping with propulsion at all, either. So I consider it very likely that Lesseps would still be able to travel through water even without them, were it fully repaired.
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Deathzealot
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Re: Swimming Lesseps

Hmmm... could they be some sort of propeller like mechanism to help support the Scale System to push through the water.

Anyways thanks for the answer Black Knight, I thought that there was something about this in a info book or something that I didn't known about. But perhaps we should just throw this in together with the never before seen Side Turret option the Lesseps is supposed to have.
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Black Knight
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Re: Swimming Lesseps

There's no wake behind the cylinders, no disruption of water which would indicate some form of propulsion. I'd say those cylinders are solely to assist in flotation due to the battle damage the land battleship has taken in the recent past, but that the lion's share of the buoyancy does come from the shape and construction of the Lesseps.
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Deathzealot
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Re: Swimming Lesseps

Black Knight wrote:There's no wake behind the cylinders, no disruption of water which would indicate some form of propulsion. I'd say those cylinders are solely to assist in flotation due to the battle damage the land battleship has taken in the recent past, but that the lion's share of the buoyancy does come from the shape and construction of the Lesseps.
Well darn there goes that theory.

Hmmm... perhaps it not a traditional propeller system. Perhaps it is something like this which is what is the movie verison of Tom Clancy's Red October's Caterpillar Drive.
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Black Knight
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Re: Swimming Lesseps

Except that the cylinders appear to be less than halfway submerged in the water, and there'd still be a wake coming out of the back. The scale system that provides movement for the Lesseps is specifically mentioned as allowing the ship to move in water, so I see no reason to postulate any sort of wacky, field-improvised propulsion system for the battleship. Jury-rigging its systems to work again and tacking some floats on in case it had too many holes to stay afloat are far more plausible explanations for what we see.
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Deathzealot
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Re: Swimming Lesseps

/shrug/

That works then.

Thanks for throwing your thoughts out on this subject, BK. It does make sense.
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