Space Colony (Gundam) - Cosmic Era

Cosmic Era

For a list of known colonies in the Cosmic Era see Cosmic Era locations.

A small number of colonies in the Cosmic Era (CE) timeline are designed on the O'Neill Island 3 design (such as Heliopolis at L3) or the Bernal Island 1 (like Mendel at L₄), however, the most common space colonies are titanic, thirty-kilometer long hourglass shaped colonies called PLANTs (Productive Location Ally on Nexus Technology), each of which has a population in excess of 240,000 Coordinators (virtually no Naturals live in the PLANTs). The PLANTs are arranged into "cities" named after the months of the year and located at and around L₅. Each city has a particular group of scientific specialties (for example, Martius City specializes in aerospace technology and shipbuilding). While spaceports on the PLANTs have a zero-gravity or near zero-g environment, the cities themselves have regular Earth style gravity through methods unknown.

A military base existing in the Cosmic Era called Artemis also exists, and appears to have gravity outside of its spaceports much like the PLANTs, as demonstrated when the Archangel was allowed to dock there only for the Eurasian federation officers to briefly detain the ship and its crew by force. Artemis also possessed a shield called the Umbrella of Artemis, which was integral to the defense of the base. Artemis was severely damaged/destroyed in Year 71 of the Cosmic Era by ZAFT through the use of the stolen Gundam mobile suits.

Most Natural-occupied space colonies (the ones built on traditional designs) were destroyed early in the Bloody Valentine War by ZAFT forces, and the primary moonbase of the Earth Alliance was destroyed by the GENESIS laser at the end of the war, so virtually all of the humans living in space as of Cosmic Era 73 are Coordinators. This had disastrous consequences for the human race when the remains of the destroyed space colony Junius Seven (250,000 dead) were dropped on the Earth with the intent of causing the extinction of all Naturals (and subsequently, as the fertility of Coordinators drops off sharply with the third and subsequent generations, the extinction of the entire human race). (Gundam SEED/Gundam SEED Destiny)