#going back through old wfm episodes and seeing suletta being suletta is a trip

[most-likely-shadowhisker]

The Hypocrisy of the Spacians (or, why worries about Kessler Syndrome are bullshit)

So, a number of things happened in the latest episode of G-Witch. A number of them were, uh, traumatizing. For both the cast and the viewers. To keep myself distracted, I'm going to focus on a little detail mentioned in episode 12. (Spoilers under cut!)

Specifically, this line. Now, a lot of people have pointed out it's perfectly reasonable to ban kinetic space weaponry in favor of lasers; lasers don't leave behind any bullets or casings that can drift through space until they hit something and cause a Kessler Syndrome. And this is reasonable- until you look deeper.

Norea here immediately points out the first layer of hypocrisy (the Spacian military-industrial complex being more than happy to pollute Earth while at the same time worrying about the pollution of space). But there's something more that undermines the kinetic weapons ban and it's stated reasoning entirely, that being that guns aren't the only thing that leaves behind space debris.

Every laser that misses and hits a building or asteroid or whatever, every limb of an enemy MS that's sheared off, all that sends little shards and particulates of material flying off into space, where they'll keep flying until they hit something, normally at high velocity.

For an example, let's look at the Vim/Bob fight in they very same episode:

The elder Jeturk is more than happy to shear off limbs and leave them drifting, not to mention his using very fucking physical cluster munitions. (How are ordinary guns banned but cluster bombs aren't?! Or is this a case of Vim's money allowing him to get away with flaunting the rules? Either way, more Spacian hypocrisy.)

And that's before we get into what happens to defeated combants; the mandatory post-kill explosion. That explosion doesn't atomize the defeated mobile suit to take care of resulting space debris, it just sends that space debris flying in every direction, making it all the harder to clean up. Here's a couple shots of Vim's MS blowing up:

Look at how the Dilanza Sol visibly bulges outwards before the explosion completes, and the debris field left behind afterwards. A few weeks, years, decades, I dunno how long, but one day those little Dilanza Sol bits are going to drift into just the right position to ruin some freighter's day.

Now, one could argue that all this is just Vim's flaunting of the rules, or a result of Benerit Group being confronted with someone who doesn't obey the laws of war anyway. Problem is, they left behind plenty of space debris in other conflicts. Look at the aftermath of the Vanadis Incident:

Or, hell, the duel between Suletta and El4n, may he rest in peace.

Benerit Group and it's subsidiaries are more than okay with leaving behind fields of space debris from all sorts of sources, as long as those sources aren't guns. Even fore something as petty as a duel among students.

In conclusion, the ban on physical weaponry in the Ad Stella timeline isn't out of any genuine sense of care for the cleanliness of space, or worries about a Kessler Syndrome. The true reason is most likely moral grandstanding, similar to Imperial Germany kvetching about American shotguns in WW1. Alternatively, it could be as simple was wanting to deny what I assume are cheap, easy to manufacture weapons that could prove comparable to lasers to the poors/revolutionaries/poor revolutionaries most likely to buy and/or make them. Either way, the hypocrisy of the Spacian military-industrial complex is on full display here. The solar system of the Ad Stella timeline won't see someone fully dedicated to keep space clean and safe until the military industrial complex is dismantled- preferably in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat that incentivized to care about the safety of freighter crews and so forth, instead of the corporatocracy incentivized to care about profit, damn everything else.