Chris responds:
1. There are no Newtypes in Turn A Gundam. I'm sure it was a deliberate choice on Tomino's part. If Turn A is a far future UC, it's possible they died off or left with the colonies long ago.

2. Although this is never explained in any series, the views you see inside the cockpits are not real time images. The many cameras on a suit record visual data, and a computer generated image is displayed in the cockpit. The way everything is animated, it looks like it's real, but it's not. The same goes for star fields.

3. The Mark II that remains in AEUG service is heavily damaged at the end of Zeta when Emma fights Yazan. Afterwards, it's fully repaired in Gundam ZZ and used by various pilots. It survives until the end of the First Neo Zeon War, when it's heavily damaged (along with the Zeta) while fighting the Quin Mantha inside Axis. Given all the explosions occurring after the battle, it and the Zeta are considered destroyed. One of the Mark II units was disassembled to serve as spare parts for the service unit, and the other was sent to Anaheim to decipher the secrets of the movable frame and other technologies.

Chris responds:
1. The One Year War was a catastrophic event for the Earth Sphere, so you could argue that the Federation never fully recovered from its effects. Also, given the massive bureaucracy, it seems those in power were more concerned about themselves than with anything that happens in space. This is clearly seen in ZZ when the Federation leadership sits by and does nothing while Haman drops a colony on Dublin. In CCA, you've got the Federation naively believing it can buy peace by selling Axis to Char. It's also illustrated in F91 when the Federation dismisses the Crossbone Vanguard rebellion as just angry colonists acting up.

2. I think you've mentioned most of the common story elements between UC and Wing.

3. I don't really see how. The optional Dash pack just provides extra thrusters and cannons, while the Guncannon is a dedicated artillery suit.

4. Not as far as I know. Given that the One Year War ended days after the Alex was damaged, I doubt the Federation bothered to repair it. However, the Alex and the GM Kai served as part of basis for the GM Custom's design, so it lived on in that aspect.

5. While ships have been shown refueling, I don't recall mobile suits being refueled on screen. You mention 0083 and ZZ as examples of seemingly long operational times, but you have to keep in mind that those episodes don't play out in real time. The suits could have easily been refueled off screen between scenes.

6. No, there's no information on what the full version of F91 would've been like. However, given how closely Victory and Crossbone were produced after F91, I'm sure Tomino probably used some of his F91 ideas in those series.

Chris responds:
1. Gundam has all sorts of naming quirks. For example, in all the Tomino series, military officers are addressed by rank and first name, rather than rank and last name. Therefore, you have Captain Bright instead of Captain Noa. But in all non-Tomino Gundam, things are referenced normally, such as Ensign Uraki and Ensign Yamato. As to your main question, there's no clear answer. It's the director and voice director's prerogative as to how these things are handled.

2. The Neo Zeon controlled Sweetwater, the makeshift refugee colony. There were many colonies sympathetic to them, but certainly not under their control. In UC 0095, the remnants of Neo Zeon gather under a mysterious masked man named Full Frontal in the Gundam Unicorn novel. But since it just started serialization, we don't have clear picture of what they're doing. In UC 0100, the Republic of Zeon gave up its autonomy and became part of the Federation again. After that, the last mention of Zeon I know of is the Oldsmobile Army in the 0120s.

3. I think you're making the mistake of presuming that the American Gundam fanbase is far bigger than it really is. Are there lots of Gundam fans in the U.S. and Canada? Sure. But not enough to support the franchise, and certainly not as many as seven years ago when Wing premiered. That's not to say there isn't anything to read- we do have Tomino's original Gundam novel trilogy, but that's just a re-release of the 1990 edition with a few updates and name changes. TOKYOPOP is also releasing the SEED novels in English, but I don't see much of a future for UC or other Gundam novels here.

4. Thanks for the comments. As for the outlines of things that never were, those translations by Mark Simmons and RGZ-91 are about all we have in English. This sort of information isn't widely available, probably not even in Japan. We don't know what the full plan for F91 was, or what would have appeared in Gundam X had it run 49 episodes. You can track down the old MSG outline translation that Mark posted on the Gundam Mailing List, but that's about it.

Chris responds:
1. There's never any explicit reason, but we have to keep in mind that the Federation is a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy. Bureaucracies tend to not do what many would consider easier or economically viable. Despite population growth and space emigration, the Federation stops building colonies early in the UC calendar. They also leave plenty of devastated colonies in ruins after the One Year War and don't bother to do anything about it until the F91 era. So it would seem that they're not too concerned about space development in the colonies, let alone on planets like Mars.

2. The Jupiter Empire forces are the main antagonists of the Crossbone Gundam manga series. They may have bizarre mecha designs, but they're completely human. The Jupiter Energy Fleet is a very powerful group because it provides the helium-3 that is an essential fuel source for all mobile suits and spaceships. Having existed in the shadows for a long time, the Jupiter colonists funded anti-Federation movements like the AEUG. By the time of Crossbone in the 0130s, they plan to conquer Earth because of the harsh conditions. Aside from people like Scirocco, Victory Gundam's Fonse Kagatie of the Zanscare Empire is from Jupiter and is rumored to be somehow related to Jupiter Empire leader Crux Dogatie. But we don't know more than that.