The SCV-70 White Base (ホワイトベース Howaito Bēsu), also nicknamed Trojan Horse (木馬 Mokuba), is a fictional spaceship from the Japanese science fiction anime series Mobile Suit Gundam. It serves as the mothership of the protagonist Earth Federation crew members and the famous RX-78-2 Gundam mobile suit. Various spin-offs are designed after it, including a whole class of ships called the Pegasus-class assault carrier, and it has inspired ships in the sequels like the Argama-class in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Archangel-class in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED.
Other non-Gundam spaceships, such as the transformed mode of Fortress Maximus from the Transformers series, are possibly also inspired by White Bases design.
Development
The White Base is designed with a three-plane view method by Kunio Okawara, which originated as a salvaged design from the anime Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3. The idea of having a space carrier from the director Yoshiyuki Tomino was partly inspired by the earlier science fiction anime Space Battleship Yamato, which he claimed to be a fan of. This ship also appeared in the Kodansha Pocket Encyclopedia series, listed as spacecraft carrier (Uchuu Kubou, 宇宙空母). The Zukai Uchusen magazine listed it the 6th most recognisable fictional spaceship (and 3rd in anime) after the Imperial Star Destroyer, Millennium Falcon, Enterprise, SDF-1 Macross, and Yamato, and the ship that made the Pegasus-class of ships famous.
Special onboard systems
As summarised for general readers, Chapter 4 of Zukai Uchusen, which is the chapter dedicated for famous fictional crafts, stated the White Base utilises Minovsky Physics to support a semi-antigravity system called Minovsky Craft to fly in the atmosphere, which it ejects Minovsky particles to create a kind of hovering effect.