Asgard Hyperdrives

[s09119]

Okay, so here's the problem we have: in earlier seasons of SG-1, the Asgard were able to cross galaxies in seconds with their hyper-advanced ships. But, as time went by, they got slower and slower until their hyperdrives, while still far faster than most other races', still took hours or even days to get places.

So what speeds do we use in arguments, and what is considered a canonical Asgard ship speed now? Even when the very fate of his race depended on Thor reaching Orilla before Fifth, his ship still took quite some time to get there, so obviously by Season 8 they can no longer cross any large distance in mere seconds. This is further enforced by later appearances of Asgard ships, not to mention the supposedly "pinacle of their technology" hyperdrive on the post-"Unending" Odyssey, which still takes hours and days to cross the galaxy, not to mention the galactic void.

My personal opinion (which I believe is more-than-backed-up by the show) is that the speed of Asgard and other advanced races' hyperdrives were retconned as it became clear that such speeds made it impractical and unbelievable for plot's sake. All other advances species we have seen (Lanteans being a great example) also have slower hyperdrives, and even Atlantis takes a fair deal of time to travel now.

Thoughts?

[2ndgenerationalteran]

use the newer speeds rather than the seconds because the writters them selves dont use that speed anymore. Asgard ship use the 3,000,000 cy per 4 days or 8.68 cy persecond they gave us in season 3 of atlantis.

[pbutter]

The speeds were never "retconned".
"ven when the very fate of his race depended on Thor reaching Orilla before Fifth, his ship still took quite some time to get there"
That's because the Replicators use Asgard Hyperdrive technology, they steal the best technology, remember.

[s09119]

The speeds were never "retconned".
"ven when the very fate of his race depended on Thor reaching Orilla before Fifth, his ship still took quite some time to get there"
That's because the Replicators use Asgard Hyperdrive technology, they steal the best technology, remember.

...it still took Thor about an hour to get to Orilla... how would Fifth's hyperdrive influence that at all?

[pbutter]

Do we know where they were travelling from ?

[JSPuddlejumper]

The show has indicated several times that the Asgard have the fastest hyperdrives.

As for the 304s:

Putting a Ferrari engine (O'Neill class) on a Toyota Corolla (304) will not entail similar peformance, even with a ZPM.

[Tarrifist]

Good question. My idea is to why their hyperdrive doesnt work as well as it would on an Asgard ship is due to our technology. IE: Computers and every set designers favorite prop PIPES for coolants and such. When was the last time you seen pipes on their ships..lol.

Wonder how fast an Asgard computer is?

[JSPuddlejumper]

The Asgard ships can fly themselves via remote, or with 1 Asgard onboard.

Their computers are clearly far beyond the capabilities of Earth yet.

[LostCityGuardian]

My personal opinion (which I believe is more-than-backed-up by the show) is that the speed of Asgard and other advanced races' hyperdrives were retconned as it became clear that such speeds made it impractical and unbelievable for plot's sake. All other advances species we have seen (Lanteans being a great example) also have slower hyperdrives, and even Atlantis takes a fair deal of time to travel now.

Thoughts?

Indeed. A plothole.

[RM_2000_A]

You sure? Atlantis was flying slow, since it has almost no power at all. And Oberoth's city-ship was flying slow since that was a replica. You may imitate a Ferrari outside, but you can never get its speed

[JSPuddlejumper]

^In case of the Asurans, they know everything the Ancients knew, and they build the machines to specs.

As for the producer saying very good replica's, he also said the Ori ships were powered by the Ascended Ori, which is impossible as shown on many episodes.

Logically, the Asurans=Ancients in tech.

Earth, not yet at the overall techincal level of the Asgard.

[Bray]

It's clearly just that the writers thought "Crap we made them way too fast, better tone them down and hope no-one notices"

I mean it would be crazy if you could be anywhere in the galaxy in a matter of seconds, it'd be like drop out bomb a planet, and two seconds later be back at your homeworld before the enemy can do anything.

[s09119]

Do we know where they were travelling from ?

The Asgard planet Hala, formerly the capital of their empire... or some name like that. Either way it was their former capital.

[pbutter]

Maybe that is really far away from their new planet.
Would this be the episode where Carter and Tealc travel in the Alkesh to IDA, to contact the Asgard, inorder to save Oneill ?
If it is, then in that episode, the sun had been collapsed into a blackhole and the Replicator blocks' had managed to come together io form a ship (to escape the blackhole's gravitational pull) and also fired the Replicator missile onto Thors' ship and infected her. There could be a number of reasons why it took them an hour to reach the Asgard world (new one).

[Jarnin]

Maybe that is really far away from their new planet.
Would this be the episode where Carter and Tealc travel in the Alkesh to IDA, to contact the Asgard, inorder to save Oneill ?

Yes, it is. However, this is pointless if you're trying to figure out how fast that ship was, due to the fact that the distance between Hala and Orilla has never been established. All we know is that they're in the same galaxy.

As for speed, the only factual information we have comes from the episode Unnatural Selection. The Prometheus is approximately 1200 light years from Earth when Thor shows up in a Bilskirnir class ship to tow them back to Earth.
Their travel time to Earth is exactly 8 seconds. That works out to be about 150 light years per second, or roughly 75 times faster than Daedalus.

If you compare that with the mention of an Asgard ship cutting nearly two weeks off the travel time to Atlantis (approximately 18 days), then you come up with a speed of about 8.7 ly/s; roughly 4.5 times faster than Daedalus.

The writers have definitely rebalanced the major players in the franchise. I just hope they're done so we won't have these paradoxes popping up each time they introduce a new Big Bad.