Atlantis in space

[Edi]

Now why the hell would Atlantis need shield to keep life-support in space?
There ware episode like A Drift where they actually lost shield for outer parts of the city and people died! How hard it could be to make it air-tight? I mean they and every advanced race have ships capable to go and support life in space without using a shield.

[big-boss-91]

its a TV program i'm afraid... good thing NASA thought ahead of the long dead alien race

[amforster]

I agree. This did annoy me.

[andy tyler]

Now why the hell would Atlantis need shield to keep life-support in space?
There ware episode like A Drift where they actually lost shield for outer parts of the city and people died! How hard it could be to make it air-tight? I mean they and every advanced race have ships capable to go and support life in space without using a shield.

Because atlantis is just a normal city. I'd like to see you make the empire state building air tight. To build an air tight space vehicle requires a lot more complex construction processes and for a city the size of atlantis to be 100% air tight is not feasible.

Ships that go into space and have life support without a shield: um they are 100x smaller than atlantis...

[Edi]

No they are not! Think hive ship, or even aurora class - they are very big, comparable with Atlantis! ( I wanted to say Ori, but we never saw one of them on space without shield )
And lol! ? THEY cant do something as simple as that?

[TrueLordOfNetu]

The way I see it most of the citys stuctures will be airtight when the main doors are sealed. The are used to prevent the transfer of airborne contagens throught the city when quarantine lockdown protocols are in effect and so must have airtight seals. The shield would be required however to stop collisions with asteroids, etc. from breaching the walls. I did think it was strange though when the doors closed, the shield retracted and suddenly the air in the then sealed rooms was suddenly no longer there and with no noticable decompression. Who knows, mabye the city could just be full of holes but then again so could the script.

[half113]

in a the drift city shut down life support and gravity coz it was no longer nessesary out side of the shield and it did it to save max power from their last zpm. shield was made smaller by the city to to save power

[Gregorius]

Now why the hell would Atlantis need shield to keep life-support in space?
There ware episode like A Drift where they actually lost shield for outer parts of the city and people died! How hard it could be to make it air-tight? I mean they and every advanced race have ships capable to go and support life in space without using a shield.

Because it wouldn't make for a nice plot if it were like that. If Atlantis had been properly constructed then all the subsections would have individual secundary shields and powersystems, be air and water tight, have an individual power system for the weapons systems, life support and gate operations. The main shield would've been fully powered by the ZPMs, along with the other systems getting power from them, but would also have multiple redundant powersystems should the ZPMs fail. Those back-up systems would keep the shield going at a lower strength/size while the ZPM problem would be solved.

In universe it can be explained as that the Ancient were were arrogant and would never have a problem with power and as such would rely on their fully powered shield to prevent any damage.

[apollo22]

You all have to realize that Atlantis is first and foremost a city, it being a space ship is merely a secondary feature. Why would you want an airtight building when it is parked on a planet most of the time, and when they are in space, they have the shield, and you have to remember that the ancients probably never had to worry about running out of power like we did because they had numerous ZPM's.

And the reason why the sections of the city didn't decompress in the sense that you are thinking of, you know explosive decompression and suck was because McKay said that the city was decompressing sections ahead of the shield collapse so that by the time that the collapse got to the section, there was no air there to decompress in the general sense.

[gatelover12]

Why would you want an airtight building when it is parked on a planet most of the time,

To keep out rain, flooding, dust, insects, and to keep the internal temperature easy to control? If you want a cross breeze, crack a window.

In answer to the original poster, you've found a plot hole. Someone thought it'd be a good idea to have it work that way. They were wrong. We should all laugh at them, and try to block this out of our minds.

[Gregorius]

You all have to realize that Atlantis is first and foremost a city, it being a space ship is merely a secondary feature. Why would you want an airtight building when it is parked on a planet most of the time, and when they are in space, they have the shield, and you have to remember that the ancients probably never had to worry about running out of power like we did because they had numerous ZPM's.

Even as a city Atlantis is poorly designed. It has no redudancy and is completely reliant on a single power source. Should that power source fail then everything fails. If such a design were to come onto the desk of an engineer he'd laugh the designer out of his room and tell him to get back with a realistic design.

When you're designing something you take into account all the features it should have, in this case space faring capabilities and permanent living capabilties. In case of Atlantis it's even more complex because it's also a science, medical, political and technological center of an empire.

This means that the city structures should be designed to take on the stresses of space travel and designed to be able to withstand nearly every scenario. It needs to be able to contain internal disasters such as an airborne pathogen or damage caused by an experiment gone wrong. It should be able to withstand attacks when its main shield is down or when its main power is gone. This is even more important when you take into account its space faring capabilities. If the shield collapses in space all building SHOULD be protected by their own shields to prevent mirco meteorites from causing damage.

You also want to be damned sure that your city is airtight when you're landing on a planet. If it isn't and your shield fails then unknown pathogens could enter the city and all its internal heat would flow outwards causing a drain on the power supplies. Not to mention the flooded corridors when the rain would come in through the cracks. Furthermore wouldn't you be able to contain an outbreak of an illness when your city isn't airtight and you lower the airtight doors since it would just slip through all the cracks and your expensive air filtration system would be pointless.

All in all, Atlantis is design that any engineer would throw in the garbage bin. It just has so many errors in it that it's a huge plothole how it actually survived for so long.

[Xaeden]

Even if Atlantis were built to be completely air tight, Atlantis is a city which has suffered damage from extreme water pressure, (resulting in water flooding an unknown portion of the city when the expedition first found the city) has been attacked from the inside and out, (the Wraith running around with their little grenades, the darts firing on the city) and more recently suffered extensive damage from asteroid fragments. Most of the damage is too exhaustive, too pointless, and/or too beyond Earth to fix. So, it makes quite a bit of sense for a fair amount of the outer portions of the city, especially, to be exposed.

But I don't think the Ancients ever imagined a time where they would need a city ship to be able to operate in space without a shield. In fact, I don't think they ever intended for city ships to remain in space for very long. I think they intended to park their cities on planets for millions of years and only move them when they outlived the environmental conditions on a planet/area of a planet or when some other disaster took place. When they did, they could plan ahead and make sure they had proper power requirements, make sure there qwew no obstacles in their way, and call on battleships fly support if need be. Then they would land on another planet and remain there for a few million more years.

And if that's the case, why be concerned with designing a city so it could survive without shields for a few hours or days when your shields served you more than well enough and you could focus their design on creature comforts that would serve residents for 99.99% of the city's existence. Comforts like making it easy to get in and out of the city, making it so they could easily get air from outside of city rather than depending so much on a closed system, (I'm not sure if they actually did that or not though) making it visually pleasing, (lots of spiral towers that are separated from each other is quite a bit different from a Hive which in completely contained in one massive shape) and so on.

[Gregorius]

Most of the damage is too exhaustive, too pointless, and/or too beyond Earth to fix. So, it makes quite a bit of sense for a fair amount of the outer portions of the city, especially, to be exposed.

Then why have people there during space flight? That makes no sense at all.

But I don't think the Ancients ever imagined a time where they would need a city ship to be able to operate in space without a shield. In fact, I don't think they ever intended for city ships to remain in space for very long. I think they intended to park their cities on planets for millions of years and only move them when they outlived the environmental conditions on a planet/area of a planet or when some other disaster took place. When they did, they could plan ahead and make sure they had proper power requirements, make sure there no obstacles in their way, and call on battleships fly support if need be. Then they would land on another planet and remain there for a few million more years.

Doesn't make it any less of a poor design.

And if that's the case, why be concerned with designing a city so it could survive without shields for a few hours or days when your shields served you more than well enough and you could focus more on creature comforts that would serve residents for 99.99% of the city's existence. Comforts like making it easy to get in and out of the city and making it visually pleasing (lots of spiral towers that are separated from each other is quite a bit different from a Hive which in completely contained in one massive shape).

2 words: Political Center.

[Xaeden]

Then why have people there during space flight? That makes no sense at all.

Because they had no choice - They needed to move quickly to escape the Asuran weapon and the Apollo couldn't carry all of their people. They did, however, evacuate non-essential personnel beforehand.

Doesn't make it any less of a poor design.

It depends on how you look at it - It seems like it was good for their purposes, not so much for Humans with limited resources and little idea of what they're doing. For the Ancients it would have been redundant. Their shields were insanely powerful, they had plenty of energy available to support them, they knew how to fully operate the city, and, according to them, before the Wraith they never met an enemy which they couldn't dispatch with their superior technology. So there's nothing to suggest they ever needed any other protection besides their shields and city ships are really designed for two contradictory purposes. They seemed to focus on making it as much like a city as possible, instead of making it as much of space ship as possible. Which for them could have been a very good design if they really never intended for a city ship to be in space for very long. Again, why sacrifice the living conditions of your people during untold generators for an action that takes place in a very short amount of time every few million years?

2 words: Political Center.

It only seemed to become a political center after Atlantis moved to the Pegasus galaxy. When designed, Dakara was the "political center."

[E.D.E.N.]

1-It is a "CITY SHIP". The first word is CITY, so I believe the Ancients wanted their environment to be not so military, some might believe that the more militaristic your surroundings the more institutionalized they feel. The comfort of feeling at ease might have made them more efficient at being who they were.
2-You can't have the Pressure strength you need from probably most of the windows they have on Atlantis to hold up in space. Air tight, yes.
3-It probably acted more as a base of operations than a spaceship, needing only to move for strategic reasons.
4-They were the ones who built the power source needed for the city, don't think they were entirely concerned about it.
5-It obviously posed no problems for the Ancients to have it this way, the only reason it was a problem for us is the lack of ZPM's.
6-Don't forget they were pretty egotistical in many ways, Atlantis might be considered the pinnacle of the Ancients tech by a lot of people, and as the saying goes...............................

IF YOU GOT IT FLAUNT IT!!!!!!