When does Earth get a space station?

[tendomentis]

Also a slight danger should a foothold situation occur in space. The enemy would have more options of escaping then in the mountain.

Not necessarily. Look at the replicators for an example. If the replicators overrun the SGC under the mountain, they could spill out onto the surface and overrun the planet.

If they overrun a space station (that has no means of propulsion other than station keeping), all they can do is escape back through the gate. Even trying to crash the station to Earth would likely just incinerate everything and all the replicators anyway (think season premiere of season 4 with Thor's ship).

Having the "pandora's box" that is the Stargate NOT on the surface of our homeworld would be safer in many ways.

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

Ah but to facilitate a quick movement of troops they would have to install a transporter (be it ring or asgard style) and of course place some weapons on the hull to protect it abit. So if any enemy quickly takes over it could be worse then where the gate is currently located at. If the gate at the mountain complex was compromised then they could just blow it up and make a cover up story. If it blows up in orbit well there are tonnes of things that could happen. And remember if the replicators did invade an orbital station then even if it was destroyed its possible they could 'ride' some of the debris and hit orbit. They did that with Thors ship after all.

And while the replicators are a worry they are one of those all powerful threats. If it was something less assault like the Mimetic Foothold aliens then it could be even more dangerous.

[RA the sun god]

to the person that said something about replacing naq genarators very often...they are genarators!!!!not bateries the naq inside will never need replaced!!!but we will need enough of them get the point

[WraithWarrior]

No, I personally think this is a GREAT idea. Seriously.

Move the whole SGC into orbit. Use a Go'auld cloaking device to keep it invisible from attacking ships and earth based peepers. Use Asgard beam transporters coordinated with a small but easily defended way station on the surface (for personnel and supplies to be transported up), that would really help tighten up security.

With no engines (only station keeping thrusters necessary), you could double up on reactor cores to have uber-shields for planetary defense, and you could act as a ship assembly plant.

Another advantage...you've now put the stargate in orbit (a la Ancients). Even if you have it "indoors" (inside the space station), you can now have a fallback incase anyone ever tries to send a bomb through the gate (or turn the gate into a bomb like at the beginning of season 5). Now a huge gate explosion doesn't have the capacity to kill the planet.

Place a few of these in orbit with ring transporters linking them together for quick transport, and you've got a hot planetary defense system. They don't need to be HUGE, but they have the ability to be because you don't have to build them to be flyable.

Even though we don't HAVE to build the ships in orbit, it probably would still be easier to do so, and we could build them BIGGER.

Thats a good point and maybe while they are creating space stations, they should create some kind of communications link, so Earth could communicate with Atlantis and the Deadulus when it is in space between Earth and Atlantis easier. Then when problems occur and Earth needs to tell Atlantis something or vice versa the technology is available. They could put several cloaked between here and Atlantis and it would be like a relay device

[MarshAngel]

to the person that said something about replacing naq genarators very often...they are genarators!!!!not bateries the naq inside will never need replaced!!!but we will need enough of them get the point

I got your point and would have done so even without the generous use of exclamation marks. I guess what I'm trying to say is that given all the things the SGC hasn't done, or at least hasn't mentioned doing technologically, all the fine details involved in launching, operating, and maintaining a space station *should* be out of their reach never mind the questionable need for such a station in the first place.

Then again... they have made several inexplicable technological leaps that make no sense so why not this. It would be nice to look at, if useless.