How many shots can you get out of a Goa'uld staff weapon?

[talyn2k1]

Never makes sense to me that they use P90's against the Jaffa. Full Rifles with Hollowpoint rounds would be so much more effective at getting through the armor. I say this because it shouldn't take 20 rounds to bring down a single Jaffa, but it does with the P90.

How many rounds it takes can vary from episode to episode. In 'The Fifth Man', O`Neill takes out a Jaffa with a single round. He does this a few times before going all out on them.

I can't say i've ever seen it takes 20 rounds to take out a Jaffa, that makes only 2 and a half Jaffa per magazine (iirc a P90 mag holds 50 rounds).

Its probably safe to say that we've seen Jaffa taken down with anything from 1 to 7/8 rounds. I don't recall an individual situation where it has taken any more than that.

[Jimbo-DR]

They always fire long bursts of fire at each Jaffa, which seems wasteful to me. There are scenes where O'neill actually holds the trigger and on purpose jinks his gun around to spray towards them. Thats certainly not what they teach in the military.

[Rudy Pena]

They always fire long bursts of fire at each Jaffa, which seems wasteful to me. There are scenes where O'neill actually holds the trigger and on purpose jinks his gun around to spray towards them. Thats certainly not what they teach in the military.

So you want a 4-man team who is being attacked by a full company of Jaffa take there time to shoot each one and then risk being killed or something else. This aint WWII where you take some time to kill your enemy.

[Jimbo-DR]

So you want a 4-man team who is being attacked by a full company of Jaffa take there time to shoot each one and then risk being killed or something else. This aint WWII where you take some time to kill your enemy.

...
No, you do it efficiently like they TEACH in the military. With the speed and accuracy of the P90 at the ranges they fight they should be hitting them once in the face and moving on to the next target. Spray and Pray never works.

[Rudy Pena]

...
No, you do it efficiently like they TEACH in the military. With the speed and accuracy of the P90 at the ranges they fight they should be hitting them once in the face and moving on to the next target. Spray and Pray never works.

Well if they did want to get head shots, then the show would be rate R because it would be not for kids.

[Mister Oragahn]

One interesting tidbit of information that could be relevant is what Carter says in "Torment of Tantalus". She says Teal'c's staff is insufficient to power the gate.

NIce catch. However, put into perspective, it's tricky.

At that time, Carter had much less experience and knowledge regarding goa'uld tech. At this point, nothing like naqahdah reactors existed. Not even a prototype.

And we're lightyears away from O'neill bricolage, thanks to his ancient knowledge.

I think that Carter's idea was relatively basic. She knew that a stargate is a capacitor that can absord energy rather liberally.
It's largely probable that the idea was to fire on the stargate.

CARTER
The Dial-Home Devices just fell through the floor into the ocean.

DANIEL
So what are we going to do?

CARTER
That thing may have a power source in it that we can use to get the Gate working.

DANIEL
Uh…No!
(appalled)
You don't understand— this book may contain knowledge of the universe. I mean, this is— this is meaning-of-life stuff. I have to get more of it down on paper before we leave. There has to be something more you can use. What about using energy from Teal'c's staff?

CARTER
It isn't powerful enough.

There's another case where we've seen a bolt go through a person and relase a big plume of hot matter:

When Teal'c shot Sha're at close distance.

[talyn2k1]

And we're lightyears away from O'neill bricolage, thanks to his ancient knowledge.

Whu?

[MechaThor]

Where dose the ammo come from? I mean i know its energy but you can't keep taking stuff out (energy being fired out) without putting stuff back in. unless theirs some constant chemical rection going on?

There a staff would fire as many shots as energy it has. Maybe its that yellow stuff Jack took out in "the 5th race". When that runs out its game over!

[gopher65]

Whu?

Yeah I had to look that up too.

"Bricolage: The construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available"

A do it yourself heap-o-junk.

[gopher65]

Using the episodes The Torment of Tantalus and The Fifth Race as a guide, I tried to figure out how much energy 1 staff power source contains.

In ToT, 2 lightning strikes hit the gate, and they power it for about 65 seconds before it destabilizes due to lack of power. Each lightning strike probably contains about 500 megajoules. So it took about 1 gigajoule to power the gate under normal circumstances for ~65 seconds.

In tFR, O'Neill powers the Stargate using a Staff power source (presumably liquid Naquhada) to travel to Ida. Carter said that the gate was drawing 10 times its regular power requirements. It stayed open for about 3 minutes before completely draining the staff power supply.

So, just cross multiple to find out the total power reserves of a staff.

X/(10*180sec) = 1GJ/65sec

I figure that each Staff Power source contains about 27 gigajoules of energy.

This doesn't help this discussion of course, since we don't know how much energy each staff shot contains. I just wanted to do it.

[Jimbo-DR]

Using the episodes The Torment of Tantalus and The Fifth Race as a guide, I tried to figure out how much energy 1 staff power source contains.

In ToT, 2 lightning strikes hit the gate, and they power it for about 65 seconds before it destabilizes due to lack of power. Each lightning strike probably contains about 500 megajoules. So it took about 1 gigajoule to power the gate under normal circumstances for ~65 seconds.

In tFR, O'Neill powers the Stargate using a Staff power source (presumably liquid Naquhada) to travel to Ida. Carter said that the gate was drawing 10 times its regular power requirements. It stayed open for about 3 minutes before completely draining the staff power supply.

So, just cross multiple to find out the total power reserves of a staff.

X/(10*180sec) = 1GJ/65sec

I figure that each Staff Power source contains about 27 gigajoules of energy.

This doesn't help this discussion of course, since we don't know how much energy each staff shot contains. I just wanted to do it.

But it didn't completely drain the device! They re-use this device in Point of View, when the Carters figure out how to reactivate it.

[jds1982]

I kinda wonder if this is like asking "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop?" The problem with using O'Neill's device is that noone really knows how it works. Does it draw power directly from the liquid naquada, or does it just use it to jumpstart another more powerful energy extraction process? I know there are people who think it worked like a ZPM, sure there's no real evidence for that, but that doesn't mean it's not the case. My guess is even the writers have no real idea how it worked.

[gopher65]

But it didn't completely drain the device! They re-use this device in Point of View, when the Carters figure out how to reactivate it.

I thought they put in a new powersource from a new staff, but then they couldn't activate it until they realigned it to the new powersource? Cause in tFR silor says the device was drained.

[Mister Oragahn]

Yes, besides this whole ten times standard consumption annoys me.

The maths are correct, but the figure is strikingly low.

If dialing another galaxy was just a question of one order of magnitude up, it would be ages that the SGC would have a big ass naqahdah generator installed there.

Let's look at the transcript:

INT—SGC—CONTROL ROOM

[Carter heads up the steps and approaches Hammond.]

HAMMOND
(To Carter)
We were preparing to send SG-11 to the next new Stargate address that Colonel O'Neill programmed into the computer.

SIMMONS
The Gate wouldn't dial out, the computer's frozen.

CARTER
That doesn't make any sense, we've just run a full diagnostic.

[Simmons types a command into the computer. The monitor gives an energy output reading. Carter looks at it.]

CARTER
The Stargate's trying to draw more power than usual from the system.

INT—SGC—INFIRMARY

[O'Neill picks up his machine and hurriedly leaves the room. Daniel and Teal'c watch him leave.]

DANIEL
(dryly)
I'm guessing we should follow him.

INT—SGC—POWER VAULT ENCLOSURE

[O'Neill opens the Gate as Teal'c and Daniel look on. O'Neill enters the caged power vault and stares momentarily at the main breaker. Opening the main breaker box, he begins to hook up his device to the power system.</blockquote>

TEAL'C
(in a low voice)
Should we not attempt to stop him, Daniel Jackson?

DANIEL
Wait a minute. Jack, what are you doing?

O'NEILL
Euge.

[O'Neill fastens the device to the door of the breaker box. The lights flicker.]

DANIEL
I think that means 'good'.

[O'Neill hooks up what appear to be power cables to his device.]

DANIEL
Jack, I really don't know if this is a good thing.

O'NEILL
Euge. Euge.

DANIEL
I don't think he understands us anymore.

[O'Neill attaches one of the cables to the main board, then switches the machine on. It hums and glows.]

INT—SGC—CONTROL ROOM

[Carter is looking at the power output monitor.]

CARTER
(to Hammond)
Sir, somehow the Stargate just got a huge power boost. It's drawing ten times more power than normal.

HAMMOND
Isn't that impossible?

CARTER
Yes, Sir, the circuit should've blown.

HAMMOND
(Goes over to the phone and picks it up)
This is General Hammond. I want Sergeant Siler and a maintenance crew to the power room immediately.

[The Stargate begins to dial outonitsown. Chevrons start to lock in place.]

CARTER
Uh, Sir?

[Hammond comes over to her.]

CARTER
The Gate is dialing out.

HAMMOND
Where to?

CARTER
I have no way of knowing. We've completely lost control, Sir.

INT—SGC—CORRIDORS

[Various different shot of SF's dashing around the complex, brandishing guns.]

INT—SGC—CONTROL ROOM

[Chevrons continue to lock in.]

SIMMONS
Chevron five is encoded.

[Daniel, O'Neill and Teal'c enter the control room.]

DANIEL
The device that Jack built is some sort of energy source. He just hooked it up in the power vault.

CARTER
Well, that explains where the Gate's getting all the extra power.

HAMMOND
I would not have authorised that, Doctor Jackson.
(To Carter)
Captain, how do we stop this?

CARTER
You could have Siler pull the main breaker.

SIMMONS
Chevron six is encoded.

DANIEL
Wait. Jack has been saying that this is a good thing. Now, so far he's done nothing bad.

HAMMOND
So far.

SIMMONS
Chevron seven…

[The seventh chevron locks in but it's not Earth's point of origin chevron and the number 8 appears on the screen under the seventh chevron's slot]

SIMMONS
…is encoded?

CARTER
And it's not the point of origin.

HAMMOND
What?

[O'Neill gazes out upon the Stargate, which has not activated yet.]

DANIEL
General, what if all these anomalies that have been happening to Jack are part of some big plan?

HAMMOND
What plan?

[Daniel looks at O'Neill.]

DANIEL
Well, earlier Jack was telling me he had to go through the Gate. Maybe everything up until now has been leading to this.

[He indicates the Stargate]

CARTER
What's it doing?

SIMMONS
Chevron *eight* is locked.

[The Stargate activates.]

SIMMONS
Wormhole is tracking…
(freaked out, then to Carter)
Captain?

CARTER
Sir, the computer indicates that the wormhole is leaving our known network of Stargates. It's going outside of our galaxy. Far out.

[O'Neill continues to gaze out at the Stargate.]

DANIEL
That's why the Gate needed all the extra power.

HAMMOND
Hold on, I thought Stargate addresses were six points in space with the seventh being the point of origin.

CARTER
The extra chevron must add a new distance calculation to the existing points. It's kind of like dialing a different area code.

First, the stargate was building up power at a faster rate.

The calculations you made, gopher, only account for the time the gate was open, while it seems clear that nor the device, nor the stargate, could actually predict how long that wormhole would remain connected.
There's also the very big problem, in all that, that the circuitry they used at the SGC should have blown, since they could not handle that amount of power. If there is a thing that they will know for sure, it's the amount of power the power grid the SGC can handle.
O'neill plugged his device into the main board.

So, chances would be that the amount of power drawn was lower than this... which is kinda bogus.

The only other solution, is that much like a DHD, O'neill's device established a cable-less power connection to the stargate.
We would have to consider, then, that plugging the device to the main board only made the device work.
After all, it's likely that the naqahdah power cell and the electricity brought from the main board would be helping the device triggered a reaction, like a mini fusion reactor for example (analogy) which needs a certain amount of energy before starting. Of course, in that case, it would have probably been cold fusion, thus far less power hungry, but let's pretend that the effect was the same.

Couldn't it be possible that the ToT stargate was already slightly charged, from an older use, or possible from the day the SGC connected to that world back in the forties or so?

The problem is not really the SGC circuitry, but more the amount of energy the stargate was supposedly drawing.

ZPMs were supposed to be necessary to reach another galaxy. In Critical Mass, simply dialing the Milky Way from Pegasus would make the ZPM generate and accumulate enough energy to overload and bust a planet.
Even tying a super dupper capital ship generator would have, theoretically, failed short of the power requirements here.

And what about the stuff about black hole power, etc?

From The Fifth Race, we should believe that no other source of power, safe a ZPM, can provide enough energy to dial an extra galactic gate. But that would be only 10 gigajoules. That is a pathetic amount of (no)power, really.

Even only a simple portable naqahdah generator has plenty of potential terajoules of energy in stock, and a mark-II working at 600% would, according to the calcs, provide far more power than what the device did in Fifth Race.
Yet, they don't seem to dial to other galaxies that much. At Atlantis, they had several naqahdah mk-I generators in place.

Something does not add up, and I'd consider that the SGC controls were simply not calibrated for such a use.
See it that way: the controls noticed that the stargate was drawing at least ten times more power than what the SGC uses normally. Considering that they never tabled for a power consumption that high, nor intergalactic trips, it's possible that the scale they used didn't go beyond a couple of gigajoules, and reached the maximum.

[gopher65]

It is made clear in one of the episodes, I don't remember which one, that the distance of the galaxy is in some way proportional to the amount of energy used. The more distant the galaxy, the more energy drawn.

If Ida is one of the satellite galaxies around the milky way, it is probably somewhere between 30K and 200K light years away. IIRC Pegasus is 3 million light years away? Maybe (who knows) the energy requirements increase geometrically or exponentially as the distance increases?