why after 2000 years is Novus not that much more advanced then present day earth?

[Quizziard]

I think the point you both are missing is "regular people" in the US hunt and a surpisingly large percent. Those military folks are regular people. Many hunters are familiar with what is involved with tanning and could figure out how to make parchment. It is a silly arguement anyways as the kinos set to audio only with some sort of mp3 type compression could holds centuries worth of audio communication.

Notwithstanding the large number of gun-toting Americans, what percentage actually skin their prey and home-tan its hide? Big difference between shooting and tanning. The process is one of the most god-awful the human race has ever invented: tanners were usually forced to work at the edge of town (or beyond) it was so appalling.

[Snowman37]

Simple answer, 2000 years ago: about 200 people, no resources. It takes time to build a civilization. Really, I'm surprised they advanced as much as they did in 2,000 years.

[slimjim]

Simple answer, 2000 years ago: about 200 people, no resources. It takes time to build a civilization. Really, I'm surprised they advanced as much as they did in 2,000 years.

"It takes time to build a civilization" a few hundred years is more then enough time to establish an infrastructure and build up a large population

[Quizziard]

Simple answer, 2000 years ago: about 200 people, no resources. It takes time to build a civilization. Really, I'm surprised they advanced as much as they did in 2,000 years.

And nowhere near that many. Around 85(?) survived Icarus and made it to Destiny. I've kinda lost count how many have died or been killed in the last two seasons, replaced by only a single LA member (insofar as only one of him has survived). Like compound interest, unless they put repopulation as a priority, this low number will be the driving factor for several generations.

[morrismike]

And nowhere near that many. Around 85(?) survived Icarus and made it to Destiny. I've kinda lost count how many have died or been killed in the last two seasons, replaced by only a single LA member (insofar as only one of him has survived). Like compound interest, unless they put repopulation as a priority, this low number will be the driving factor for several generations.

Once they build a society that can feed and provide for itself (2 years) they'll start pumping out babies. This will go on for several generations and they'll get sufficient growth to drive their development.

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

IMO 2000 years is a perfectly plausible amount of time to get to the level the Novans had.

Modern day Earth has taken a lot longer than 2000 years to get to the level we have and we still aren't quite at the Novan level.


IMO the reason they haven't got FTL tech is because they don't have the right materials to make it happen like Naquada or Naquadria.
TBH the only things the Novans seem to lack is FTl tech, shields and energy weapons.
Every other piece of tech we've seen is far more advanced than modern day Earth.

[slimjim]

Modern day Earth has taken a lot longer than 2000 years to get to the level we have and we still aren't quite at the Novan level.

we started at more of a disadvantage

IMO the reason they haven't got FTL tech is because they don't have the right materials to make it happen like Naquada or Naquadria.

but they do have a Stargate, surly they could find that stuff on another planet

TBH the only things the Novans seem to lack is FTl tech, shields and energy weapons.
Every other piece of tech we've seen is far more advanced than modern day Earth.

1)"FTl tech, shields and energy weapons" have always been some of the hallmark of really advanced worlds in stargate, 2)"Every other piece of tech we've seen is far more advanced than modern day Earth" apart from the walkie talkies, the computer interfaces, and they still use nuclear weapons, they are more advanced in some ways..... but I already conceded to that

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

we started at more of a disadvantage

Yes the guys from Destiny had knowledge that a new culture wouldn't, but that's all they had, they didn't have knowledge of the landscape around them.
They had to learn what was edible, what was poisoness, where resources to make the technology they could would be.

Would the people of Novus actually know how to make every piece of tech that we have today?
I doubt they would, not every stage, they'd have to learn to fill in the gaps in knowledge that each member of their team would have.
Basic tools wouldn't take long to make, but gaining the ability to harvest advanced materials would take time and you can't cheat on any stage, you have to develop each level of technology to get to the next one.

but they do have a Stargate, surly they could find that stuff on another planet

Exploring those worlds would likely require having industrialization on those planets or advanced sensor tech to speed things up, they wouldn't have the latter until they developed the former.
TBH it would take them many hundreds of years to actually get any level of technology remotely comparable to anything we have today, actually implementing it on a worldwide scale would take far longer.
IMO it's remarkable they are even at the level we saw.

1)"FTl tech, shields and energy weapons" have always been some of the hallmark of really advanced worlds in stargate, 2)"Every other piece of tech we've seen is far more advanced than modern day Earth" apart from the walkie talkies, the computer interfaces, and they still use nuclear weapons, they are more advanced in some ways..... but I already conceded to that

Fair enough, but so far you haven't actually provided any evidence to support your viewpoint that they should be further along than they actually are.
You infer that they should be more advanced, if you want to convince people then you need to provide evidence to support that viewpoint.

[slimjim]

Would the people of Novus actually know how to make every piece of tech that we have today?

yes, they had several of the worlds most highly trained engineers

Exploring those worlds would likely require having industrialization on those planets or advanced sensor tech to speed things up, they wouldn't have the latter until they developed the former.

we see in Blockade that they do have industrialization on other planets, and yes they probably would have "advanced sensor tech" before FTL.... which why I expect them to have already have that tech two by 2000 years later

TBH it would take them many hundreds of years to actually get any level of technology remotely comparable to anything we have today, actually implementing it on a worldwide scale would take far longer.
IMO it's remarkable they are even at the level we saw.

"actually implementing it on a worldwide scale would take far longer" what's that based on? the industrial revaluation happened less then 300 years ago, and modern technology is every where today

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

yes, they had several of the worlds most highly trained engineers

You missed out the next line of my post, where I said "not every stage", by which I meant leading up to modern day levels of technology we have today.
They may know how to build current pieces of technology, with tools and machinery that exists and that has already been developed, but building everything from scratch they would likely have holes in their knowledge at certain stages of older tech development, they're Human they aren't omnipotent gods and they have been focusing on future developments, not past stuff, certainly not the middle stages between windmills and computer chips or gravity manipulation, many of them probably wouldn't understand the reasons why a Hyperdrive actually works.

Just because there are other engineers amongst the people that made it to Novus that doesn't mean they would have a complete working knowledge of how to make every stage of technology to get to the level we saw or even beyond for that matter.

The group that made it to the planet would have to relearn and test out techniques for building things they needed, this would take time, if you think they'll collectively know everything they need to then you're expecting too much.

we see in Blockade that they do have industrialization on other planets, and yes they probably would have "advanced sensor tech" before FTL.... which why I expect them to have already have that tech two by 2000 years later

They have industry on a small number of worlds we've been shown, Naquada doesn't appear on every world within the Milky Way and Naquadria is present in far fewer locations so it's not likely to exist in every planet within the Novan's galaxy, I don't recall Naquada even being mentioned in SGU, not since people got to Destiny or that Naquadria was mentioned to be present within their homegalaxy.

The industry we saw on planets besides Novus was not very large and didn't look very old, they didn't have massive cities on those worlds or large outposts capable of mass mining large volumes of materials, we didn't even see machinery that looked able to dig out and process materials away from the homeworld.

"actually implementing it on a worldwide scale would take far longer" what's that based on? the industrial revaluation happened less then 300 years ago, and modern technology is every where today

It's based on the fact that even though technology far from the best stuff we have exists like even a few levels below high speed fibre optic internet, relatively quick computers (not even the fastest processors), safer cars, better public transport, clean power generation it's not present everywhere, most places in the USA, UK and even European countries don't have high speed internet, they can barely get a few megs.
It's a fact that you develop technology first, then it takes time for it to spread accross the world.
Many third world countries don't have adequate medical care, which should be easy to provide for everyone in the world, but it isn't around.

Modern technology is not everywhere, it's in some locations and even the stuff that's out there isn't even close to the best that we can make, sometimes new manufacturing techniques have to be developed to allow new devices to be manufactured in large quantities, even though we know how to make the best stuff.

In the modern real world we can theorize on how to make FTL technology like an Alcubierre Drive, but making it a reality is still a far way off, even Nanotech is still beyond us today and Quantum Computers are the same deal, many of this stuff the Novan's would have to master and implement on a wide scale to know that it would be effective.

[slimjim]

You missed out the next line of my post, where I said "not every stage", by which I meant leading up to modern day levels of technology we have today.
They may know how to build current pieces of technology, with tools and machinery that exists and that has already been developed, but building everything from scratch they would likely have holes in their knowledge at certain stages of older tech development, they're Human they aren't omnipotent gods and they have been focusing on future developments, not past stuff, certainly not the middle stages between windmills and computer chips or gravity manipulation, many of them probably wouldn't understand the reasons why a Hyperdrive actually works.

Just because there are other engineers amongst the people that made it to Novus that doesn't mean they would have a complete working knowledge of how to make every stage of technology to get to the level we saw or even beyond for that matter.

The group that made it to the planet would have to relearn and test out techniques for building things they needed, this would take time, if you think they'll collectively know everything they need to then you're expecting too much.

I always thought engineers didn't just understand how to put things together in a way that would make them work, I thought they also understood why they worked, they understood the mathematical principals and laws that that makes them work
I assumed they would be able to apply that understanding regardless of whether they where working with technology and materials they where use to or not

They have industry on a small number of worlds we've been shown, Naquada doesn't appear on every world within the Milky Way and Naquadria is present in far fewer locations so it's not likely to exist in every planet within the Novan's galaxy, I don't recall Naquada even being mentioned in SGU, not since people got to Destiny or that Naquadria was mentioned to be present within their homegalaxy.

The industry we saw on planets besides Novus was not very large and didn't look very old, they didn't have massive cities on those worlds or large outposts capable of mass mining large volumes of materials, we didn't even see machinery that looked able to dig out and process materials away from the homeworld.

1)"They have industry on a small number of worlds we've been shown" actually only one planet bedsides their home world we've been shown.... but I would point out that they found that planet from basically dialling randomly, given the number of planets with gates the odds probably mean there is a lot more
2)"The industry we saw on planets besides Novus was not very large and didn't look very old" I don't know what you mean by that, they weren't in major industrial area of the city, and "look very old" there where ware warehouses and factory like building weren't there?
3)"they didn't have massive cities" actually they did the drones destroyed the rest of it
4)"large outposts capable of mass mining large volumes of materials, we didn't even see machinery that looked able to dig out and process materials away from the homeworld" they where in the middle of an urban area, if you walked down the street in london would you expect to see any evidence of the mining supplying the city with it's resources? also the buildings had cut stone on them and they would probably need fossil fuel to power their city so unless their bringing it though the gate from novus they must have some ability to quarry or mine raw materials

It's based on the fact that even though technology far from the best stuff we have exists like even a few levels below high speed fibre optic internet, relatively quick computers (not even the fastest processors), safer cars, better public transport, clean power generation it's not present everywhere, most places in the USA, UK and even European countries don't have high speed internet, they can barely get a few megs.
It's a fact that you develop technology first, then it takes time for it to spread accross the world.
Many third world countries don't have adequate medical care, which should be easy to provide for everyone in the world, but it isn't around.

Modern technology is not everywhere, it's in some locations and even the stuff that's out there isn't even close to the best that we can make, sometimes new manufacturing techniques have to be developed to allow new devices to be manufactured in large quantities, even though we know how to make the best stuff.

In the modern real world we can theorize on how to make FTL technology like an Alcubierre Drive, but making it a reality is still a far way off, even Nanotech is still beyond us today and Quantum Computers are the same deal, many of this stuff the Novan's would have to master and implement on a wide scale to know that it would be effective.

1)those technologies are all only a few tens of years old at best, we where talking hundreds of years, "Modern technology is not everywhere, it's in some locations and even the stuff that's out there isn't even close to the best that we can make" it was the best we could make less then hundreds of years ago
2) novus has no third world
3) we don't live in gateverse where "FTL technology" is far easier

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

I always thought engineers didn't just understand how to put things together in a way that would make them work, I thought they also understood why they worked, they understood the mathematical principals and laws that that makes them work
I assumed they would be able to apply that understanding regardless of whether they where working with technology and materials they where use to or not

The engineers may understand how certain process of manufacturing work, but that doesn't mean they instantly know how to go from stone tools to cpus or other more modern devices.
When it comes to materials found on alien worlds they wouldn't have the equipment to analyze their composition, other than maybe if the Kinos have that function built into them.

Unless these engineers have hobies that revolve around the history of tech development then it's doubtful they'd have a working understanding of how to harvest materials from scratch, they'd need to make the processing facilities to turn useful ores into a useful material, then they've gotta shape those materials into the products they need to make.
These development stages may be obvious to some individuals, but they will still take time and much effort until they get to a point where they can make motors, tough materials beyond basic stone.

How long would it take to mine and process iron into something useful if you had to do it from scratch, let alone identify deposits of other materials or make basic components for other electronics.

1)"They have industry on a small number of worlds we've been shown" actually only one planet bedsides their home world we've been shown.... but I would point out that they found that planet from basically dialling randomly, given the number of planets with gates the odds probably mean there is a lot more

I thought they were searching for supplies and had a lead to that world from previous Novan or their relatives in a world they explored with a small camp.
Or it could have been after that went to the Novan homeworld.

It has been a while since I last saw those episodes though, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened.

2)"The industry we saw on planets besides Novus was not very large and didn't look very old" I don't know what you mean by that, they weren't in major industrial area of the city, and "look very old" there where ware warehouses and factory like building weren't there?

The buildings weren't covered over by plant growth, materials weren't falling apart and many of the buildings were pretty much intact.
All we saw would be classed as a large town, nothing more, certainly not even a small city.
This area wasn't large like a modern city from Earth, it was like they started again there pretty recently, like within a decade or maybe a few decades.

3)"they didn't have massive cities" actually they did the drones destroyed the rest of it

Where were the remains of large skyscrapers and massive city blocks?
I sure didn't see them.

4)"large outposts capable of mass mining large volumes of materials, we didn't even see machinery that looked able to dig out and process materials away from the homeworld" they where in the middle of an urban area, if you walked down the street in london would you expect to see any evidence of the mining supplying the city with it's resources? also the buildings had cut stone on them and they would probably need fossil fuel to power their city so unless their bringing it though the gate from novus they must have some ability to quarry or mine raw materials

The towns (not cities) that we saw were not large enough to have industrial regions being far away, they were small and would have needed machinery nearby to harvest any materials.
In London you'd see cranes, we didn't see any there.

1)those technologies are all only a few tens of years old at best, we where talking hundreds of years, "Modern technology is not everywhere, it's in some locations and even the stuff that's out there isn't even close to the best that we can make" it was the best we could make less then hundreds of years ago

The point still stands, the tech exists, it hasn't been spread out accross the entire planet, you said that modern tech was everywhere, this is still modern tech and it's not present everywhere.
We've known how to make rockets for thousands of years, yet not everyone can travel into space when they want to.
The same point applies to the knowledge and implementation of stuff the Novan people would know about.

2) novus has no third world

You don't know that, where was it stated that there were areas like that on the planet?
All we saw was the main city, we didn't see anything outside of it, let alone the whole planet to be sure.

3) we don't live in gateverse where "FTL technology" is far easier

Easy?
The Goauld have been using ftl tech for more than 5000 years, yet they aren't on an intergalactic level.
Even knowing how to make a hyperdrive it's taken the, decades to make improve them.
The Asgard have been around 100,000 years, they had intergalactic travel tech 10,000 years ago and had to use stasis tech 30,000 years ago to get to a neighbouring colony to of their worlds, presumably because their propulsion wasn't fast enough to do the journey with the crew awake.

All of the races we've seen that have developed the tech on their own like the Asgard and Ancients have had ftl tech for at least the tens of thousands of years and took longer to make it on their own.
If the Asgard started out as a peaceful group 100,000 years ago (easily plausible since they called themselves a civilization and not just a culture) and they didn't have hyperdrive engines 30,000 years ago then it logically took them thousands of years to get to ftl level even having stasis tech and more advanced stuff then us 30,000 years ago (see Revelations as a reference).

What you have to realise is there's no evidence to support the Novans being more advanced than what we saw, they didn't have shields, ftl tech or energy weapons similar to the Goauld, Earth, Ancients, Asgard etc.
Any number of situations could have happened to prevent them from getting to that point.
There's zero proof that Naquada or other powerful materials exist in the regions of the galaxy can get to, so there's no proof to support your viewpoint that they should have ftl tech or any other advanced tech they don't possess.

[Quizziard]

yes, they had several of the worlds most highly trained engineers

The irony is, those engineers are mostly concentrated in the same specialist areas. They will have excellent working knowledge of their current topic and probably "some" theory about the history of the subject. They're apparently pretty good at picking up new things, related to their field, but that's with physical material/technology. It's a large jump to go back and recreate earlier steps. "Every kid" has made a half-hearted bow and arrow, once. And that's how often it worked. Bending a branch over and tying it with string as the string. A long way from a workable bow that can be used for life/death hunting parties. Going further: I don't know how much neolithic history Americans are taught. But they might know about napping flint. It's a long way from theory to not crushing or cutting your finger ends off on shards of razor sharp split-rock!

[slimjim]

The engineers may understand how certain process of manufacturing work, but that doesn't mean they instantly know how to go from stone tools to cpus or other more modern devices.
When it comes to materials found on alien worlds they wouldn't have the equipment to analyze their composition, other than maybe if the Kinos have that function built into them.

Unless these engineers have hobies that revolve around the history of tech development then it's doubtful they'd have a working understanding of how to harvest materials from scratch, they'd need to make the processing facilities to turn useful ores into a useful material, then they've gotta shape those materials into the products they need to make.
These development stages may be obvious to some individuals, but they will still take time and much effort until they get to a point where they can make motors, tough materials beyond basic stone.

How long would it take to mine and process iron into something useful if you had to do it from scratch, let alone identify deposits of other materials or make basic components for other electronics.

I'm suggesting they would know how to make things like wind mills and such from scratch not microchips

I thought they were searching for supplies and had a lead to that world from previous Novan or their relatives in a world they explored with a small camp.
Or it could have been after that went to the Novan homeworld.

It has been a while since I last saw those episodes though, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened.

I don't count that world because it wasn't a real colony

The buildings weren't covered over by plant growth, materials weren't falling apart and many of the buildings were pretty much intact.
All we saw would be classed as a large town, nothing more, certainly not even a small city.
This area wasn't large like a modern city from Earth, it was like they started again there pretty recently, like within a decade or maybe a few decades.



Where were the remains of large skyscrapers and massive city blocks?
I sure didn't see them.

because the where completely levelled

The point still stands, the tech exists, it hasn't been spread out accross the entire planet, you said that modern tech was everywhere, this is still modern tech and it's not present everywhere.
We've known how to make rockets for thousands of years, yet not everyone can travel into space when they want to.
The same point applies to the knowledge and implementation of stuff the Novan people would know about.

when I said "modern" I was more thinking of stuff like the light bulb, not the PS3

You don't know that, where was it stated that there were areas like that on the planet?
All we saw was the main city, we didn't see anything outside of it, let alone the whole planet to be sure.

it only had two countries both of which where supper powers

Easy?
The Goauld have been using ftl tech for more than 5000 years, yet they aren't on an intergalactic level.
Even knowing how to make a hyperdrive it's taken the, decades to make improve them.
The Asgard have been around 100,000 years, they had intergalactic travel tech 10,000 years ago and had to use stasis tech 30,000 years ago to get to a neighbouring colony to of their worlds, presumably because their propulsion wasn't fast enough to do the journey with the crew awake.

All of the races we've seen that have developed the tech on their own like the Asgard and Ancients have had ftl tech for at least the tens of thousands of years and took longer to make it on their own.
If the Asgard started out as a peaceful group 100,000 years ago (easily plausible since they called themselves a civilization and not just a culture) and they didn't have hyperdrive engines 30,000 years ago then it logically took them thousands of years to get to ftl level even having stasis tech and more advanced stuff then us 30,000 years ago (see Revelations as a reference).

What you have to realise is there's no evidence to support the Novans being more advanced than what we saw, they didn't have shields, ftl tech or energy weapons similar to the Goauld, Earth, Ancients, Asgard etc.
Any number of situations could have happened to prevent them from getting to that point.
There's zero proof that Naquada or other powerful materials exist in the regions of the galaxy can get to, so there's no proof to support your viewpoint that they should have ftl tech or any other advanced tech they don't possess.

1)I wasn't thinking of intergalactic hyper drive, the normal kind is far easier
2) the point still stands, the Alcubierre Drive would take trillions of times the amount of power we can possibly generate on earth

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

I'm suggesting they would know how to make things like wind mills and such from scratch not microchips

I wasn't suggesting that they wouldn't know how to make a windmill.
You're average person with a little bit of common sense could probably make one, I don't think you'd need to be an engineer to make a windmill.
What we're talking about here is going from basic stuff like windmills, to modern and then slightly more advanced than modern stuff.
You then believe they should be beyond the level that we've seen, the fact is they had the level of technology we saw.

I don't count that word because it wasn't a real colony

How was it not a real colony?
There was a settlement of people living there, they settled there, hence it's a colony, it just lacked any large buildings, probably because if was relatively new.

because the where completely levelled

On the planet where the Drones arrived there were many buildings still very much intact, there was no sign of mass damage to that site, not to the point of suggesting large buildings were destroyed.
There's no evidence to suggest what you claim here.

when I said "modern" I was more thinking of stuff like the light bulb, not the PS3

What's modern is relative to what we have now, that includes computer technology, Novus had technology far beyond PS3, Xbox 360s etc.

it only had two countries both of which where supper powers

We never saw beyond that city on Novus, no one explicitally stated that there were no other countries, unless stated otherwise we can't say there weren't other countries, all we should be saying is that we don't know if there are any others.

There's no point in creating settlements on other worlds, unless they've spread elsewhere throughout their planet and they needed to use space on other planets, this indicates that there should be other regions where the Novans settled on their homeworld and newer regions may not have everything other more established regions would and older areas could have be less well maintained, so it's possible that some people may have less pleasing living conditions that others.

1)I wasn't thinking of intergalactic hyper drive, the normal kind is far easier

My point in mentioning those races who've had ftl tech for a long time is that we've never come accross a race with comparable tech to our own (without interference from other races) that possess FTL tech.
It's not like a race gets to our level of technology and can then quickly make FTL work with ease, it could be centuries or even millenia before we make it work, considering that Novan tech appears to be in maybe the decades beyond our's it kinda goes to prove the point that they're right where they should be without intereference.

2) the point still stands, the Alcubierre Drive would take trillions of times the amount of power we can possibly generate on earth

I don't know where you've got that idea about us knowing exactly how power it requires, I know some physicists have theorized thinking they know, unless experiments have been done into distorting space.
Would you have any links to any info on experiments?

Hyperdrive engines (if they were possible and hypersoace existed) would also have to distort space, actually opening a hole in space to whatever other dimension hyperspace/subspace occupies, so the power requirements could be greater than a warp drive (alcubierre drive for those who don't know it's official name), since Earth can make these power requirements the Novans should be able to in time, if they can either gain the right materials or make some new powersource like a subspace tap or something like a ZPM.

In your last point you kind of prove the point that FTL should still be beyond the Novans developing by themselves, because they don't have any power generation tech far beyond Earth.
If it's gonna require many orders of magnitude of power to just start to manipulate space to a point where you can start to think about using that, then it's gonna take many more centuries if not longer to actually make a working FTL system.