Puddle Jumper Trains for Mass Stargate Travel

[Jolly Blond Giant]

A lot of us have probably wondered how we could make the Stargate accessible to the masses. Thing is, our heroes are still largely reliant on walking through the gate, which even the Ancients eventually figured out is horribly inefficient. The solution they eventually came up with were Puddle Jumpers, which could both travel in space and through the gate. No offense to the Ancients, but I think we've surpassed them in terms of large-scale logistics, and assuming we can reverse-engineer the puddle jumper, we can build the ultimate gate transportation solution: the Jumper Train!

The Siemens Venture coach (the planned replacement for the Amtrak's aging Amfleet II cars) has the following dimensions:

Length: 25.908 meters (85 ft)
Width: 3.2 meters (10 ft 6 in)
Height: 4.2 meters (14 ft)
Capacity: 74 passengers

These dimensions would fit pretty nicely through the stargate.

Let's assume a safe approach speed of Mach 0.5, or 171.5 meters/second. Let's also assume some staging is needed on either end of the transit, allowing a total transit time of 28 minute, or 1680 seconds.

171.5 m/s / 25.908 m/coach = 6.62 coach/s

6.62 coach/s * 1680 s = 11,120 coach

11,120 coach * 74 passengers/coach = 822,880 passengers

Even allowing only 8 hours a day for passenger service, that's over 10 million passengers/day. Not too shabby.

[Xaeden]

Thing is, our heroes are still largely reliant on walking through the gate, which even the Ancients eventually figured out is horribly inefficient. The solution they eventually came up with were Puddle Jumpers, which could both travel in space and through the gate. No offense to the Ancients, but I think we've surpassed them in terms of large-scale logistics..

Quick side note, but the Ancients did come up with teleporter obelisks that could transport entire structures through the Stargate (see: "The Quest, Part 2" from season 10). Although, it's unclear if Ancients utilized that before ascending or if it was an innovation of Merlin's.

The obelisks are also only useful for moving large volumes through worlds you already have a foothold on, but then so is a puddle jumper train as it's just as vulnerable to attack while coming through a Stargate as a newly established obelisk.