Something that bothers me...

[RonBell]

Hi yall
im new here but im a big Stargate fan, i watch all of it multiple times ever since i was a little kid.
Recently i started to rewatch sg-1 and Atlantis after many many years and something that bothers me creep back in my mind...
Maybe its a topic that you all already answered and debate about it and if you do, plz respond with a link or an answer ... My question is:
The mighty ancients base all of their technology around the ZPM, fron the city of Atlantis to their ships, all of their technology powered by the ZPM...
so why there nothing about how to make new one??
You expect that in Atlantis there will be a room where they make tham, or in the Atlantis database any instructions on how to manufacture it??
We know the ancients made datebase with all their knowledge ( the one that jack look in) there no info there??
Human can't use it fully because we're not evolve enough but the Asgards can use the date and tell us!!
i expect before they destroy themselves and gave us all there knowledge they will tell us or even offer other power source that they uses...

Hope i made my point, it drive me crazy that a super advence society will base their technology on a power source without the ability to make it in their own city!

[Mikorsky]

Well, im not sure, or better i think they never said that there is no info about how to build a ZPM. And sure a City-class ship like Atlantis could probably have something like a factory for ZPMs. Sadly the series was stopped, it could have bin in a hidden room like the one wich Daniel Jackson found. But on the other hand do have ZPMs a long life so maybe a little facility inclusive a little reserve was enough for the Ancients. And i think anyways that the Tau'ri couldn't replicate a ZPM. And about Asgard energy systems... doesn't have the BC-304 ships Asgard energy-reactors? Oh and: didn't the Wraith wanted to make theyr own ZPMs too? Im not so up to date there anymore. Hope i could help for more kreative thoughts!
MfG

[RonBell]

Well, im not sure, or better i think they never said that there is no info about how to build a ZPM. And sure a City-class ship like Atlantis could probably have something like a factory for ZPMs. Sadly the series was stopped, it could have bin in a hidden room like the one wich Daniel Jackson found. But on the other hand do have ZPMs a long life so maybe a little facility inclusive a little reserve was enough for the Ancients. And i think anyways that the Tau'ri couldn't replicate a ZPM. And about Asgard energy systems... doesn't have the BC-304 ships Asgard energy-reactors? Oh and: didn't the Wraith wanted to make theyr own ZPMs too? Im not so up to date there anymore. Hope i could help for more kreative thoughts!
MfG

Thanks for replying appreciate that,
But Even if ZPM have a long life span and they only need to make a bunch every few years, lets say making ZPM is super hard and they make a stock every 500 years, where is it?
they were in a long war in Atlantis,but it didnt seem to look like they about to run out, and even if the war with the writh drain Thier stoke you assume they start making them again for the war, and they lived in Atlantis for thousands of years , thet will need a factory.
Maybe a research that try to find a way to make the process easier..
The point is theres nothing! No how to make, no places with storage,no factory ,no reports from ancient scientist on improving the process - nothing and its bugs me....

Maybe it was in a hidden room , maybe the show was cancelled and they planned to find the room in the future (last shot of last episode of Atlantis, Rodney macky open a door and there's a room full with ZPMs )
It only show that they cancelled them to soon and it sucks so many things went unanswered ????

[Falcon Horus]

You are correct this was debated to ... errmm... death. The cows certainly never came home for it.

However, it's always nice to see new blood (welcome by the way) add their 2 cents.

As far as I can remember, they never actually found a room where the Ancients manufactured ZPM's en masse. I don't know if I read in a fanfic or it actually happened but I do think Rodney may have mentioned something about making a ZPM once.

However, keeping in mind he once blew up half a solar system, I don't think it would even be a good idea to attempt creating one themselves.

[RonBell]

You are correct this was debated to ... errmm... death. The cows certainly never came home for it.

However, it's always nice to see new blood (welcome by the way) add their 2 cents.

As far as I can remember, they never actually found a room where the Ancients manufactured ZPM's en masse. I don't know if I read in a fanfic or it actually happened but I do think Rodney may have mentioned something about making a ZPM once.

However, keeping in mind he once blew up half a solar system, I don't think it would even be a good idea to attempt creating one themselves.

Thank you for ur response, truly i appreciate it, its something that sit in my mind every few years when i rewatch sg-1 and Atlantis ( didnt really connected to Stargate universe).
always feels like they ended it way too early ( not that 10 seasons of sg-1 and 5 of Atlantis isnt alot )
It feels that they could of done so much more ????

Btw last i check there where no plans of continuing the frenchise (its been years since i check last)
, any hope to see another series/movie?

[FarOutSpaceNut]

The Ancients were getting beaten in the war with the wraith. Maybe the information was lost because the war went on for a very long time? The Ancients that temporarily displaced humans from Atlantis at the end of season 3 did not seem all that competent--the were also smug and arrogant-- and were quickly annihilated by the Replicators. Maybe the best Ancients were already dead by the time Atlantis was abandoned as well as ZPM production info lost?

Well, that's my best noob shot at retcon. I only recently became a fan of Atlantis: years ago, I gave up on SG-1 somewhere around seasons 2-3. Having just seen the first 4 seasons of Atlantis in 2023, I am impressed: some good space opera storytellying here; much better than contemporary Star Trek which was going through a very rough patch in those days.

Maybe it's best if Amazon does not continue the SG franchise. What they did with The Expanse was not great: as the Amazon plot diverges from the books, the once-fast-paced, compelling plot slows down to a soap opera crawl and never recovers.

[Xaeden]

Human can't use it fully because we're not evolve enough but the Asgards can use the date and tell us!!
i expect before they destroy themselves and gave us all there knowledge they will tell us or even offer other power source that they uses...

The Asgard aren't capable of fully or quickly making sense of data from the Ancient database either. In "New Order, Part II" (Sg-1's Season 8, Episode 2), Thor told Jackson that the Asgard had been studying parts of the Ancient repository for centuries or millennia (depending on how long Thor has been alive) and were still far from understanding the lion's share of the data...

-

THOR: You cannot even begin to comprehend the extent of what was unfolding in O'Neill's mind. Our scientists, long ago, extracted parts of the Ancient library of knowledge and learned much from it. But we have been studying it for as long as I can remember, and we have barely scratched the surface.

I also doubt the Asgard would've shared how to produce ZPMs with Earth prior to "Unending," even if they learned how to do so from knowledge that Earth shared with them. It might seem unfair, but it was important to the Asgard Council to maintain a tactical advantage over potential adversaries, particularly given the weakened state of their fleet in the wake of the replicator war. Earth is more vulnerable to leaks, infiltration, and radical political/administrative changes than the Asgard are, so whatever trust and gratitude they had toward the humans who worked in and oversaw the Stargate program had to be balanced with the risks of shared technology being lost to hostile actors or more colonial/aggressive minded Earthlings gaining control of the Stargate program in the future.

they were in a long war in Atlantis,but it didnt seem to look like they about to run out, and even if the war with the writh drain Thier stoke you assume they start making them again for the war, and they lived in Atlantis for thousands of years , thet will need a factory.

To me it very much looked like they couldn't produce ZPMs as quickly as they were drained and possibly lost the ability to make them altogether at some point in the final years before they abandoned Atlantis. Here's some reasons why:

In season 2, we learned about Project Arcturus, a failed attempt to extract vacuum energy from their own universe. Caldwell noted that it seemed like the Ancients would have tried to do this before inventing ZPMs, prompting McKay to say, "And they may have, but extracting zero point energy from our own universe is ... well, it's, uh, definitely trickier." That the Ancients tried to pull off something so dangerous (the whole universe could have been destroyed) and so difficult (to the point where it may be impossible to do safely) as they were losing the war (McKay: "Look, the Ancients were losing the war against the Wraith when work on Arcturus began.") implies that they were desperate for an alternate power source because they didn't have enough ZPMs.

There's the Ancient outpost from "Inferno." McKay stated that normally a ZPM would be required to power its shield, but instead the facility was designed to extract geothermal energy from a supervolcano. It wasn't explicitly stated why they would do this, but it very much suggests that the Ancients didn't have enough ZPMs to distribute to all of their outposts. When the Taranians tried to draw enough energy from the magma chamber to power the outpost's shield at maximum for a year, it triggered a devastating eruption. That means that the outpost could not resist a prolonged Wraith siege, so the Ancients devoted considerable time, resources, and manpower to constructing an outpost atop the caldera of a dormant supervolcano and a system for extracting geothermal energy from it because they wanted to conserve the amount of ZPM energy that would be used when powering non-emergency systems used on a daily basis and when powering shields/weapons during limited Wraith attacks.

There's Atlantis itself. There were some Ancients still living on other planets and a few Aurora-class ships operating elsewhere in the galaxy during the siege of Atlantis, but by that point it seems they were attempting to hide/avoid detection and Atlantis was the last major source of active resistance. The demands on ZPM production output at that time would have been much lower than earlier in the war when the Ancients had dozens or maybe hundreds of facilities that would regularly come under attack and their own large-scale offensive operations. Yet, there are multiple indications the city's three ZPMs were being drained too quickly to replace for much more than those last few years, so something must have happened to reduce or completely halt their ZPM production capabilities.

Those indications are as follows. (1) The Lanteans built an underwater drilling platform to supplement the energy that the city received from its three ZPMs with geothermal energy. (2) They sunk the city because the Wraith's continuous bombardment of Atlantis' shields was draining a whole lot of ZPM power. (3) They eventually abandoned Atlantis altogether, which would have been unnecessary after sinking the city unless supplying food, power, or both to the city's population became untenable in the long term.

Keep in mind that Atlantis itself was a major research center. It was home to a large volume of great Ancient scientists and a lot of space was devoted to laboratories so they could conduct their experiments. You're right that there's no indication that Atlantis had facilities for mass producing key technologies, but before the Ancients started losing the war, Atlantis was one of many cities and outposts that were spread out throughout the galaxy, and they were all connected to each other by devices that allowed for near instantaneous travel. Given that, why would the Ancients carve out space within one particular city for any kind of factory when they could just build one on a different world?

That would make distribution easier as the Stargate on a dedicated factory world wouldn't be constantly clogged up by people traveling to/from the planet like you'd expect to be the case for cities and other major hubs.

It would reduce the risk to civilians if production was in some way dangerous to their health or existence. Like, for example, if there was a chance in-production ZPMs could explode if mishandled or because of disruptions/problems caused during external attacks.

It also solves the space issue. Atlantis cannot get any bigger without being unable to fly should it need to be relocated and because the Ancients wanted to keep it on the ocean it has no outpost or nearby land to build additional facilities in/on. To build a factory on Lantea, they would therefore either need to build a separate facility on the mainland that would have to have its own shield and power sources, just like an offworld facility, or repurpose space inside of the city. The latter means less space for scientists to live and work, which would likely lead to a reduction in research and development. Even though Ancient researchers could've used the Stargate and subspace communication to connect with one another, being in the same space on a day-to-day basis is likely to foster a higher degree of collaboration and sharing of ideas and equipment.

Meanwhile, if the Ancients lost their last/only offworld ZPM factory late in the war when Atlantis was one of the few holdouts and they wanted to, were able to, and could safely rebuild a ZPM factory on Atlantis, it would be unlikely that they'd have the space to spare given all the refugees they were forced to take in.

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If interested, here are some other considerations that could put a monkey wrench into the idea of an Atlantis ZPM factory...

Can all the equipment and work space for a factory fit into existing spaces? If not, existing buildings need to be torn down and replaced.

What raw materials are needed in the production process and where are they sourced from? The Asgard may have had energy to matter convertors, but we don't know that the Ancients ever did (and the Asgard still had to mine neutronium, so their version at least is incapable of making all forms of matter). Daniel said the device Merlin used in "The Quest, Part 2" was "piecing something together from base molecules." It's unclear if that device was invented by the Ancients before ascending or if Merlin used his ascended knowledge to make it. In either case, molecules are made up of two or more atoms of an element or elements and have to come from somewhere. It's thus quite possible that an Atlantis factory would have to receive regular offworld shipments of raw materials, which would likewise have to compete for gate time.

What power requirements does a ZPM factory need? I would imagine it takes a lot of energy to create an artificial region of subspace time. If that's the case, harvesting energy from renewable sources would likely be preferable as using energy from previously constructed ZPMs will lead to diminishing returns. Atlantis, though, would have to reconvert additional living/work space to harvest and store that energy and the sources it can access may not be sufficient or optimal. The drilling platform can certainly provide a lot of energy, but it was a designed as a mobile unit that travels along the ocean floor drilling into and exhausting different thermal pockets. Therefore, to construct ZPMs without using ZPM power, it may be necessary to look for a planet where comparable amounts of energy can be obtained without interruption.

If a factory does use ZPM power, can Atlantis' power system fulfill its energy requirements when multiple high energy usage systems are active at once? Even with three ZPMs, Beckett had to prioritize firing drones or using the engines to stay in orbit during the series finale because the shield was demanding so much of the available energy to resist the strain put on it by the Super Hive's weapons fire. A city would therefore not be an ideal location for a ZPM factory if a factory's energy demands are so high that the Control Tower would need to cut power to the factory in order to meet the energy needs of the city's shield and weapons during an attack. Best case scenario, you have an interruption in production that could last months or years, which could force the Ancients to scale back on offensive operations and/or abandon entire outposts. Worst case scenario, creating an artificial pocket of subspace time is not something that can be quickly completed or paused and the consequences would be devastating if a city ship does not maintain its energy demands at the expense of shields and weapons.

You wouldn't have that problem with an independent factory as it would have a smaller shield, which wouldn't strain a ZPM (or alternative power source) to the degree a shield is strained when extended over a large population center.