New Gate, Bad Design

[VirtualCLD]

I think their white Superbright LEDs, but yeah, I thought the symbols are not CG, just a grid array of LEDs at each position that can form any constellation they need to. (White Superbrights have a "blueshift" especially when transistioning between "on" and "off")

[Orange Crush]

There are no moving parts.


Plus, again, manual dialing doesn't fit with any other stargate science we've seen. Why bother having DHDs capable of calculated planetary drift if all you need is the inner track to spin? Why does the SGC need to use several supercomputers to calculate the drift to a planet once they have the address?

UGH

Sure it does. We've seen it before on SG-1. How are you so sure the gates have no moving parts? The only reason the Milky Way gates don't spin is because they have a DHD attached. As has been established on screen in SG-1--you apply enough power to a DHD-less gate and the inner track will unlock and spin freely allowing a manual dial. The gate on Earth has no DHD and is controlled by computer, so it has to be dialed by spinning. In reality, this is a production cost saving method since it's cheaper to have a solid non-moving gate prop for their location shots, yet they can keep the cool spinning gate at the SGC.

I've seen no reason so far to see that this is not the case in Atlantis (which has a DHD and doesn't need to spin). For all we know, those gates might be able to spin if the DHD's are knocked out of comission.

It does create a problem w/ the stellar drift compensation, but that only happens once every few centuries anyway, so a disconnected gate should still work manually for a few hundred years.

-Nick

[Mio]

Sure it does. We've seen it before on SG-1. How are you so sure the gates have no moving parts? The only reason the Milky Way gates don't spin is because they have a DHD attached. As has been established on screen in SG-1--you apply enough power to a DHD-less gate and the inner track will unlock and spin freely allowing a manual dial. The gate on Earth has no DHD and is controlled by computer, so it has to be dialed by spinning. In reality, this is a production cost saving method since it's cheaper to have a solid non-moving gate prop for their location shots, yet they can keep the cool spinning gate at the SGC.

I've seen no reason so far to see that this is not the case in Atlantis (which has a DHD and doesn't need to spin). For all we know, those gates might be able to spin if the DHD's are knocked out of comission.

It does create a problem w/ the stellar drift compensation, but that only happens once every few centuries anyway, so a disconnected gate should still work manually for a few hundred years.

-Nick

i was talking about Atlantis gates not having moving parts.

And I believe carter said that we communicate with the gate by electrical pulses. so, we send the correct pulses, it spins to the right spot. An error pops it, it sends some pulses back.

[Draegos of Texas]

There are no moving parts.

Plus, again, manual dialing doesn't fit with any other stargate science we've seen. Why bother having DHDs capable of calculated planetary drift if all you need is the inner track to spin? Why does the SGC need to use several supercomputers to calculate the drift to a planet once they have the address?

UGH

Well, manual "rotary" dialing predates every other aspect of "stargate science," it was the only means of dialing a gate in the movie, and it's used by the SGC in virtually every episode of SG-1. So rather than simply dismiss an obvious, integral part of the entire Stargate premise, maybe we can look a little closer in the series for a more reasonable explanation.

I was under the impression that the DHD doesn't actually store gate coordinate information. The Stargate itself does that. Rather, the DHD component can call up that information, recalculate and update it, and then send this updated data back to the Stargate. The DHD seems to be more of a dedicated correction tool with a dialing padded added for extra convinience; "24 Hours" established that it corrects against things like leftover information being stuck in the pattern buffer, recall. This makes much more sense to me. It also explains how Carter's program to correct for stellar drift works; it's feeding its results directly into the Stargate, just like a DHD would.

Perhaps the DHDs were originally a late addition to the Stargate network, while the Ancients were still only building the network; an extra peice to suppliment the most basic required machanisms which the Stargate already contains. The Stargates seem to be made to be fully self-contained on the most basic level; all the machanisms and technologies required to open a wormhole to another gate is encorporated into a Stargate. This makes them modular; you can just drop one on a planet, and leave it; no further setup required. If you find yourself going to that planet a lot, then you march a DHD through with you and set it up.

Of course, after a few million years the Stargate network is so vital to the Ancients society's commerce that virtually every gate has a DHD eventually.

That's what DHD-centric episodes like "Avenger 2.0" and "24 Hours" seem to be hinting at. At least, the part about the DHD not storing coordinates, only performing the calculations needed to update them. This makes a lot more sense, and perfectly gells with all the 'gate behavior we've observed over the years, so it's what I tend to believe.

(Edit: fixed some minor grammar errors.)