Atlantis' clandestine departure..?

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

The city can't do both due to how the cloak uses the shield generators.

Yet we know that the shield generators can cover differing parts of the shield and stretch - even covering the planet thousands of years ago to protect it from a solar burst.

Therefore you could in theory, divide the shield generators into two groups using one to generate the shield and the other to generate the cloak.

[jelgate]

Their was nothing to ever show you can pick and choose. It has always been all or none. Yes we can move the area that shields covers. But given the amount of time it takes to change the shield to a cloak it does not seem you divide the generators like that no matter how many ZPMs you have

[McAvoy]

Is it possible for Atlantis to liftoff with its cloak active? I ask because there doesn't appear to be a way for it to leave Earth if it ever needed to without people witnessing the event and exposing the stargate program, short of incapacitating the whole region anyway.

I don't remember any precedent for the stardrive operating simultaneously with the cloak active, although I suppose the puddle jumper would be an example of the two working in conjunction...

There isn't a real way of them lanuching Atlantis without anyone seeing it. However, they could possibly fly Atlantis cloaked through the skies without going to space. It would have be slow, and they could just take it to the Pacific Ocean before eventually lifting off. However, Earth has many ways have tracking objects. So even then someone would detect a large object leaving Earth's surface. It would have to covered up of course.

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

Their was nothing to ever show you can pick and choose.

But thats the point, they are all individual shield generators controlled by the city. Therefore you could easily reassign a few of them to do a different task. Just because it hasn't been done on the show doesn't mean that it couldn't be done.

How you reassign them I've no idea. I suspect in typical SG style it would be done by rodney tapping away at a console and changing a few settings but I'd like to think that they would physically pull the plug on some and plug them into another circuit to isolate them.

[jelgate]

Apparently not easy as it has been said you can only choose a shield or cloak not both. I do not recall the number of shield generators being mentioned. Yes their are more than one emitters but that is not the same as a generator. So your theory is lacking in proof.

[McAvoy]

It may not been seen. Therefore, you can't just say it can be done. For all we know mixing the two could accidently create a flux capacitor and send the city to 1955 ot 2015 at 88 MPH. Or it could cause a rift in the space time continuum where the Imperial Empire of Carebears are battling the Royal Alliance of Unicorns.

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

Good lord some of you really are closed to new ideas aren't you.

[jelgate]

More like closed to ideas that have little to no facts to support them

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

More like closed to ideas that have little to no facts to support them

What because it was never said in the show? You're not even trying to think common sense are you.

When you connect multiple light bulbs, do you connect them in series or parallel? - Assuming you want them all to continue working should one blow then you wire them in parallel otherwise when one goes the whole circuit is dead. Better still, put them all in seperate rooms on seperate switches on seperate circuits and they all work independently. Sure, you can turn them all on and off at the same time via the fusebox but you can also use each one as needed.

Think about it logically before refuting an idea just because it wasn't mentioned. The ancients mastered almost instantaneous intergalaxial space travel through artificial wormholes. Do you think they'd be stupid enough not to have their shield emitters and generators setup seperately but centrally controlled?

As I said previously, if they are all seperate devices but just rigged together via a central controller, what is to stop a few of them being disconnected and reassigned to be used as cloak generators / emitters?

[McAvoy]

What because it was never said in the show? You're not even trying to think common sense are you.

When you connect multiple light bulbs, do you connect them in series or parallel? - Assuming you want them all to continue working should one blow then you wire them in parallel otherwise when one goes the whole circuit is dead. Better still, put them all in seperate rooms on seperate switches on seperate circuits and they all work independently. Sure, you can turn them all on and off at the same time via the fusebox but you can also use each one as needed.

Think about it logically before refuting an idea just because it wasn't mentioned. The ancients mastered almost instantaneous intergalaxial space travel through artificial wormholes. Do you think they'd be stupid enough not to have their shield emitters and generators setup seperately but centrally controlled?

As I said previously, if they are all seperate devices but just rigged together via a central controller, what is to stop a few of them being disconnected and reassigned to be used as cloak generators / emitters?

Or... just maybe, just maybe... for that special kind of the shield that Atlantis uses requires all the shield generators?

[The Urban Spaceman]

When you connect multiple light bulbs, do you connect them in series or parallel?

Are you seriously comparing the wiring of lightbulbs to the Atlantis city shield? We know nothing about the circuitry or how the power is deployed once it leaves the ZPMs. You might as well just compare making ten lasagnes simultaneously. Don't you think that if it could be done, Rodney would have done it when there was a risk of the Wraith discovering Atlantis due to Caldwell's plan to expose the city when he was under goa'uld influence?

At any rate, since you appear to like common sense whilst not employing it, here's some info for you:

"By interfacing a Jumper's stealth cloak generator with the city's shield, we should be able to render the city invisible."

This would imply that the cloak generator has to be interfaced at a certain point along the chain between shield emitters and generators, in order to allow the cloak to be generated entirely. If you look at how the shield comes up on Atlantis, from bottom to top, it does appear that individual generators are present around points in the city, so if only half of them were generating shield whilst half were generating cloak, you might have a half-cloaked, half-shielded city. Or maybe they wouldn't work at all.

Over time, the Atlantis expedition has discovered alternative uses for the shield of Atlantis. The first such time was during the Wraith attack on Atlantis. In order to trick the Wraith into believing Atlantis was destroyed, the expedition converted the shield into a massive cloak, turning the whole city invisible to both visual and mechanical means of observation. When the shield used in this manner, the emitters draw much less power than normal, allowing the cloak to remain active for far longer than the shield could when under no stress. The downside to using the shield in this way was that the cloak is simply the shield operating on another frequency, meaning the shield is replaced entirely and the city is vulnerable to attack if an enemy is not fooled, as it takes time to reconfigure the cloak back to a shield.

Thus the debate was ended.

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

Or... just maybe, just maybe... for that special kind of the shield that Atlantis uses requires all the shield generators?

Well we know that the city shield was somehow stretched over a large area of the planet where the whales were in order to protect it from solar radiation. Therefore, each shield emitter is clearly capable of covering a larger area than its share of Atlantis. That being the case, if each emitter can contribute to covering thousands of square miles of a planet, then it would make sense that one or two being taken offline wouldn't make a big different to the shield when it is ONLY covering Atlantis.

Are you seriously comparing the wiring of lightbulbs to the Atlantis city shield?

No, I'm providing an analogy of how it would be connected up. Just like people hundreds of years ago also used the wheel (which btw, is on every modern car). Just because the tech is old doesn't mean the same principle doesn't apply.

We know nothing about the circuitry or how the power is deployed once it leaves the ZPMs.

No but we do know enough that the Ancients were smart enough to figure out all of this stuff themselves. If we can use seperate lighting circuits for light bulbs just to light a house, don't you think the Ancients would be smart enough when their lives and city depended on it?

You might as well just compare making ten lasagnes simultaneously.

I hate to break it to you but in pizza parlours and pre-made pizza factories thats actually what they're capable of.

Don't you think that if it could be done, Rodney would have done it when there was a risk of the Wraith discovering Atlantis due to Caldwell's plan to expose the city when he was under goa'uld influence?

Rodney didn't even think of cloaking the city in the first place until he was shoved in that direction. Remember Rodney is good but he still makes mistakes. Blowing up solar systems, overloading ancient weapons satellites to name but a few. He makes mistakes, he doesn't always think of things and he is not always right. He's often so self obsessed with other things that he's playing with that he dismisses ideas quickly. Remember Tealc being trapped in earths gate? Rodney said there was absolutely way in hell Tealc could be trapped in a buffer and survive but again was wrong.

At any rate, since you appear to like common sense whilst not employing it, here's some info for you:

No offence, you've not done a brilliant job yourself of using common sense.

This would imply that the cloak generator has to be interfaced at a certain point along the chain between shield emitters and generators, in order to allow the cloak to be generated entirely. If you look at how the shield comes up on Atlantis, from bottom to top, it does appear that individual generators are present around points in the city, so if only half of them were generating shield whilst half were generating cloak, you might have a half-cloaked, half-shielded city. Or maybe they wouldn't work at all.

And as I mentioned above, if the shield could extend over a large area of the entire planet, then they could clearly cover others that are not in use when covering ONLY the city. Why do you think that each generator/emitter doesn't have enough redundancy to cover others that are not in use? Do you really think the Ancients would take a chance like that? The very fact that each part could somehow be stretched over a large area of a planet shows that each one can stretch / cover other areas as needed.

As for the shape of it, the shield emitters are based outside of the central tower yet in adrift we see the shield covering ONLY the central tower. That alone should tell you that the way they operate is shown for cosmetic purposes. Rodney could probably reprogram the shield to take the form of santas sleigh for all we know.

[The Flyattractor]

For all we know mixing the two could accidently create a flux capacitor and send the city to 1955 ot 2015 at 88 MPH. .

Yes. 2015. The Distant Future...

[McAvoy]

Yes. 2015. The Distant Future...

I want my hoverboard... They got two years and change...

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

I want my hoverboard... They got two years and change...

lol