Gates and Power

[The_Asgard_live]

No one said the Ancients couldn't reach Destiny. They never actually tried. Their civilization fell and then the few remnants went on to ascend. Destiny was totally forgotten in favor or ascension. Moreover, who said the Asgard ever knew about Destiny?

Power might not even be that big an issue, knowing the actual address however, is. I don't remember them ever saying a ZPM couldn't reach Destiny, but I do know ZPMs are too precious too few, and Earth has all of two. One almost depleted (in Atlantis) and one locked into Odyssey, that's it.

Now, if we knew how ZPMs were made.. that'd add a lot to the discussion.

I think you are misinterpreting my post. I'm saying there have been several discussion threads about whether or not its possible to reach Destiny. You can search for them and read for yourself. I think you will absolutely find forum users making the argument that its difficult to the point of almost impossible to reach destiny. Nothing short of dozens to hundreds of ZPM will do it. Asgard couldn't have helped, and neither can their core. Juiced up ships can't, and at this point even the ancients probably couldn't etc. etc... I'm sure you'll find all those kind of arguments in those threads.

I think this episode is kind of a game changer in discussions like that since it was a million+- year old ship and a short range gate that seems to be able to do it. At least the science geeks on the show seemed to accept that there is no reason it shouldn't work.

So, either a Destiny class ship (wicked old tech) can store the power of dozen's to 100's of ZPMs (something that seemingly is almost impossible to do in present time) and would seem quite ridiculous, or perhaps powering up the gate to dial back and forth just isn't that hard.

Again, Destiny isn't doing it with some magic power generating device, or rare mineral. Its all about the storage. Earth can't build subspace in a bottle, but how about destiny style capacitors?

[Kaiphantom]

I think you are misinterpreting my post. I'm saying there have been several discussion threads about whether or not its possible to reach Destiny. You can search for them and read for yourself. I think you will absolutely find forum users making the argument that its difficult to the point of almost impossible to reach destiny. Nothing short of dozens to hundreds of ZPM will do it. Asgard couldn't have helped, and neither can their core. Juiced up ships can't, and at this point even the ancients probably couldn't etc. etc... I'm sure you'll find all those kind of arguments in those threads.

Considering we don't know how well a ZPM stacks up to a Naquadria planet, I'm not sure you can say the Ancients wouldn't be able to reach Destiny. Considering they can make ZPM's, I assume they'd make enough to enable the trip.

So, either a Destiny class ship (wicked old tech) can store the power of dozen's to 100's of ZPMs (something that seemingly is almost impossible to do in present time) and would seem quite ridiculous, or perhaps powering up the gate to dial back and forth just isn't that hard.

Again, Destiny isn't doing it with some magic power generating device, or rare mineral. Its all about the storage. Earth can't build subspace in a bottle, but how about destiny style capacitors?

It does seem like Destiny can store quite a bit of power, the equivalent of an Icarus planet at full charge at least. Destiny is ultimately Ancient tech, and is still light years ahead of what we can do. We simply cannot generate the power right now to make the trip.

[Stormtrooper]

I'm sure a bunch of neutrino-ion generators could do the trick... Don't forget about the Asgard Legacy. Either that, or a perfected Project Arcturus.

[RobertF]

I wonder if the seeder ships are laying a trail of stargates between galaxies as well as inside each galaxy they pass through? Maybe a continuous chain of stargate wormholes could connect Destiny with Earth using significantly less power than one big wormhole requiring multiple ZPMs.

Also we don't know how far the Destiny and seeder ships have flown from the Milky Way during the past million years. The ships may not be on a continuous outbound flight vector, but instead on a more circuitous route or a steadily widening spiral. This makes sense if the Ancients are interested in colonizing nearby galaxies within several tens of millions of light years of the Milky Way, rather than a string of galaxies out to a hundred million light years from the Milky Way. If so, then perhaps the Destiny isn't so far from the Milky Way that the power equivalent of a few ZPMs are all that is necessary to connect with the stargate on Earth.

But there was no mention of either possibility in the episode, so this is only speculation.

[Abiron]

One thing that I think is being forgotten here is that there is likely a big difference between a gate in the MW dialing Destiny and the gate on Destiny dialing home.

As others have posited in the tech forum, the fact that a single 9-chevron address is used to reach Destiny seems to indicate that the calling gate needs to send a signal out to find Destiny prior to any possibility of connection. This address is not a spatial reference; it's a special address that only goes to one endpoint, and that endpoint is moving (sometimes at FTL speeds) away from the sending gate. So the sending gate likely needs enormous power to send a subspace signal that Destiny can detect - even at FTL - and respond to. Once the sending gate "locates" Destiny, the ship stops what it's doing and comes to a stop, waiting for the sending gate to connect. Other Destiny-style gates cannot dial the ship while it's in FTL.

On the flipside, initiating a gate connection from Destiny to a gate in the MW is a point-to-point dial, just like every other dialing we've ever seen. I assume there is a set of calculations that need to be done by the Destiny's computers (or Eli) to deal with the distance factor, and that the return address is an 8-chevron one, not 9. (We have yet to see a successful dial back to the MW, so that's just speculation.) Even with the massive increased distance, I'm thinking that a dial from Destiny to any gate in the MW requires an order of magnitude less power than a dial from the MW to the 9-chevron "code" of Destiny, because the former is point-to-point while the latter is a sort of seek-and-find transmission.

If I'm right, it also begs the question: If we knew how to calculate for an 8-chevron dial from the MW and knew where Destiny was in relation to the dialing gate, could we dial Destiny with an 8-chevron address requiring a lot less power?

[morbosfist]

If I'm right, it also begs the question: If we knew how to calculate for an 8-chevron dial from the MW and knew where Destiny was in relation to the dialing gate, could we dial Destiny with an 8-chevron address requiring a lot less power?

Destiny stops in empty space. Normal addresses use planetary targeting. Destiny would have to stop in orbit of a planet of fairly close, and even then calculating the proper location when Destiny is billions of light-years away would be nigh-impossible, assuming they even have an idea of how to dial intergalactically beyond the addresses that they have found.

[The_Asgard_live]

One thing that I think is being forgotten here is that there is likely a big difference between a gate in the MW dialing Destiny and the gate on Destiny dialing home.

...

If I'm right, it also begs the question: If we knew how to calculate for an 8-chevron dial from the MW and knew where Destiny was in relation to the dialing gate, could we dial Destiny with an 8-chevron address requiring a lot less power?

Interesting speculation. And if you are right, technically earth wouldn't need to calculate Destiny's exact location to see huge power savings, not after they dialed it the first time? Since earth has its own dialing device, after they connect to Destiny once, shouldn't/couldn't each subsequent connection search be narrowed down to a very small (relatively) band of space? Instead of searching the entire universe, you have a very targeted search now because you knew where the ship was recently?

That said, there is one bit from the show that seems to contradict your theory, not directly, but by implication. Rush faked an Icarus planet in one of the earlier episodes? The implication of that being they need an Icarus planet's worth of power on their end as well.

I wonder if the seeder ships are laying a trail of stargates between galaxies as well as inside each galaxy they pass through? Maybe a continuous chain of stargate wormholes could connect Destiny with Earth using significantly less power than one big wormhole requiring multiple ZPMs.

Hmmm a McKay Bridge? I don't think so (who knows for sure) but given what we seemed to have confirmed in this episode, that old style gates can do long distance, I dont think it matters. O'neill devices attached to those gates might allow you to galaxy hop backwards right back to earth. If earth ever could send supplies through (or destiny crew make them) it would be what? 50-100? 100-200? hops backwards?

Also we don't know how far the Destiny and seeder ships have flown from the Milky Way during the past million years. The ships may not be on a continuous outbound flight vector, but instead on a more circuitous route or a steadily widening spiral.

Based on the map presented in the first episodes it does seem to be more of a straight line than a spiral.

[Abiron]

As to the need for a planet for targeting: I don't see why. A normal gate address is a 3-dimensional area of space. For Milky Way gates, that is a planet, but a gate should be able to connect to another gate if the address finds a target, no matter whether it's on a planet, in orbit, or just sitting in interplanetary space. If not, canon things like the gates on the Midway station or the gate used to dial into the Ori supergate from Pegasus wouldn't have worked.

As for Rush's lie about the naquadria-laced planet for dialing home: I think of that as his way of making his fabrication make sense to everyone, including the non-scientifically minded folks aboard. He gave them something that they could easily understand, i.e., a planet with the necessary power to dial home. They know it took a planet like that to get here, so they would easily accept that the same kind of planet would allow them to go home. And in any event, a planet with that kind of geology would allow them to dial home, if power is the only concern. I'm just not sure that it would take as much juice to dial home as it took to dial Destiny in the first place.

[morbosfist]

As to the need for a planet for targeting: I don't see why. A normal gate address is a 3-dimensional area of space. For Milky Way gates, that is a planet, but a gate should be able to connect to another gate if the address finds a target, no matter whether it's on a planet, in orbit, or just sitting in interplanetary space. If not, canon things like the gates on the Midway station or the gate used to dial into the Ori supergate from Pegasus wouldn't have worked.

Those are special circumstances. Midway used a special macro that overrode basic gate operating procedure. The Ori Supergate was built in orbit of a planet, so it's still technically planetary targeting.

[thekillman]

A ZPM the size of several rooms? There is nothing from SGU that suggests thats how power is stored on Destiny. Also my understanding of a ZPM is that you can not recharge them, ZPM size, or room size

not.... exactly.

a ZPM holds a self-contained universe. what if destiny's "capacitor" (no real capacitor can hold that much energy), is a microverse like a ZPM has, but this time round DESIGNED to charge and recharge.

also in theory, nothing prevents a ZPM from being recharged. however it can only be done when it has charge left. once depleted, the microverse is collapsed.


as to ancients never revisiting the tech:


remember it's built during their height. imagine what happens if 90% of our population died. how much of our tech would remain, and how much would we still understand?

[morbosfist]

There's no way to "charge" a universe, artificial or otherwise. Zero-point energy is extracted from the universe until it reaches maximum entropy. There's no way to add back to that. Once it's done, it's done.

[pipi]

I don't understand why Young didn't send a military team over there to kill the aliens. Even if all the power was drained from Destiny as long as you seized control of the seeder ship you could repower it (and its not like it could go anywhere with a totally disable Destiny docked on it)

They kept mentioning something about if the power drops into the red there will be no return. I believe what this means is when the power drops too low or empty completely it can not be recharged. So storming the seeder ship would be not an option unless they want to sacrifice Destiny's power storing capacity. And where did I pull this out from? Well it applies to present day laptop batteries. If you drain your battery complete dead like leaving it in sleep mode for too long and too often, your rechargable battery can actually die and not be rechargable anymore.

[pipi]

Not true. First, individuals could gate in an out to anywhere they want. And since they would be essentially plugged into a power source at all times, their shields should never give way. So why couldn't they park themselves there, launch drones and pick off wraith indefinitely? If drones weren't manufactured on site, again, the gate works. If for some reason they should want to leave, their fully charged shields would only need to sustain hits until they enter into hyperspace.

You've been *****ing about the Ancient's tactical stupidity in a few post so I'll try to add some insight to help you sleep better. Not in any particular order:

Why don't the Ancients park the Atlantis base next to a sun?
Well, for starters it would be a !@#$ place to bring up your kids. And second they were holding off the Wraith just fine for years on that ocean planet. From my memory, the Ancients were not defeated in battle. They just got sick of the endless harrassment and fighting and decided to fake their own deaths and leave the galaxy. Third, any object too close to a sun would most likely be burned or trapped by the gravity indefinitely; Destiny was only flying onto the surface at speed, if it was going any slower it may not be able to escape the gravitational forces. If a puddle jumper attempted to dock with Atlantis while it was parked near the sun, I'm pretty sure the puddle jumper would either 1 be a floating microwave for everyone on board or 2 sucked into the middle of the sun and melted before it even came close to docking.

Why were the Ancients using ZPMs to power their warships instead of Destiny class style recharging batteries?
For practicality? No eco warriors here. The military don't issue their men with rechargable batteries for their flash lights and tell them to run to the nearest recharge station when it runs out; they just use disposables and they got backups handy. Lame anology but the smarter tactical advantage is to have spare ZPMs on board the ship to go the distance as opposed to leaving the fleet for a recharge during the heat of battle. Also strategically if an Ancient ship would be captured, the Wraith wouldn't gain access to limitless energy but ZPMs which run out. And if the Wraith put two and two together and figured out that all these Ancients ships are making a runner to the nearest star for a recharge, I'm pretty sure they would ambush them, since the Wraith are everywhere.

[garhkal]

I think Rush did reverse the power transfer and the aliens messing with the controls was just a red herring... he then was really quick to separate and leave the seeder ship behind.

I disagree that it was rush.. BUT it would make sense with what we have seen.

There were a dozen aliens but Destiny has many more military personnel (even more if you armed the LA to fight the aliens) - I don't understand why Young didn't send a military team over there to kill the aliens. Even if all the power was drained from Destiny as long as you seized control of the seeder ship you could repower it (and its not like it could go anywhere with a totally disable Destiny docked on it)

We only saw one room with their pods and i counted a lot more than 12... And who is to say that was the only room with those pods.. Also something knocked out both rush and the Military guy. So those aliens had SOME weaponry...

He gave up on that way home pretty damn quickly considering it is the first real chance we have seen them have. Reminds me of Voyager where every week they were shown a way home but they never really pursued them beyond trying once and never tried to make them work.

That he did.. BUT at the mo, we will never knw why.

Maybe Destiny was like this. Maybe for a while there was a lot of interest in the 'great unknown' and the ancients got all excited about it, and made all the seeder ships and the destiny. Maybe after a few generations interest simply waned, and they went about doing things closer to home, things that didn't require the technology that they used for the destiny. They simply started developing in a different direction, and didn't necessarily look back. After half a million years, Destiny would probably be no more than a footnote in history, and by the time of Atlantis, very few probably even knew it had ever set out.

Optionally perhaps something happened that made them think the destiny was lost.. and so they decided to scrap all data related to it.

But you can also look at this as part of the Ancient stupidity (they did a LOT of dumb things). No one thought to ask, "Hey, now that we have this new, nifty Atlantis-type shield which can block anything as long as it has power, why don't we dig up that old star-power harvesting tech we abandoned long ago and park our city in the sun?" I mean, they pretty much forgot about Destiny, so it wouldn't be too surprising they forgot about other old tech. For an advanced race, they weren't too bright...

Perhaps that tech was lost to them, OR the data on it was.

I wonder if the seeder ships are laying a trail of stargates between galaxies as well as inside each galaxy they pass through? Maybe a continuous chain of stargate wormholes could connect Destiny with Earth using significantly less power than one big wormhole requiring multiple ZPMs.

Would that not have been shown on the holo in air pt2 when they first saw how far they have come??

Also would not they have seen some gates when they were crossing from galaxy 1 to 2?

remember it's built during their height. imagine what happens if 90% of our population died. how much of our tech would remain, and how much would we still understand?

Just look at what was lost when Constantinople was sacked, or when we entered the dark ages...

[The_Asgard_live]

You've been *****ing about the Ancient's tactical stupidity in a few post so I'll try to add some insight to help you sleep better. Not in any particular order:

The main point of my original post was to address the 'power' problem and people's perceptions of it.

If you look at some of the old threads, you'll find people calculating that it takes dozen to 100's of ZPM, and other seemingly ridiculous amounts of energy to connect with Destiny and back again. This episode suggests one of 2 things.

Either a Destiny class ship stores the power of dozens to hundreds of ZPM's which seems ridiculous because its million year old tech, or the power requirements to make the connection just isn't that big a deal (relative to what we've seen in the franchise).

Regardless, it seems a Destiny class can hold the power of several ZPMs? Thats more than an Arura Class ship runs on by factor of 2 or 3 seemingly, and even more than Atlantis itself. That seems odd.

Why don't the Ancients park the Atlantis base next to a sun? Well, for starters it would be a !@#$ place to bring up your kids.

Neither is a war zone, neither is under the ocean. But in theory, a sun would be a constant power source and place that the wraith couldn't follow. So, imagine Atlantis equip itself with the solar collectors and power storage and could juice its shields to the tune of a dozen ZPMs, not just 3. Flies into the sun, recharges, flies out basically indestructible, offs a half dozen hives, flies back to the outer surface of the sun. rinse, repeat

And second they were holding off the Wraith just fine for years on that ocean planet. From my memory, the Ancients were not defeated in battle. They just got sick of the endless harrassment and fighting and decided to fake their own deaths and leave the galaxy.

Because the writers turned them into tactically dumb smart people.

Third, any object too close to a sun would most likely be burned or trapped by the gravity indefinitely; Destiny was only flying onto the surface at speed, if it was going any slower it may not be able to escape the gravitational forces.

We don't know one way or the other.

If a puddle jumper attempted to dock with Atlantis while it was parked near the sun,

Don't dock, come through the gate.

Why were the Ancients using ZPMs to power their warships instead of Destiny class style recharging batteries? For practicality? No eco warriors here. The military don't issue their men with rechargable batteries for their flash lights and tell them to run to the nearest recharge station when it runs out; they just use disposables and they got backups handy. Lame anology but the smarter tactical advantage is to have spare ZPMs on board the ship to go the distance as opposed to leaving the fleet for a recharge during the heat of battle. Also strategically if an Ancient ship would be captured, the Wraith wouldn't gain access to limitless energy but ZPMs which run out.

Few problems. You are missing the scope of the power. The rechargeable variety seems to allow for the power of many ZPMs, not 1. If the value of your shields/hyper drive speed are proportional to the power you plug into it, the rechargeable variety is better, unless ZPMs are plentiful.

Second, if an Ancient ship was captured, they get the ZPM, the long range (non-crappy says McKay) hyperdrive, the drones and everything else the ship has.

And if the Wraith put two and two together and figured out that all these Ancients ships are making a runner to the nearest star for a recharge, I'm pretty sure they would ambush them, since the Wraith are everywhere.

Unlikely. The wraith had 60 hives or so? Compare that to the number of stars one could flee to to recharge.