Faster hyperdrives asgard/ancient

[Jimbo-DR]

I agree that the Ancients are much farther along than the Asgard, but the Asgard are much farther ahead of us than 10,000 years. In Revelations, the ship that was carrying the body of the deceased Asgard was lost some 30,000 years ago, which means they had interstellar travel some 30,000 years ago, and real life humans are nowhere close to that yet.

[2ndgenerationalteran]

Based on what? You mean the episode "Revelations" where the Asguard, Heimdall, said they once used suspended animation to travel? That doesn't prove much. A lot happens in 30,000 years.

My reference is not to Revelations, in that episode any person with a basic sense of time would have realized that the Asgard vessel that was lost definitely had hyperdrive engines, you cannot transverse between galaxies in 30,000 years. What that episode gave us in regards to hyperspace travel is that about 30,000 years ago Asgard hyperdrives were comparable to Gould hyperdrives of today.

That said what i referred to was that Thor said they received a copy of the ancient database. Though they may have just scratched the surface they could have specified their searches like we do and gained an understanding of ancient hyperdrive technology. That knowledge went to significantly improving their engines, probably slowly at first but maybe at the current day they could have built off of the ancient designs and pushed the technology forward nearing the level the ancients left off at. So yes they learned it all, but they probably copied a lot of ancient concepts and designs rather than make it themselves. 30,000 years is a short amount of time to learn 50 million years or more worth of technology, I'm not saying the Asgard should not be credited for their achievement, which is truly astonishing, but their hyperdrive engines are probably not original.

[YodaMate]

Based on what? You mean the episode "Revelations" where the Asguard, Heimdall, said they once used suspended animation to travel? That doesn't prove much. A lot happens in 30,000 years.

I imagine a lot more happens in a few million years

Likewise, there is no evidence to suggest the Asguard used the Ancient repository to construct the lasers and shileds found on Odyssey. As you commented earlier "The asguard were only capable of scratching the surface." So, what the Asguard could comprehend from "parts" of the repository they likely modified, making it uniquely their own.

Well, the tech in question is obviously new. Either the Asgard came up with it on their own (which is very convenient for the current conflict, but less convenient that they didn't come up with to take on the Replicators, when they were focusing on improving their tech), or they developed it from ideas found in the repository (i like the way you summarised their process) or they developed it from the Ori satellite from Ethon, the last scenario i particularly like.

Why was Jack held with such high regard by the Asguard council? Answer: he fully UNDERSTOOD and was able to utilize the contents of the Ancient repository when it basically rewrote his mind, causing it to function differently.

Interesting way of putting it, very insightful, green for you is coming !

In "Aurora", Mckay never implied the Ancient's version of a hyperdrive was somehow superior to the Asguard's; on the contrary, he puts them on equal terms in "efficiency."

I think that's precisely how we should settle the question of which tech is 'better'. In terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Here's how i see it ;

I can't remember that Aurora quote, so i'll ignore it for now.

In terms of effectiveness, there seems to be a lot more flexibility in weapons and shields than in hyperdives. There appears to be a single sub-space dimension for the purpose, so either your drive can get you into it and deposit you elsewhere, or it can't.

Effectiveness only really affects primitive technologies. Our first hyperdrives weren't particularly effective because they were unstable, we could get into hyperspace but not get to other solar systems. Hyperdrives seem to be the Wraith's weakest area, but this is because the part-biological hulls can't take hyperspace radiation very well, which means their hyperspace capability is not very effective, although the actual drives themselves are fine. The Wraith obviously don't mind as this suits their lifestyle, but more on this later.

Other issues of effectiveness would be how big an object can you bring into hyperspace. Sizing difficulties aside, i would assume Atlantis and Asuran cityships are the largest hyper-capable objects, but since Ori ships are big and Asgard ships are not small, for these races it becomes a matter of how fast you can go with your enormous object : an issue of efficiency.

Efficiency in these cases comes with two separate but linked meanings, speed and power.

A more power-efficient drive would be the same size drive with same size power source that can go faster/pull larger craft. For instance, in Season 6 Earth could build a cargo-ship sized hyperdrive and power it with no problems, but it couldn't move something as large as Prommie. The same drive could have moved 302s easily but it was too big to install on them. Hence the naquadria to boost the power source without increasing its size. We ended up compromising with an Alkesh (i.e. medium drive on Prommie (pushing it to the limits and giving it cooling off periods, thus not as effective as we'd like). The problem was solved when the Asgard designed a more power-efficient drive for us.

This brings us to speed, which in the minds of many is a true indicator of a real hyperdrive. This is partly true because it's hard to compare Asgard and Ancient drive sizes because we haven't seen the drives themselves and comparing sizes between episodes is problematic. If the Asgard could go as fast (maximum sustainable top-speed) as an Ancient, with the same size drive and power-source, then their drive would be equal or superior in terms of power-efficiency and speed-efficiency. If one could travel faster than the other period, and could maintain that speed safely, then they would be more speed-efficient.

With our limited information, we can compare known power sources and speeds, whilst recognising that our analysis is limited. Thor points out that the Beliskner is powered by four very big generators back in Season 3. Assuming that remains relatively the case in current Asgard designs, we can compare that to a ZPM. How do they really compare ?

Well, that depends. It really is determined by whether the Asgard have installed a top quality drive in the Daedalus (i.e. if Daedalus had four big Asgard generators, would it travel between galaxies in minutes ?). If so, then a single ZPM provides less total power than the Asgard generators since it took three days to Pegasus. But then, that's a big if, and if you could hook up two ZPMs dedicated to the hyperdrive, then presumably you could fly very fast, cut travelling time in half at least.

If Daedalus has a top-quality drive, then the gap is close but the ZPMs still have a huge size advantage over Asgard generators. And if Daedalus doesn't have a top-quality drive, then a more 'normal' Asgard drive with a ZPM hooked up would logically it would take less than three days to reach Pegasus, perhaps a lot less. In which case, the gap has widened, with the Ancients still well in front on power-efficiency.

Now, the question we've all been waiting for : the matter of maximum top-speed. Thor gets the Bat Signal : "Cimmeria is in trouble" and in a matter of minutes he's on the scene in his Chariot-mobile. Where's the Ancient answer to that ? Unfortunately it's disappointing : we simply have no idea.

In Stargate Atlantis, an ongoing and paramount issue for the expedition is ensuring the Wraith don't get their hands on either Atlantis' or Daedalus' hyperdrives. Logically, this would have been an issue for the Lanteans as well, so it seems highly likely that they deliberately down-graded their ships' hyperdrives in the event of capture. This is backed up by the fact that the Aurora's Captain knows how to upgrade his drive and has the tools at his disposal to do so, but only does in an emergency when they need more speed. Tria's hyperdrive was damaged and not going anywhere, we saw Atlantis leave Earth but that was it. Rodney was able to design a jumper-sized hyperdrive just by enhancing his brain (probably also due to his ongoing access to the Atlantis database), surely the Ancients could have designed them but chose not to.

We haven't seen an Ancient hyperdrive let rip, so we can't accurately compare top speeds. In the category where we have more evidence, the Ancients (between Jack's tinkering with a cargo ship drive to the sheer portable nature of ZPMs) have clearly got the Asgard beat in terms of power-efficiency.

Damn, that was long. Short answer ; jury's out but Ancients are still looking better

[randy23]

My reference is not to Revelations, in that episode any person with a basic sense of time would have realized that the Asgard vessel that was lost definitely had hyperdrive engines, you cannot transverse between galaxies in 30,000 years. What that episode gave us in regards to hyperspace travel is that about 30,000 years ago Asgard hyperdrives were comparable to Gould hyperdrives of today.

That said what i referred to was that Thor said they received a copy of the ancient database. Though they may have just scratched the surface they could have specified their searches like we do and gained an understanding of ancient hyperdrive technology. That knowledge went to significantly improving their engines, probably slowly at first but maybe at the current day they could have built off of the ancient designs and pushed the technology forward nearing the level the ancients left off at. So yes they learned it all, but they probably copied a lot of ancient concepts and designs rather than make it themselves. 30,000 years is a short amount of time to learn 50 million years or more worth of technology, I'm not saying the Asgard should not be credited for their achievement, which is truly astonishing, but their hyperdrive engines are probably not original.

Sorry for the correction but the Asguard only possessed "parts" of the repository as Thor said in "New Order". Did the writers actually say how long [it] took the Ancients to develop hyperdrive technology comparable to the ones seen on Daedalus and other 304s? And if this technology is 50 millions years old as you suggest, how were they (Asguard) able create formidable weapons, shields, and hyperdrives in the span of 30,000 years when they had only begun to "scratch the surface" of the repository? (Noting their construction of Neutrino power cores which was able to pump out energy at a rate equivalent to a ZPM). I'm still on the fence on this one. I think the Asguard did some serious independent thinking.

[randy23]

If Daedalus has a top-quality drive, then the gap is close but the ZPMs still have a huge size advantage over Asgard generators. And if Daedalus doesn't have a top-quality drive, then a more 'normal' Asgard drive with a ZPM hooked up would logically it would take less than three days to reach Pegasus, perhaps a lot less. In which case, the gap has widened, with the Ancients still well in front on power-efficiency.

I didn't get this paragraph and its link to power-efficincy. Could you elaborate?

[2ndgenerationalteran]

No the writers did not say how long ago the ancients made intergalactic hyperdrives, but its presumably several million years old. From the times when they escaped their original galaxy from the religious fanatics, so maybe 50 million years ago? So perhaps mastering hyperdrive technology is one of the first major mile posts in technology, but still they had access to parts of an almost infinitely big database. The Alliance was a place where they shared knowledge, since the ancients seem more ready to give away their knowledge its probable that they gave the Asgard their notes on war fare technology, since they were so far beyond them they posed no threat. as i said we have always been able to refine our searches to find what we need, and no one said the Asgard jumped straight into the hard stuff, they probably eased their way there adjusting their instruments to do the tasks that the ancient notes told them to do. instead of discovering all these facts they could look at the notes and know what to do next. If we had a data base of alien technology and we took the basics and understood it, we could accelerate our learning much faster than trial and error, every time you go back to your work you know what to do improve. Especially with a species that age really is no problem, its not surprising that they could advance so quickly. To put it all into comparison the Gould fought against each other for nearly 10,000 years their technology has stayed relatively the same throughout that time. Asgards jumped from years of travel to minutes in roughly 3 to 4 times that, and they seemed to have no problems until we showed up making the replicators, so they had no military need of high quality weapons and shields that we know of. So if your saying Asgard hyperdrive models are unique you may be right, but if your saying the underlying concepts beneath it is completely unique id have to strongly disagree with you there.

[randy23]

No the writers did not say how long ago the ancients made intergalactic hyperdrives, but its presumably several million years old. From the times when they escaped their original galaxy from the religious fanatics, so maybe 50 million years ago? So perhaps mastering hyperdrive technology is one of the first major mile posts in technology, but still they had access to parts of an almost infinitely big database. The Alliance was a place where they shared knowledge, since the ancients seem more ready to give away their knowledge its probable that they gave the Asgard their notes on war fare technology, since they were so far beyond them they posed no threat. as i said we have always been able to refine our searches to find what we need, and no one said the Asgard jumped straight into the hard stuff, they probably eased their way there adjusting their instruments to do the tasks that the ancient notes told them to do. instead of discovering all these facts they could look at the notes and know what to do next. If we had a data base of alien technology and we took the basics and understood it, we could accelerate our learning much faster than trial and error, every time you go back to your work you know what to do improve. Especially with a species that age really is no problem, its not surprising that they could advance so quickly. To put it all into comparison the Gould fought against each other for nearly 10,000 years their technology has stayed relatively the same throughout that time. Asgards jumped from years of travel to minutes in roughly 3 to 4 times that, and they seemed to have no problems until we showed up making the replicators, so they had no military need of high quality weapons and shields that we know of. So if your saying Asgard hyperdrive models are unique you may be right, but if your saying the underlying concepts beneath it is completely unique id have to strongly disagree with you there.

So, what kind of knowledge did the Asguard share with the Ancients? The secret of building fires? What was the point of calling it an "alliance" only to have it one-sided? It doesn't add-up. What intellectual contributions did they impart to the fellowship? An argument can be made that the Nox gave the Ancients their cloaking technology seeing how the Nox epitomize the whole concept of being unseen. They even have the power/technology to cast a shroud of invisibility around others. There had to [have] been something about the Asguard that peaked the interest of the Ancients. Was it their beaming technology? From the very beginning of the show, the Ancients were suggested to have used only transporter rings until recently.

2ndgenerationalteran, in your aforementioned remark about Replicators, you can just see the amount of progress the Asguard made in such a short period in terms of weapons and shields - so, why not a hyperdrive 30,000 years ago? If the Asguard already possessed interstellar travel 30,000 years ago, I think that's more than enough time to develop intergalactic hyperdrives. Granted that the Asguard did receive a jump-start from the Ancients in advancing their hyperspace capabilities, it's been 30,000 years, it's practically more Asguard than Ancient when one considers the setup and power source. I don't know, maybe we'll have to agree to disagree.

[2ndgenerationalteran]

Does the idea of powerful allies mean anything? America is allies with Britian, do they share scientific knowlege, however limited but yes they do, but is that our only reason to ally with them? No, both are very powerful nations no matter how powerful you are it is good to have friends that are also powerful to fall back on, and share ideas with. We have no idea how old the other races in the Alliance were, for all we know the Ancients could have been the second youngest. Perhaps what intriqued the ancients about the Asgard is how fast they can learn. My point is that the asgard most likely had help in making their improvements on their hyperdrives, over thousands of years. That help gave them the opportunity to accelerate their technology much faster than what it would have taken normally. Look at us, we are learning even faster, 10 years ago we had no interplanetary vehicles and now we have learned how to build an opperate a standard hyperdrive in under 6 years. But I do want to point out we had things to learn from, and we didnt have to fiddle around discovering new concepts. I think we both have lost sight of the true intention of this thread.

[randy23]

Does the idea of powerful allies mean anything? America is allies with Britian, do they share scientific knowlege, however limited but yes they do, but is that our only reason to ally with them? No, both are very powerful nations no matter how powerful you are it is good to have friends that are also powerful to fall back on, and share ideas with. We have no idea how old the other races in the Alliance were, for all we know the Ancients could have been the second youngest. Perhaps what intriqued the ancients about the Asgard is how fast they can learn. My point is that the asgard most likely had help in making their improvements on their hyperdrives, over thousands of years. That help gave them the opportunity to accelerate their technology much faster than what it would have taken normally. Look at us, we are learning even faster, 10 years ago we had no interplanetary vehicles and now we have learned how to build an opperate a standard hyperdrive in under 6 years. But I do want to point out we had things to learn from, and we didnt have to fiddle around discovering new concepts. I think we both have lost sight of the true intention of this thread.

Maybe we did digress from the original point of the thread. However, personally, I just don't see how the Asguard could not have developed intergalctic hyperdrives before meeting the Ancients, or atleast some primative version. It's quite possible the Asguard created the predecessor versions of their technology and then mingled with the Ancients' own knowledge during the time of the alliance, thereby, increasing their capabilities even more, and at the same time, shared their knowledge with the Ancients. Isn't that possible?

[YodaMate]

I didn't get this paragraph and its link to power-efficincy. Could you elaborate?

Sorry about that, i sometimes get a little incoherent when i get deep into a topic. By "top-quality" i meant "the best the Asgard have". It's a crucial matter ; is the Daedalus' hyperdrive essentially the same as what the Asgard put into their own ships, just has access to a lot less power ?

If the answer is yes, then if Daedalus somehow got a full Asgard power system without changing a thing to its hyperdrives, it would travel as fast as any Asgard ship. In that case, the numbers associated with Daedy become relevant ; a ZPM attached makes an Asgard hyperdrive travel slower than when the four big Asgard generators are attached (as i assume is the case with all Asgard ships) because it took three days to reach Atlantis.

My argument was that if you had multiple ZPMs, the same hyperdrive could travel faster, probably up to the speeds that we've seen the Asgard travel at. Say for arguments' sake, you could patch in four ZPMs (i think it would take less, but that's just an opinion) to reach the Asgard speed. Four ZPMs take up a lot less space physically than four big Asgard generators, so the Ancient (ZPM) power source is more efficient (being smaller means you have a lot more room to install things on your ship) and thus superior, IMHO.

But if the answer is no, if the Daedalus hyperdrive is not the best the Asgard have to offer, than the calculations are thrown into chaos. If a ZPM was the power source for the best hyperdrive the Asgard have, then it would logcially fly a lot faster to Pegasus than the Daedalus did, but we'd still be speculating because we have no hard data. But with the same multiple-ZPM scenario proposed above, it would logically travel much much much faster than the three days.

Of course, my logic depends on the basic theory that Ancients can get at least twice as much raw power out of two ZPMs (and thrice as much power with three, and so on), an idea which some people may consider debatable.

My other argument was that we've never seen the full capabilities of a fully powered and operational Atlantean hyperdrive, the best that the Ancients can produce. Thus, we can't compare the Ancients' top speed with that of the Asgard, which is what many people consider "the best" to come down to.

[wiseowl777]

prolly been said b4...

asguard can flew from ida to the mw in a fewseconds/minutes in "point of view" s3 and in "small victories" s4.... so thats very fast... seemingly faster than it took the odyssey to get to the mw with the zpm in "unending"

-aurora & daedelus took 13 hrs (no zpm) to reach the wraith in the void btwn the 2 galaxies in "no mans land" and the daedlus took inside of 4 days to get from earth to atlantis with zpm and takes 3 weeks otherwise...

... so anybody know where ida is
.... andd any1 got a calculator?

.... also the mw replicators modified the hatak to travel with integrity at 800x its normal speed to get to apohis's base on nea'tu in s5 "enemies"... so they win as fastest ship!

[YodaMate]

That is indeed a major part of the problem ; we don't know how far away Ida is. We can assume it's part of our local group, but it's hard to compare with Pegasus without some hard data.

[tauriprivatesoldier]

Logically, I would say that the ancients' hperdrive were a lot better than the asguard. Except that what I've seen of the Arora class argues against that. Except for that time when Oneil modify the engines of a Teltac (or was it Alkesh?)to hyper-accelerate the ship.

But do consider the fact that the asguard used cyrogenic capsules in their early days. What does that imply abt asguard speed. And how much of asguard tech is based on ancient tech? The ancients had came across the respository too surely they did some reverse engineering of their own.

[Jimbo-DR]

prolly been said b4...

asguard can flew from ida to the mw in a fewseconds/minutes in "point of view" s3 and in "small victories" s4.... so thats very fast... seemingly faster than it took the odyssey to get to the mw with the zpm in "unending"

-aurora & daedelus took 13 hrs (no zpm) to reach the wraith in the void btwn the 2 galaxies in "no mans land" and the daedlus took inside of 4 days to get from earth to atlantis with zpm and takes 3 weeks otherwise...

... so anybody know where ida is
.... andd any1 got a calculator?

.... also the mw replicators modified the hatak to travel with integrity at 800x its normal speed to get to apohis's base on nea'tu in s5 "enemies"... so they win as fastest ship!

First that replicator Modified Ha'tak was definitely ridiculously fast but it's possible the Asgard and Ancients are faster. The Ori might be as well.
But the Point of View episode doesn't really count because we can't be sure of the specifics. How do we know the Asgard ship wasn't chilling 5 light yeasr away and got word from Othalla that they needed to head over to Earth and kick the **** out of the Goa'uld?