Water Calculations - Was it Worth It?

[Cory Holmes]

I don't think the ship is as sentient and 'thoughtful' as rush thinks it is.

it's a coincidence that they found the replenishment for hte filters, and it's a coincidence that they found the ice

In rush's mind, anything and everything the ship does is 'perfect'.

That's part of what makes him such an amusing git to watch Of course, it also begs the question as to what happens when Destiny lets him down?

[Mongoletsi]

people can survive a lot longer without water than 2 days. i only drink about hald a litre of water a day

"Water" or "Fluids"? Half a litre of fluids per day is unhealthy dude.

Btw, coffee doesn't dehydrate you, tea neither. Well, it does, but the amount of fluid you take on far outweighs the diauretic effects.

[The Prophet]

Touche... although I do remember it being called the "Law of Conservation of Mass" - but I guess alien bugs don't have to obey the fundamental physical laws of the universe. The only possible explanation is that the bugs broke it down into hydrogen and oxygen, which doesn't make any sense either since that requires way more energy (its an endothermic process) then it liberates, so how could it help them.

They're a swarm of alive, flying sand.

We've also seen an FTL drive and a Stargate.

I doubt everything is going to be able to be explained in conventional terms and physics. For all we know, the Sand was storing it in a dimensional pocket. Or using the water to replicate more flying sand beings.

[GateGipsy]

I'm up there with the replication theory - it is possible that just two or ten grains of sand came through the gate, and that plentiful water triggers reproduction. That big tank would be an amazing amount of water for creatures from the sand planet.

[Wayston]

you're right that the ice planet was a lousy solution but a lousy solition was better than no solution

personaly I'm quite convinced that there is at least some very rudimentary AI routine on destiny (like water tanks running low --> go to nearest planet with H2O on it; energy supply running low --> fly into the nearest suitable sun; detecting hazardous situation on planet with stargate --> block it out of the console). You have to remember that under normal circumstances destiny's ancient crew would have little to no trouble finding the proper resources on that desert planet or mining the proper amount of water from the mining planet

as was pointed out the humans had to go out if only for morale purposes and when in danger of life you take whatever little resources that are presented to you. Suppose these couple hundreds of litres are just enough for the crew to survive until the next water planet? then the crew would be blaming young for squandering the opportunity to get such a small quantity

[Skydiver]

That's part of what makes him such an amusing git to watch Of course, it also begs the question as to what happens when Destiny lets him down?

his brain will melt as he tries to explain it

but, if it is ever proven that Destiny isn't the benevolent Ancient wonder that he thinks it is, he'll never believe it.

I mean, if Destiny was as sentient as he thinks, don't you think it woulda programmed the Kino to lead Young and Scott to the good water/ice?

Still doesn't change the fact that the return didn't justify the risk. the ONLY way it could have worked would have been for there to be a dozen or so suits and a couple more sleds so they could harvest maybe a ton of ice. the few hundred pounds they may have gotten won't be much more than a few plops in the bucket.

[Dain]

They're a swarm of alive, flying sand.

We've also seen an FTL drive and a Stargate.

I doubt everything is going to be able to be explained in conventional terms and physics. For all we know, the Sand was storing it in a dimensional pocket. Or using the water to replicate more flying sand beings.

Well, the sand being consumed about 40 cubic meters of water yet still fit into a single barrel, so it cannot have been growing that much. The only explanation is indeed that it magicked the water away into another dimension or whereever.

The proposal that the alien was "losing" the water in the hallways also is nonsense. The Destiny is a closed system. 10 000 litres of water lying around would produce more than a wet floor and would have been noticed by Greer. The soldiers searched even the crew's beds!

[LtHawk]

The way i got it broken down is this:
(guessing they had about 1.5 tons of ice)

Aprx 1lb. of water ice = 1 pint of water

1.5 tons = 3000 lbs of water ice, which = 3000 pints
there are 8 pints in a gallon; which makes aprx 375 gallons of liquid water
there are 3.785 liters in a gallon, which brings it to aprx. 1419.375 liters of water

So they had 91460 liters of water, divided by 2(plus a little more that the aliens drank)
leaves them with 45730 + 1419.375 liters... 47149.375... that makes it a useless trip.

ALSO - people are quibbling about the kino(kinos) carrying that much ice on the platform - all i have to say is that they are made for exploration on other planets - won't some other planets have higher gravity?

[Avenger]

It's not useless when you don't know when you're going to be able to take on more water. Even a few days worth of water could amount to enough time to find another water source. In that kind of situation, you have to take advantage of every situation that presents itself, even if the benefits is marginal.

If you're lost in the woods and it starts to rain, you try to rig up something to collect the rain water, even if it only nets you a couple of cups because it's more than you'd have otherwise.

On Destiny, they do have a water supply and it's fairly sizable supply now, but what if they don't reach another planet with a viable water source for several months? They have to take advantage of every opportunity presents itself.

Also, keep in mind that when Young and Scott went out to get water, they were losing water at a rapid pace and didn't know why. For all they knew when they left, there would be no water left in the tank by the time they got back.

[Dain]

No matter how you look at it, the use of the away mission was dubious even at the beginning. Bringing in more water is useless if you are unable to find such an enormous leak. Additional water wouldn't change anything if you are losing several 100 liters a minute.

On their first return to the Stargate, it then it became completely clear that they not only couldn't hope to find more water than they were losing, but also that an alien was responsible for the water losses. This made any additional trips extremely pointless.

Presumably, they planned to put the ice water into their own containers somewhere so that it wouldn't be connected to the water tanks which were being drained.

However, this only highlights the uselessness of their away mission even more:
Whatever water they got from the ice was completely insignificant compared to what was in the tanks, so they could have just filled their own containers with the ship water.