No MALP

[Jper]

I must contradict you, sir.
There is every reason to have that MALP on the Ramp as precedent shows and no reason not to. There was no Gate Traffic. The moment there is intent to dial the gate was the moment the MALP should have been on the RAMP.

There was intent to dial to Earth. So you are suggesting they'd bring out the MALP to send it to Earth? Wasting valuable time by doing so?

[blackluster]

The moment there is intent to dial the gate was the moment the MALP should have been on the RAMP.

Nah, I don't think that reasoning applies in this case. I'd have to watch the ep again but I think Rush outlines the experimental procedure that was surrounding the 9th chevron project (he does so when the senator asks him about the away team I think). They would first sort out the power issue. The dial the gate. If they get a connection, they shut it down and analyze their results like power output from the core and the wormhole's stability. Sending stuff through, even a MALP is the very last stage of the experiment. Even when Scott was showing Eli around, we see scientists fiddling around the gate, probably monitoring the system they used to tie it into the core. Thus I think it is very likely that a device like the MALP would be in the way, especially since it would not be needed for quite some time regardless of the possibility of a stable wormhole.

[Control_Chair]

They have a MALP on standby for a planned gate dial. The dialing of Destiny was unplanned not to mention Rush was violating orders

Nah, I don't think that reasoning applies in this case. I'd have to watch the ep again but I think Rush outlines the experimental procedure that was surrounding the 9th chevron project (he does so when the senator asks him about the away team I think). They would first sort out the power issue. The dial the gate. If they get a connection, they shut it down and analyze their results like power output from the core and the wormhole's stability. Sending stuff through, even a MALP is the very last stage of the experiment. Even when Scott was showing Eli around, we see scientists fiddling around the gate, probably monitoring the system they used to tie it into the core. Thus I think it is very likely that a device like the MALP would be in the way, especially since it would not be needed for quite some time regardless of the possibility of a stable wormhole.

The Plan was to dial the gate, establish a connection and send a MALP to check for viability, then shut it down and analyse the results from both the MALP and the data from the core before deciding whether or not to send a Team, why Dial the gate 3 times when only 2 is necessary. As this attempt to dial the 9 Chevron Address only a few hours earlier at most, before the attack occurred then there should have been a MALP on the ramp from that first attempt. It is possible that it was put away until Rush figured out the problem of why the dialling did not work, but not because the MALP would have cluttered up the gate room, because all the rest of the expedition crap was just lying around the gate room cluttering the place up.

[apostrophe]

i never said they would use a MALP on the first go, just have it close by so they could whip it out when they needed it and as such SHOULD have taken it out and sent it through when they dialed Destiny to check it out before going through, even though they had no choice.i sure wouldn't like to blindly go through, not having some clue what was on the other side

I just started getting the first 3 DVD's from netflix so I'm going to pretend this thread isn't a month old and go through the episodes since they are still new for me.

I agree that they should have had the MALP there, sent it through and got just enough telemetry back to confirm the presence of air = basic viability, but little else. Then the decision to plunge ahead wouldn't have seemed so dumb. Milo says "It can't be worse than here, can it?" which is supposed to clinch it, but from SGA we know it could be worse, like total vacuum, what if it went to a space gate? Pretty common in the Pegasus galaxy.

Recall Scott lost radio contact so there probably was a problem with communications either over that distance through the wormhole or equipment damage due to the bombardment. Ideally the MALP could have locked up on it's last command and kept crawling forward otherwise everyone would have been smashing into it and probably killed. OTOH, fewer characters wouldn't hurt. No, I guess don't mean that, I don't actually want them to be killed off, but I am having trouble caring about most of the characters so far. It's like most of them would be "red shirts" from the old Star Trek cliché anyway. It's kind-of to be expected. OTOH, BSG killed off almost the entire human race and that was that. Obviously added to the jeopardy factor of the survivors.

Alternately, Scott could move the MALP off to the side before too many people came through. Having them send the MALP wouldn't have hurt the plot. Helped it a lot, in fact.

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[escyos]

I just started getting the first 3 DVD's from netflix so I'm going to pretend this thread isn't a month old and go through the episodes since they are still new for me.

I agree that they should have had the MALP there, sent it through and got just enough telemetry back to confirm the presence of air = basic viability, but little else. Then the decision to plunge ahead wouldn't have seemed so dumb. Milo says "It can't be worse than here, can it?" which is supposed to clinch it, but from SGA we know it could be worse, like total vacuum, what if it went to a space gate? Pretty common in the Pegasus galaxy.

Recall Scott lost radio contact so there probably was a problem with communications either over that distance through the wormhole or equipment damage due to the bombardment. Ideally the MALP could have locked up on it's last command and kept crawling forward otherwise everyone would have been smashing into it and probably killed. OTOH, fewer characters wouldn't hurt. No, I guess don't mean that, I don't actually want them to be killed off, but I am having trouble caring about most of the characters so far. It's like most of them would be "red shirts" from the old Star Trek cliché anyway. It's kind-of to be expected. OTOH, BSG killed off almost the entire human race and that was that. Obviously added to the jeopardy factor of the survivors.

Alternately, Scott could move the MALP off to the side before too many people came through. Having them send the MALP wouldn't have hurt the plot. Helped it a lot, in fact.

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Milo? Dont you mean Eli?

[apostrophe]

Milo? Dont you mean Eli?

Sorry. Yes, Eli. Right. Thanks . I'm terrible with names sometimes. And the large cast of all these new characters isn't helping.

Hopefully when I run through the episodes again the character names will start to stick.

[Brian]

I think the only thing that matters here is time. Young hardly made it through the gate at all after that 6 minutes of it being open because he didn't walk through, he got blasted through. Young was also made aware upon his return to the gate room that they couldn't shut it down, as well as the core was going to go critical. Regardless of where the MALP was, it still would have resulted in (insert number here) people not getting through, including Young, Greer, and others. Once Rush dialed Destiny's address, there was no turning back, no alternate options...Scott's radio we can safely assume didn't work because once on the other side he didn't get a response after multiple attempts to contact Icarus.

[Flyboy]

It's as close to an open and shut case as you're going to get without canon just saying it out right.
Those Malps have been the most consistent thing in the show next to zatnicatels.

I'm not sure if there any excuse not to have it ready to go on a gate that only has one destination and no arrivals. This was Youngs operation so is this just the start of his incompetence or was it just a production "error" we're making to big a deal over?

You do not leave valuable equipment lying around gathering dust. It gets stored away correctly.