Destiny must have self repair.

[kwlafayette]

You're right, we don't know exactly when the Ancients were planning on boarding the Destiny

That is the salient point. Sometime in the past could be 1 million years after launch, it could be 50 years after launch. Short time periods make less sense; you could just go there in a regular ship. The longer the period, the less likely the ship will be intact without self repair systems. At some point, it makes little sense to even launch a ship without self repair, because there is no chance it would survive without intervention. I would put this time around 50,000 years. Even the way they built things, they could not expect an unmanned ship to still be operating after 50,000 years without self repair or regular intervention.

This is the first ship we have seen that refuels itself. Self refueling ability implies a pretty long term mission in and of itself. Also the range between refueling is huge, more than enough to span the distance between galaxies. At the very least, Destiny was meant to travel to the next galaxy cluster before it was boarded, and possibly to the next super cluster or galactic strand.

I think you have to conclude that the unknown time is at the very least, 50,000 years unmanned in space. Whatever mission it is, does not make sense without self repair.

The only way to do it without self repair, is the scattershot approach. Send many ships on the same mission, small cheap ships, and hope that one of them survives long enough. But there was only one 9 chevron address.

[kwlafayette]

First off, life support that was failing when they got aboard.. then theres the fact that the power generator systems are so badly damaged that they don't even have enough energy the power the shield enough the keep the atmosphere in all over the ship, we saw in battles with the blues that using the weapons too much means the ship could very well explode... theres all those holes that have been poked in it... You'd think they'd have been the first target of any potential auto repair system that the ship had? The power conduits literally all over the ship are extremely badly damaged, that is far from superficial damage, that to me seems like very very bad damage, the computers work and the doors open, the gate is good and the ship can still go, but that doesn't mean its superficial damge...

Just because the main systems still function, doesn't mean that they're not damaged, heavily damaged even, infact everything we've seen shows that putting the main systems under any stress at all could result in them failing

Life support: not mission critical.
Shield: it can't keep the atmosphere in, but for some reason it can keep star out. It not that the shield is failing, it is that it is not designed to contain atmosphere like the Atlantis shield was. Seriously, the ship can fly through stars, I think it is in pretty good shape.

And yet, all these power conduits, that are ready to explode, not one of them has actually done it in 5 million years, has it? The drive has not failed, the shield has not failed, the refueling system has not failed, navigation keeps them on course (even exacuting perfect aero braking maneuvers). Not one critical system has failed in all that time, and the Ancients have never been on board to fix anything themselves.

Gee, how very very lucky in the 1 in a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kind of way.

[Krazeh]

That is the salient point. Sometime in the past could be 1 million years after launch, it could be 50 years after launch. Short time periods make less sense; you could just go there in a regular ship. The longer the period, the less likely the ship will be intact without self repair systems. At some point, it makes little sense to even launch a ship without self repair, because there is no chance it would survive without intervention. I would put this time around 50,000 years. Even the way they built things, they could not expect an unmanned ship to still be operating after 50,000 years without self repair or regular intervention.

This is the first ship we have seen that refuels itself. Self refueling ability implies a pretty long term mission in and of itself. Also the range between refueling is huge, more than enough to span the distance between galaxies. At the very least, Destiny was meant to travel to the next galaxy cluster before it was boarded, and possibly to the next super cluster or galactic strand.

I think you have to conclude that the unknown time is at the very least, 50,000 years unmanned in space. Whatever mission it is, does not make sense without self repair.

The only way to do it without self repair, is the scattershot approach. Send many ships on the same mission, small cheap ships, and hope that one of them survives long enough. But there was only one 9 chevron address.

Again, this is all pure conjecture mixed with your own personal beliefs, well apart from the bit about the Destiny being able to refuel itself. Where is your in-universe evidence to support any of these claims?

[kwlafayette]

We have all seen how damaged the ship is. It is simply impossible for it to still be in operation without some repairs being done at some point, and we know the Ancients never did them. Something has held it together for 5 million or so years. If it turns out to be pure luck, this will be the crappiest possible Stargate spin off of all time, and it will not last past the second season. I will sue the producers to get the time I spent watching that load of crap, back.

Freaking continents are not even the same after that time frame. No force short of the Almighty himself could build something that would last that long. And not only has it lasted that long, it has been attacked in that time. People have told me that you need not have any particular expertise or knowledge to make something blow up; yet here we have a ship with no crew, and (you would have me believe) no ability to repair itself, and no one has managed to stop it in 5 million years. It literally must have encountered at least a dozen advanced civilizations during that time. Each galaxy seems to have one dominant and technologically advanced civilization, so possibly hundreds of thousands of advanced alien races.

[Mike.]

There are holes all over the ship. The crew had to manually close all the bulkhead doors they could to protect the little atmosphere they had left in "Air".

Destiny's power storage system is falling apart, it's at 30% of original capacity (see "Light", "Sabotage").

The energy conduits are also failing - see "Earth" - Riley almost got killed by one. Also in "Space" energy was leaking in the corridors - Lt James had to cut power to that section to avoid getting everyone electrocuted. [1] [2] [3]

The CO2 scrubbers have also failed. They had to replace the active material in "Air III".

Main power, life support, hull integrity - three critical systems badly damaged.

[kwlafayette]

I really can't believe no one else finds it the least bit odd that the laundry circuits are blown, water recycling does not work, the air scrubber was shot, a couple of doors won't open, some lights don't work. But not one failure, in all that time has managed to impede the progress of the ship in any way.

The Ancients could not build a water recycling system, that was not even in use, that would last that long, but you have no problem believing the drive, built by the same people is just fine, even though it has been in continuous operation.

Do you guys believe the promises politicians make too?

[kwlafayette]

There are holes all over the ship. The crew had to manually close all the bulkhead doors they could to protect the little atmosphere they had left in "Air".

Destiny's power storage system is falling apart, it's at 30% of original capacity (see "Light", "Sabotage").

The energy conduits are also failing - see "Earth" - Riley almost got killed by one. Also in "Space" energy was leaking in the corridors - Lt James had to cut power to that section to avoid getting everyone electrocuted. [1] [2] [3]

The CO2 scrubbers have also failed. They had to replace the active material in "Air III".

Main power, life support, hull integrity - three critical systems badly damaged.

All that damage to the ship, and yet amazingly, drives still driving. Shields still shielding. Fueling system, still fueling. Navigation still guiding. Absolutely amazing how none of that "critical" damage you mention has ever stopped the ship from going wherever it is that it is going.

If I were to tell you that my car was critically damaged, would you expect that to mean the power seats and windows were not working, but the engine, transmission, drive train, steering, brakes and tires were all perfectly fine?

[Mike.]

From Sabotage:

PERRY: There was an overload - one that probably shouldn't have happened because the system is unbelievably robust, with more safeguards than I can count, but it happened. And - as with most overloads - it happened in the weakest link.

WALLACE: The F.T.L. drive is made up of sixteen separate modules. The one that blew up was the weakest link because it was the least efficient.

YOUNG: You're sure the ship can fly on the other drives?

RUSH: Even better than that.

PERRY: Without the worn-out drive bringing down overall efficiency, Destiny should be able to make it across the void.

Note a few keywords: unbelievably robust, safeguards, 16 separate modules, worn out.

If a blue alien hadn't shorted out the misbehaving one Destiny would have run out of power in the void. Dead in space.

Life support also completely failed, it had to be repaired by the crew.

If they had continued to stress the energy conduits the ship would have blown up in "Earth", same thing in "Space" caused by firing the main weapon.

[kwlafayette]

One last word with regard the length of Destiny's mission. We know about reactors, and nuclear stuff. The amount of nuclear fuel required to keep a rector going for a thousand years is not that big in terms of sheer volume. You could easily fill a small room with enough naquada pellets for some 100,000 years (according to the information given in various episodes). So the self refueling thing, it is possible that not even the Ancients knew how long the Destiny mission would take.

[kwlafayette]

From Sabotage:


Note a few keywords: unbelievably robust, safeguards, 16 separate modules, worn out.

If a blue alien hadn't shorted out the misbehaving one Destiny would have run out of power in the void. Dead in space.

Life support also completely failed, it had to be repaired by the crew.

If they had continued to stress the energy conduits the ship would have blown up in "Earth", same thing in "Space" caused by firing the main weapon.

I repeat:

All that damage to the ship, and yet amazingly, drives still driving. Shields still shielding. Fueling system, still fueling. Navigation still guiding. Absolutely amazing how none of that "critical" damage you mention has ever stopped the ship from going wherever it is that it is going.

All the attacks it survived over all those years, and somehow it is only life support that fails.

PS. Also, how is all that "catastrophic" damage evidence that there could not possibly be any self repair system? It seems you are trying to prove my point?

[Krazeh]

I repeat:

All that damage to the ship, and yet amazingly, drives still driving. Shields still shielding. Fueling system, still fueling. Navigation still guiding. Absolutely amazing how none of that "critical" damage you mention has ever stopped the ship from going wherever it is that it is going.

All the attacks it survived over all those years, and somehow it is only life support that fails.

Critical systems, by their very nature, are going to be the most robust systems on the ship, the fact they would be last to fail is hardly a suprise. It'd hardly be a great design if critical systems ended up failing before non-critical systems wouldn't it? Furthermore the fact they haven't failed yet isn't proof that they're working without a problem or anywhere near their proper operational capacity. It's been made quite clear that the systems on the Destiny are working at a fraction of what they should be and are on the road to failure.

[kwlafayette]

Man kwlafayette, you are really good at getting people riled up with your theories. I agree that on the forefront it seems like Destiny could not have survived all this time without some sort of repair mechanism, but there's just no way to know that for certain. The repair robot sure seemed like it would fit with your theory, but it required too much manual direction, unless the Icarus crew doesn't really understand how to operate it yet. Again, we just don't have enough facts.

As for the timing of the Ancients return, you're right in that there's no way to know when they planned to return. Perhaps that time is yet to come. However, I think it's fairly safe to say that whenever their scheduled return date was/will be, they aren't going to show up because they ascended before they made it back to the ship.

I suppose another possibility might be that the Ancients did return to Destiny, sometime long ago, and did whatever they planned to do, but then decided to let her continue her way. I know Rush said they were never there, but he's been mistaken before, so nothing he concludes can be considered concrete fact.

I definitely agree with that. Although, I do not know if he has been mistaken, or deliberately misleading, or both.

[kwlafayette]

Critical systems, by their very nature, are going to be the most robust systems on the ship, the fact they would be last to fail is hardly a suprise. It'd hardly be a great design if critical systems ended up failing before non-critical systems wouldn't it? Furthermore the fact they haven't failed yet isn't proof that they're working without a problem or anywhere near their proper operational capacity. It's been made quite clear that the systems on the Destiny are working at a fraction of what they should be and are on the road to failure.

Destiny has been in space a vast amount of time. The longer a system is in operation, the greater the chance of failure becomes. Eventually, if you wait long enough, chance of failure becomes certainty of failure. It is my opinion that 5 million years is far beyond the certainty of failure point, even for the most robust and most redundant system.

If they had been down to 2 out of 16 drive modules, then you definitely have a point. But there has not been one critical failure in 5 millions years! They were at 16 out of 16 drives until an act of deliberate sabotage! There is just no indication of anything major ever having gone wrong. Nothing like a drift from the planned course that the ship is unable to correct. Nothing like the fuel collectors stuck on open, or stuck closed (and moving parts would be the most likely of all systems to fail).

In five million years, the orbit of the earth will have slowed down enough that year will be much longer than now. I do not think you are grasping the vastness of time here, and the probabilities.

[kwlafayette]

Think of it this way. If the chance an Ancient drive failing is 1 billionth of a percent, and this chance doubles every 100,000 years, what number do you end up with? 2 to the 50th power is a huge number. It is like the fable of the girl who asked for one grain of rice on the first square of the chess board, then double each square. Only more so. You end up at absolute certainty of failure long before you hit that 5 millionth year.

It is 11259% chance of failure. Those odds are worse than Vegas even! I cannot get past the math on this one. Without self repair, for at least part of its journey, Destiny should be completely derelict by now.

[Mike.]

I repeat:

All that damage to the ship, and yet amazingly, drives still driving. Shields still shielding. Fueling system, still fueling. Navigation still guiding. Absolutely amazing how none of that "critical" damage you mention has ever stopped the ship from going wherever it is that it is going.

All the attacks it survived over all those years, and somehow it is only life support that fails.

PS. Also, how is all that "catastrophic" damage evidence that there could not possibly be any self repair system? It seems you are trying to prove my point?

You're grasping at straws here, so far you haven't posted a single shred of evidence from the show, whereas everything I said is properly sourced/established canon.
Show me your proof or concede the point.

Ancient tech is remarkably resilient. Everything they built was made to last and still functions after millions of years. The fact that you refuse to accept (show)reality shows a lack of imagination.
- Stargates last millions of years,
- the Dakara "weapon" was still fully functional with an intact powersource,
- the Repositories of Knowledge - still fine.
- The gate destroyer used by Anubis - Ancient tech and still operational, power source intact, shield...,
- all the tech Merlin left - it still works,
- Atlantis in top condition, the only damage ever caused was from lack of power to properly maintain the shield.

That's just how the Ancients made things. Accept the show's established canon.