Destiny must have self repair, otherwise, it simply would no longer be functional. Obviously, given the holes in the outer hull, the self repair currently is not working. Obviously, given the holes in the hull, the ship is not impervious to damage. Obviously, in the million(s) of years Destiny has been autonomously operating, not all damage would have been superficial without affecting critical systems. You must assume that on an unmanned mission, self repair is a high priority system. Given that the engines and shields are still functional, you must assume that the self repair has not been out of operation for very long (only a few hundred years at most).
So the question is, why isn't Destiny's self repair system working? It seems there are only a few choices:
The self repair broke down.
Someone or thing disabled/destroyed the self repair.
The self repair ran out of some critical resource, but is still operational.
On an unmanned mission, it is my opinion that self repair is the highest priority system; so the repair system would repair itself first regardless of any other damage to the ship. I say this because, without repair ability, the rest of the systems would soon become inoperable. Further I would say that the system would be both well protected, and redundant, so some random event is very unlikely to destroy it, but leave the rest of the ship intact.
Repair implies manufacturing, so if it ran out of something, it would have to be some externally harvested resource, and not anything like repair bots.
Why isn't Destiny repairing itself?
The two most likely theories in my mind:
1. Someone boarded Destiny and turned it off.
2. During a trip across a void, Destiny ran out of power for FTL and raw materials for repairs (ore, minerals, stuff like that). It shut down all the systems it could, cannibalized what it could, and continued to repair what it could, but drifting for thousands or millions of years with no asteroids or gas clouds or planets to harvest materials from, there was eventually a critical failure that it could not fix. This would have to be a recent thing, a few hundred years or perhaps a thousand at most.
Perhaps most of Destiny's time has been spent in powerless drift across some great void?
So the question is, why isn't Destiny's self repair system working? It seems there are only a few choices:
The self repair broke down.
Someone or thing disabled/destroyed the self repair.
The self repair ran out of some critical resource, but is still operational.
On an unmanned mission, it is my opinion that self repair is the highest priority system; so the repair system would repair itself first regardless of any other damage to the ship. I say this because, without repair ability, the rest of the systems would soon become inoperable. Further I would say that the system would be both well protected, and redundant, so some random event is very unlikely to destroy it, but leave the rest of the ship intact.
Repair implies manufacturing, so if it ran out of something, it would have to be some externally harvested resource, and not anything like repair bots.
Why isn't Destiny repairing itself?
The two most likely theories in my mind:
1. Someone boarded Destiny and turned it off.
2. During a trip across a void, Destiny ran out of power for FTL and raw materials for repairs (ore, minerals, stuff like that). It shut down all the systems it could, cannibalized what it could, and continued to repair what it could, but drifting for thousands or millions of years with no asteroids or gas clouds or planets to harvest materials from, there was eventually a critical failure that it could not fix. This would have to be a recent thing, a few hundred years or perhaps a thousand at most.
Perhaps most of Destiny's time has been spent in powerless drift across some great void?
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