How did the Seed Ships gather the materials for the gates?

[thekillman]

I would assume the Seed Ship docks with an asteroid (or scoops up the ~10m ones) and uses their naquahdah to build the gates. cue robotic arms and whatnot to build, assemble and place the gates and voila, you have a gate builder.

[garhkal]

Na. their front opens up ala unicron and eats them up!

[nathan MCD]

Or maybe they don't even have naquida in them.

good point

they are pretty basic gates, not as basic as a bunch of fibreoptics, titanium and a toaster like the gate used by orlin but they are pretty easily damaged by weapons fire compared to newer models that can withstand meteor strikes, probably dont have naquadah.

[Krisz]

Since I've always managed to find a thread to discuss any thoughts about various things in Stargate that hit me out of the blue sometimes, I have resurrected this one. I guess that's why I've never started my own thread once since I joined GW!

On watching Air and Lost recently it got me wondering. Apart from how the gates were actually placed on the planets after being built on board the seedships, which has been answered by this thread with some great ideas, I began to wonder how the gates, once they're established and still operational after thousands of years on uninhabited planets are always in nice 'clearings'.

In 'Lost' we go to a few planets with vegetation and a snow covered forest as well as a desert, as in Air. How do the gates survive being uprooted and toppled by tree roots or damaged by vines that push their tendrils into the smallest cracks? How is it that the gate in the snow covered forest isn't covered in a snow drift and only the path left by the gate activating would be accessible when the team come through? Realistically they would be walking into deeper snow and denser tree growth since the 'kawoosh' would have cleared the snow and trees horizontally.

How is it that gates in deserts are not buried by sand dunes? We've seen them buried in rock slides, by meteor hits, fall into the ocean due to erosion of the land and destroyed by lava flows. Since these events are less likely than encroachment by plant life I have to wonder how the area all around them, not just what you'd expect is cleared by the gate activating, if at all since it was placed there are kept clear. Even if the gate activates the teams from Destiny should be faced with impenetrable plant growth.

I can only think that there is a device built into the base of the gate that emits some kind of radiation that stunts plant growth in the immediate vicinity of the gate. Some other means must be used to keep sand and other debris from accumulating on the gate to prevent it from spinning.

[RunnerRonon]

You raise a very good point there Kisz! The gates are thousands of years old, but it seems like the clearings around them have only been there for a few years at most. It might be that gates that got covered by snow or sand don't show up, or aren't accessible from Destiny(which they've mentioned several times in the first season), but that wouldn't explain why all the other gates have a perfect clearing around it. Radiation against plant life would be an option, but I feel like they would've mentioned that when they first used a Keno to check out a planet(seeing how they did all kinds of tests to see if it was safe).