Destiny's Stargate

[LtColCarter]

Spoiler:

I personally do not think the writers really think about certain elements in the Stargate realm very much. For instance, saying the Destiny's/Seed ship made gates would be inferior. Why? The Seed ships were launched 40million years B.C and Carter said that the MW gate could have been as old as 50 million years B.C. Also, this-[ATTACH=CONFIG]31944[/ATTACH] Clearly a MW type gate in Amelius's notebook.

The whole distance thing could be a combination of energy requirements AND the lack of D.H.D's for compensating for stellar drift. Those dinky dial devices SG-U teams have would be unlikely to be as good at ether of those as a D.H.D. But with the power requirements, how could such an inferior gate made out of apparently second hand materials hold enough energy to dial back to Earth from Destiny which they attempt? We know they are second hand because a blast from a Berzerker drone blasted a hole in one, but it takes powerful nukes to damage MW gates.

interesting

[Amelius]

I personally do not think the writers really think about certain elements in the Stargate realm very much. For instance, saying the Destiny's/Seed ship made gates would be inferior. Why? The Seed ships were launched 40million years B.C and Carter said that the MW gate could have been as old as 50 million years B.C. Also, this-[ATTACH=CONFIG]31944[/ATTACH] Clearly a MW type gate in Amelius's notebook.

How do you know the seed ships were launched 40 million years ago? The only thing we know is that the first Earth gate was about 50 million years old and that the Destiny gates were prototypes. So Destiny had to have been launched before the Milky Way gates were made. It's quite possible the Ancients used the Destiny gates in the Milky Way and then replaced them with the better versions when they figured out how to make them. They obviously then could not reach the Destiny or its seed ships to replace their gates and certainly they wouldn't recall the ships just to upgrade them. The mission was far too important.

The whole distance thing could be a combination of energy requirements AND the lack of D.H.D's for compensating for stellar drift. Those dinky dial devices SG-U teams have would be unlikely to be as good at ether of those as a D.H.D. But with the power requirements, how could such an inferior gate made out of apparently second hand materials hold enough energy to dial back to Earth from Destiny which they attempt? We know they are second hand because a blast from a Berzerker drone blasted a hole in one, but it takes powerful nukes to damage MW gates.

As for this, the seed ships couldn't possibly carry enough raw materials to make millions of gates to seed across the universe. They most likely have some way of taking raw materials from planets when they drop a gate. These ships have to make the gates out of whatever they find. If all they can find is iron, the gates are going to have to be made of that. They'd probably dump the weaker junk metal as soon as they can find something better, but any gates made with inferior metals would still be used, why expend the time/effort/energy to disassemble a gate just to remake it with slightly better stuff?

And also any Naquadah that's found would need to be used only for things it's needed for (the internal workings of the gate) since it'd be pretty rare. Making a whole gate out of Naquadah when you have very short supply is pretty foolish. The Ancients could make the Milky Way and Pegasus gates entirely/mostly out of Naquadah because they had enough. Find a planet with a huge supply and you can keep going back for more. Seeder ships don't have that luxury. They can fill up with as much as they can carry and move on. It's impossible to go back for more as the main mission is far more important than making gates that are stronger that the Ancients may never use anyway.

The limited amount of Naquadah in the gate could be the very reason they don't have the power to reach very far. Maybe it isn't about how much power they have stored, but how much can be channeled through the gate to make a wormhole.


And the notebook, maybe Amelius planned on Gates that could span a galaxy originally but didn't have the ability to do so with the first generation Stargates. Someone else in another thread made a good point. Leonardo da Vinci invented all kinds of things that weren't possible to build until centuries later. The idea was good but the technology was lacking. The reason the constellations weren't used on the Destiny gates is because of the limited distances. Using constellations for the coordinate system might have been dependent on gates that could span the galaxy. Shorter range stargate would meant the constellation system might not have worked for them. Or maybe those symbols were purely cosmetic and the Ancients working on the gate just wanted to get ones that worked properly before working on making them prettier

[Gurluas]

Another explanation is that the Destiny gates were simply not MEANT to be a galaxy wide network, they were meant to go in a straight line through Destiny's path so it could be resupplied.

[escyos]

Another explanation is that the Destiny gates were simply not MEANT to be a galaxy wide network, they were meant to go in a straight line through Destiny's path so it could be resupplied.

I doubt that. These were the Ancients, maybe they knew that by the time they wanted to get to Destiny they would have the power sources needed to dial there directly. Then again, maybe they were going to do a "gate-bridge" like thing.

[terminator]

Whenever they dropped out of FTL usually 2-4 gates would appear and some may or may not be locked out. This is a bit off topic but where exactly were these gates? All in one star system? In different systems several light years apart from each other? From the coordinate standpoint it has been accepted that you would likely only have one gate in any star system because they would be too close together to have different addresses. Earth never had 2 working at the same time one would always dominate the other. Just curious.

[maneth]

I would guess that the Destiny could access all the gates within about 50 or 100 light years. Given that most stars don't have a planet capable of supporting life orbiting them, and that a sphere of space 100 light years in diameter would contain some 10 or 20 stars if you assume an average distance between stars of about 10 light years on Destiny's route (it seems to avoid galactic cores, probably smart given that most apparently contain huge black holes and have few main sequence stars).

But the gate override still works, it's why the Destiny stays close to the heliopause of a star system unless it intends to recharge its energy reserves. In one episode at least there was an issue of them not being able to dial Destiny because they were too close.

[terminator]

I would guess that the Destiny could access all the gates within about 50 or 100 light years. Given that most stars don't have a planet capable of supporting life orbiting them, and that a sphere of space 100 light years in diameter would contain some 10 or 20 stars if you assume an average distance between stars of about 10 light years on Destiny's route (it seems to avoid galactic cores, probably smart given that most apparently contain huge black holes and have few main sequence stars).

But the gate override still works, it's why the Destiny stays close to the heliopause of a star system unless it intends to recharge its energy reserves. In one episode at least there was an issue of them not being able to dial Destiny because they were too close.

Great, thank you. I only saw each SGU once when they came out and didn't remember anything specific about it. I can't enjoy watching it as much if I don't understand some of their in-show scientific guidelines.

[LtColCarter]

I would guess that the Destiny could access all the gates within about 50 or 100 light years. Given that most stars don't have a planet capable of supporting life orbiting them, and that a sphere of space 100 light years in diameter would contain some 10 or 20 stars if you assume an average distance between stars of about 10 light years on Destiny's route (it seems to avoid galactic cores, probably smart given that most apparently contain huge black holes and have few main sequence stars).

But the gate override still works, it's why the Destiny stays close to the heliopause of a star system unless it intends to recharge its energy reserves. In one episode at least there was an issue of them not being able to dial Destiny because they were too close.

There was?

[Pytheas]

Eh. I know I go against the producers here, but I still think that the idea of the Destiny gates being the prototypes is problematic.

One of the first reasons I can think of is why the galaxy-specific gates are made almost entirely of naquadah. They need to be made of this material in order absorb and generate enough energy in order to open a stable wormhole. However, storing all of this naquadah on an automated gate seed ship would not only likely be extremely dangerous but there simply wouldn't be enough space, considering the gates are made en route - think about how many gates are produced by these ships!!!? I didn't keep track, but over the course of about 2 years, Destiny visited more than one galaxy, and there seemed to be a good number of Stargates seeded in each. Image how many had been created over the course of 40-60 million years??!! IMO, it's more likely the Ancients discovered another element more superconductive than naquadah, and decided to use this on the Destiny Gates instead, the benefits being that they aren't potential uber-bombs; are probably quicker and more efficient to construct on an automated system and less of the mineral is needed to store. Sure, they're more brittle, but I get the feeling the Ancients were going for quantity over quality.

I imagine that the Milky Way gates were made first, hence the reason why the DHDs are so large, and then later miniaturised the dialling tecnology for Destiny. Considering the number of gates and the use of Destiny as a sort of jump-off platform, they didn't need to be long-range, the benefit of that being the computer doesn't need to keep track of all of the Stargate addresses seeded, just the ones in each galaxy, allowing it to reuse addresses. I find it hard to believe that the Ancients would send a prototype technology out on a mission that would not actually be manned for many centuries to come, before they used the technology for their own interplanetary purposes in the Milky Way Galaxy. There may have been a negligible dating difference between the creation of the two generations, making them roughly the same age based on carbon dating, but I still prefer to think of the Milky Way gates as the first.

It's speculation I know, as well as the fact it conflagrates with the producers' explanation. But mine makes more sense!!

[Asgard Flu]

I think the Destiny gates were tailor made for their particular mission and were built at the same time as the milky Way Gates. The difference is, as someone has said, the gate seeder ships would need to use raw materials gathered and would thus be building inferior gates since Naquadah probably isn't that easy to come by and perhaps seeder ships were on a time limit and couldn't spend forever searching for naquadah resources.

In the Milky Way the gates locations would be known and thus constellations would be placed on the ring rather than numerical like symbols as on the Destiny gates, also access to resources would mean the ancients could build Milky Way gates entirely out of Naquadah meaning Milky Way gates could suck in ambient energy and have enough power to dial anywhere, Destiny gates were made of primitive resources and had no DHD so could only harness enough power each to dial nearby gates.

I think it's quite possible the Destiny gates could have preceded Milky Way gates in the sense that since Destiny's departure the Milky Way gates probably got upgraded at some point since the ancients spent quite some time in the Milky Way before upping and leaving for Pegasus.

[dr.chrismckay]

IMHO, the reason for no DHD's with the Destiny gate system would mean having to store more materials as well as complete assembly of the DHD. Another reason would be as a security precaution so that not just anyone could gate onto the ship for a takeover. Though we did see it with the Lucian Alliance. Perhaps this could be the reason that the ancients built in a shield or iris. I think that based on the time frame, the Destiny gates came first, The Pegasus gates came second, and the milky way gates last as they had a chance to correct for manual dialing. Again I am speculating.