The Gate Generations

[Quadhelix]

I know destiny seemed to have a large number of kinos but was it ever made clear that its manufacturing them to demand? - I don't recall this but correct me if I am wrong.

This is the best I can give you for now: most of the photosynth tour is down, so I have no way of checking if that is the original source.

We know they are ahead of destiny yes but we also know that the seed ships were not only planting gates but also looking for something. If the ancients already knew what direction to send destiny in then why even bother using seed ships and planting gates?

That isn't the right question, but I'll answer it anyway. You plant the Stargates because, while Destiny's out there, you may as well have the crew explore a little, and the Stargates help you do that.

The right question, by the way, is, "Why plant Stargates that nobody is going to use?" The evidence strongly suggests that, in the millions of years between Destiny's launch and Atlantis's departure to Pegasus, the Ancient's civilization never expanded beyond the Milky Way, let alone to the billions or trillions of galaxies that would be littered with Stargates if the Seed Ships were launched in all directions.

Again, as above, earth doesn't have a backwards and forwards, it has a top, bottom, left, right.. it's a big 360 globe with all sorts of directions for a space craft to go off in. We have galaxies above and below us as well as to the side of us. Therefore it would make sense that seed ships (and factory ships) were send off in all directions and SOME of them then managed to plot a path / send back data that destiny deemed valuable enough to investigate.

That seems like a colossal waste of Seed Ships when the Stargates they plant won't get used by anyone ever. If that were really necessary, then they could send out a few cheap, disposable unmanned scouts for that mission and then send off Destiny and the Seed Ships when they have a viable direction.

But destiny wasn't planning it's route. This was plotted by the seed ships which did all the leg work in each galaxy. Destiny as simply following up on those that found what it was looking for.

Semantics - the point is that Destiny has a preplanned route and the Seed Ships do not plant Stargates off that route.

Yes but don't forget it was millions of years ago that they started this and the universe was younger and thus there may have been less threat from other races.

I was younger ten seconds ago, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to go around provoking fights.

Assuming that the Ancients would have shot down any catastrophic asteroids headed towards Earth, we can safely say that Destiny is less than 65 million years old. The universe is ~13.6 billion years old. Yes, ~.5% of the universe's age is still really freaking old even by evolutionary standards, but consider this: the Permian-Triassic extinction was 250 million years ago and wiped out nearly all life on Earth; were it not for that extinction, it's quite conceivable that the Ancients would have found the Milky Way already occupied by a large spacefaring empire.

Even if there was, any race that came into contact with ancient ships and technology would realise that a race that could achieve those goals is a formiddable enemy not to be messed with.

The thing is, dropping random junk around other sovereign powers' territory is generally the sort of thing that's seen as an act of aggression. It's even worse when it's not junk, but rather transmitters.

In other words, any race that came into contact with the Seed Ships passing into their territory is going to assume that it's a prelude to an invasion, or at the very least take it as an act of aggression.

The narrow corridor of gates that destiny was aware of. There may be others that are out there but simply of no interest to destiny and thus not displayed.

Nope.

It's worth noting that the Destiny's crew has had access to the Seed Ships' databases since "Life" in Season 1. This means that, unless the information about these other 'Gates is password protected for some reason, they would have found out about them.

This is important to remember because in "Lost," Eli was fairly sure that the 'Gates were in a relatively linear corridor, rather than spread out over the galaxy or isolated in pockets. This belief was borne out when they managed to make their way back to another planet that they had visited, rather than rambling aimlessly about the galaxy in a random direction. You could argue that the dialing remote pulls up a list of 'Gates on Destiny's path, rather than searching for nearby 'Gates. However, if the remote actually contained such a list (a) it doesn't seem too unlikely that a map feature would have been included and (b) there would be no reason not to include 'Gates off the corridor.

Another point when 'Gates outside the corridor would have come up is "Gauntlet." The Drone Command Ships were blockading planets with Stargates.

TELFORD: And they're at every single Gate?

YOUNG: Well, they figured out how we operate. They know which stars we use to recharge; they know that we use the Gate to re-supply. They're everywhere we wanna be along that path.

TELFORD: So go off the path - use the shuttles to check out ungated worlds.

RUSH: We can't do that. There's over three hundred billion stars in that galaxy. Only a small percentage of them have planets. An even smaller percentage are capable of sustaining life. The seed ships did the legwork; they found the needles in the haystack. If we go off on our own, it could be months, maybe even years, between viable worlds. It's not an option.

If there were Stargates off the path, that would have been an ideal time to check for them to see if the Drones hadn't missed one. Additionally, Rush wouldn't be talking about going off the corridor as "go[ing] off on our own."

It's an idea. You seem to think that its wrong to think the seed ships had any purpose other than supporting destiny

I don't necessarily think that it's wrong to consider it as a possibility, but I do object to you treating it as unobjectionable fact.

hang on a minute, they were seeding stargates and that wasn't really what destinys mission was about. Thats two purposes the seed ships have already.

And a third purpose: collecting power from stars. And a forth purpose: flying faster than light. And a fifth purpose: sending out sub-space signals.

It seems, however, that purposes two through five (and others) are all just means of accomplishing the Seed Ships' primary purpose: supporting Destiny. This is not, of course, to say that you are wrong - only that your argument is not as conclusive as you seem to think.

[Durgia]

I'm mostly trying to reconcile the story against the capability of a device to open a wormhole: my understanding of both Stargate: SG1 and Stargate: Atlantis was that the reason the gates were almost entirely built of naqaudah was to be able to conduct enough energy to open a stable wormhole. Its durability was just a happy additional benefit. Then SGU comes along and introduces a gate not made of naquadah - even though its range is limited compared to the MW and the Pegasus gates, establishing an event like a wormhole would still require a huge amount of energy that only a superconductive material could channel. Besides, the Destiny gates wouldn't need to have a huge range due to the presence of the ship - whose gate could establish intergalactic wormholes. Even if there was more equipment underneath the ship's gate room, I can't see how that equipment would have any bearing on the actual gate's ability to generate a wormhole, considering part of its job is to contain the event horizon. Two things seem to be important in the gate's functionality: energy and conductivity, considering we can assume that Stargate Command utilises only a nuclear reactor at best (I know how that sounds), which apparently science tells us would not be nearly enough to create a wormhole.

The current canon would mean, in my view, that there must be another material somewhere out there that - although more brittle - is still just as or only slightly less superconductive than naquadah, in which case, it needs to be discovered! Quick! Admittedly, the Destiny gates may only be made of a small amount of naquadah (limited resources on the seed ships), hence explaining their limited range.

But even that seems to suggest that destroying the casing would not necessarily completely render the device unusable?! Ugh.

Hey, don't write off Quadhelix's Story Corner just yet. It killed this thread, and that's something.

During SG1 a Stargate was built from a toaster and some industrial wire... I don't think it needs a special material just to make a wormhole. (Reference to Orlin in Sam's basement) To make a Stargate capable of surviving for 10s of millions of years on the other hand...

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

That isn't the right question, but I'll answer it anyway. You plant the Stargates because, while Destiny's out there, you may as well have the crew explore a little, and the Stargates help you do that.

Yes but destiny is equipped with shuttles so what really is the point? Ok the gates are faster but the shuttles allow you to explore vast distances on a planet. As you said further down below, invading other races territories would almost certainly be seen as an aggressive act so why plant stargates everywhere if you can just dial into a ship and explore from there w

The right question, by the way, is, "Why plant Stargates that nobody is going to use?" The evidence strongly suggests that, in the millions of years between Destiny's launch and Atlantis's departure to Pegasus, the Ancient's civilization never expanded beyond the Milky Way, let alone to the billions or trillions of galaxies that would be littered with Stargates if the Seed Ships were launched in all directions.

Given that the gates can only be activated by remote and no other dialling sequence (that we're aware of) that is actually a very good point. We do know two things though: The Milky Way has newer gates and Pegasus has even newer gates. I don't think the ancients would go to thousands of planets and replace gates manually when they already have the tech to build and plant them autonomously. From my POV it would make sense that a follow up wave of seed ships would be gradually working their way around and replacing gates gradually.

That seems like a colossal waste of Seed Ships when the Stargates they plant won't get used by anyone ever.

Yes and No. Yes because as you say they may never be used however we know that the ancients were excited by the spreading of life and the exchange of knowledge etc. Therefore it would seem logical that they would want to connect as much of the universe as they could while also investigating this radiation thing. No because if the ships were capable of gathering materials and being built autonomously it wouldn't be a waste of anything more than asteroids. The ancients wouldn't be wasting their own time, the ships would just be released into space and allowed to get on with it while needing no attention from the ancients. As previously mentioned, if they're able to gather the raw elements from the stars themselves then even the asteroids would be left for other races to mine.

If that were really necessary, then they could send out a few cheap, disposable unmanned scouts for that mission and then send off Destiny and the Seed Ships when they have a viable direction.

Where was currency ever demonstrated in the ancients way of life?
Yes they could do this but as I said above it would make sense that the ancients were keeping their options open. For all we know, destiny may have jumped course to other seed ships a few times. We saw a few zig zagging lines from earth on the display and then the camera moved away so we will never know the exact course it took. It's possible however that the seed ships find bubbles of interesting things and that destiny doesn't follow the same seed ships continuously. Granted I can't say it doesn't follow the same ships either but it's a possibility and I am being open minded about it.

Semantics - the point is that Destiny has a preplanned route and the Seed Ships do not plant Stargates off that route.

No. Season 2, episode 20:

RUSH: We can't do that. There's over three hundred billion stars in that galaxy. Only a small percentage of them have planets. An even smaller percentage are capable of sustaining life. The seed ships did the legwork; they found the needles in the haystack. If we go off on our own, it could be months, maybe even years, between viable worlds. It's not an option.

You are wrong. The seed ships are ahead searching for habitable planets and then planting gates. Yes destiny may take a linear route through the galaxy worked out by the seed ships but it doesn't mean that those are the only planets with gates. I stick with my original suggestion that there are others that destiny either does not know of or have not been presented to the crew.

Assuming that the Ancients would have shot down any catastrophic asteroids headed towards Earth, we can safely say that Destiny is less than 65 million years old. The universe is ~13.6 billion years old. Yes, ~.5% of the universe's age is still really freaking old even by evolutionary standards, but consider this: the Permian-Triassic extinction was 250 million years ago and wiped out nearly all life on Earth; were it not for that extinction, it's quite conceivable that the Ancients would have found the Milky Way already occupied by a large spacefaring empire.

All true. For all we know the ancients may have made their own technological discoveries from another civilisation..

The thing is, dropping random junk around other sovereign powers' territory is generally the sort of thing that's seen as an act of aggression. It's even worse when it's not junk, but rather transmitters.

Agreed and this is why I also said it would make sense for many seed ships to have been targetted and destroyed - thus the need for a factory ship between every x amount of galaxies - some of which could have also been destroyed. For all we know, the Goa'uld space station could have been a captured ancient seed ship factory (ok it probably wasn't but we know they liked this kind of thing) which would explain why the MW has no gate replacement / maintenance going on.

In other words, any race that came into contact with the Seed Ships passing into their territory is going to assume that it's a prelude to an invasion, or at the very least take it as an act of aggression.

Probably yes but then Destiny is knackered, clearly attacked and despite having the firepower the blue aliens still haven't destroyed it so there ARE races out there that will observe before shooting. You are wrong to assume that they're all trigger happy like many americans.

Nope.

It's worth noting that the Destiny's crew has had access to the Seed Ships' databases since "Life" in Season 1. This means that, unless the information about these other 'Gates is password protected for some reason, they would have found out about them.

No they had access to ONE seed ship and that was stationary doing nothing unlike the others that are still ahead of destiny. It was a single ship sat there doing nothing light years behind the others. This may well have been just a maintenance seed ship. I'm not saying it definitely was but *may have been*. Also the crew weren't on the ship long enough to look at its entire database and they were also preoccupied with the power transfer and the thought of getting home. Sure, telford had access to the ship but he openly states that they worked on the ship to get it online and were then trying to chase down destiny ever since. It doesn't mean he was studying all the other stargates - he may have realised the information was there but not thought it was important as it was on destiny etc.

We don't even know that desinty has a full database of all the stargates - the seed ships are plotting a course for destiny and may simply pass back the gates in the area of the course.

This is important to remember because in "Lost," Eli was fairly sure that the 'Gates were in a relatively linear corridor, rather than spread out over the galaxy or isolated in pockets.

Yes and Eli has also been known to make mistakes in the past too. As I said, for all we know destiny only has information on the gates on its course.

This belief was borne out when they managed to make their way back to another planet that they had visited, rather than rambling aimlessly about the galaxy in a random direction. You could argue that the dialing remote pulls up a list of 'Gates on Destiny's path, rather than searching for nearby 'Gates. However, if the remote actually contained such a list (a) it doesn't seem too unlikely that a map feature would have been included and (b) there would be no reason not to include 'Gates off the corridor.

Yes but the remotes are pretty small aren't they. So small it seems unlikely that they would have a range over an entire galaxy. I'd say it's probably a mixture of the two - it has data from destiny but can also (via the limited range stargates) scan for any other gates in the area. Not that this really has anything to do with the idea of the seed ship support network..

Another point when 'Gates outside the corridor would have come up is "Gauntlet." The Drone Command Ships were blockading planets with Stargates.If there were Stargates off the path, that would have been an ideal time to check for them to see if the Drones hadn't missed one. Additionally, Rush wouldn't be talking about going off the corridor as "go[ing] off on our own."

Yes but again, for all we know destiny only has details of the gates of interest and not all the others.

I don't necessarily think that it's wrong to consider it as a possibility, but I do object to you treating it as unobjectionable fact.

But I haven't. All I've done is put forward and idea and try to explain the logic and reasoning behind it and you just try to rip it apart (as you do with many ideas in many threads I've noticed). In fact you're the one who treats your own ideas as unobjectionable because you only accept your own ideas / logic and try to destroy anyone elses.

And a third purpose: collecting power from stars. And a forth purpose: flying faster than light. And a fifth purpose: sending out sub-space signals.

Get a grip. Those are not purposes. They are simply methods of operation. A car has a purpose of transporting people from A -> B. It can also carry goods. That doesn't mean that consuming fuel is a 'purpose' that is just a method of operation to do its job.

The seed ships main purposes that we know of are to plant manufacture and plant stargates and to observe any regions of space that may be of interest to destiny.

It seems, however, that purposes two through five (and others) are all just means of accomplishing the Seed Ships' primary purpose: supporting Destiny. This is not, of course, to say that you are wrong - only that your argument is not as conclusive as you seem to think.

You do not know for a fact that their primary purpose is to support destiny. Yes they do this while they are out there planting gates but this may just be a convenience - such as when someone asks you to grab them something while you're at the shop. It doesn't mean your primary reason for going to the shop was to get what that person asked for because you were already going.

[Pytheas]

OK, so maybe the thread wasn't dead. It's just turned into a boxing ring for Quadhelix and Energizer.

Anybody want to place bets?!

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

Not from my POV. I have ideas that continue to get shot down and I'm a bit miffed to be honest. No "Good idea but how about this or that?" No it's just always "Nope, wrong, never" etc.

It's Quads way or nothing..

[Energizer_Vs_ZPM]

Not from my POV. I have ideas that continue to get shot down and I'm a bit miffed to be honest. No "Good idea but how about this or that?" No it's just always "Nope, wrong, never" etc.

It's Quads way or nothing..

[Quadhelix]

No "Good idea but how about this or that?" No it's just always "Nope, wrong, never" etc.

Good point - I think that I came on far too aggressively because I mistakenly believed that you were presenting your idea as irrefutable fact. Looking back at your original post, it seems far less authoritative than I originally thought.

So, for what it's worth, I am sorry about getting so aggressive.

But I haven't. All I've done is put forward and idea and try to explain the logic and reasoning behind it and you just try to rip it apart (as you do with many ideas in many threads I've noticed). In fact you're the one who treats your own ideas as unobjectionable because you only accept your own ideas / logic and try to destroy anyone elses.

I am biased in favor of my own opinions - everyone is biased in favor of his or her own opinions. I'm biased because I can see all the evidence that led me to form that opinion but have more difficultly seeing the evidence against it.

That's why we have debates on these forums - to help expose the evidence and reasoning on both sides. When someone argues back against my ideas, they are doing me and everyone else the same favor that I do when I argue against others' ideas.

Yes but destiny is equipped with shuttles so what really is the point? Ok the gates are faster but the shuttles allow you to explore vast distances on a planet. As you said further down below, invading other races territories would almost certainly be seen as an aggressive act so why plant stargates everywhere if you can just dial into a ship and explore from there w

That's good point.

My suspicion on the matter is that the Seed ships try to avoid things that suggest the presence of potentially hostile powers (e.g., hyperspace signatures, sub-space communications, etc.), but that raises the question of how they ran across the blue-skinned aliens.

Given that the gates can only be activated by remote and no other dialling sequence (that we're aware of) that is actually a very good point. We do know two things though: The Milky Way has newer gates and Pegasus has even newer gates. I don't think the ancients would go to thousands of planets and replace gates manually when they already have the tech to build and plant them autonomously. From my POV it would make sense that a follow up wave of seed ships would be gradually working their way around and replacing gates gradually.

It's quite possible that, when the Ancients came up with a new design of Stargate, they built a new generation of Seed Ships capable of building that design and then used those Seed Ships to replace the existing Stargates.

Of course, it's also possible that Stargate-grade naquadah might be so finicky to work with that each Stargate had to be made in a lab at the cost of thousands of man hours, even with extensive automation.

Where was currency ever demonstrated in the ancients way of life?

Time is currency. Raw materials are currency. Ideas are currency.

You are wrong. The seed ships are ahead searching for habitable planets and then planting gates. Yes destiny may take a linear route through the galaxy worked out by the seed ships but it doesn't mean that those are the only planets with gates. I stick with my original suggestion that there are others that destiny either does not know of or have not been presented to the crew.

The problem is that, if there were Stargates off the path, the Drone ships would be guarding those too, unless the Drones have some way of magically knowing that Destiny doesn't know about those 'Gates. That would have been something rather noteworthy - "Gee, the Drones ships are guarding all these planets along our path, but they're also guarding all these other planets that just so happen to be emitting the same subspace signal as the Stargates."

Also, it occurs to me, if there were other Stargates in the galaxy, wouldn't Destiny's sensors be able to pick up their subspace signals the same way that they pick up the Drones?

Probably yes but then Destiny is knackered, clearly attacked and despite having the firepower the blue aliens still haven't destroyed it so there ARE races out there that will observe before shooting. You are wrong to assume that they're all trigger happy like many americans.

The ones that observe before shooting aren't the ones that I'm concerned about provoking.

Seriously, however, the presence of peaceful civilizations would not necessarily negate the threat from hostile ones.

No they had access to ONE seed ship and that was stationary doing nothing unlike the others that are still ahead of destiny.

What I had in mind was that, in "Life," they were, "able to access the sub-space link between Destiny and the unmanned ships that were sent out ahead of her."

Yes but the remotes are pretty small aren't they. So small it seems unlikely that they would have a range over an entire galaxy. I'd say it's probably a mixture of the two - it has data from destiny but can also (via the limited range stargates) scan for any other gates in the area. Not that this really has anything to do with the idea of the seed ship support network..

Well, my argument is something like this:

• If there were Stargates off Destiny's path, then they would probably show up on the remote unless the remote were somehow limited to 'Gates on the path.
• If the remote could display 'Gates off the path, then the possible directions for the teams in "Lost" go from "towards the Destiny" and "away from Destiny" to a whole 360 degrees of possible paths.
• If the teams could go in any direction, it is unlikely that James' team could have found the planet where the original team was lost and exceedingly unlikely that Eli, Chloe, and Scott would have stumbled on the planet with the crashed ship.

[Aesop]

As I understand it, the current story is that the Destiny gates are the 1st Generation (prototypes); the Milky Way/Avalon gates are the 2nd Generation; and the Pegasus gates are the 3rd Generation.

I have something of a problem with this. If the Alterans arrived in the Milky Way Galaxy and established first on Dakara already with the capability to build Astria Porta, then it doesn't really make much sense for them to use conventional space travel to re-establish themselves on Earth in order to build a ship containing "prototype" Stargates without first utilising them for their own interplanetary means.

(I also have a theory about the Giza gate being taken by Ra initially from Dakara, where there were two: a prototype twinned with the Abydos gate, and an upgraded version...).

Instead, I find it far more likely that they arrived in Avalon/Milky Way and first established statehood there using the MW Gates, and then made Terra/Earth their capital planet, or at least a shipbuilding yard where they constructed Destiny. Since the Stargates in the MW need to be built of naquadah to produce enough energy to create a stable wormhole, surely a Stargate built of a different material or considerably less naquadah suggests technological advance, not regression? Plus, Destiny's gates would have to be manufactured in transit using limited resources.

I don't see what's so hard to believe about the chronological order of the gate versions. Given what we know: Destiny and her gate design predate the Antarctic gate, the Antarctic gate is said to be around 50 million years old.

It's entirely likely that the Destiny-era gates were in fact used throughout the Milky Way. At some point the Seed Ships and Destiny were launched, never to be contacted again by the Ancients, hence the lack of any kind of design update with the gates. Some hundreds of thousands or maybe even of millions of years after Destiny launched from Earth the second rendition of the Stargate is developed and the "new" Milky Way network is established. Some millions of years after that the Ori plague forces the Ancients to abandon the Milky Way, they flee to Pegasus and develop the final rendition of the Stargate which becomes the basis for the Pegasus network.

I also question the idea that the Antarctica gate is older than the Giza gate, although only by a few years. My explanation about Dakara's two gates sort of ties up the issue of language (how MW races can be understood due to a language program in the buffer, which didn't exist in the Dakara/Abydos prototypes, and therefore why the Abydos Expedition needed to translate the local tongue), and why the point-of-origin symbol is still the circle-topped lambda (representing instead the mountain in which the superweapon was located).

Thoughts?!

I think it makes sense that the Antarctic gate is older. We can glean from episodes like "Lost City, Pt. 2" that when the Ancients inhabited Earth the continents hadn't drifted to their present locations and most likely had formed one of the supercontinents, so I believe the gate would have been nearer to the equator. After tens of millions of years of continental drift, the original gate is now near the south pole. Not too far fetched if you asked me.