How far away do two Stargate have to be?

[thekillman]

Now my fanfic will work!

Considering that there's not all that much precedence for the limit of stargates, you have a LOT of wiggle room to deal with this. Write it either way, it's not exactly set in stone what the minimum limit it.

I just rewatched EATG (and reconfirmed once more my extreme annoyance with many of the decisions made), and judging from context, its not entirely clear if the Moon really is far away enough, or that it takes some time before the Pegasus gate detects competition and supercedes the gate. After all, Atlantis did need to recalibrate to lock on to the pegasus grid.

[BethDoodle]

its not entirely clear if the Moon really is far away enough

DAVIS to Sheppard: "It's the hive ship. It dropped out of hyperspace and established orbit around the moon just before you arrived."
If the hive ship is orbiting the moon, and then Sheppard gated in from Atlantis, then the Pegasus 'gate on the hive ship couldn't have been in range of Earth's 'gate address or Sheppard would have wound up on the hive.

[lvalen18]

The actual distance can be debated forever.

After the replicator attack on Atlantis when it was forced out of hyperspace due to the damaged caused they couldn't calibrate the gate since they were moving too fast. How fast? Cant say for sure but the jumpers were able to move faster then Atlantis to make a path through an asteroid field. By that logic a gate address only spans a small amount of space, but then again that would mean every couple of months a planet needs a new address. The distance only matters based on the episode.

[thekillman]

The actual distance can be debated forever.

Based upon logic, it must be about the size of a star system. Otherwise the dialing system makes no sense as a planet would constantly need updates for it's position. I find it extremely unlikely that the Pegasus Stargate would immediately take precedence. Besides, the whole superseding thing sounded like a software, not hardware feature (they tried to work around it with Midway). If the Pegasus gate needed a few minutes to establish it's dominance, that's all that's needed. The Superhive arrived only a few moments before Sheppard, and thereafter any known attempt failed. So, all that's needed to connect Enemy At The Gate with every other episode is to assume that the Pegasus Gate does not instantly take precedence, allowing sheppard to arrive at earth and any other attempt to fail.

Considering that all that they had after First Strike was the stars to navigate, Atlantis may simply have been moving too fast to accurately determine it's position. Although this may put it at significant fractions of c, the PJ moving around the star system in minutes proves it can attain massive speeds close to the speed of light anyway. So, it's more likely that Atlantis' position could not be accurately measured due to the lack of easy landmarks than that it moved out of it's gate address all the time.