Stargate - The Ark of Truth

[ray245]

But then...I LIKE the idea of USAF having a whole fleet of warships.

Namely because we will NEVER see a large scale GROUND battle in stargate. EVER.

[Darth Wong]

Even with all of that bullshit, it's still totally ridiculous. How many years did it take to develop the F-22, again? All with real, well-understood physics rather than having to learn entire new branches of physics from ruins?

The F-22 took 21 years to develop (the Saturn V took 5 years to develop). I doubt that the Prometheus is the F-22 of starships - IIRC the bad guy in its introduction episode was apalled that Earth would even attempt interstellar travel with such crude technology. Rather than squeezing out every last drop of performance at the cutting-edge (like the F-22), it's more like a modern third world country trying to build a Spitfire.

I concede that the introduction of Earth ships to the Stargateverse was sloppily executed, and the feel was practically copied-and-pasted from Star Trek. I also concede that having only extraterrestrial scientific knowledge is not a plausible explanation for Earth's development of starship technology. However, I don't agree that the short development time of the Prometheus is laughably impossible.

As others have pointed out, a staple of the show is that Area 51 often acquires working examples of alien technology (engines/hyperdrives from Death Gliders, Cargo ships, Al'kesh etc). They traded for plans and examples of naquadah reactors in one episode, completely skipping most of the time needed to develop a hand-held nuclear power station (if it could have been done at all).

The SGC also exchanges personnel with the Tok'ra. They can not only provide plans for Goa'uld starships, but plans of the industrial fabrication technology needed, expert consultants, and they may even outright sell parts and/or tooling to Earth.

There are a lot of ways the writers could have explained the Prometheus. The simplest would be that it really is just a runt Ha'tak or souped-up Goa'uld cargo ship, painted-by-the-numbers with off-the-shelf Tok'ra/alien manufacturing technology. The world is at war, and they needed an anti-Ha'tak vessel ASAP. That's my rationalisation. The only reason it's shown great combat performance is because the Asgard explicitly improved it and gave it Asgard shields.

Regarding naquadriah, American nuclear submarines use highly enriched uranium that has over 130x the energy density of the fuel in a natural uranium reactor. Yet the fundamental principles are the same. A naquadriah reactor may be nothing more than a high power density naquadah reactor, that happens to be very temperamental.

And at what point did this project become large enough to reveal its existence to the American public? It's bad enough that you have to make up all this bullshit to justify this absurd rapid-development cycle, but it was supposedly done with so few resources that they could keep substantial portions of the product development cycle secret from the general public, was it not?

[SirNitram]

Not too secret. It's funding was found and investigated by a bog-standard reporter, who also obtained some of the exotic metal making up the hull. It was mistaken for a next-gen nuclear reactor, which isn't too odd, given that the only technology actually created from scratch was the failed reactor.

It's been repeatedly shown that, for all the government denies the Stargate, anyone interested can find alot about it.

[Chris OFarrell]

The development of Earths ships was unrealistic, but not grossly so, certainly no Star Trek where they'll often totally go through completely alien tech in an episode and be just fine for Act 4.

They recovered the two Death Gliders in Season 2, the first episode in fact. Between the two of them, they built their own version of a Death Glider, with lots of Earth technology' glued' over the top of it by mid season 4. During this whole time they were learning a lot about the technology as well as a lot of other alien technology, with huge amounts of resources being thrown into the effort.

Of course the 301 was a complete failure insomuch as they didn't know about the comptuer overrides in the Goa'uld systems that took it out of their control, but they DID successfuly integrate a lot of Earth tech.

In the middle of Season 5 we saw that they were able to repair a somewhat badly shot up Cargo Ship, that Earth had complete plans to the things and a good enough knowledge to make repairs and replace components, albeit still not exactly reliable.

Then at the beginning of Season 6 we have the X-302 prototype. And when you look at it, its not THAT unreasonable. It uses conventional jet and rocket engines, weapons, radar, with advanced alien materials in the construction to strengthen and improve it. The only REAL two alien technologies are the inertial dampening drive technology and the hyperdrive. The former was a KEY component of the 301 that they have been studying since season 2 and the later was crude, unpredictable and simply didn't really work, EVER. We also find out large chunks of the F-302 were developed by the private sector and later in season 8, one of the major aeronautical companies would figure it out.

The first PRODUCTION model varients of the F-302 were only reason by the start of season 7, ironicly in the 'Prometheus' episode, Major Davis comments that none of the 302's under production are ready to fly.

Prometheus and the 304's just blew the whole thing away, unless you want to believe that the manufacturing process itself was done using alien technology.

From what I can see, a lot of the fundemental principals behind Goa'uld technology are not THAT insane to understand from an Earth perspective, just that a lot of materials not available on Earth (Naquadah especially, also Trinnium and other stuff) prevent Earth from moving down those paths until the Stargate program starts.

Of course, getting a basic scientific understanding is something so utterly different from *engineering* it into reality that its not funny, but I don't think the producers exactly understand that.

Prometheus then utterly blew this away of course

[NecronLord]

Regarding the Ark of Truth film, I wonder if the aberrant replicator behaviour could be something programmed into them by the IOA to allow them to take over priors and use their 'mind powers.'

[Winston Blake]

And at what point did this project become large enough to reveal its existence to the American public? It's bad enough that you have to make up all this bullshit to justify this absurd rapid-development cycle, but it was supposedly done with so few resources that they could keep substantial portions of the product development cycle secret from the general public, was it not?

I haven't made up anything that hasn't been implied or referenced in the show. We don't get the specifics of Earth's extraterrestrial trade or Area 51 projects, so there's room to speculate within the known facts. If that leads to a plausible explanation for an apparent absurdity, then it's not really bullshit.

The entire point of my rationalisation is that the apparent size of the project could be dramatically reduced if we assume the Stargate program was smart and took full advantage of its offworld resources and partners. Regarding Earth components, you don't actually need to tell defense contractors what Ultra Radar A or Super Fuel Pump B or Cool Captain Chair C is really for.

That is, the development of non-sensitive systems can be safely outsourced, and the few remaining sensitive systems can be acquired from offworld. Area 51 only strictly had to develop the new-fangled naquadriah reactor (which got the project noticed by a reporter as a plot point, as has been mentioned).

In fact, cover-up stories could allow sensitive work to be hidden in plain sight, e.g. modelling absurdly high temperature rocket nozzles. 'Pure research' of course, for a 'hypothetical future antimatter craft', by the way can you hurry I have to deliver four of these by next March.

If it's hiding the payroll of a big black global project that irks you, then you probably don't like the entire premise of SG-1.

[Crazedwraith]

Regarding the Prometheus did the reactor ever even work? In 'Prometheus' it caused the hyperdrive to jump them in a random location then the asgard hauled them nearly everywhere in 'Unnatural Selection.' In its next appearance 'Memento' the reactor exploded. Next we hear the Prometheus limped home using "an engine" from an Al'Kesh an shortly afterwards the Asgard installed their own hyperdrive.

Strangely enough it was never the hyperdrive istelf that malfunction the probelm was always the naquadriah. So when they said to they installed engines from elsewhere do they really mean they got a new power source?

[SirNitram]

Regarding the Prometheus did the reactor ever even work? In 'Prometheus' it caused the hyperdrive to jump them in a random location then the asgard hauled them nearly everywhere in 'Unnatural Selection.' In its next appearance 'Memento' the reactor exploded. Next we hear the Prometheus limped home using "an engine" from an Al'Kesh an shortly afterwards the Asgard installed their own hyperdrive.

Strangely enough it was never the hyperdrive istelf that malfunction the probelm was always the naquadriah. So when they said to they installed engines from elsewhere do they really mean they got a new power source?

No. The Naquadriah reactor sufficed to keep the ship running when it was an empty shell in Prometheus and possibly Unnatural Selection, but it's temperment was always catastrophic. And on her very next flight, despite the modifications made by a species with actual shipbuilding experience, the reactor blew out.

So that means the one new tech didn't work. The engines looked nothing exotic. The inertial dampners, in retrospect, could simply have been lifted en mass from the ship in Nightwalkers.