Sci-fi's most ineffectively used technologies...

[dragon]

They fear for their immortal souls. Seriously, transporters kill you and put you back together- is there any wonder people are reluctant to use them? I think the TPM example is just Qui-Gon misspeaking.

Except there has been episodes where they show that they retain full consecious (sp) while in transport. For example when Barclay was inside the beam and was seeing other people trapped there.

[dragon]

What does it mean to "adapt" to bullets? Don't tell me you think "adapt" means "become invulnerable to". We can adapt to bullets today; we put on body armour. But that doesn't make us invulnerable.

Adapt as in modify their personal shields to be able to repell them.

Edit: anyway, this is a discussion that's been had before, and I'm not trying to start a debate on it. I'll conceed the preponderance of evidence is against my hypothesis.

Problems with conservation of momentum. Even if it can repel a bullet, the bullet's momentum is still transferred to the shield generator. Even if the generator is a large flat plate on their chest that distributes the force over their body, they'll still break bones, and if its a little internal thing it'll mash organs.

Not good, either way.

When they made the force field from their com badge that repelled the bullet, the person hit showed no signs of momentum transgerence.

[NecronLord]

That was a malfunctioning holodeck. It might give you the injury when you get hit, but if your holographic bullet is disintegrated on a force field before it hits, why bother?

[dragon]

That was a malfunctioning holodeck. It might give you the injury when you get hit, but if your holographic bullet is disintegrated on a force field before it hits, why bother?

For the same reason why the Tommy gun was able to kill the borg the safety protocol weren't working or turned off. So the bullets were real as the holodeck uses a cobination of holographic and transporter/replicator technology. Rember when Weasly got wet in the holodeck and when he went into the corridor he was dripping water onto the floor.

[MJ12 Commando]

Problems with conservation of momentum. Even if it can repel a bullet, the bullet's momentum is still transferred to the shield generator. Even if the generator is a large flat plate on their chest that distributes the force over their body, they'll still break bones, and if its a little internal thing it'll mash organs.

Not good, either way.

Unlikely. Most of the injury caused by being hit with a bulletproof vest on is backface deformation, not momentum transfer. With zero backface deformation (in the case of our hypothetical force field), a baseline human with the generator secured fairly well would be able to laugh at modern heavy machine gun rounds without significant issues. Hell the impacts wouldn't even knock the guy over, let alone hit hard enough to break bones.

Borg being technozombies one would assume that they're at least marginally tougher than regular humans no?

[Zixinus]

Even if the replicators are modified to not be able to make weapons, there should be an override by either the high staff in case the crew needs more weapons than otherwise. This is assuming that there is anything resembling sanity in the minds of the Starfleet command.

[Ryan Thunder]

Unlikely. Most of the injury caused by being hit with a bulletproof vest on is backface deformation, not momentum transfer.

Exactly what the fuck is supposed to cause the backface deformation, then, eh? Momentum transfer. You can't just ignore it. A personal shield suffers from the same problems any other sort of armour would face. The precise mechanisms might be different, but the net result is the same or worse, because instead of a nice, reinforced starship hull supporting it, it has a squishy biological body to hold it up.

Borg being technozombies one would assume that they're at least marginally tougher than regular humans no?

What grounds are you basing that assumption on?

[Solauren]

Star Trek;
Another way the transporter is underused (probably more so for Borg + Dominion transporters).

use a series of transporter relay satelites, and literally beam people from Earth to Vulcan and back. You'd establish a 'transporter highway', and be able to move materials and personelle far faster then Warp drive allows.

At a range per relay station of 40,000km, a trip of (for example) 10 light years would require roughly 2.4 billion relay stations. Maybe they should stick with warp drive.

I was thinking more the Dominion and Borg transporters, as well as the Subspace Transporter we saw in a TNG episode. Range of several light years, and it took the Enterprise a minute or so to catch up at Warp 9.

[Darth Wong]

They fear for their immortal souls. Seriously, transporters kill you and put you back together- is there any wonder people are reluctant to use them? I think the TPM example is just Qui-Gon misspeaking.

Except there has been episodes where they show that they retain full consecious (sp) while in transport. For example when Barclay was inside the beam and was seeing other people trapped there.

How many fucking times does it have to be pointed out that people would be unable to perceive interruptions in their own consciousness? This does not prove that there is no discontinuity in the process; it only proves that there are parts of the process where you are conscious.

[Darth Wong]

Problems with conservation of momentum. Even if it can repel a bullet, the bullet's momentum is still transferred to the shield generator. Even if the generator is a large flat plate on their chest that distributes the force over their body, they'll still break bones, and if its a little internal thing it'll mash organs.

Not good, either way.

Unlikely. Most of the injury caused by being hit with a bulletproof vest on is backface deformation, not momentum transfer. With zero backface deformation (in the case of our hypothetical force field), a baseline human with the generator secured fairly well would be able to laugh at modern heavy machine gun rounds without significant issues. Hell the impacts wouldn't even knock the guy over, let alone hit hard enough to break bones.

Why the fuck do you think a hypothetical force field should be assumed to have infinite rigidity? The universe is full of various kinds of force fields, and none of them possess this quality.

[CaptJodan]

The Asgard were a mighty civilization, a hundred thousand years old, with an entire galaxy's resources seemingly at their disposal.

Even with the same technology, a secret programme run by the United States military isn't going to produce anything nearly as impressive.

Most often, were they to request the Asgard's shiny stuff, like super FTL drives, they'd just get a little hologram of Thor saying, "That is not possible with your current resources. Would you like me to explain the infrastructure projects you must undertake first?"

You've as much as admitted in the past that the level of advancement the SGC has seen over the past 10 years, generally without a manual to help them along (though on occasion they did get a helping hand similar to Thor's role here, see Ion Drives and Naquada reactors) is staggering. What humans were able to do without this massive assistance has been amazing, so it doesn't make sense that suddenly they're unable to make a huge leap in at least a few areas in Asgard science just as quickly.

Take the Asgard beam weapons (this works just as well for Asgard shields, Asgard hyperdrive, beaming technology, etc). The beam weapons are the most advanced, most powerful weapons we know of that the Asgard have ever built, and it obviously took some time to develop them. In fact it was the last major advance we saw from them. Yet we've seen within a year or so all 304s have access to these weapons. This is the "Asgard's shiny stuff". Now what is the difference between shields, transporters, and weapons that make these so easy to duplicate, but they can't duplicate more simple technologies they've used in the past? The way its played out, a lot of the Asgard's shiny stuff has been monumentally more easy to duplicate than has been the more mundane.

Which is something of very limited use. It would have been a good (or at least, plausible) way to take on the Asurans' ships, I suppose. But for the most part, that's just an over-complex tactic when the Asgard also gave it guns that are the shit

I think you were referring here to the time dilation device, rather than replication on limited use factors, and I agree in principle. I can think of a few other areas where it might come in handy, should they be able to extend it over, say, a planet (as we know the Asgard can do), but the point exists that it is an option. More to the point, if they can build more TD devices, it can be used many other fields, from medicine to the use as a weapon to slow down enemy populations. A bit dicey, for sure, but certainly more plausible than Spoiler

Instant wormhole drive knowledge (come on, you know I'm going to beat this point to death)

.

So they broke it? What's so odd about that. They are the bone-bashing apes in 2001, compared to the Ancients, let alone the Ancients' super-genius, mystically-charged former-chancellor.

Um.....no. Had they actually said they had broken it, (and not had a passing chance at making another one as Carter implies) it would have made more sense and the cloak wouldn't be on this list of "things not used to their full potential". Instead, they've said nothing about what happened to the cloak. Spoiler

As an aside, I'm willing to go with the idea that it was probably destroyed, along with the chair, in the final episode, though they will probably never tell us that. Prior to that episode, though, they really haven't had any on-screen chance to break, destroy, or for some reason or another not use the device.

Honestly, the encyclopedia isn't a problem. They also have access to the database of Atlantis, but I don't see them building one in a reasonable time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they actually end up deleting the majority of information stored in Atlantis in preparation for the first season Wraith attack? They were only able to back up so much before wiping it clean, as I recall, and we have no idea if some of that knowledge they deleted contained "first you must build an ore processing facility like this before you can have super-drones like that" type information. Given how little they've advanced or taken away from Atlantis verses the SGC program, I'd say they deleted a ton of useful information.

Short of going public, and overhauling the entire education system to Asgard standards (if that's even possible for humans) and trying to introduce asgard technology to the entire planet (not a bad idea, mind, but one the writers will never embrace, with the pretense that this is RL Earth) I don't see why they should really be making much use of this stuff.

They've more than strained their credibility on how in the open the program is, and yet how dumb the public remains. Independent contractors work on replicator blocks, certain medical facilities have access to advanced medical knowledge (though, strangely, medicine is one of the few areas that just hasn't seen a huge, across the board advance compared to other sectors, but that's a topic all it's own), global warming scientists working on universe bridge technology and being able to cover up the eventual mistakes made by it, contractors working on building huge warships and fleets of fighters, the list goes on. I think we passed the point where it was reasonable that the general population doesn't at least strongly suspect something fishy is going on, but like you said, the writers ain't going there. Still, the number of people that would have to be involved just to build one of those massive 304s more than makes up for the fact that a lot of the core's knowledge would be very useful indeed.

For an example, remember Carter always talking about quantumn physics? Quantumn Theory is just plain wrong in universe. Uncertainty is outright dismissed by the Tollan as a fallacious theory. And she's known such since season one. This is fairly fundamental stuff for the operation of the technologies they're dealing with (stargates, transporters) but she's still not looked up what the Asgard's theories on those are, or if she's tried, she's been unable to understand them.

To be fair, I don't know if it's possible to ascertain just how much Carter has looked into the Asgard core. At this point, I think it's safe to assume that there would likely be a team of scientists, independent of Carter (but she might be an adviser), working to unlock its secrets, and whether or not quantum theory is high on their list (or if the Tollans were just flat wrong about QT) is impossible to determine.

Beyond asking it for 'a personal cloak' or 'one of those neat little hand-held diallers that Thor had' there's really not that much use they can make of the things.

Even if we take this as the absolute minimum the core can reproduce on sight, these are still two useful things we haven't seen it produce, now have we?

Spoiler

Also, I don't recall what bit about cloaking a ship you're talking about. Could you elaborate?

Why certainly. From Unending:

CARTER
Hopefully not. My plan is to try and make the necessary modifications to the Odyssey so we can take it out of phase. Then, when we shut down the time dilation field, the blast won't hit us.

DANIEL
That would be good.

CARTER
You're probably wondering why I just didn't do that in the first place.

MITCHELL
I'm still back on the "time thing."

CARTER
The Asgard core has time dilation field technology built right into it. It was a quick and easy option. I'm actually gonna have to recreate some of Merlin's out-of-phase technology from scratch with what we have on-board. And it could take a while.

And later....

CARTER
I'm sorry. I've been trying to adjust the parameters. Now the problem is, according to Thor, I can't seem to take this ship out of phase before I shut down the field. And once we deactivate the time dilation field, we have point eight six seconds before the blast hits us. And that just isn't enough time to take the ship out of phase.

Now, technically, I suppose, they didn't talk about "cloaking" the ship along with taking it out of phase, but whether or not the ship would actually cloak when they took it out phase is mere semantics. As I said prior, it's unclear whether or not Carter could have actually recreated elements of the phase-cloak, however it was her "option A" and she felt confident enough about the plan to spend two weeks trying to make it work fast enough so the beam wouldn't hit them.

Of course, the Asgard core is under-used. Early season Earth would've been chomping at the bit to get that stuff. Now that they have it, and few enemies who are a serious threat, is there the slightest disclosure to the public? Hell no.

After all that, and you agree the core is underused. Admit it, you just enjoy going after everything I say, don't you?

[Samuel]

I find it reasonable they would be a bit careful given that it is messing with the foundation of reality.

Uh, how is that even remotely relevant, and what makes you think all temporal manipulation is 'messing with the foundation of reality', any more than all FTL is violating causality and more or less impossible in a realistic universe? Shows with time travel CLEARLY don't have a problem with the cosmic censor or the universe disintegrating, and like the example says, even people who are supposed to be 'masters' of such manipulation simply don't use it to it's fullest potential. Hell, many of these shows EXPLICITLY have the ability to suppress LOGIC ITSELF! Regardless, it's not even necessary to travel in time to have temporal manipulation tech; I understand Star Wars must use temporal manipulation to offset the side effects of their absurdly fast FTL.

I hear 'being a bit careful' because an irrelevant reason means it's not underusing the technology?

Because using time travel doesn't fix their universe- it just creates on that branches off it? At least in Trek that looks like the case.

In universes where that isn't true there is the slight problem of removing yourself from existence.

Borg being technozombies one would assume that they're at least marginally tougher than regular humans no?

The metals parts would, but they are hooked up to squishy stuff. And the momentum would be transfered to the forcefield generator. So if you shoot the Borg in the front and it is on their back, it will fly off

[NecronLord]

You've as much as admitted in the past that the level of advancement the SGC has seen over the past 10 years, generally without a manual to help them along (though on occasion they did get a helping hand similar to Thor's role here, see Ion Drives and Naquada reactors) is staggering. What humans were able to do without this massive assistance has been amazing, so it doesn't make sense that suddenly they're unable to make a huge leap in at least a few areas in Asgard science just as quickly.

Their advances are in the area of understanding. I have a damn good idea how acomputer works. That doesn't mean I could build one from base elements. Even given full design details from the switch level up: You need resources, labour, assembly facilities... Earth doesn't have these things for the full-scale Asgard production.

This is the "Asgard's shiny stuff".

That's a small gun. They've a limited ability to replicate that, presumably the parts can be materialised by the core. The FTL is their shiny stuff. The gigantic battleships is their shiny stuff. The machines that can drain power from an entire USAF base through an outgoing stargate are the shiny stuff. The machines that collapse stars and effortlessly change their emission spectra are the shiny stuff. And so on. There's tons of things the Asgard have that I'd assume can't be simply made by the core.

Now what is the difference between shields, transporters, and weapons that make these so easy to duplicate, but they can't duplicate more simple technologies they've used in the past? The way its played out, a lot of the Asgard's shiny stuff has been monumentally more easy to duplicate than has been the more mundane.

The beam weapons are so small you can't see them on a 304. The engines and drive systems are actually bigger than a 304 in some cases. You can't exactly materialise them on that little pedastal in the core room.

A bit dicey, for sure, but certainly more plausible than Spoiler

Instant wormhole drive knowledge (come on, you know I'm going to beat this point to death)

.

Spoiler

In fairness: The Ancients had been working on it. I assume it uses existing Ancient technology, or devices they'd built into their city already (presumably they planned to use it to evacuate past the Wraith blockade, but decided that was a dangerous idea). All Zalenka had to actually do was press the button marked go and hope that McKay was right about how to interpret the calculations. The in-universe effort needed to actually build an O'Neill class battleship ought to be far greater.

Um.....no. Had they actually said they had broken it, (and not had a passing chance at making another one as Carter implies) it would have made more sense and the cloak wouldn't be on this list of "things not used to their full potential". Instead, they've said nothing about what happened to the cloak.

There's a crapload of things that they take to area 51 and experiment on. I'd assume now and then this screws up.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they actually end up deleting the majority of information stored in Atlantis in preparation for the first season Wraith attack?

They were planning to, and it was 'part of the countdown' but there was no mention of them having deleted it, that I recall. I'd assume it's still there, from future references; a partial delete shouldn't really work with the kind of 'plain old virus' they were planning to use.

I think we passed the point where it was reasonable that the general population doesn't at least strongly suspect something fishy is going on,

Indeed.

(or if the Tollans were just flat wrong about QT)

I'd rate that as incredibly unlikely.

Even if we take this as the absolute minimum the core can reproduce on sight, these are still two useful things we haven't seen it produce, now have we?

I'd assume they don't want the personal intergalactic dialling device (the wraith getting one off a dead SG guy would be bad...) as standard issue. They do have and seem to manufacture some flavour of personal cloaks (see Ark of Truth) for use.

Why certainly. From Unending:

Oh, you mean the final episode of SG1. Yeah. I remember that

After all that, and you agree the core is underused. Admit it, you just enjoy going after everything I say, don't you?

Yes, I am your Nemesis!

But more seriously, I'm very resistant to the idea that Earth has all this silly shiny stuff. It hurts my SoD at times. If I were running the show, I'd have them blow up their starship manufacture facility in an industrial accident at some point. I'd certainly never have made their ships the invincible curb-stompers they have been for the last few seasons of Atlantis.
Spoiler

I cheered when Area 51 was destroyed. Literally. I got up out of my seat and cheered, thinking 'take that you smug, smug bastards.' In fact, I spent the entire episode rooting for the Wraith. Sure, they're life-sucking aliens, but they've been the whipped underdogs for four seasons now. I wanted to see them to fly over a major city and start harvesting. And for the show to end on such a cliffhanger with them beating the shit out of Earth, in very public view.

Instead, the city isn't even landed in public view. Stupid wormhole drive... *Grumble*

Stargate was much more fun when the humans were the underdogs who had to watch out, instead of an intergalactic superpower.

[Bilbo]

Problems with conservation of momentum. Even if it can repel a bullet, the bullet's momentum is still transferred to the shield generator. Even if the generator is a large flat plate on their chest that distributes the force over their body, they'll still break bones, and if its a little internal thing it'll mash organs.

Not good, either way.

Unlikely. Most of the injury caused by being hit with a bulletproof vest on is backface deformation, not momentum transfer. With zero backface deformation (in the case of our hypothetical force field), a baseline human with the generator secured fairly well would be able to laugh at modern heavy machine gun rounds without significant issues. Hell the impacts wouldn't even knock the guy over, let alone hit hard enough to break bones.

Why the fuck do you think a hypothetical force field should be assumed to have infinite rigidity? The universe is full of various kinds of force fields, and none of them possess this quality.

If you created a personal forcefield to deal with bullets wouldnt it make sense to design one that projected a triangular shape around you with the point a couple feet in front of you? Bullets fired at you head on would hit one of the two angled sides and deflect which would reduce the amount of energy the field has to absorb.

[Gil Hamilton]

Unlikely. Most of the injury caused by being hit with a bulletproof vest on is backface deformation, not momentum transfer. With zero backface deformation (in the case of our hypothetical force field), a baseline human with the generator secured fairly well would be able to laugh at modern heavy machine gun rounds without significant issues. Hell the impacts wouldn't even knock the guy over, let alone hit hard enough to break bones.

Newton is unhappy with you. For a force field generator to stop a bullet, it, as the name would imply, apply a force on the bullet to stop it. That's fine and dandy, except that the bullet is applying an equal and opposite for on it. That's what Ryan is talking about. It stops the bullet, but the generator gets knocked back with the force of the bullet. Depending on the circumstances, this would be damaging to the drone, even if you were clever and angled your forcefield so that the bullet impacts on it from an extremely shallow angle.

At a certain point, it becomes alot more effective to just start making body armor for your drones. Conceivably, it's not out of the realm of possibility to armor something like a Borg drone to be effectively bullet proof to anything man portable, especially since mobility and comfort isn't a high priority for the Borg Drone on the Go.

[Darth Wong]

Why the fuck do you think a hypothetical force field should be assumed to have infinite rigidity? The universe is full of various kinds of force fields, and none of them possess this quality.

If you created a personal forcefield to deal with bullets wouldnt it make sense to design one that projected a triangular shape around you with the point a couple feet in front of you? Bullets fired at you head on would hit one of the two angled sides and deflect which would reduce the amount of energy the field has to absorb.

That is not an answer to my question. That is simply a repetition of the notion that a forcefield is an invisible rigid plate.

[NecronLord]

Hell, I think there's actually been some instances in Trek of visible force fields deforming under pressure, though I can't recall them offhand. Collisions, perhaps?

[Gandalf]

Even if force fields are indomitable, couldn't sufficient force just rip them from their weaker walls?

Necronlord; I think something like that occurred in DS9's Starship Down. An atmosphere with 10,000kph winds proved too much for them.

[Bilbo]

Why the fuck do you think a hypothetical force field should be assumed to have infinite rigidity? The universe is full of various kinds of force fields, and none of them possess this quality.

If you created a personal forcefield to deal with bullets wouldnt it make sense to design one that projected a triangular shape around you with the point a couple feet in front of you? Bullets fired at you head on would hit one of the two angled sides and deflect which would reduce the amount of energy the field has to absorb.

That is not an answer to my question. That is simply a repetition of the notion that a forcefield is an invisible rigid plate.

You are right its not. If the forcefield is a body hugging then it needs to be rigid. It cannot deform too much or it will hit the person its protecting. So with this in mind one assumes it would be projected outward a distance from the person if its a maleable. If this is the case then it would make sense to also give it an optimum shape.

Not that this would really matter. Projectile weapons are so rare in Star Trek that close body hugging shields would work fine most of the time since energy weapons do not operate the same way projectile weapons do.

So when you are thinking of a non-rigid shield are you thinking of one that collapses and spreads the impact the way body armor does?

[Gil Hamilton]

I think you are making a mistake to treat a force field as a physical object. The field itself is just a description of the forces produced by a generator at any point where its non-negligibly applying force. They appear to have a very sharp gradient of effect so the field has a shallow depth, thus appearing to be a wall, but that doesn't make it "rigid" in the sense of a physical object. The force of the bullet is STILL going to be applied to the shield generator, not the field. The field isn't going to slap against anything and spread out the force.

What it comes down to is how the generator is attached to the drone. If they built it into a plate that the drone was wearing, the plate itself would be what's hitting the drone with the force necessary to deflect the bullet and that would be useful a thing to do (turning the bullet impact into a large owie rather than something that's lethal).

For that reason, stopping a bullet with a basically flat field is less than ideal, incidentally. You want your field to have much depth as feasible so that the bullets interaction with the field is spread out over time. That's the way to reduce the amount of impact your drone takes.

[Neko_Oni]

Exactly what the fuck is supposed to cause the backface deformation, then, eh? Momentum transfer. You can't just ignore it. A personal shield suffers from the same problems any other sort of armour would face. The precise mechanisms might be different, but the net result is the same or worse, because instead of a nice, reinforced starship hull supporting it, it has a squishy biological body to hold it up.

Umm backface deformation is not just momentum transfer you know. It's the bullet pushing the armor into your body even though it didn't penetrate. Depending on the mechanics a personal shield may or may not suffer similar effects.

Even if the generator is a large flat plate on their chest that distributes the force over their body, they'll still break bones, and if its a little internal thing it'll mash organs.

If the shield generator is like you said, a large plate that distributes the force over the body, then a bullet's momentum should not cause broken bones etc. If it's an internal thing, well then it's probably worse than useless.

[Ender]

Umm backface deformation is not just momentum transfer you know. It's the bullet pushing the armor into your body even though it didn't penetrate. Depending on the mechanics a personal shield may or may not suffer similar effects.

That is momentum transfer you fucking moron. The momentum of the bullet is transfered to the plate which is in turn transferred to you flesh, which in turn transfers it to the ground by way of your feet. Since these are inelastic collisions the amount of KE varies through the transfers as the less durable things deform.

[CaptJodan]

Their advances are in the area of understanding. I have a damn good idea how a computer works. That doesn't mean I could build one from base elements. Even given full design details from the switch level up: You need resources, labour, assembly facilities... Earth doesn't have these things for the full-scale Asgard production.

They apparently have some facility churning out naquada reactors, Asgard shields, Asgard hyperdrives, Asgard sensors, and all long before they had the Asgard core to do it for them. I don't deny that it should take some time to study and understand the information they've been given, but given the insane plug-and-play ability of most tech in Stargate, along with some of the real mind-blowing shit they've just whipped out of their ass on the fly on occasion, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that months, or a year later, we start to see little signs of new Asgard tech coming to the field. Not anything in the realm of an O'Neill, but "this little device was made with the help of the Asgard core", or "we've made improvements to X with the help of knowledge gained..etc".

That's a small gun.

You and I have different definitions on that one.

They've a limited ability to replicate that, presumably the parts can be materialised by the core.

We really don't have any idea how the super advanced ray gun is made, and I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it is magically replicated.

The FTL is their shiny stuff. The gigantic battleships is their shiny stuff. The machines that can drain power from an entire USAF base through an outgoing stargate are the shiny stuff. The machines that collapse stars and effortlessly change their emission spectra are the shiny stuff. And so on. There's tons of things the Asgard have that I'd assume can't be simply made by the core.

True. But we have no idea how big some of these technologies are. I wouldn't hazard a guess on whether or not the core can do it until we know how complex the device is or how large it is. Maybe it *can* replicate the power drain device, but we'll likely never know.

The beam weapons are so small you can't see them on a 304. The engines and drive systems are actually bigger than a 304 in some cases. You can't exactly materialise them on that little pedastal in the core room.

No doubt there's a hole about the diameter where the beam comes out that is somewhere on the external part of the ship. The fact that we don't see external support structures for these weapons doesn't mean that, internally, they don't have a large series of structures for cooling, capacitors, focusing units, and so on.

I strongly doubt that it is just replicated into existence. But if you want to talk small guns, why not equip Atlantis with Asgard defense guns (in a similar manner they used the rail guns in season 1), or Earth for that matter?

Spoiler

In fairness: The Ancients had been working on it. I assume it uses existing Ancient technology, or devices they'd built into their city already (presumably they planned to use it to evacuate past the Wraith blockade, but decided that was a dangerous idea). All Zalenka had to actually do was press the button marked go and hope that McKay was right about how to interpret the calculations. The in-universe effort needed to actually build an O'Neill class battleship ought to be far greater.

The problem with that scene is we really have no idea how much time it took them to get it up and running, though certainly it doesn't seem like they built anything new. Either way, I'm not suggesting they can build ready-made O'Neills, though they should be considering a new class, 305, soon for a more seamless incorporation of the new Asgard knowledge and technology.

There's a crapload of things that they take to area 51 and experiment on. I'd assume now and then this screws up.

Usually we hear about it, though something like that would be incredibly lazy and shitty writing. But something as simple as

"There's nothing between them and Earth now."
"Uh...what about that Merlin phase cloak thing?"
"Sorry, son, Felger spilled coffee on it. It's toast."


Would still be superior to simply forgetting about a device that was made a big deal of throughout the end of SG-1's run.

I'd rate that as incredibly unlikely.

You're kidding, right? The Tollans were one of the most arrogant allies Earth had, secure in the knowledge their Ion cannons couldn't be bested (not once, but twice). I can definitely see the Tollans being so arrogant as to disregard a theory, even if it might have practical applications in fields other than the one they were referring to with Carter.

I'd assume they don't want the personal intergalactic dialling device (the wraith getting one off a dead SG guy would be bad...) as standard issue.
They do have and seem to manufacture some flavour of personal cloaks (see Ark of Truth) for use.

I can't recall any cloaks besides the Odyssey's cloak being used in Ark of Truth. Can you remind me of what you speak? Though, off the top of my head, I'd guess they were probably the Sodan cloaking device, not exactly "in production", but rather borrowed/loaned/given to them by the Sodan.

Yes, I am your Nemesis!

Given how many times we've been through this, yes...yes you are.

But more seriously, I'm very resistant to the idea that Earth has all this silly shiny stuff. It hurts my SoD at times. If I were running the show, I'd have them blow up their starship manufacture facility in an industrial accident at some point. I'd certainly never have made their ships the invincible curb-stompers they have been for the last few seasons of Atlantis.

I don't particularly mind Earth coming in with some advanced technology here and there. Asgard shields, sensors, and hyperdrive don't offend me. The not up gunned Daedalus class design was, in my view, a decent balance for storytelling. It was reasonably well defended, but couldn't shoot down old school Hatak's, and even had to take Hives by surprise and fire their entire load of missiles to get a single nuke through their fighter screen. This, coupled with their limited numbers, made them the underdogs in a fight.

If I were running the show (since we're speculating here), I'm not sure how I would have run the beam weapon issue, but I certainly wouldn't have given Earth either a phase device or an Asgard "everything" core. If I did the latter, it would be history, society, and general knowledge of what they went through ONLY, not technical specifications for the latest and greatest gadgets that it is supposed to be. Even a core with just their history allows stories to be told of teams going out to find relics of Asgard tech to use or learn from, rather than just handing it all to them on a plate.
Spoiler

I cheered when Area 51 was destroyed. Literally. I got up out of my seat and cheered, thinking 'take that you smug, smug bastards.' In fact, I spent the entire episode rooting for the Wraith. Sure, they're life-sucking aliens, but they've been the whipped underdogs for four seasons now. I wanted to see them to fly over a major city and start harvesting. And for the show to end on such a cliffhanger with them beating the shit out of Earth, in very public view.

Only now, at the end, are your true motives revealed.
Spoiler

Instead, the city isn't even landed in public view. Stupid wormhole drive... *Grumble*

Gonna wait till Friday to start talking about that part. Needless to say, I have an opinion.

Stargate was much more fun when the humans were the underdogs who had to watch out, instead of an intergalactic superpower.

On that, we agree. But some advancement should be made along the way, if for no other reason than to justify the program's expense (the stargate, not the show).

[Stark]

Because using time travel doesn't fix their universe- it just creates on that branches off it? At least in Trek that looks like the case.

Protip; Star Trek is not 'sci fi'. It's a tiny, stupid little corner of science fiction.

In universes where that isn't true there is the slight problem of removing yourself from existence.

Wow, you really have no idea what you're talking about. To repeat myself, 'temporal manipulation technology != time travel'. SW uses this technology itself. Can you even fucking read? ST even has LOGIC NULLIFYING SHIELDS, for fuck's sake, and in sci-fi centred on time travel the limitations are either well understood or controllable.

[Neko_Oni]

That is momentum transfer you fucking moron. The momentum of the bullet is transfered to the plate which is in turn transferred to you flesh, which in turn transfers it to the ground by way of your feet. Since these are inelastic collisions the amount of KE varies through the transfers as the less durable things deform.

Get fucked Ender. If you can't understand the difference between the force been spread out evenly across the whole plate in the shield situation and a bullet hitting conventional armor which DOES NOT spread out the impact evenly, then you should shut the fuck up.