posted
Apart from Atlantis itself, have we ever seen an "original" installation for a stargate?
I mean, the stone pedestals are millions of years younger than the gates, obviously. Were all the original gates in orbit, and the planetside ones are in fact something that fell out of the sky in the respective prehistoric times of those planets? (Unless brought down to the surface by a semi-advanced, spacefaring culture, that is.)
...Well, probably not, if the DHDs that can be found next to most surface gates are also "original" hardware.
The multiply redundant, hyper-robust backups to gate operation (such as manual dialing) would suggest that these things are meant to be used "shirtsleeves" by barbaric natives when necessary, rather than being optimized for orbital installation. Perhaps the diameter of a standard gate is also chosen with such operations in mind: something that a tribeful of people can easily erect and operate.
And it is a nice safety feature if the biggest thing that can fit through your gate is a Wraith needle, or a silly ATV with a .50cal.
posted
I don't know if the Ancients meant for primitives to be able to use it necessarily. All accounts seem to suggest that it's a pretty complex system to figure out. It seems to be set up to keep people who don't understand it from using it easily, but also to keep accidental usage, as well as effects from the random astronimical phenomonea, from being fatal. The Ancients set these things up and basically just left them there for millions of years to take care of themselves, but still had to count on them to work.
The installation of the gate on Earnest's planet was probably original since that building seems to have been designed as a meeting place. Steps there make since as probably only delegates would be arriving and not equipment.
posted
Well, we know they *can* be lugged around. The people in "The First Commandment" tore one down and set it back up all in the space of a few hours (which is really silly). Maybe the high radiation excellerated the curing process of some really fantastic mortar.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Or accelerated, even. But anyway, the Egyptians were pretty primitive and look at the size of those great big stone things they built. Not just the pyramids, either, but the monuments too. There's a lot of debate as to how they managed it, but there are a lot of interesting ways a primitive culture can manipulate a very heavy monolith like a Stargate. One guy even demonstrated, with ancient Egyptian-available tech, that wind power could be used to raise some of these things.
And as a side note in the same area of Ancient 'architecture,' why is it some devices (like the time loop device, the Dakara superweapon, etc) seem to have easily accessible controls made of weird multi-height stone columns (not to mention giant primitive-looking stone combination locks) that look to be designed, almost, for primitive people? As opposed to the high-tech, sleek touch-screen and hand-waving tech as seen in Atlantis, various warships and outposts?
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Dan: Maybe after their affair with the Wraith they decided to try to create tech that would blend in better than all the high tech flashy stuff?
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posted
It depends. The stone tech seems to be common in the Milky Way, but in Pegasus it's more like the tech they find in Atlantis. The civilization is literally millions of years old; there's plenty of time for styles to come and go dozens of times. For the Milky Way stuff, it's certainly likely that most of it was created by Merlin and his Lantean buddies - he had one, the time loop device had one (which jives with the time when the Lanteans were experimenting with time travel), and the big reboot device at Dakara had one. I'm willing to infer that the Dakara and time-loop machines had been refitted after millions of years by Merlin or a friend as a possible weapon to use against the Ori, explaining the more "modern" stone table and the "older" Atlantis-style displays on Dakara.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
I think the Atlantis stuff looks more modern, really. Displays, controls, all right there, instead of having to calculate relative heights of stones and so on. Also, a screen, I would think, would convey much more information than a set of 'topological' stones.
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posted
A screen would, if one were trained to read it, a set of stones would, were one trained to read them. All in perspective.
How long did it take the first ship to get from Atlantis to our galaxy in the first place?
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
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posted
Probably not long at all. We can get from Earth to Lantea in about three weeks. We don't know how much available power or mass to be moved affects speed in hyperspace, but the massive Atlantis had three of 'em on the way out.
quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: I think the Atlantis stuff looks more modern, really. Displays, controls, all right there, instead of having to calculate relative heights of stones and so on. Also, a screen, I would think, would convey much more information than a set of 'topological' stones.
Well in a way having to calculate relative heights of stones to control a high tech devise proves, in a way that the person using it is REALLY clever and has a sharp eye, to say the least. So by that logic the "stonetech" is more advanced than the more intuitive displays on Atlantis. As for how much information it can convey, you have to wonder how many possible positions one of those control stones can have and if it's significance is altered in the context of all the other stones then the permutations become exponentially complex.
I think the key phrase for the Stonetech is not so much less modern as it is deceptively simple.
Plus one would think the stonetech is more durable and not as prone to breakdown as say a touch display or a panel of small buttons, at least on the scale of millions of years and especially when said tech is often found out in the open.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Well, I guess my version of high-tech includes 'intuitive' by definition. Using a lot of your concentration just to read the display seems self-defeating; but then by the time the Ancients were building things like Dakara and the time-loop device (wonder if Janus had anything to do with that? Do we know how long the Ancients' lifetimes were?) they might have been close enough to ascension to be Prior-like in their intelligence and concentration...Bah, I'm being self-argumentative again.
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posted
A bit better than being self manipulating I suppose.
Now I have to ask about the effects of erosion on the stonetech. How long has this stuff been in the open, compared to, say, the time it took to make the Grand Canyon? Then, like the time-loop device, what would be left after millions of years of sand blasting?
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
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posted
True, even if they were indestructible after a single millennium of wind blown sediment and rainfall they should be at least several feet underground, after a million years, they should be upside-down, on their side and sticking out of a cliff face halfway up a mountain that used to be a riverbed...but then it's just a tv show and I wouldn't try to over think these things.
I suppose it's possible of course that subsequent human civilisations have preserved some of these ancient artefacts and the areas around the gates (where most of them tend to be sat) and it just so happens that on some of the ones the SGC have visited have only actually been deserted for a fre centuries since the last inhabitants.
As for the user interfaces being intuitive vs them being intrinsically complex, yet efficient, remember that the frozen chick in Antarctica was said to be genetically more evolved than "modern" humans and of course at that level their perception of what constitutes complicated is a little different than ours. To them our computer displays might look as crude and as clumsy as a fisher price computer for toddlers. Hardly an efficient scientific instrument.
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