posted
One should note that the constellation theory was only quoted twice, once in the movie and once in the pilot. Both times, it was our resident anthropoarchaeologist nutcase speaking, not an astronomer.
After the pilot, the theory dies, as far as dialogue is concerned. In fact, SGC seems to lose the ability to predict where given coordinates will take the victims. And the one prediction we heard, "Abydos is on the other edge of the universe", was proven false in the pilot already - Abydos is in fact one of Earth's closest neighbor gates, and well within our galaxy.
So it should be safe to assume that the symbols never stood for constellations, and that SGC now realizes that as well. Instead, the primitive Earthlings CREATED Earth's constellations out of RESPECT to the sacred symbols of the stargate. And perhaps a friendly Jaffa actually pointed to the sky and said "Yes, these six Sacred Symbols will take you to serve your Lord THERE, while these six will take your sister THERE". So the people who overheard suddenly began seeing these very symbols at those very parts of the sky.
That way, what originally were just letters in the Ancient alphabet would be constellations to Earthlings and perhaps to their offworld descendants as well, but would not really correlate to gate destination 3D whereabouts except when viewed from Earth, and even then only very roughly.
This still leaves wide open how the USAF got any meaningful input from Jackson's rantings in the movie. But perhaps they didn't? After the briefing, it's "Thunderbirds are go!" almost immediately - everything is ready, including the tracker that follows the probe through wormholespace, supposedly according the Jackson's just-voiced theory!.
So perhaps the USAF already knew how to work the gate (like "Torments of Tantalus" actually confirms!) but the generals just wanted to have an idea of where it would take the victims. And Jackson's idea was good enough for them, as no others were forthcoming. They just took the excuse to back down from their "we want to know where our men go" position without looking like they were backing down.
posted
Following the 1945 events in "Torment", they closed off the project, sealed the documents and essentially forgot about the whole thing. When Catherine started her research in 1969, she started on a near-blank slate.
Mind you, they knew a little of what it was *supposed* to do, as a transportation device of some sort. How else would they know to stand it upright and such? The cover stones that came with the gate gave them a lot, but just how much?
Alas, with the series being so long after the fact, such questions will likely never be answered...
posted
Umm, it seems that I wasn't sufficiently up to date on the episodes: at least "Memento" and probably others as well confirm that SGC can get proper 3d coordinates out of the cartouche symbols, and can use them as navaids when piloting their fancy-schmancy new starship.
But the symbols could still be Ancient alphabet, and a string of six letters, digits, pictograms or whatever is the way Ancients (or whoever really built the gates) wrote down 3D coordinates. The added seventh and eighth letters have separate functions, no more tied to "constellations" than the coordinate function is.
And SGC has simply learned how to decipher the Ancient coordinate code, but not necessarily during the first two-three seasons yet. The knowledge could have come much later on, perhaps simply through sending MALPs and SG teams to as many addresses as possible, taking pics of the stars on the sky, and finding the correlations.
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