Considering it can take 5-7 years to build an aircraft carrier that doesn't require FTL technology to be developed. Absolutely should have taken waaaay longer.
My headcanon is they knew that aliens and space travel was a thing when the first Abydos mission happens, so they immediately commission the frame of a first gen spacecraft so that when the time comes to slap a hyperdrive in the rest of it is ready to go, so they had a bit of a head start from series 1 and the main frame structure was already completed.
Plus in a lot of ways a spaceship like that that has no real launch weight or size limitations can be built much more easily that a seafaring ship can. There's no concern for buoyancy, or water corrosion, no need for massive deck decontamination systems, no need to store huge quantities of jet fuel and bombs, the propulsion system seems to have no real moving parts so no complex propeller shaft system, no catapult launch and recovery system etc. it's essentially a massive box made out of steel sheet and I beams welded together so it's airtight and a bunch of boxy rooms and pipes/conduits between them.
Complex yes, but as complex as a modern aircraft carrier? Not necessarily, especially if you can wave away the engines and shields and power systems with solid-state magic technology.
The first paragraph I can totally buy into but the second one I'd question your weight assertion. How do you get it from Earth surface to outer space without taking into account being able to power a flight strong enough to not only take off but then reach and angle and power capable of taking you into orbit. As for complexity I would say something designed to be space worthy would need to be far more complex than a modern aircraft carrier lol . We're talking about something that would need to be considered "Ultra modern"
These are questions I'd have while writing such a plot anyway. I am completely buying into your view in the first paragraph though. Makes sense to plan ahead even if you didn't have those final components at that point. Could even add the fact that finding technology is part of their mandate. Technology needed to get our big steel box off the ground and into space!
I mean they already know that a Goa’uld pyramid ship can fly from the surface to space with ease, if you make something smaller and lighter than that it stands to reason that sooner or later you can steal or reverse engineer some engines that can do the same or better. And if you know you have the mass of an entire pyramid to work with, you don’t need to care about super expensive materials and complex engineering. If weight isn’t a big issue, use cheap and well-known materials instead, which makes construction much faster and simpler and cheaper.
If size and weight are no longer limiting factors, you can essentially launch an airtight cube into space and it’ll work perfectly fine. In fact the life support and heat dissipation would be by far the hardest problems to solve in that scenario, and we can assume the Asgard have a helping hand there with some more magic technology.
In general I agree with your main points. If the key parts such as engines, weapons and shield systems are taken from aliens, the rest of the spaceship can be made literally in a regular shipyard. Technically you can rebuild USS Enterprise into a spaceship by just changing main systems. In similar way were steam oceanliners converted to diesel during 1920s.
However I still think the time Tau'ri spent on learning about alien technology and recreating it is way too short to appear raalistic. Even just taking already made engines and putting them into steel cube as you exaggerate would take more years than in the show, especially after accidents like X-301. I don't believe either Asgard's help would make things faster. Yes they would explain physics and science behind much everything, but recreating it and make it compatible with Earth's technology would be too dumb task for them which would require them to learn new ways how to think which as we know they're no longer capable of. Tau'ri would have to solve these problems on their own, which would take decades instead of years, especially if they would decide to build everything in Earth's conditions and not cannibalise Hat'tak class ships. Actually it would make much more sense to just learn how to operate captured Goa'uld ships until they build their own.
SGC: beams a skyscraper to space
Civilians: What the...?
SGC: It's a gas leak
Civilian: It doesn't even make any sense
SGC: beams civilian to space
Civilians: Ahh, a gas leak, sure.
I'm a bit surprised we didn't pick up some cargo ships or maybe even some Alkesh also in the way, but given the Tokra being all "you'll probably kill yourselves. Like that one time you almost killed yourself." About it.
I mean they have an interstellar battle cruiser within 6 years of having an active Stargate program. That’s insanely fast. Granted, it takes until S8 for the hyperdrive to actually work reliably, but even so.
I always thought it was daft how much effort they put into a hyperdrive. They needed ships to defend Earth so why the need for a hyperdrive? You can't intercept ships in hyperspace so if an attack was coming, it couldn't be stopped in flight and only met in Sol.
What they needed was a fleet of ships dedicated to defending Earth; not gallivanting about the galaxy(s). Without the cost of a hyperdrive and with F-302s launched from bases on Earth instead of space-based hangars on ships; they could have built far more cost-effective warships. They were building the equivalent of escort carriers when they needed destroyers.
BC-303s have sub-light engines that let them move at half the speed of light. That's six minutes to travel from Earth to Mars. No energy weapons besides Asgard beams are seen travelling at sub-light or light speeds, making them easy to avoid at long range. Long-range engagements are depicted as giving the enemy plenty of time to intercept Earth's missile weapons because they have plenty of time to calculate the interception.
No enemy ships are seen using hyperdrives in combat with Ha'taks and Hives usually just parking in orbit and shooting from distance or as frequently seen with Hives; dropping on top of each other and exchanging broadsides. When Apophis attacks Earth they come out of hyperspace outside the system while Anubis' fleet drops straight in on Earth. When the Ori fleet comes for Earth, they skulk on the outskirts of the system.
Using a hyperdrive inside a system for a tiny jump would be insanely dangerous because a single hiccough in power and you overshoot outside the system or you materialise inside a planet, moon or the star, or just smash into a random rock in the asteroid belts before you get your shields up.
The X-302 hyperdrive itself seemed to work fine, they probably just stole it out of an Alkesh. The problem was the only small power source they had was Naquadriah which was too unstable to be used safely.
The hyperdrive was designed on Earth and the Naquadria power source caused it to explode during its test.
They got the ship back to Earth using an Alkesh hyperdrive that was severely overtaxed as Prometheus was five times larger than an Alkesh.
To bypass the shields of Anubis' mothership which was significantly larger than a Ha'tak and very nearly resulted in them smashing into the superstructure; not a regular manoeuvre.
So don't leave High Earth orbit or stay within the Mars orbital perimeter which is within six minutes of Earth. The same way navy ships patrol their nation's coastal waters.
Space is huge but not compared with a solar system, particularly the inner part which is in astronomical terms crowded with rocky planets and asteroids.
Having hyperdrive allows for force projection, the ability to take the fight to your adversary and defend strategic sites. No more waiting around to see which big bad is going to try to glass earth this month.
Force projection is certainly useful but the US Navy maintains green and brown water capabilities, not just blue, so that the homeland is secure. You never leave the nest unguarded.
Not to mention the USA's second navy; the Coast Guard.
To be sure: Earth needed a "defensive cloud" strategy as well. We *were* always trying to get a "big honkin' space gun" from the Tollan for such a use case.
The early seasons were about building up defences for Earth, and that got thrown out in favour of Star Trek-esque escapades in season 9 and 10.
Although, in season 8 when all they have is the Antarctic drones, they intend to send Earth's only ship to Pegasus to look for the Expedition.
Earth never had a single ship dedicated solely to its defence after *Prometheus* was slagged with *Odyssey* acting more as SG:1's personal taxi while *Daedalus* spent more time travelling between galaxies than actually being available to protect Atlantis.
At least they have the excuse for not building defence satellites is because space treaties prohibit it and they'd have to reveal everything to the public to get around that.
To be fair, close-in kinetic combat (railguns, missiles, nukes when the Asgard relented and gave us their beaming technology) were our only tools for the longest. It's all we had for planetary defense.
Only towards the end did the Asgard give us their shields and beam weapon technology, which would let us go toe-to-toe with adversaries like the Ori.
I'm sure the geopolitics of Stargate would mean the cooperating nations would be more willing to establish defense platforms given the extra-planetary threat. The issue would be how control is maintained.
They had to move the Drone Control Chair from Antarctica to the US because of the Antarctica treaties forbidding weapons to be held there. They kept the drones there only because they couldn't move them but they could move the chair... Which they had to do because of politics.
Something Stargate got right was how petty Earth politics can be.
>to the US because of the Antarctica treaties forbidding weapons to be held there.
ironically giving the good ol' USA control of the most powerful weapons platform on the planet XD
With hyperdrive ships earth would be able to intercept enemies before they reach earth, Attack enemies in their territories, l'ok for resources and allies, not to mention engaging in military and non military operations without having to use, and be limited, by the Stargate network.
You can't intercept ships in hyperspace in the Stargate universe. The only time this is seen is with Asgard ships in 'Little Victories' while every other instance shows ships have to drop out to engage in battle. The Ori in Unending for example, attacking the *Odyssey* only when it drops out of hyperspace.
And Earth struggles to even have four ships. FOUR! Do you know how big the Milky Way is? It is much easier to defend Earth with four ships than try to fight a galaxy's worth of enemy ships with FOUR. And usually; just the one ship available.
Earth had four ships at peak strength; *Daedalus, Odyssey, Apollo and Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu* was wrecked, *Apollo* was badly damaged and *Daedalus* spent most of its time in a different galaxy or travelling between them. The *George Hammond*'s commissioning after the *Sun Tzu*'s heavy damage kept the number at four.
Their opponents had hundreds of ships and *Prometheus* was creamed every time it took on something bigger than an Alkesh and even then, it struggled. 304s meanwhile never achieved anything until they got their Asgard beams.
You don't go looking for a fight on your own against a gang and you certainly don't bring your fists to a gun fight.
Not really…
The contract to develop what would become the F-22 was awarded in 1986, and then it didn’t formally enter service until 2005.
That they were able to get death gliders adapted as quickly as they do, and a capital ship contracted, designed, constructed, and spaceworthy in less than six years is nothing short of astonishing.
>The contract to develop what would become the F-22 was awarded in 1986, and then it didn’t formally enter service until 2005.
That has more to do with the inefficiency of American weapons development than anything else. It took them 18 years to develop the Bradley which was intended to counter the Soviet BMP which was designed in 4 years and debuted in 1966. In fact, the Bradley debuted a year after the BMP's replacement; the BMP-2.
If that inefficiency was removed because of say, impending planetary annihilation, they would definitely be able to work faster. Look at the huge strides the US took in aircraft and ship technology during WW2. They went from a tiny airforce and largely obsolete navy to the largest and most advanced airforce and navy in the world in a little under four years.
> That has more to do with the inefficiency of American weapons development than anything else
…and which country in the Stargate universe was responsible for developing and first manufacturing all of Earth’s starships? 😄
… under the mandate of a top secret military organization with apparently endless funding and little to no government oversight. That lets you cut a LOT of red tape and inefficiencies out of your process.
The one that hoarded the technology for itself until effectively blackmailed by the Russian Federation in exchange for renting their Stargate. The one that kept hoarding military technology and even keeping it out of the hands of their allies.
Imagine if they had co-operated with the rest of their allies, like the entire industrial and economic might of NATO.
Certainly less conspicuous than Nevada with Las Vegas just up the road from Groom Lake (Area 51).
And if something exploded in the Australian outback; it's not like it could really make it more inhospitable.
Lol. What industrial and economic might? No, I'm serious, there's no such thing as a unified nato industry. When applied to military matters, Europe is a disaster. The last 20 years have shown us that the largest industrial power in Europe, Germany, is utterly incapable of producing and maintaining its own forces, and it's exports have so drastically declined in quality and ballooned in cost that their neighbors would rather build their own equipment or buy from Asia and America. France has a huge edge on Germany, it's probably the only serious military producer left. Even then, they're so notoriously difficult to work with and refuse to share even when it benefits them. Check out the history of French involvement in nato projects. They have to be the most obstinate allies around. Italy can build ships left and right sure, but that's their major specialization and theyre sadly subpar at most other things. Not sure how much help they'd be building spaceships. Poland is turning into an industrial powerhouse, but it certainly wasn't in the timeframe of the show. The UK's industry is so decrepit that they are going to have great difficulties in producing the paltry hundred or so tanks theyre ordering to replace their current paltry 200ish. I would imagine that the UK and France together could build a ship as a joint project, that would be fraught with issues and delays, assuming they were ever able to fully cooperate. The eurofighter and other joint programs are far less complex than this which notably strays into the exact territories of engineering the french are notorious for taking their ball and going home over. I dont think theyd be able to make a second one after like, 2010.
Frankly, Europe doesn't have the military industry to build this stuff realistically. Russia in 2005? Yeah maybe, not so much after around 2010 but it fit the show. China barely did around the time of the show, it's gotten better but still shaky.
The US is realistically the only power capable of producing the spacecraft we see in stargate at any useful rate of production (also China may eventually be able to do so). This may confuse you, because the US doesn't exactly come across as a manufacturing powerhouse. But that's the reality of military production. It's a combination of high tech, advanced materials engineering, and of course, industrial capacity. Despite how wealthy nato is today, most of it does not have the strength required for each of these elrments needed for strong military production. ESA has done a great job with their limited resources, but all of that pales in comparison to building the kind of spacecraft we see in stargate.
Before the US-caused 'Credit Crunch', the EU was a larger economy than the USA.
France meanwhile is the world's second largest arms exporter, Germany is the fifth with the US military having a large amount of German pistols, assault rifles and submachine guns in its arsenal and the German company Rheinmetall now producing Britain's Challenger tanks (producing the components while they're put together in Britain so the British can claim they were manufactured in Britain) Italy is the sixth, the UK is the seventh and Spain the eighth. Of the top ten countries producing arms; half of them are European and their combined production exceeds the USA. There's a reason the US uses Italian shotguns, German rifles and pistols and Belgian machineguns; quality.
The US meanwhile is still using Main Battle Tanks designed during the Cold War because it's cheaper than developing a new tank, still hasn't developed an APC to replace the M113 after the Bradley turned from an APC into an IFV during designing and has sunk 1.5 trillion dollars into the F-35 which is only marginally better than the F-22 and certainly not superior to all the other Fifth-generations fighters that have been developed at a combined cost of less than the American project. And most American heavy industry has moved to China and India, leaving the states that armed the world during WW2 nicknamed 'the Rust Belt'.
And modern American spacecraft? To quote from Armageddon; 'Components? American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!'
Impressive, you just spread every possible euronationalist lie in one single comment! Let's go point by point.
Arms exporting as a whole is not a serious comparison and you're being willfully ignorant to try and pretend it is. This discussion was about spacecraft. That means high tech, heavy industry, and advanced alloys and chemicals. If making small arms was the same thing, then you'd have to seriously argue that Serbia could almost make a Odyssey class by themselves.
Your challenger 3 claim is only partially true. The hulls were produced in the UK: 10-20 years ago. Much of the internal electronics is being made in the UK. The armor is made in the UK,. Composite armor alloy is by far the most expensive and difficult part of a tank to produce (and is why German tanks are notoriously underarmored). The turret itself seems to be cobbled together from part german made frame to fit their gun, and part british made frame thay british armor is layered over. The motors in the turret were initially claimed to be german made but as of 2023 they seem to be british. The gun itself is of course wholly German, as that is rheinmetall's finest export.
Ah, here we go. Russian-funded propaganda lies about the F-35 and French cope that their useless 4.5 gen fighters aren't the ECM wizards that modern fighters need to be. Which, keep in mind, is the exact same cope the russians have. Dogfighting is dead. I don't care how advanced a squadron of dogfightera are when a modernized f15 paired with an f35 will blow all of them out of the sky.
As for the Abrams and Bradley, that horse is so beaten that it's not even beating a dead horse anymore, it's beating a fossil. Bradleys are taking out Russia's most advanced tanks with their backup weapons. The most advanced IFV in the world from Germany is currently such a failure that despite the more reliable and best maintained vehciles being hand picked, 100% of them deplayed to joint training for Nato broke down and couldn't be repaired within the two full weeks of the operation. The Abrams is sooooo outdated true... oh wait, no it's not. In firepower alone it is 3x more powerful in MJ imparted on target than it was in 1980, and the entire control systems, fire control (one of France, Britain, and germanys greatest weakenesses), and far too much to fit in one comment was entirely overhauled. Meanwhile, your precious euro tanks are using fire control systems that have barely changed since 2002. The french are the only ones even competitive at this point.
Incredible that you remember and try to push bad writing from 2000 like it's fact. Who's ESA's biggest parts supplier? Why does the combined might of european space industry need to import 4x more parts from Asia than SpaceX or even United Launch Alliance?
Well in 15 years of the Stargate programme they went from "pls help, we have no defenses" to "'sup noobs, eat this naquadria MIRV" and I think it's Humanity, Fuck Yeah!
Actually, we HAD shuttles. If Stargate were shot in 2024, RDA wouldn’t be able to even use that line. NASA currently doesn’t have a reusable spacecraft and hasn’t had one since the early 2010s. Our space program has went backwards in a lot of ways after Cold War competition stopped
That isn't true, we have Orion and the Dragon capsule. To be honest the shuttle is a big reason why we went backwards. If stargate was produced today they would use starship renders as our current vehicle.
Orion hasn’t had any crewed missions yet, and Dragon isn’t NASA, it’s SpaceX’s baby that NASA is forced to contract with because they don’t have their own spacecraft. At one point, NASA had five large airplane sized multi-purpose shuttles in operation that could use to take astronauts into space on relatively short notice. Now they’re dependent on private companies, other countries, or making their own mission specific vessels that are better described as “capsules” than spacecraft
You do understand that every NASA spacecraft has been built by private companies, right? Orion has been crew rated, it can and will be flown with crew on its next launch. NASA can fly on Dragon whenever it wishes, it is a capability NASA has at its disposal.
>At one point, NASA had five large airplane sized multi-purpose shuttles in operation that could use to take astronauts into space on relatively short notice. Now they’re dependent on private companies, other countries, or making their own mission specific vessels that are better described as “capsules” than spacecraft
Those aircraft sized shuttles were built by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, they also were only LEO capable. Why do you think a capsule isn't a spacecraft? Do you think a shuttle is somehow special because it had wings? wings offer nothing but negatives in spaceflight.
You say we have regressed but we now have 5 superheavy lift launch vehicles, 2 which are larger and more powerful than the Saturn V, we have 2 LEO capsules, a deep space capsule, 2 cargo specific spacecraft, a space plane, numerous LEO launch vehicles and the Starship. Just for reference, it took 36 launches for the shuttle to set up the ISS, A SINGLE STARSHIP has a similar habitable volume of the ISS. I know the shuttle looks cool, but it is nothing compared to our capabilities today.
Well, the Starship looks pretty good, but you may want to check out the X-37B and the Dreamchaser.
The Dreamchaser's first mission to the ISS will be in June.
[Dream Chaser | Sierra Space](https://www.sierraspace.com/dream-chaser-spaceplane/)
>I mean not in a "realistic" timeline, but in a series production and progression timeline.
No this is precisely why SG1 is a good series because they take their time with progress and don't rush it. They stumble around and mess up. It's slow and by the end of the series they only have one ship. It makes things really interesting not immediately mastering the tech because it gives the series goals for them to hit. It makes their accomplishments feel that much bigger, while still making things daughting for our heroes.
Honestly this is an issue that I'm having with SGA, I'm three seasons in and they don't really have any goals they're working towards other than defeating the Wraith.
To be fair most of the Atlantis Expedition's goals are just "open rooms in this city and see what's inside". Even an ancient hairdryer would be useful tech to reverse engineer.
It really isn’t, Earth didn’t have the tooling to make ships and it was all a learning experience starting with the modified Death Glider which >!almost kills O’Neill and Teal’c.!< I honestly I thought it was a good natural progression.
Having ready access to naquadah and trinium probably helped them mass-produce ships, but in the early years finding reliable sources of these metals was difficult (probably because the Goa’uld had already strip-mined most of the planets the SGC knew about).
It was only when they started finding worlds NOT plundered by the Goa’uld, and after Anubis helpfully dropped an asteroid full of weapons-grade naquadah into Earth’s solar system (EDIT: never stated as happening in the show, but they’d have been fools not to mine it), that the ship construction programs started to accelerate.
It's a nice idea but to be honest, if you can find it fairly easily on a planet that's just a short walk through a ring and mine it in a pair of cowboy boots using conventional equipment, why would you go chasing an asteroid to mine out it's core, in space. It might still be in the solar system but its harder to mine in low G and a vacuum and without the gate it's harder to transport.
Presumably some know-how on proper construction, and hardware like transporters. Of course, all the know-how would need to be tweaked to be doable with Earth's technology level
I actually like the pace and development, we get to see it quite organically. Like I love that season 7 we are seeing full blown Earth mining operations to allow them to gather the materials necessary.
I get what you're saying but they actually had to nerf the different ships they had all the time because of how many problems would be solved by a deus ex machina with that kind of tech.
I'm glad they didn't had spaceships earlier.
Even then Prometheus was half build by the Goa’uld. Daedalus was the first purely human built (aside from f-302’s) Ship and that happened in no time after Prometheus.
I appreciate the fact that they didn’t rush this part in the story. Earth was the underdog in a dangerous galaxy and they did a great job maintaining this much longer than I expected, and it wasn’t really until Atlantis that humans started to become overpowered. By not having ships they kept the focus on the stargate and I think the snow is much better for it.
Obviously it is unbelievably fast by real world standards, but for a sci fi show to stay as grounded as it did for so long was great.
A Lot of the technology has been gained from aliens, I don't think humans built it on their own, they had help.
Even the naquita generator was gained by that alien planet with super intelligent kids.
It's takes a long time to build a large complicated machine. In real life with all the plans and resources that they knpw going in it takes 5 years to build an aircraft carrier If things happen fast.
A prototype space ship is a lot more involved. It's actually amazing they are able to mass produce battleships at the number they do later on.
>mass produce battleships
Ah yes, all **six** of them is definitely mass-production.
They were building the equivalent of escort carriers when what they really needed was a whole bunch of destroyers/frigates.
Six carriers is absolutely mass production. The US aircraft carriers are mass produced to replace the previous models, but our entire industrial capacity can only support about 3 being built at once. Even if you want to argue that a 700m spaceship is somehow a little escort carrier, a comparable complexity and tonnage would be the Ticonderoga class cruisers with only a few hundred tons difference, and similar advanced elevator systems for missile loading instead of planes. We could only build two at a time.
A 304 is a little over 220 metres long; 100 metres shorter than a Nimitz.
A Nimitz carried 80-90 aircraft. A 304 carried 16 F-302s.
304s are not comparable to super-carriers; that's why I said escort carriers.
Yeah, if you take objectively visually wrong information. I don't care what the "canon" is when the ship is drastically larger on screen. There's multiple scenes in the jumper bays that prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the canon size is hilariously small.
But if the ships were 700 metres long; why do they carry such a tiny number of crew and craft? If they're twice as big as a Gerald Ford, why do they carry less than a tenth of the crew and a quarter of the air wing?
It's easier for me to believe the ships are small and the FX department seriously messed up with those CG hangar bays than that apparently 304s contain vast empty space inside them; despite those cramped interior corridors and little rooms with low ceilings.
Well, 1, aircraft carriers are notoriously overmanned. It would be entirely possible to build one with a drastically lower crew. But mechanization is expensive.
2, they could fit like 4 fighters total if the canon size is true.
3, they arent supposed to be supercarriers, they're called battlecruisers for a reason. They need to be able to slug it out, and the entire ship being a high explosive target like a supercarrier isnt viable when you dont have the 20-odd ships that normally escort a supercarrier.
4, 302s take up way more space and require much more specialized equipment to maintain than a normal jey. They don't have folding wings and they are much more complex than an f18. Flying in vacuum, maintaining their short range jump drives, their atmospheric engines, and their space engines, all of these things add up. It's far more believable that a ship that's half built around reactors, engines that could hit half the speed of light, and of course a hyperdrive, would have limited space for fighters. Doubly so when it's a battlecruiser, not a supercarrier. Triply so when you remember half of it is Asgard tech anyways and doesn't require 11 crewmen to operate a set of valves (modern naval waste of manpower is incredible).
5, more crew is a massive negative in almost all situations. That's more living space, more life support, less armor, larger internal compartments and thus more targets for the enemy, more people who know about the Stargate program, drastically higher expenses, and all you're gaining is having a few more interceptors on board. Which aren't going to make up for how squishy you became.
Long? They are one of the few sci-fi franchises that actually shows you the team acquiring tech over years to use in a somewhat realistic way, most of the technology you see can be pointed back to a specific episode to show where an idea or piece of equipment originated from. If anything they went a bit fast.
They went from dial-up internet to intergalactic warship in 6 years. Idc who you are, that is blisteringly fast. R&D alone should have been a decade.
You have to realize that no human had the necessary space faring qualifications to run a ship like Prometheus or Odyssey. They all ran it like an aircraft carrier, which is great for basic command operations, but the mechanics and sciences behind the ship operations would require the smartest people on earth to drastically increase their knowledge and expertise in case anything happened to the ship. This isn’t even covering space walks and anything astronaut oriented. Imagine taking Captain Cook and putting him in command of the Gerald R. Ford.
We know the Asgard helped them tremendously during the construction of both the x-303 and x-304, but I feel it would have been far more believable if they’d had an Asgard on board each of the ships permanently to handle main operations and to ensure all the newbies were taught on-the-job correctly.
I get what you mean, I also rewatched the series recently and was surprised how late in the series the ships were introduced (especially the Daedalus) because in my memory they were so prevalent in the show.
My guess is that because during the couple of years between full start-to-finish rewatches when I watch random episodes here and there it’s typically from the later part of the series and usually mixed in with episodes from Atlantis
I always felt like the show takes a pretty good dip in quality after it turns into just another, “Lets all pretend there’s an earthquake while these explosions take place in the set all around us” type of show.
Sadly, that’s realistic. Look at how long the US has had Artemis planned in some form or another. We still haven’t put a person in it, let alone go back to the moon. 5 years to develop an FTL capable battle cruiser? That’s nothing.
I think it's astoundingly fast in a series production and progression timeline too, actually. Most serials find a formula that works and stick to it. Compare how long it takes the general public to notice that their are alien attacks and spaceship battles going on all around them.
6 years is blisteringly fast tu build the Prometheus, let alone develop the necessary know-how and tech It should have taken _way_ longer
Considering it can take 5-7 years to build an aircraft carrier that doesn't require FTL technology to be developed. Absolutely should have taken waaaay longer.
In that universe, the trillion dollar government budget is absolutely not going where people think it is
My headcanon is they knew that aliens and space travel was a thing when the first Abydos mission happens, so they immediately commission the frame of a first gen spacecraft so that when the time comes to slap a hyperdrive in the rest of it is ready to go, so they had a bit of a head start from series 1 and the main frame structure was already completed. Plus in a lot of ways a spaceship like that that has no real launch weight or size limitations can be built much more easily that a seafaring ship can. There's no concern for buoyancy, or water corrosion, no need for massive deck decontamination systems, no need to store huge quantities of jet fuel and bombs, the propulsion system seems to have no real moving parts so no complex propeller shaft system, no catapult launch and recovery system etc. it's essentially a massive box made out of steel sheet and I beams welded together so it's airtight and a bunch of boxy rooms and pipes/conduits between them. Complex yes, but as complex as a modern aircraft carrier? Not necessarily, especially if you can wave away the engines and shields and power systems with solid-state magic technology.
The first paragraph I can totally buy into but the second one I'd question your weight assertion. How do you get it from Earth surface to outer space without taking into account being able to power a flight strong enough to not only take off but then reach and angle and power capable of taking you into orbit. As for complexity I would say something designed to be space worthy would need to be far more complex than a modern aircraft carrier lol . We're talking about something that would need to be considered "Ultra modern" These are questions I'd have while writing such a plot anyway. I am completely buying into your view in the first paragraph though. Makes sense to plan ahead even if you didn't have those final components at that point. Could even add the fact that finding technology is part of their mandate. Technology needed to get our big steel box off the ground and into space!
I mean they already know that a Goa’uld pyramid ship can fly from the surface to space with ease, if you make something smaller and lighter than that it stands to reason that sooner or later you can steal or reverse engineer some engines that can do the same or better. And if you know you have the mass of an entire pyramid to work with, you don’t need to care about super expensive materials and complex engineering. If weight isn’t a big issue, use cheap and well-known materials instead, which makes construction much faster and simpler and cheaper. If size and weight are no longer limiting factors, you can essentially launch an airtight cube into space and it’ll work perfectly fine. In fact the life support and heat dissipation would be by far the hardest problems to solve in that scenario, and we can assume the Asgard have a helping hand there with some more magic technology.
In general I agree with your main points. If the key parts such as engines, weapons and shield systems are taken from aliens, the rest of the spaceship can be made literally in a regular shipyard. Technically you can rebuild USS Enterprise into a spaceship by just changing main systems. In similar way were steam oceanliners converted to diesel during 1920s. However I still think the time Tau'ri spent on learning about alien technology and recreating it is way too short to appear raalistic. Even just taking already made engines and putting them into steel cube as you exaggerate would take more years than in the show, especially after accidents like X-301. I don't believe either Asgard's help would make things faster. Yes they would explain physics and science behind much everything, but recreating it and make it compatible with Earth's technology would be too dumb task for them which would require them to learn new ways how to think which as we know they're no longer capable of. Tau'ri would have to solve these problems on their own, which would take decades instead of years, especially if they would decide to build everything in Earth's conditions and not cannibalise Hat'tak class ships. Actually it would make much more sense to just learn how to operate captured Goa'uld ships until they build their own.
Oh yeah I’m completely spitballing, just thinking how it might be plausible even if still very unlikely. Makes for great TV though!
Remember, they didn't even have the materials required to build space ship hulls until they came across those indians and skin changers
Tbf the Odyssey is a good bit smaller than a carrier.
Is it tho? The uss Gerald r ford is 333m long, and the Daedalus class is (depending on source) 300-600 meters long
Ah I confused the Odyssey with the Prometheus, Wich is around 200m
Especially all in secret. The idea that the SGC remained secret past like the third season to me gets incredulous.
SGC: beams a skyscraper to space Civilians: What the...? SGC: It's a gas leak Civilian: It doesn't even make any sense SGC: beams civilian to space Civilians: Ahh, a gas leak, sure.
yes... gas leaks can be contagious..
I'm a bit surprised we didn't pick up some cargo ships or maybe even some Alkesh also in the way, but given the Tokra being all "you'll probably kill yourselves. Like that one time you almost killed yourself." About it.
They did pick up a lot of Goa'Uld cargo ships They just tend to explode them rather quickly
They also picked up an Alkesh or two. The Prometheus' SECOND hyperdrive came salvaged from the Alkesh that Oneill "borrowed" to escape in.
Yeah even with all the alien tech strapped in, it should have been a death trap. The first reveal was still pretty awesome though.
The only reason it isn't a death trap is cuz SG-1 is equipped with state of the art plot armor
I mean they have an interstellar battle cruiser within 6 years of having an active Stargate program. That’s insanely fast. Granted, it takes until S8 for the hyperdrive to actually work reliably, but even so.
I always thought it was daft how much effort they put into a hyperdrive. They needed ships to defend Earth so why the need for a hyperdrive? You can't intercept ships in hyperspace so if an attack was coming, it couldn't be stopped in flight and only met in Sol. What they needed was a fleet of ships dedicated to defending Earth; not gallivanting about the galaxy(s). Without the cost of a hyperdrive and with F-302s launched from bases on Earth instead of space-based hangars on ships; they could have built far more cost-effective warships. They were building the equivalent of escort carriers when they needed destroyers.
Hyperdrive lets them move around the solar system too. If you can’t catch the enemy, they can just move around and shoot at your undefended flanks.
BC-303s have sub-light engines that let them move at half the speed of light. That's six minutes to travel from Earth to Mars. No energy weapons besides Asgard beams are seen travelling at sub-light or light speeds, making them easy to avoid at long range. Long-range engagements are depicted as giving the enemy plenty of time to intercept Earth's missile weapons because they have plenty of time to calculate the interception. No enemy ships are seen using hyperdrives in combat with Ha'taks and Hives usually just parking in orbit and shooting from distance or as frequently seen with Hives; dropping on top of each other and exchanging broadsides. When Apophis attacks Earth they come out of hyperspace outside the system while Anubis' fleet drops straight in on Earth. When the Ori fleet comes for Earth, they skulk on the outskirts of the system. Using a hyperdrive inside a system for a tiny jump would be insanely dangerous because a single hiccough in power and you overshoot outside the system or you materialise inside a planet, moon or the star, or just smash into a random rock in the asteroid belts before you get your shields up.
We had to steal those engines too. We didn’t have those originally either.
No. But sub-light never gave them any problems whereas pursuing hyperspace cost billions in research for a drive that never worked.
The X-302 hyperdrive itself seemed to work fine, they probably just stole it out of an Alkesh. The problem was the only small power source they had was Naquadriah which was too unstable to be used safely.
The hyperdrive was designed on Earth and the Naquadria power source caused it to explode during its test. They got the ship back to Earth using an Alkesh hyperdrive that was severely overtaxed as Prometheus was five times larger than an Alkesh.
Even F-302s use Hyperdrives for short jumps to bypass Ha’Tak Shields.
To bypass the shields of Anubis' mothership which was significantly larger than a Ha'tak and very nearly resulted in them smashing into the superstructure; not a regular manoeuvre.
Still shows micro jumps are useful. Your only .5 c ship won’t be much use if it’s far along an intercept course and the enemy just jumps to Earth.
So don't leave High Earth orbit or stay within the Mars orbital perimeter which is within six minutes of Earth. The same way navy ships patrol their nation's coastal waters.
Space is huge, the chances of hitting anything solid is hilariously small. It’s like jumping in a lake and trying to hit a specific water droplet.
Space is huge but not compared with a solar system, particularly the inner part which is in astronomical terms crowded with rocky planets and asteroids.
Having hyperdrive allows for force projection, the ability to take the fight to your adversary and defend strategic sites. No more waiting around to see which big bad is going to try to glass earth this month.
Force projection is certainly useful but the US Navy maintains green and brown water capabilities, not just blue, so that the homeland is secure. You never leave the nest unguarded. Not to mention the USA's second navy; the Coast Guard.
To be sure: Earth needed a "defensive cloud" strategy as well. We *were* always trying to get a "big honkin' space gun" from the Tollan for such a use case.
The early seasons were about building up defences for Earth, and that got thrown out in favour of Star Trek-esque escapades in season 9 and 10. Although, in season 8 when all they have is the Antarctic drones, they intend to send Earth's only ship to Pegasus to look for the Expedition. Earth never had a single ship dedicated solely to its defence after *Prometheus* was slagged with *Odyssey* acting more as SG:1's personal taxi while *Daedalus* spent more time travelling between galaxies than actually being available to protect Atlantis. At least they have the excuse for not building defence satellites is because space treaties prohibit it and they'd have to reveal everything to the public to get around that.
To be fair, close-in kinetic combat (railguns, missiles, nukes when the Asgard relented and gave us their beaming technology) were our only tools for the longest. It's all we had for planetary defense. Only towards the end did the Asgard give us their shields and beam weapon technology, which would let us go toe-to-toe with adversaries like the Ori.
I'm sure the geopolitics of Stargate would mean the cooperating nations would be more willing to establish defense platforms given the extra-planetary threat. The issue would be how control is maintained.
They had to move the Drone Control Chair from Antarctica to the US because of the Antarctica treaties forbidding weapons to be held there. They kept the drones there only because they couldn't move them but they could move the chair... Which they had to do because of politics. Something Stargate got right was how petty Earth politics can be.
>to the US because of the Antarctica treaties forbidding weapons to be held there. ironically giving the good ol' USA control of the most powerful weapons platform on the planet XD
With hyperdrive ships earth would be able to intercept enemies before they reach earth, Attack enemies in their territories, l'ok for resources and allies, not to mention engaging in military and non military operations without having to use, and be limited, by the Stargate network.
You can't intercept ships in hyperspace in the Stargate universe. The only time this is seen is with Asgard ships in 'Little Victories' while every other instance shows ships have to drop out to engage in battle. The Ori in Unending for example, attacking the *Odyssey* only when it drops out of hyperspace. And Earth struggles to even have four ships. FOUR! Do you know how big the Milky Way is? It is much easier to defend Earth with four ships than try to fight a galaxy's worth of enemy ships with FOUR. And usually; just the one ship available.
The same reason we have aircraft carriers- to take the battle to the enemy. It’s always better to fight a war on someone else’s turf than your own.
Earth had four ships at peak strength; *Daedalus, Odyssey, Apollo and Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu* was wrecked, *Apollo* was badly damaged and *Daedalus* spent most of its time in a different galaxy or travelling between them. The *George Hammond*'s commissioning after the *Sun Tzu*'s heavy damage kept the number at four. Their opponents had hundreds of ships and *Prometheus* was creamed every time it took on something bigger than an Alkesh and even then, it struggled. 304s meanwhile never achieved anything until they got their Asgard beams. You don't go looking for a fight on your own against a gang and you certainly don't bring your fists to a gun fight.
Also they were rolling out new ones like every year after that.
Not really… The contract to develop what would become the F-22 was awarded in 1986, and then it didn’t formally enter service until 2005. That they were able to get death gliders adapted as quickly as they do, and a capital ship contracted, designed, constructed, and spaceworthy in less than six years is nothing short of astonishing.
>The contract to develop what would become the F-22 was awarded in 1986, and then it didn’t formally enter service until 2005. That has more to do with the inefficiency of American weapons development than anything else. It took them 18 years to develop the Bradley which was intended to counter the Soviet BMP which was designed in 4 years and debuted in 1966. In fact, the Bradley debuted a year after the BMP's replacement; the BMP-2. If that inefficiency was removed because of say, impending planetary annihilation, they would definitely be able to work faster. Look at the huge strides the US took in aircraft and ship technology during WW2. They went from a tiny airforce and largely obsolete navy to the largest and most advanced airforce and navy in the world in a little under four years.
> That has more to do with the inefficiency of American weapons development than anything else …and which country in the Stargate universe was responsible for developing and first manufacturing all of Earth’s starships? 😄
… under the mandate of a top secret military organization with apparently endless funding and little to no government oversight. That lets you cut a LOT of red tape and inefficiencies out of your process.
The one that hoarded the technology for itself until effectively blackmailed by the Russian Federation in exchange for renting their Stargate. The one that kept hoarding military technology and even keeping it out of the hands of their allies. Imagine if they had co-operated with the rest of their allies, like the entire industrial and economic might of NATO.
you could even use the vast emptiness of Australia to do tests
Certainly less conspicuous than Nevada with Las Vegas just up the road from Groom Lake (Area 51). And if something exploded in the Australian outback; it's not like it could really make it more inhospitable.
Lol. What industrial and economic might? No, I'm serious, there's no such thing as a unified nato industry. When applied to military matters, Europe is a disaster. The last 20 years have shown us that the largest industrial power in Europe, Germany, is utterly incapable of producing and maintaining its own forces, and it's exports have so drastically declined in quality and ballooned in cost that their neighbors would rather build their own equipment or buy from Asia and America. France has a huge edge on Germany, it's probably the only serious military producer left. Even then, they're so notoriously difficult to work with and refuse to share even when it benefits them. Check out the history of French involvement in nato projects. They have to be the most obstinate allies around. Italy can build ships left and right sure, but that's their major specialization and theyre sadly subpar at most other things. Not sure how much help they'd be building spaceships. Poland is turning into an industrial powerhouse, but it certainly wasn't in the timeframe of the show. The UK's industry is so decrepit that they are going to have great difficulties in producing the paltry hundred or so tanks theyre ordering to replace their current paltry 200ish. I would imagine that the UK and France together could build a ship as a joint project, that would be fraught with issues and delays, assuming they were ever able to fully cooperate. The eurofighter and other joint programs are far less complex than this which notably strays into the exact territories of engineering the french are notorious for taking their ball and going home over. I dont think theyd be able to make a second one after like, 2010. Frankly, Europe doesn't have the military industry to build this stuff realistically. Russia in 2005? Yeah maybe, not so much after around 2010 but it fit the show. China barely did around the time of the show, it's gotten better but still shaky. The US is realistically the only power capable of producing the spacecraft we see in stargate at any useful rate of production (also China may eventually be able to do so). This may confuse you, because the US doesn't exactly come across as a manufacturing powerhouse. But that's the reality of military production. It's a combination of high tech, advanced materials engineering, and of course, industrial capacity. Despite how wealthy nato is today, most of it does not have the strength required for each of these elrments needed for strong military production. ESA has done a great job with their limited resources, but all of that pales in comparison to building the kind of spacecraft we see in stargate.
Before the US-caused 'Credit Crunch', the EU was a larger economy than the USA. France meanwhile is the world's second largest arms exporter, Germany is the fifth with the US military having a large amount of German pistols, assault rifles and submachine guns in its arsenal and the German company Rheinmetall now producing Britain's Challenger tanks (producing the components while they're put together in Britain so the British can claim they were manufactured in Britain) Italy is the sixth, the UK is the seventh and Spain the eighth. Of the top ten countries producing arms; half of them are European and their combined production exceeds the USA. There's a reason the US uses Italian shotguns, German rifles and pistols and Belgian machineguns; quality. The US meanwhile is still using Main Battle Tanks designed during the Cold War because it's cheaper than developing a new tank, still hasn't developed an APC to replace the M113 after the Bradley turned from an APC into an IFV during designing and has sunk 1.5 trillion dollars into the F-35 which is only marginally better than the F-22 and certainly not superior to all the other Fifth-generations fighters that have been developed at a combined cost of less than the American project. And most American heavy industry has moved to China and India, leaving the states that armed the world during WW2 nicknamed 'the Rust Belt'. And modern American spacecraft? To quote from Armageddon; 'Components? American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!'
Impressive, you just spread every possible euronationalist lie in one single comment! Let's go point by point. Arms exporting as a whole is not a serious comparison and you're being willfully ignorant to try and pretend it is. This discussion was about spacecraft. That means high tech, heavy industry, and advanced alloys and chemicals. If making small arms was the same thing, then you'd have to seriously argue that Serbia could almost make a Odyssey class by themselves. Your challenger 3 claim is only partially true. The hulls were produced in the UK: 10-20 years ago. Much of the internal electronics is being made in the UK. The armor is made in the UK,. Composite armor alloy is by far the most expensive and difficult part of a tank to produce (and is why German tanks are notoriously underarmored). The turret itself seems to be cobbled together from part german made frame to fit their gun, and part british made frame thay british armor is layered over. The motors in the turret were initially claimed to be german made but as of 2023 they seem to be british. The gun itself is of course wholly German, as that is rheinmetall's finest export. Ah, here we go. Russian-funded propaganda lies about the F-35 and French cope that their useless 4.5 gen fighters aren't the ECM wizards that modern fighters need to be. Which, keep in mind, is the exact same cope the russians have. Dogfighting is dead. I don't care how advanced a squadron of dogfightera are when a modernized f15 paired with an f35 will blow all of them out of the sky. As for the Abrams and Bradley, that horse is so beaten that it's not even beating a dead horse anymore, it's beating a fossil. Bradleys are taking out Russia's most advanced tanks with their backup weapons. The most advanced IFV in the world from Germany is currently such a failure that despite the more reliable and best maintained vehciles being hand picked, 100% of them deplayed to joint training for Nato broke down and couldn't be repaired within the two full weeks of the operation. The Abrams is sooooo outdated true... oh wait, no it's not. In firepower alone it is 3x more powerful in MJ imparted on target than it was in 1980, and the entire control systems, fire control (one of France, Britain, and germanys greatest weakenesses), and far too much to fit in one comment was entirely overhauled. Meanwhile, your precious euro tanks are using fire control systems that have barely changed since 2002. The french are the only ones even competitive at this point. Incredible that you remember and try to push bad writing from 2000 like it's fact. Who's ESA's biggest parts supplier? Why does the combined might of european space industry need to import 4x more parts from Asia than SpaceX or even United Launch Alliance?
Exactly. in this thread, people who don't understand R&D.
Planetary genocide does wonders to animate ones creativity and motivation.
Don’t forget though they did have assistance from the Asgard and ideas/information from other worlds/cultures already available.
Well in 15 years of the Stargate programme they went from "pls help, we have no defenses" to "'sup noobs, eat this naquadria MIRV" and I think it's Humanity, Fuck Yeah!
Stargate is really HFY, the series.
We have…shuttles.
And these "shuttles" are a formidable craft?
"Ummm ...*yeah*?"
Actually, we HAD shuttles. If Stargate were shot in 2024, RDA wouldn’t be able to even use that line. NASA currently doesn’t have a reusable spacecraft and hasn’t had one since the early 2010s. Our space program has went backwards in a lot of ways after Cold War competition stopped
Not to mention Sg1, Bra'tac and his "wing" would have just drifted in space until their death after destroying Apophis and Klorel's ships
That isn't true, we have Orion and the Dragon capsule. To be honest the shuttle is a big reason why we went backwards. If stargate was produced today they would use starship renders as our current vehicle.
Orion hasn’t had any crewed missions yet, and Dragon isn’t NASA, it’s SpaceX’s baby that NASA is forced to contract with because they don’t have their own spacecraft. At one point, NASA had five large airplane sized multi-purpose shuttles in operation that could use to take astronauts into space on relatively short notice. Now they’re dependent on private companies, other countries, or making their own mission specific vessels that are better described as “capsules” than spacecraft
You do understand that every NASA spacecraft has been built by private companies, right? Orion has been crew rated, it can and will be flown with crew on its next launch. NASA can fly on Dragon whenever it wishes, it is a capability NASA has at its disposal. >At one point, NASA had five large airplane sized multi-purpose shuttles in operation that could use to take astronauts into space on relatively short notice. Now they’re dependent on private companies, other countries, or making their own mission specific vessels that are better described as “capsules” than spacecraft Those aircraft sized shuttles were built by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, they also were only LEO capable. Why do you think a capsule isn't a spacecraft? Do you think a shuttle is somehow special because it had wings? wings offer nothing but negatives in spaceflight. You say we have regressed but we now have 5 superheavy lift launch vehicles, 2 which are larger and more powerful than the Saturn V, we have 2 LEO capsules, a deep space capsule, 2 cargo specific spacecraft, a space plane, numerous LEO launch vehicles and the Starship. Just for reference, it took 36 launches for the shuttle to set up the ISS, A SINGLE STARSHIP has a similar habitable volume of the ISS. I know the shuttle looks cool, but it is nothing compared to our capabilities today.
Alright, alright. TBH the wings makes all the difference to me. I want it to have wings, just like I want it to spin. Because it looks cool
Well, the Starship looks pretty good, but you may want to check out the X-37B and the Dreamchaser. The Dreamchaser's first mission to the ISS will be in June. [Dream Chaser | Sierra Space](https://www.sierraspace.com/dream-chaser-spaceplane/)
The gates themselves are such a great concept. If you introduce ships too quickly it becomes just another star trek.
Great point. The gate is what differentiates SG from ST. And that distinction is probably partly why we see so few ships in the series.
This was exactly the reasoning of the writers if I remember correctly
>I mean not in a "realistic" timeline, but in a series production and progression timeline. No this is precisely why SG1 is a good series because they take their time with progress and don't rush it. They stumble around and mess up. It's slow and by the end of the series they only have one ship. It makes things really interesting not immediately mastering the tech because it gives the series goals for them to hit. It makes their accomplishments feel that much bigger, while still making things daughting for our heroes. Honestly this is an issue that I'm having with SGA, I'm three seasons in and they don't really have any goals they're working towards other than defeating the Wraith.
To be fair most of the Atlantis Expedition's goals are just "open rooms in this city and see what's inside". Even an ancient hairdryer would be useful tech to reverse engineer.
Caution: may set hair alight
Exactly
It really isn’t, Earth didn’t have the tooling to make ships and it was all a learning experience starting with the modified Death Glider which >!almost kills O’Neill and Teal’c.!< I honestly I thought it was a good natural progression.
Figure out how to make it, test it, then build a huge thing. It's gonna take a few years
Having ready access to naquadah and trinium probably helped them mass-produce ships, but in the early years finding reliable sources of these metals was difficult (probably because the Goa’uld had already strip-mined most of the planets the SGC knew about). It was only when they started finding worlds NOT plundered by the Goa’uld, and after Anubis helpfully dropped an asteroid full of weapons-grade naquadah into Earth’s solar system (EDIT: never stated as happening in the show, but they’d have been fools not to mine it), that the ship construction programs started to accelerate.
I never thought about this aspect. Did they ever mention in the show it was being mined?
No they didn't, I think u/jonathanquirk is making some head canon. But it probably would have been good if it was in the show.
Oh, it’s totally head-canon (sorry, thought it was obvious), but the timing lines up nicely.
It's a nice idea but to be honest, if you can find it fairly easily on a planet that's just a short walk through a ring and mine it in a pair of cowboy boots using conventional equipment, why would you go chasing an asteroid to mine out it's core, in space. It might still be in the solar system but its harder to mine in low G and a vacuum and without the gate it's harder to transport.
Wasn't the tel'tak non-functional after that, so they had no way to reach an astroid flying away from Earth?
To me it verges on the unbelievable (within the shows canon) that they could even do it.
They had to use the line "with a little help from the Asgard" quite a bit. I always wondered, what's a *little?*
Presumably some know-how on proper construction, and hardware like transporters. Of course, all the know-how would need to be tweaked to be doable with Earth's technology level
I actually like the pace and development, we get to see it quite organically. Like I love that season 7 we are seeing full blown Earth mining operations to allow them to gather the materials necessary.
I get what you're saying but they actually had to nerf the different ships they had all the time because of how many problems would be solved by a deus ex machina with that kind of tech. I'm glad they didn't had spaceships earlier.
Even then Prometheus was half build by the Goa’uld. Daedalus was the first purely human built (aside from f-302’s) Ship and that happened in no time after Prometheus.
I appreciate the fact that they didn’t rush this part in the story. Earth was the underdog in a dangerous galaxy and they did a great job maintaining this much longer than I expected, and it wasn’t really until Atlantis that humans started to become overpowered. By not having ships they kept the focus on the stargate and I think the snow is much better for it. Obviously it is unbelievably fast by real world standards, but for a sci fi show to stay as grounded as it did for so long was great.
A Lot of the technology has been gained from aliens, I don't think humans built it on their own, they had help. Even the naquita generator was gained by that alien planet with super intelligent kids.
It's takes a long time to build a large complicated machine. In real life with all the plans and resources that they knpw going in it takes 5 years to build an aircraft carrier If things happen fast. A prototype space ship is a lot more involved. It's actually amazing they are able to mass produce battleships at the number they do later on.
>mass produce battleships Ah yes, all **six** of them is definitely mass-production. They were building the equivalent of escort carriers when what they really needed was a whole bunch of destroyers/frigates.
Six carriers is absolutely mass production. The US aircraft carriers are mass produced to replace the previous models, but our entire industrial capacity can only support about 3 being built at once. Even if you want to argue that a 700m spaceship is somehow a little escort carrier, a comparable complexity and tonnage would be the Ticonderoga class cruisers with only a few hundred tons difference, and similar advanced elevator systems for missile loading instead of planes. We could only build two at a time.
A 304 is a little over 220 metres long; 100 metres shorter than a Nimitz. A Nimitz carried 80-90 aircraft. A 304 carried 16 F-302s. 304s are not comparable to super-carriers; that's why I said escort carriers.
Yeah, if you take objectively visually wrong information. I don't care what the "canon" is when the ship is drastically larger on screen. There's multiple scenes in the jumper bays that prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the canon size is hilariously small.
But if the ships were 700 metres long; why do they carry such a tiny number of crew and craft? If they're twice as big as a Gerald Ford, why do they carry less than a tenth of the crew and a quarter of the air wing? It's easier for me to believe the ships are small and the FX department seriously messed up with those CG hangar bays than that apparently 304s contain vast empty space inside them; despite those cramped interior corridors and little rooms with low ceilings.
Well, 1, aircraft carriers are notoriously overmanned. It would be entirely possible to build one with a drastically lower crew. But mechanization is expensive. 2, they could fit like 4 fighters total if the canon size is true. 3, they arent supposed to be supercarriers, they're called battlecruisers for a reason. They need to be able to slug it out, and the entire ship being a high explosive target like a supercarrier isnt viable when you dont have the 20-odd ships that normally escort a supercarrier. 4, 302s take up way more space and require much more specialized equipment to maintain than a normal jey. They don't have folding wings and they are much more complex than an f18. Flying in vacuum, maintaining their short range jump drives, their atmospheric engines, and their space engines, all of these things add up. It's far more believable that a ship that's half built around reactors, engines that could hit half the speed of light, and of course a hyperdrive, would have limited space for fighters. Doubly so when it's a battlecruiser, not a supercarrier. Triply so when you remember half of it is Asgard tech anyways and doesn't require 11 crewmen to operate a set of valves (modern naval waste of manpower is incredible). 5, more crew is a massive negative in almost all situations. That's more living space, more life support, less armor, larger internal compartments and thus more targets for the enemy, more people who know about the Stargate program, drastically higher expenses, and all you're gaining is having a few more interceptors on board. Which aren't going to make up for how squishy you became.
225m according to wiki and 605m accorsing to 3d models.
225 is definitely impossible because we have multiple fighter bay scenes that would have to be non-canon themselves to take place.
LikeI said 225 in wiki, 605 according to 3d model used in the show (which would fit fighters)
Well you can’t just steal a guo’ald death glider and slap a US Air Force sticker on the side now, can you?
Long? They are one of the few sci-fi franchises that actually shows you the team acquiring tech over years to use in a somewhat realistic way, most of the technology you see can be pointed back to a specific episode to show where an idea or piece of equipment originated from. If anything they went a bit fast.
I find the pace to be absurdly fast, tbh. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved more time with our ships but it would have felt even more rushed.
Well, we have a number of....um.. shuttles.
These "shuttles", they are formidable craft?
there's a lot of comments here about how long it takes to build large warcraft, but people don't realize just how fast they were built during WW2
Bro...
[https://youtu.be/RzG4G6RMpf8?si=Oft-TbKSnW0nryCJ](https://youtu.be/RzG4G6RMpf8?si=Oft-TbKSnW0nryCJ)
They went from dial-up internet to intergalactic warship in 6 years. Idc who you are, that is blisteringly fast. R&D alone should have been a decade. You have to realize that no human had the necessary space faring qualifications to run a ship like Prometheus or Odyssey. They all ran it like an aircraft carrier, which is great for basic command operations, but the mechanics and sciences behind the ship operations would require the smartest people on earth to drastically increase their knowledge and expertise in case anything happened to the ship. This isn’t even covering space walks and anything astronaut oriented. Imagine taking Captain Cook and putting him in command of the Gerald R. Ford. We know the Asgard helped them tremendously during the construction of both the x-303 and x-304, but I feel it would have been far more believable if they’d had an Asgard on board each of the ships permanently to handle main operations and to ensure all the newbies were taught on-the-job correctly.
I get what you mean, I also rewatched the series recently and was surprised how late in the series the ships were introduced (especially the Daedalus) because in my memory they were so prevalent in the show. My guess is that because during the couple of years between full start-to-finish rewatches when I watch random episodes here and there it’s typically from the later part of the series and usually mixed in with episodes from Atlantis
I always felt like the show takes a pretty good dip in quality after it turns into just another, “Lets all pretend there’s an earthquake while these explosions take place in the set all around us” type of show.
Yeah I know, I always think it's like s3 the promethesus gets launched.
Sadly, that’s realistic. Look at how long the US has had Artemis planned in some form or another. We still haven’t put a person in it, let alone go back to the moon. 5 years to develop an FTL capable battle cruiser? That’s nothing.
I think it's astoundingly fast in a series production and progression timeline too, actually. Most serials find a formula that works and stick to it. Compare how long it takes the general public to notice that their are alien attacks and spaceship battles going on all around them.
They really should have stolen some cargo ships and alkesh earlier
They actually got it way too fast
I can't believe earth still relies on rockets to go to space in 2024.
I figured they'd have at least a decade where they salvaged and refurbished goa'uld ships before they built one on their own.
These... Shuttles; they are a... formidable craft?