sgu propulsion question

[BlackFire3]

the destiny had a unique stardrive enabling it to cross galaxies at greater efficiency than the deadalas class, not to mention it can refuel on certain stars.
my question is this: why hasn't anyone thought to use atlantis' drive that enabled it to hop from the pegasus galaxy to earth in seconds. given the time between the last atlantis episode and the start of sgu they could have used the asgards technology to reduce the risk stated in the atlantis episode and to catch up to the destiny to at least offer support if not return them home.

 

[BlobVanDam]

The whole wormhole drive thing they pulled in Enemy At The Gate was a pretty poor plot idea to begin with imo.
I think the extreme risk of them being instantly destroyed while attempting it is the most likely reason they haven't tried it again. A necessary risk when the fate of 6 billion people being devoured by the wraith is at stake, not so much when less than 100 people are floating through space. And to actually save them they'd have to use the wormhole drive twice, so that doubles the risk. And I doubt they'd give up Atlantis for a one way trip just to offer support.

 

[Reverend]

I think the main stubling block there is *finding* the Destiny. It's a bloody huge universe and without precise targeting data they wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting anywhere near them. Secondly, I wouldn't necessarily say Destiny's FTL drive is unique. For all we know it's the same design the Alterians used when they left the Ori galaxy. Thirdly I doubt Homeworld Command is about to risk loosing their greatest asset in two galaxies with out an absolute, definite assurance it'd work...without draining the ZPM. Finally, if they do that then the show's over...but since it's over anyway I suppose that last one is moot.

 

[Brent]

The wormhole drive was like a one shot deal, and ate up tons of power they just don't have, not like there are loads of extra ZPMs about.

 

[Deks]

I think Atlantis by itself has the capacity to create extra ZPM's in one of the unexplored areas of the city.
It IS a city... and for the supposed advanced technology the Ancients were attributed to, I think the writers missed on a whole lot of tech (which would probably make certain things moot).

Using the wormhole drive severely depleted the ZPM's, but not in their entirety.
Even if they would be able to manufacture new ones (which probably wouldn't be beyond their capability), finding the Destiny is another matter (although one could say this can be achieved via the Stargate subspace network itself much like the drones tracked down the Destiny upon using it to find supplies and whatnot).

Heck, if the plan to open a stable wormhole to Destiny (without blowing up the planet) is sound as McKay said it would be, then just send extra personnel and raw materials to restore the ship completely, populate it properly, perhaps even install better weapons and shields if possible and continue with the mission using the existing crew).

 

[The Wormhole]

Actually, I was under the impression Destiny's FTL was slower than hyperdrive. After all, with hyperdrive you can get o another galaxy in a matter of weeks. It seems to take Destiny a matter of weeks to get to another solar system.

And it didn't take Atlantis a couple of seconds to get from Pegasus to Earth. It took an unspecified amount of time to get from Pegasus to a solar system at the edge of the Milky Way, then they pulled wormhole drive out of their ass to make it the rest of the way instantly.

Although it is a legitimate question why they don't use wormhole drive to send a ship out to Destiny. I'm sure using the stones you could calculate a rough idea of where Destiny is in the universe. Its computers did keep a log of its journey from Earth, after all.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Actually, I was under the impression Destiny's FTL was slower than hyperdrive. After all, with hyperdrive you can get o another galaxy in a matter of weeks. It seems to take Destiny a matter of weeks to get to another solar system.

And it didn't take Atlantis a couple of seconds to get from Pegasus to Earth. It took an unspecified amount of time to get from Pegasus to a solar system at the edge of the Milky Way, then they pulled wormhole drive out of their ass to make it the rest of the way instantly.

Although it is a legitimate question why they don't use wormhole drive to send a ship out to Destiny. I'm sure using the stones you could calculate a rough idea of where Destiny is in the universe. Its computers did keep a log of its journey from Earth, after all.

It's also entirely possible that the difficulty of calculating the wormhole drive equations increases with difficulty over distance, or possibly requires more power for longer distance, just like the stargates themselves, which apparently are similar in technology.
I don't know how far to Earth they were before they dropped out of hyperdrive, but at the very most it was from one galaxy to the next. Destiny would have covered hundreds/thousands of galaxies in the hundreds of thousands of years it's been traveling (I'm sure they've probably mentioned it, but I can't be bothered checking).
Either way, I'm sure the order of magnitude of difference in distance is enough of an excuse for them not to use the wormhole drive solution for this situation, even if they do know the exact location of Destiny.

 

[Deks]

On another note, I do recall when the Destiny was on the verge of exiting a galaxy it was initially in and by the next episode they were already within the new one (but not before being chased in the void by the blue aliens who abducted Rush and experimented on Chloe).

Taking into account the slow passage of time as it was portrayed on-screen (one year effectively equated 1.5 seasons), it's not exactly consistent.

Is it possible the Destiny simply travels through galaxies at a slower FTL rate but between voids in a faster fashion?
Though this is not exactly consistent with the 3 year FTL jump to avoid the current drone occupying galaxy and reach the next one (unless the ship would be traveling at a lower speed and the crew simply didn't find ways to manipulate that aspect of the FTL).

See, it doesn't exactly 'mesh'.
In this particular situation, one could say they used the 'speed of plot' to traverse the void between the initial galaxy and the one they are going through now.
Unless of course the speed differential is in play here.
Too little do we know about Destiny's overall capabilities though, so one cannot be certain, but I wouldn't go as far to say that FTL the ship is using is necessarily slower than Hyperspace (though it may very well be).

 

[The Wormhole]

Is it possible the Destiny simply travels through galaxies at a slower FTL rate but between voids in a faster fashion?
Though this is not exactly consistent with the 3 year FTL jump to avoid the current drone occupying galaxy and reach the next one (unless the ship would be traveling at a lower speed and the crew simply didn't find ways to manipulate that aspect of the FTL).

They did say the next galaxy is further away from the current one than the current one was from the Sombrero galaxy. That's why Sombrero to current took a little over a week, while current to next one will take 3 years. But you're right, it doesn't really mesh.

And yes, I'm still calling it the Sombrero galaxy.

 

[Kaijima]

The crew was stuck on Destiny for about one year by the time they had to go into stasis at the end. They traveled through, what? Two galaxies and the gulf in-between those two, in that year?

Remember how HUGE the gulfs between whole galaxies is. Destiny's FTL definitely seems much slower and more primitive than the true hyperspace drive that later civilizations developed. It is also clearly a lot more dangerous in a sense, because they're not entirely outside the universe when using it - they need the navigation shields to deflect hyper kinetic particles from impacting the hull.

Given how often Destiny needs to recharge just for crossing one galaxy, its FTL system also isn't as power efficient as hyperdrive. Really, it's a clever storytelling conceit to make the ship appear old and primitive yet still more advanced than 21st Century Earth (sans secret Stargate program technology). The only way for Destiny's FTL to be viable for full galactic and extra-galactic travel is to devise a mechanism whereby the ship can refuel from stars along the way. Makes sense considering it seems force field manipulation was one of the Ancients' strongest capabilities.

Given they're the only ones who truly and fully cracked making wormholes on demand, I'd say it seems manipulating fields is what the Ancients did best.

 

[Deks]

The problem with the power issue is that due to it's overall damage and age, the Destiny is incapable at the moment to recharge beyond 40% of it's max capacity.
If the ship was able to recharge up to 100% though, or very close to it, there's a good chance it would in fact be a lot more capable than what we've seen thus far.
It would have been nice for the crew to be able to restore the ship's power levels to say 80% of where it once was.

'The Wormhole'

One thing that's also an unknown is: when the crew wormholed to Destiny, for how long was the ship in that particular galaxy?
We noticed that the passage of time for 2 seasons is effectively just over 1 year (or almost twice as slower than our real time).
Furthermore, when it crossed the void and entered the second galaxy, we don't know how much distance of the second galaxy it traversed.
In that sense, we have to bear in mind that the 3 year FTL jump would not only include the void but also the remainder of the current galaxy.

Hm... on another note, Destiny's power reserves were very low (after the recharge in the blue giant) and the ship ended up with more damage by the time the final episode finished.
It's possible that this contributed to lower FTL speeds, or it could simply mean the void between the current galaxy and the next one is much larger than the previous one resulting in 3 years needed to traverse it and the current galaxy.

In that retrospect, Destiny's FTL might not be so far off when compared to hyperspace (only that the latter might be more efficient).
It takes 3 weeks for Deadelus to traverse distances between Mikly Way and Pegasus... who is to say the void between the galaxy the Destiny is occupying at the moment and the next one isn't 48x larger?
It wouldn't be beyond reason after all (within the confines of SG universe).

 

[timmy84]

Are the FTL engines on Destiny more efficient then hyperdrive? I don't think they are. I think they just predate hyperdrive. Whether they are faster or not is another question. Considering they showed the blue aliens catching up to Destiny several times and traversing the gap between galaxies makes me think they aren't superior at all.

Although I am curious how long Destiny was in the first galaxy. It just makes me think that if the blue aliens are so obsessed with it then maybe they had been following Destiny through several galaxies.

 

[Deks]

I hadn't said that Destiny's FTL engines are more efficient than hyperdrive... merely that the speeds could be comparable between the two, but that the latter is more efficient in terms of power requirements for example.

As for how long the Destiny was in the first galaxy... we don't know (check my reply).
We do know it was reaching the edge of it by what... second half of first season.
So it could have been anything between months or years (depending on the size of the galaxy, the speed the Destiny was traversing it, etc.).
And in regards to the blue aliens... oh it's entirely possible that they have been following Destiny through several galaxies.

 

[Tom]

If they can't get enough power to power the Stargate to Destiny (without tapping into planets) then how they hell would they have enough power for the wormhole drive? its the same concept. If ZPM's were enough to dial the ninth chevron on a stargate they would have done that already. They need much more power then a ZPM(s) can produce.

 

[Deks]

I think it was already established that ZPM's were in fact quite the power houses by default.
Virtually no power generation rivaled them (except for the zero point limitless energy source project that the Ancients abandoned and McKay blew the whole solar system with due to inherent instability).

3 ZPM's in union can effortlessly open up and maintain wormholes to Earth from the Pegasus galaxy for example.
I would imagine that the Ancients also could open a wormhole to Destiny with ZPM's, but might need more than 3.

The whole premise is based that Icarus type planets have the cores which are able to open up the wormhole to Destiny irrespective to where in the universe the ship is located.
And seeing how advanced the Ancients were, I find it doubtful that they wouldn't be able to produce all that power from Atlantis with 3 ZPM's or more (say 10 in total).

As to the wormhole drive... well, the thing did pretty much exhaust the ZPM's (though not entirely as they still had enough juice in them left for the fight and all), so it's possible that 3 ZPM's (fully charged) would be enough to open the stargate directly to Destiny from Atlantis, but would be burned out after the wormhole closed.

 

[KJbushway]

the destiny had a unique stardrive enabling it to cross galaxies at greater efficiency than the deadalas class, not to mention it can refuel on certain stars.
my question is this: why hasn't anyone thought to use atlantis' drive that enabled it to hop from the pegasus galaxy to earth in seconds. given the time between the last atlantis episode and the start of sgu they could have used the asgards technology to reduce the risk stated in the atlantis episode and to catch up to the destiny to at least offer support if not return them home.

Sorry mate, I didn't see this in time. I asked the same question, even have a thread about it.

Basically the Wormhole drive requires a lot of power, something one ship can't do even with just one ZPM.
Not only that but that plot was just a quick way for Atlantis to end up in time to save their friends.