Sci fi Series?

posted on February 19th, 2010, 10:17 pm

yeh, it seems that they are operating out of a power conduit atm

posted on February 20th, 2010, 12:09 am

blocked can be either, or both, the whole room may have been blown to pieces if it existed. there are no containment fields on destiny, they use the shield for that. and they arent travelling at hyperspace, its never explained how the achieve FtL speeds.

the ship has demonstrated the capability to run itself, meaning that a large control centre wouldnt be necessary. the characters always refer to the apple core room as the control room if i remember correctly. maybe they were going for decentralised command, the chair could have been used to control many systems. Like on atlantis, operations took place in the gate room control centre, but the engines were controlled from the chair far away. perhaps destiny was meant to be controlled from several locations, so all the command crew couldnt be taken out at once. this is just speculation though.

i think its reasonable that the ship can be controlled well from the apple core room

[Atlantisbase]

posted on February 20th, 2010, 12:36 am

Last edited by Atlantisbase on February 20th, 2010, 12:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

While the exact method of FTL travel is never addressed, the only FTL system used in Stargate, unless I'm forgetting some small one-shot thing, was hyperdrive. The Ancients used it, the Goa'uld used it, the Asgard used it, the Replicators used it, Earth used it, the Ori used it. Therefore Destiny is probably using a version similar to the intergalactic model used on city ships.

The characters call it the "control room" if only because they haven't found anything else which looks like one and really don't have anything better to call it. The chair found on Destiny was clearly less developed than the Atlantis chair; it digs into your head and practically electrocutes you, somehow I don't think it was used for controlling the ship unless the person was constantly connected. Keep in mind that Atlantis was not designed as a ship, it was designed as a movable base and as such having the weapons and propulsion control in a separate, deep, protected area is feasible since most of the time it does not have to be occupied. But on a starship where you must constantly be adjusting things like the engines and shields it is more productive and efficient if all command personal are in one location. Note that Aurora class ships have centralized bridges.

While the ship may be capable of essentially running itself, it was clearly designed to hold a crew and one which was advanced and skilled enough to ultimately operate the ship. Prometheus could practically run itself, it still had a bridge. Chances are Destiny has one too. While yes, the ship probably could be controlled more or less from the "apple" control room, it is a bit like controlling a ship from Engineering, yes it can be done, but it is far from efficient as none of the consoles are geared towards actually operating the ship, they are specialized towards managing the engines and power systems. In the case of the apple control room, the consoles aren't specialized at all, they're generic, which is just as bad.

posted on February 20th, 2010, 12:56 am

1) they clearly say its NOT hyperdrive, they dont say what it is, but they explicitly say not hyperdrive, besides, its way faster than hyperdrive, it had to be to go between galaxies faster than intergalactic hyperdrives do. its fuelled by stars themselves.

2) the chair hurt that tech guy probably because he wasnt compatible, if he had been the intended user it would have probably not even hurt. the ancient repository of knowledge hurt o'neill, but we clearly see merlin use it to control his machines.

3) destiny was completely automated, it didnt NEED a crew, even if the ancients had a crew on board at one point, they would have probably just sat back and let the computer do the work. in the show they said that the ancients plan was to send it out on autopilot so it could run around and explore for a while, and then go there themselves, but they got sidetracked by plagues and ascension and left destiny alone.

4) i dont know where you base your evidence that prometheus could practically run itself, it couldnt run itself at all, it was stone age compared to destiny, promtheus couldnt turn any of its systems on or fly itself, it couldnt make decisions on when to refuel, it needed people controlling it constantly.

5) your last statement about ancient control styles has no evidence, for all we know (because we dont really know we just speculate) ancient tech is really easy to control from any console and generic consoles are fully functional.

posted on February 20th, 2010, 1:42 am

DOCTOR WHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

posted on February 20th, 2010, 2:17 am

1) When do they say that it isn't hyperdrive and by isn't hyperdrive are they actually comparing technologies or are they looking at what information they can glean from the schematics and saying this doesn't look like our hyperdrive therefore it can't be. We don't actually know how long it takes to go between galaxies with Destiny. We do know that the 304s can go from Earth to Pegasus in about a week and that Atlantis can do it in even less time. So it is entirely possible that they are using hyperdrive. The fact that it's powered by stars is rather empty. How is it "powered by the stars"? Does it take in solar plasma and extract energy from that? Or does it extract energy and store it in capacitors of some kind? Either way, the amount of power is probably close to that delivered by several ZPMs. It's likely that the Ancients had yet to invent the ZPM when Destiny was constructed. Perhaps it isn't exactly the hyperdirve we (Earth) know but a variation which is more powerful and efficient but which in our minds qualifies as a "different" technology.

2) Yes, there probably is a compatibility issue, but it obviously isn't the ATA gene. O'Neill was never really "hurt" by the repositories, he just started absorbing the information and, as far as his mind goes, becoming an Ancient. Merlin (or Mirdin if you prefer) may have used the same piece of equipment for another purpose. You can visualize things easier and much quicker than you can describe a design with a keyboard. Merlin used that to construct, virtually, his anti-Ori weapon which was then produced materially. This chair is something else entirely, for all we know you need sockets implanted into your head to make it work.

3) For all we know that's the poster speech for Destiny. It's like when you sign up for some program or some such you saw a pamphlet or ad for and when you got there found that it was completely different. And I should feign to think that the Ancients would be so arrogant as to think they could actually build a ship which would completely run itself. Of course when you think about it, it was pretty silly of them to believe that they could just pop back and forth to Destiny. Destiny is massive, so clearly they intended it to, at some point, hold a large number of crew and I still hold that to operate a ship that size you need a substantial, efficient, centralized command center. Even if most of the time it's on autopilot, there will come a point when you need to control it, like when you need to turn around.

4) Prometheus was advertised as needing only four people to operate it regularly, not as a skeleton crew. As far as I'm concerned, that's practically running itself. The fact is we don't know the extent to which Prometheus' systems were automated. It's entirely possible that if the crew died it would set a course for the nearest Federation outpost and engage at maximum warp. It is clearly capable of controlling its three parts in combat, there is no reason to believe it isn't capable of more.

5) Generic consoles maybe fully functional but that does not necessarily mean they are automatically tied into command systems. In fact, chances are they aren't; to do so would pose a security risk and becomes immensely inefficient.
For example let's say that the captain is sitting in his office and decides he wants to change course to planet XYZ for no particular reason. He calls up his helmsman. His helmsman happens to be eating lunch at the moment, even though he's on duty, but there's no one station he can be at so it's ok. So he calls up the helmsman and says, "I want you to alter course to planet XYZ." "Aye sir," replies the helmsman, "let me just put down my sandwich and go over to the food dispenser where I just got it, and punch that it." The captain has no idea if its actually been done, he just has to assume it has. On top of that, none of the command staff know this has been done because only the helmsman heard the order. Then maybe the tactical officer wants to test the weapons, so he looks up the nearest asteroid field and goes to the nearest console and changes the ship's course again without anyone knowing. Now what will the captain do, he wanted to go to XYZ and he's the captain. Well when he sees that he's not going to XYZ he'll call up his helmsman and tell him to change course again. "But I already did", says the helmsman who must now stop eating again and go change course again.

It is far more efficient to have everyone in one location where the captain can look at his helmsman say, "Change course to planet XYZ." "Aye sir." *tap tap* *beep beep* "Course laid in sir." the captain can see the order has been carried out and so does everyone else.

Ultimately all consoles are generic, but the consoles on the bridge are tied directly into specific subsystems and have priority over all other consoles in the ship. Consoles in engineering are tied into propulsion systems and specialized to control these systems, but can be re-purposed and tied into command systems. Another example. Say you have a stairwell and you are the king of this stairwell and you decide that you want the light off so you flip your light switch and out they go. However your switch isn't a master switch, there is no master switch and there are others at the bottom who want the lights on and they have a switch too so they flip it and the lights go on again. But you are the king and you want the lights off, so you use your switch and turn them back off again. So the folks at the bottom turn them on again. You will go in circles like this until you decide to keep the lights on. However, if we change this and say that your switch is a master switch, when you flip that switch the lights will go off and stay off no matter how much the folks at the bottom wiggle theirs.

Unless you specialize consoles and centralize command functions, you are asking for a disaster and I should hope that the Ancients were around long enough to realize this.

posted on February 20th, 2010, 2:54 am

If my helsman in duty was in the kitchen having a sandwich when he was supposed to be at the helm, he'd get a nice tan courtesy of the ship engines.

Anyways, IF there was need for this, "standard protocol" would make the helm console to reflect any course change, authorized by who and executed by who else.

Besides that, any gunner that thinks that the ship is his personal toy to move around as he pleases when he decides to make some unscheduled target practice, would be in the seat next to the helsman getting his very own tan.

posted on February 20th, 2010, 3:13 am

The situation was purposely ridiculous so as to illustrate a point. That is decentralized command structures and generic consoles from which anything can be controlled are inefficient.

posted on February 20th, 2010, 11:52 am

1) in the first episode air, they specifically say, faster than light without hyperdrive. a character actually said that, its as canon as you get.

1a) it is powered by stars, it flies through stars, and uses them to recharge somehow (we dont know how). thats powered by stars, it is probably less powerful than zpms as zpms are more recent and use a mini universe in a bottle. but there are plenty of stars in the universe for destiny to refuel at over and over again.

1b) earth ships without zpms have consistently been seen to take 18 days to get to pegasus, thats about 2 and half weeks, nowhere near the one week u said.

2) o'neill was hurt really bad by the repository, the knowledge was too much for his mind and he would have died were it not for the asgards timely help (twice). and when daniel used merlins device it weakened him really badly. its possible only the latest ancient tech was compatible with humans who have the ata gene (who still arent ancients, just closer)

3) the ancients were arrogant, but in this case they DID build a completely automated ship, it can set courses make decisions fly through stars, its completely automated, it doesnt need a crew, its been going for hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of years without a crew.

4) you prove my point with your point about prometheus, 4 people is some people. its not completely automated, its not close, it actually requires regular input from 4 crewmembers.

4a) theres no federation in stargate

4b) the crew were rendered completely unconscious and most were removed in grace, but the ships just sat there in the nebula eroding. not so clever is it?

5) i agree with you that a bridge is a good thing, but there are several issues we disagree on:

5a) did the ancients build destiny with a bridge? even though i think a bridge is useful on ships most of the time, it is possible that destiny never needed one due to high automation and the apple core room being perfectly sufficient. we cannot apply star trek values (such as bridge at the top of the ship etc) and human values of having control centres to ancient design, its perfectly possible destiny was never supposed to have a bridge.

5b) assuming a bridge exists, it could have been completely destroyed or all access to it cut off. even if it exists (which we dont know) its perfectly resonable that the expedition never reaches it. i would like them to reach an engineering section in the back half of season 1 though.

6) ancient crew arent stupid, a tactical officer isnt going to alter course without command approval, for all we know the apple core room can easily control all systems, maybe the captain serves as pilot and operations officer, and the rest is handled by one other officer, we dont know much about ancient command structures at that time. on the aurora class ship orion we saw lots of consoles, but it was all operated by zelenka it seems, he was flying it, firing guns, controlling power allocation to shields. lorne just told him what to do. maybe ancients are good multi taskers