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> That doesn't explain why they didn't develop their own long before then. They could reverse engineer the tech and materials science for fighters and spaceship

> That doesn't explain why they didn't develop their own long before then. They could reverse engineer the tech and materials science for fighters and spaceships but not energy weapons? Come on. Your confusing two terms there. Retrofit doesn’t mean to reverse engineer. It means taking hardware and placing it elsewhere. Earth didn’t know how to build a hyperdrive but, with help, they could take someone else’s working hyperdrive and install it into their own ship. That seems a reasonable jump in tech imo because at no point in SG1 did they say Earth knew how to design their own hyperdrive. > It's simply implausible that they would not have prioritized developing their own energy weapons with an eye towards making them more accurate, rather than simply throwing their hands up and saying "bullets are more accurate". I agree but you’re trying to apply real world logic to a TV show. Stargate isn’t even intended to be hard SciFi. At some level there needs to be some suspension of disbelief because naturally the writers are going to prioritise what makes a compelling story. The fact is that SG1 does a much better job at technology progression than most soft SciFi.

naasking 5y ago
> Your confusing two terms there. Retrofit doesn’t mean to reverse engineer. It means taking hardware and placing it elsewhere. Earth didn’t know how to build a hyperdrive I'm not talking about the hyperdrive, I'm talking about the ships themselves. The degree of science and engineering it would take to build the Prometheus and it's systems is enormous. All they had built previously was a tiny space worthy fighter. Consider the materials science needed for structural integrity and the science and engineering needed for artificial gravity, which presumably is part of the system that lets the Prometheus actually fly in-atmosphere. It's just insane that they could reverse engineer all of that in one or two seasons since they acquired gliders, but they couldn't devise their own real energy weapons based on staffs or Zats that they had access to since the beginning of season 1. It's the biggest plot hole in the show's tech arc IMO. And yes, SG isn't hard sci-fi and requires suspension of disbelief, but that only goes so far. It's also perfectly fine to point out where that did go too far in a thread where we're explicitly discussing those missteps.
- laumars 5y ago
  > It's just insane that they could reverse engineer all of that in one or two seasons since they acquired gliders, Again, they didn’t reverse engineer it. They retrofitted it. They are not the same thing and the latter requires massively less understanding of the hardware to achieve. You’re other points about structural engineering, gravity, etc are valid but they could also easily be handwaved by saying “retrofitted Asgard systems”. Which is precisely what they did do in the show. In fact when they showed the Prometheus I too was like “how the fuck did you build that?” But then Sam Carter would say “it’s retrofitted with alien tech” (ie they didn’t engineer a lot of it. They ostensibly just built a nuclear submarine and bolted on some Asgard hardware to make it work in space). If you watch it carefully you’ll see that there was a sharing of peaceful technology. It was weapons tech that SG1 couldn’t secure. The talk about Asgard hyper drives, teleports and all sorts. And for the first few space flights it was always the American tech that was failing, not the alien systems. I do agree that there is still complexity even in retrofitting other peoples technology. However it is several orders of magnitude easier than reverse engineering it. The difference is like you buying a PC and writing an application to run on it vs designing a CPU, RAM, motherboard, storage, visual display unit, keyboard and mouse etc and then programming an operating system for your application to run on too. But since aliens weren’t sharing weapons tech (and bare in mind upscaling a handheld energy weapon to spaceship proportions requires reverse engineering rather than retrofitting), Earth was required to learn how to build energy weapons from scratch. > It's also perfectly fine to point out where that did go too far in a thread where we're explicitly discussing those missteps. I didn’t say you are not allowed to point it out. I’m just saying any soft SciFi will fall apart under heavy scrutiny. The point we were making wasn’t that Stargate was hard SciFi but rather that the tech progression was better than your average popular SciFi. Sure there are going to be aspects that seem off but most shows fair far worse because they will just invent some amazing piece of tech to save the heroes - tech that should alter the entire dynamic of the show - yet then never mention that tech again after that one episode. SG1 never really fell into that trap (relatively speaking).
  - naasking 5y ago
    > Again, they didn’t reverse engineer it. They retrofitted it. They are not the same thing and the latter requires massively less understanding of the hardware to achieve. The X-302 and the Prometheus were fully human-built. They added the Asgard tech in later seasons, but they had hyperdrive prior to the retrofit you're talking about, see: https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Prometheus https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Prometheus > It was weapons tech that SG1 couldn’t secure. They reverse engineered the gliders by capturing some. That was the point of the X-301 retrofitted glider, which went bad, and the fully human-built X-302 fighter from reverse engineering glider tech. This includes human-built naquada and naquadria reactors, so reverse engineering this tech was not beyond their capabilities. That's why it makes no sense that they couldn't reverse engineer the staffs and zats in all of that time. It was a convenient plot point they used to drive exploration and trade with other species, but it never really made sense.

naasking 5y ago

> Your confusing two terms there. Retrofit doesn’t mean to reverse engineer. It means taking hardware and placing it elsewhere. Earth didn’t know how to build a hyperdrive I'm not talking about the hyperdrive, I'm talking about the ships themselves. The degree of science and engineering it would take to build the Prometheus and it's systems is enormous. All they had built previously was a tiny space worthy fighter. Consider the materials science needed for structural integrity and the science and engineering needed for artificial gravity, which presumably is part of the system that lets the Prometheus actually fly in-atmosphere. It's just insane that they could reverse engineer all of that in one or two seasons since they acquired gliders, but they couldn't devise their own real energy weapons based on staffs or Zats that they had access to since the beginning of season 1. It's the biggest plot hole in the show's tech arc IMO. And yes, SG isn't hard sci-fi and requires suspension of disbelief, but that only goes so far. It's also perfectly fine to point out where that did go too far in a thread where we're explicitly discussing those missteps.

laumars 5y ago
> It's just insane that they could reverse engineer all of that in one or two seasons since they acquired gliders, Again, they didn’t reverse engineer it. They retrofitted it. They are not the same thing and the latter requires massively less understanding of the hardware to achieve. You’re other points about structural engineering, gravity, etc are valid but they could also easily be handwaved by saying “retrofitted Asgard systems”. Which is precisely what they did do in the show. In fact when they showed the Prometheus I too was like “how the fuck did you build that?” But then Sam Carter would say “it’s retrofitted with alien tech” (ie they didn’t engineer a lot of it. They ostensibly just built a nuclear submarine and bolted on some Asgard hardware to make it work in space). If you watch it carefully you’ll see that there was a sharing of peaceful technology. It was weapons tech that SG1 couldn’t secure. The talk about Asgard hyper drives, teleports and all sorts. And for the first few space flights it was always the American tech that was failing, not the alien systems. I do agree that there is still complexity even in retrofitting other peoples technology. However it is several orders of magnitude easier than reverse engineering it. The difference is like you buying a PC and writing an application to run on it vs designing a CPU, RAM, motherboard, storage, visual display unit, keyboard and mouse etc and then programming an operating system for your application to run on too. But since aliens weren’t sharing weapons tech (and bare in mind upscaling a handheld energy weapon to spaceship proportions requires reverse engineering rather than retrofitting), Earth was required to learn how to build energy weapons from scratch. > It's also perfectly fine to point out where that did go too far in a thread where we're explicitly discussing those missteps. I didn’t say you are not allowed to point it out. I’m just saying any soft SciFi will fall apart under heavy scrutiny. The point we were making wasn’t that Stargate was hard SciFi but rather that the tech progression was better than your average popular SciFi. Sure there are going to be aspects that seem off but most shows fair far worse because they will just invent some amazing piece of tech to save the heroes - tech that should alter the entire dynamic of the show - yet then never mention that tech again after that one episode. SG1 never really fell into that trap (relatively speaking).
- naasking 5y ago
  > Again, they didn’t reverse engineer it. They retrofitted it. They are not the same thing and the latter requires massively less understanding of the hardware to achieve. The X-302 and the Prometheus were fully human-built. They added the Asgard tech in later seasons, but they had hyperdrive prior to the retrofit you're talking about, see: https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Prometheus https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Prometheus > It was weapons tech that SG1 couldn’t secure. They reverse engineered the gliders by capturing some. That was the point of the X-301 retrofitted glider, which went bad, and the fully human-built X-302 fighter from reverse engineering glider tech. This includes human-built naquada and naquadria reactors, so reverse engineering this tech was not beyond their capabilities. That's why it makes no sense that they couldn't reverse engineer the staffs and zats in all of that time. It was a convenient plot point they used to drive exploration and trade with other species, but it never really made sense.