Could the Destiny crew make a pseudo-gate bridge?

Question

In Stargate: Universe, there is a group of people who become stranded on a ship floating a whole long way from home. They got there by use of a planet with a special super-powered core which had the power generation to dial that distance, but the ships power reserves were too damaged by the time the new crew got there that they couldn't dial back.

However we know that the Destiny had several 'Seed' ships which preceded it, placing stargates along the entire path.

What I ask is if they (either the Destiny crew or the SGC) could find enough power sources to connect to the gates that were between each galaxy the Destiny visited, (thus connecting every galaxy, as the Destiny gates had a very low range they needed a lot of power in order to get anywhere, this is why the gates at the end of each Galaxy need an external power source), could they make a new gate bridge between Destiny and Earth thus saving the crew of the Destiny? Or were there other limitations which may have barred them from this?

And not to confuse anyone, I know why they didn't do this, just asking if it were possible from a canon perspective.

Answer 1

This was never directly addressed in the show, the novelization of the pilot, or the tie-in comic book. So we'll have to examine the possibilities.

The McKay/Carter Intergalactic Gate Bridge was constructed by the following:

Place gates at strategic intervals

Thirty-four Gates from both the Milky Way and Pegasus Gate systems have been strategically placed in the massive void between our two galaxies.

There are several important points about these 34 gates:

• They were under the control of the SGC (i.e. no enemies were using them)
• They were known to be operational
• The locations (gate addresses?) were known

None of this is true for Destiny. If any enemies have taken control of gates, or any have been destroyed (or gotten too close to a black hole), then they aren't any good for Destiny. And do you know the gate addresses for all of them? It's possible that they are maintained by Destiny and the ship can update for stellar drift, but once you start your journey, you won't be able to refer to that.

Write macros to be able to forward someone being transferred

A macro that I have written specially for the occasion will command each Gate in the chain to store you in its buffer and forward you along to the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next until you arrive here.

[...] enter the Milky Way Gate system where a similar macro designed by yours truly will forward you along to the SGC

McKay wrote two distinct macros: one for the Pegasus Galaxy and one for the Milky Way Galaxy. We don't learn much about what this entailed, but this suggests there isn't a generic macro that can be used for any arbitrary galaxy's gate system.

If I were to guess, the macro involves specific gate addresses for each gate you are forwarding to, so you would need to take the time to understand the gate system of each galaxy and know which gates are viable. Or if gate addresses don't work between galaxies, then it involves a custom gate coordinate system.

Have a space station to transfer between gate networks

Once at the midway space station you simply exit the Pegasus Gate system and enter the Milky Way Gate system

Each galaxy's gate system can't interface with each other, so you need a place to stop between systems. Destiny doesn't have Puddlejumper-sized craft that can fit through the gate, so you need somewhere to stand.

Theoretically, you could use a ZPM to go from one land-based gate to another land-based gate in a nearby galaxy in order to prevent needing a stopover point, as the SGC has used to go to the Pegasus and Ida (i.e. Asgard) galaxies. But since Stargates aren't usually designed to connect to ZPMs, you'd have to macgyver a way to connect each Stargate to a ZPM, and have more than one available so that you could leapfrog them through the galaxy. Given the difficulty that the Atlantis expedition had in finding even one ZPM, and there being doubts about if Destiny even has the technology for a ZPM, this is unlikely to be a solution.

Answer 2

Theoretically, yes. Practically, no.

You'd need a team and a minimum of 2 ZPMs, but it could be done. For the purposes of this exercise, we'll assume that we have enough ZPMs spare to make the full journey, though in practice the SGC would run out by the time they reached even 1% of the distance to Destiny. We'll also assume that they know where Destiny is at all times so they don't get lost on the way, which is actually quite a likely outcome.

The way this works is fairly simple.

Step 1: Use the regular gate network to dial to the edge of the Galaxy. The DHDs and internal power sources inside the Stargates themselves will be enough to achieve this.

Step 2: Hook up a ZPM to the Stargate in your current Galaxy. Doing so will allow you to dial to a neighbouring Galaxy via an 8-Symbol address.

Step 3: Send a team through the gate with the other ZPM and hook it up to the receiving Stargate.

Step 4: Take down the ZPM on the dialling side and take it through the gate. When the power source is disconnected, the receiving Stargate takes up the slack of the power requirements, which is why we hooked up the other ZPM to it.

Step 5: After you go through and the connection terminates, take down the other ZPM. Now you have the full team and both ZPMs safely in another galaxy. Repeat from Step 1 as necessary until you're within range of Destiny's gate.

Of course, even if you succeed, all you really end up with is a bunch of extra mouths to feed on Destiny with some depleted ZPMs. Even if it can be accomplished, it could only be done once and you wouldn't be able to take enough supplies with you for it to be worth it.

---

TL;DR - It can be done, but it's not worth doing.

Answer 3

This was never directly addressed, however, seeing as the Universe-style gates are capable of dialing each other (S1E15 "Lost"), there shouldn't be any technical limitations. The only potential issue comes with power - the Atlantis expedition needed to use a ZPM to provide the gate at the SGC with enough power to dial Atlantis.

So, in short, yes, there isn't anything in the show preventing them from doing so other than the power requirements.

Answer 4

It may have been possible but the amount of ZPMs it would have taken to get to the Destiny would have been astronomical if they had that many ZPMs it would simply have been easier to dial Destiny and throw a bunch of ZPMs through

A more practical problem of galaxy hopping would be finding the addresses you need it would come down to random dialing 8 chevron addresses and hope the galaxy you connect to is in the right direction

Answer 5

Technically yes but there are insurmountable obstacles.

First, we only ever see two destinations outside the Milky Way Galaxy network successfully dialed.

We know from SGA that the only way to directly connect to Pegasus was through a Pegasus network gate that had the special crystal that Atlantis had in it's DHD. So not only did they need that crystal to dial out but also to accept an incoming connection from the MWG network. O'Niell dialing Ida doesn't count as it had the same style gate as the MWG, it only needed a range boost. This means that Destiny's gate is very likely the only Destiny style gate able to connect outside the seedship network.

It stands to reason that given access to naquada (which Destiny could certainly locate) the crew ought to be able to construct at least simple boosters like O'Neill made and greatly increase the seedship gates range but it's not something that would reach from MWG to Pegasus without an actual intergalactic gate bridge or they would've used it to avoid the need to place 34 gates in the intergalactic void to begin with.

Any reasonable estimate of the number of galaxies Destiny has passed through means there will be hundreds of intergalactic gaps just as big. And if there were fewer the gaps would be even larger. So it would seem to be a non-starter without a supply of hundreds of ZPMs as noted by others.

One potentially viable alternative might be based on the Ori approach of using a black hole to power a very long range wormhole from the MWG.

It's never explicitly stated how far away the Ori galaxy is but it must at least be far enough to require gate travel to avoid months or more of travel at the speed of Asgard or Ancient hyperdrives. So tens of millions of light-years at least. We've seen the Tauri place a standard gate near a black hole in Pegasus and dial the Ori supergate in the MWG to block it's use, it follows then that this could be used to dial a (compatible) gate ~50M ly away.

But even this scheme requires they first find a seedship gate in/near the Milky Way and that a hyperspace capable Puddle Jumper could be perfected and used to place a seedship gate near a black hole in each of several to a few dozen galaxies along the way.

Answer 6

It's simple, Destiny has explored 38 different galaxies, as Destiny is following the path of the seedships before it then it stands to reason that so have the seed ships.

You cannot seed gates between 38 galaxies, the effort would take you more than a lifetime and would require resources which the Destiny Crew simply did not have.

In addition the gates deployed by the seed ships are of an older design so may have a more limited range, also add the fact that in all three series no one has ever been shown to gate from one galaxy to the next without the need for vast amounts of energy and special gates with specifically coded dialling crystals.