Stargate traffic control
Nov. 13th, 2011 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo I was thinking about the limits of Stargate use. Like, how many people was it designed to be used by? There's some seriously small limits on how many people can get through it, compared to population size.
How many people have we seen walk through it side by side? A team of four? Pretend its that. And say it takes them one second to walk through, even though you'd actually have to put time to dial and let the kawoosh happen and walk up and down the ramp. In the minutes where people are just walking through quickly that's 4*60=240 people a minute. 14,400 people per hour. 345,600 people per day, even assuming they all only go one way and nobody needs to dial in and get home. That's miniscule. 126,144,000 people per year might look like a lot, but it's only twice what Heathrow airport does. And, yes, I'm using made up numbers for Stargate traffic, but unless you add a lot more zeros it looks like maximum traffic between worlds was expected to be in the ballpark of air traffic to the UK. Not many more people wanting to go offworld than wanting to visit this tiny island? What's up with that?
If you need to evacuate the planet it's absolutely useless. Are there more new people than you can fit through the gate? A quick google for births per day says maybe. It's midnight so I won't do more than a quick google.
So I'm wondering, what was the Stargate for? What was the original use? Was it meant for exploration even back then? It's a quick trip to market for some of the Pegasus galaxy, yesno? But they're much more sparsely populated. Were there just not so many Ancients, or did they just want to stay home? There's theme parks that get more than a hundred thousand visitors a day. Surely the big wide universe has more appeal than Disneyworld?
If the Stargate got revealed now, if people got to know about it, the supply to demand would surely skew waaaaaay on the demand side. Everyone would be wanting to get out there and see. Even if there was civilian traffic, there couldn't be much. It would have to cost a bundle, just to stop it being overwhelmed.
Could combining it with Asgard beaming technology get a lot more people through? Probably. Just has to flick a signal, not be limited by how many you can fit up the ramp. Maybe then the economics get, like, usable by entities smaller than governments and corporations (and maybe rock stars).
But it's such an impractical thing for so many purposes, just to have this one ring connecting planets together.
There could also be a lot of ships. Bazillions of ships. Gate travel would be quick and direct, hence amazingly expensive. Starship travel would be tedious and take ages, relatively speaking, so not quite as much in demand. But still, can you imagine starships as numerous as airplanes are now? Or cruise ships, they'd have to be more liveable than sardine packed seats. Unless combined with stasis and VR. Then you can stack them in cans and give them a pretty holiday on their way anywhere.
City ships would be the ultimate in bulk transportation, and convenience. You'd just bring your whole life with you. But imagine trying to decide the route. How many cities can agree about anything, let alone which entirely different planet they're going to visit next? If they did go visit places it could be like market days in a county, like, it's Tuesday and Friday, must be Dereham, becomes it's Tuesday, must be Terra. Only it would probably take longer.
If city ships did a loop then if you got lost or missed your ship you could just sit tight and wait for them to come back. If they went exploring you'd never dare step outside, you'd never see your whole entire city again if it took off without you.
That would be a reasonable use for stargates, just to pick up strays who missed their ship. There wouldn't be as many of those.
I just keep trying to think up viable societies around technologies that were invented to be reasonable on a Vancouver budget or to make a particular plot or line sound good. It's an occupation with inherent problems.
It's just, the gate works great for small team exploration, but it's not even so very great for trying to move larger armed forces around, let alone running regular travel through. It's a nasty enough crush trying to get everyone on the same tube train. Imagine trying to get through that same tube sized space, all day, every day, as your only chance of getting off world. Blergh.
Some things get so complicated when they scale up it's hard to see them working. Everyone on a particular ship wanting to go a particular place, sure, why not, they could all book and choose it. City ships? Too many arguments. If the people there think anything like people I'm used to. Even just deciding which hemisphere to park in would be, like, thermostat wars, times a million.
This is what I think of when I've spent two hours trying to get to sleep already.
The one about the goa'uld biology and life cycle and how it leads to their psychology I keep going back to and poking, but really, I'd have to actually watch the episodes over again and gather evidence. Or admit I'm just making stuff up in the grand tradition of SF before me. It would either be bad fanfic, if I did it from memory, or ridiculously time consuming fan meta, if I did the research.
And I can't say I haven't got anything better to do, at least until I pass my degree.
It's just I can't really do reading for my degree while staring at the ceiling trying to sleep.
How many people have we seen walk through it side by side? A team of four? Pretend its that. And say it takes them one second to walk through, even though you'd actually have to put time to dial and let the kawoosh happen and walk up and down the ramp. In the minutes where people are just walking through quickly that's 4*60=240 people a minute. 14,400 people per hour. 345,600 people per day, even assuming they all only go one way and nobody needs to dial in and get home. That's miniscule. 126,144,000 people per year might look like a lot, but it's only twice what Heathrow airport does. And, yes, I'm using made up numbers for Stargate traffic, but unless you add a lot more zeros it looks like maximum traffic between worlds was expected to be in the ballpark of air traffic to the UK. Not many more people wanting to go offworld than wanting to visit this tiny island? What's up with that?
If you need to evacuate the planet it's absolutely useless. Are there more new people than you can fit through the gate? A quick google for births per day says maybe. It's midnight so I won't do more than a quick google.
So I'm wondering, what was the Stargate for? What was the original use? Was it meant for exploration even back then? It's a quick trip to market for some of the Pegasus galaxy, yesno? But they're much more sparsely populated. Were there just not so many Ancients, or did they just want to stay home? There's theme parks that get more than a hundred thousand visitors a day. Surely the big wide universe has more appeal than Disneyworld?
If the Stargate got revealed now, if people got to know about it, the supply to demand would surely skew waaaaaay on the demand side. Everyone would be wanting to get out there and see. Even if there was civilian traffic, there couldn't be much. It would have to cost a bundle, just to stop it being overwhelmed.
Could combining it with Asgard beaming technology get a lot more people through? Probably. Just has to flick a signal, not be limited by how many you can fit up the ramp. Maybe then the economics get, like, usable by entities smaller than governments and corporations (and maybe rock stars).
But it's such an impractical thing for so many purposes, just to have this one ring connecting planets together.
There could also be a lot of ships. Bazillions of ships. Gate travel would be quick and direct, hence amazingly expensive. Starship travel would be tedious and take ages, relatively speaking, so not quite as much in demand. But still, can you imagine starships as numerous as airplanes are now? Or cruise ships, they'd have to be more liveable than sardine packed seats. Unless combined with stasis and VR. Then you can stack them in cans and give them a pretty holiday on their way anywhere.
City ships would be the ultimate in bulk transportation, and convenience. You'd just bring your whole life with you. But imagine trying to decide the route. How many cities can agree about anything, let alone which entirely different planet they're going to visit next? If they did go visit places it could be like market days in a county, like, it's Tuesday and Friday, must be Dereham, becomes it's Tuesday, must be Terra. Only it would probably take longer.
If city ships did a loop then if you got lost or missed your ship you could just sit tight and wait for them to come back. If they went exploring you'd never dare step outside, you'd never see your whole entire city again if it took off without you.
That would be a reasonable use for stargates, just to pick up strays who missed their ship. There wouldn't be as many of those.
I just keep trying to think up viable societies around technologies that were invented to be reasonable on a Vancouver budget or to make a particular plot or line sound good. It's an occupation with inherent problems.
It's just, the gate works great for small team exploration, but it's not even so very great for trying to move larger armed forces around, let alone running regular travel through. It's a nasty enough crush trying to get everyone on the same tube train. Imagine trying to get through that same tube sized space, all day, every day, as your only chance of getting off world. Blergh.
Some things get so complicated when they scale up it's hard to see them working. Everyone on a particular ship wanting to go a particular place, sure, why not, they could all book and choose it. City ships? Too many arguments. If the people there think anything like people I'm used to. Even just deciding which hemisphere to park in would be, like, thermostat wars, times a million.
This is what I think of when I've spent two hours trying to get to sleep already.
The one about the goa'uld biology and life cycle and how it leads to their psychology I keep going back to and poking, but really, I'd have to actually watch the episodes over again and gather evidence. Or admit I'm just making stuff up in the grand tradition of SF before me. It would either be bad fanfic, if I did it from memory, or ridiculously time consuming fan meta, if I did the research.
And I can't say I haven't got anything better to do, at least until I pass my degree.
It's just I can't really do reading for my degree while staring at the ceiling trying to sleep.