The World of Stargate

Interstellar Travel

What does it mean to travel to the stars? Science can really tell us very little, as we are only in the past few decades just beginning to explore the other worlds in our own star system (which we call the Solar System, named after our sun, Sol).

Current scientific belief holds that we are very unlikely to find life on other worlds which is compatible with life on Earth. That means that every living thing we find may be potentially deadly to us (and vice versa). Even if we find the equivalent of molds, bacteria, and viruses on far worlds, their DNA may be very different from our own.

While wormhole travel is considered theoretically possible by some scientists, others believe that even if wormholes exist or can be created, the forces inside them would be powerful enough to crush us in fractions of a second.

So, if we ever reach out to the stars, it will probably be with large, powerful spaceships, perhaps self-contained biospheres called Generation Ships in which colonies of humans will travel for many decades, raising children and living out their lives in entirely self-contained environments.

Such colonists might well question why they should carry out whatever intentions the people back on Earth had for their expeditions. What if they become perfectly comfortable with life aboard a hollowed-out asteroid?

On the other hand, we are beginning to detect so many strange things moving between the stars that travel through interstellar space may prove to be impossibly dangerous. What if we cannot leave our own star system because of all the debris zipping through the vast emptiness of space?

We've got...shuttles

In the first episode of its second season, Stargate-SG1 underscored the limited capabilities Earth would be able to bring to any conflict with an alien civilization. When Bra'Tac asked O'Neill about Earth's formiddable warships, O'Neill (and Daniel Jackson) immediately realized that ignorance was about the only thing which had prevented the Goa'uld from destroying the Earth sooner.

The truth is that we don't yet know enough to build craft capable of operating over great distances in space, much less craft capable of transporting colonists or engaging in space warfare. We can barely lob computer-guided probes at our neighboring planets, and we're still not hitting the mark 100 per cent of the time. And while Intel and its rivals have made great strides in computer technology, our probes are still being remotely controlled and programmed from Earth.

If an alien civilization showed up demanding our instant allegiance, we might put up some sort of defense. After all, we still have a few intercontinental ballistic missiles with which we can destroy ourselves. We just don't have the Naquada we'd need to create any Goa'uld Busters (for all the good those things did in the show against the shields on Apophis' ships).

Our best defense against an invasion from space might simply be to flee underground. While most people probably would not survive a massive bombardment, one would hope that SOME of us could hang on long enough to start over.

Lack of access to anything like a stargate network at least gives us time to grow up a little more. You really have to hate Senator Kinsey for being an arrogant, scheming idiot, but he does have a point. We have no business running around the universe stirring up trouble with people we cannot hope to outgun. Good thing the Goa'uld never figured out how to make gunpowder.

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