It has been stated in the show, IIRC, that they have charted dozens and dozens of completely empty earth type worlds.
Based on this, my ex-father-in-law once stated that the US gov’t policy in this case is totally wrong. He feels that the US gov’t would be setting up military bases, and starting up colonies of good American citizens on these foreign worlds.
Do you agree?
Why or why not?
And, most importantly… would you go?
Well, since the Stargate project is top secret, getting enough citizens for even one colony would be tricky.
I would disagree that they would be the average American Joe doing colonizing if the gov’t was going to do it.
If the gov’t decided to colonize those worlds, they would most likely send out soldiers and people who they feel they could do so. IE Top Secret personnel and the like for the simple fact of secrecy. Most people wouldn’t be able to keep their mouth shut and mention to family “Oh by the way I’ll be leaving the planet to colonize a new one.”
Of course a lot of people would just be like riiight, but since the program is top secret the best bet would be those personnel already in place to go out and do what the gov’t asks of them.
Plus there would be the worries of any other nearby colonized planets. Do they know that any planets in the nearby systems have other forms of life? The studies were done of solely those planets they could get to. And there is always the worry the Goua ould (sp?) might find those initial colonies and blast them or take them over for their own purposes, giving them a greater knowledge of Earth and an idea of how to conquer it again.
Yeah, but what if it weren’t kept secret? The whole idea would have volunteers lining up for blocks if the US gov’t put out an ad: “Wanted: valient folks willing to leave everything behind in an effort to colonize foreign planet. Must bring own shovel.”
Hell, I know I’d be in line.
If it wasn’t secret… well I still don’t think many people would do it.
Oh there would be a section of society who would love to go and just start a new life on another planet, but how many people really would do that? Many people would rather live if not elegantly at least comfortably here on earth rather than have to actually go and fend for themselves.
Personally I might do it. I’d have to think long and hard on it but eventually I just probably would go, as long as I know I have a support system there in case anything happens. I don’t want to end up in another solar system and starve to death because of unforseen problems, but there will always be a section of people who will see that as an acceptable risk.
Take the pioneers who settled the ‘new world’. They went through many trials such as inability to find food during the winter, freezing etc etc. The end result is the continent of America as we know it and eventually it would happen with another planet, but you have to find those accepting to take the risks.
Or we can just toss convicts on those planets like we did with Australia. 
How much effort does it really take to colonize a world via a Stargate, though? When you can open the gate and commute back to earth on a moment’s notice I doubt that living on the foreign world wouldn’t be a greater hardship than living in the suburbs.
Initial colonization would have the team of builders to put up everything the colony needs. That same construction crew could do that with every world they want. Put up a power plant, the communications systems, build some housing, put in all the modern conveniences, and there you go.
After that open the gate once a day and send through other things like food, mail, video tapes of all the current tv shows and movies, and so on.
Colonizing via stargate is all the fun of exploring with practically no risk or hardship; sounds like fun to me.
Ok…I don’t know all the ins and outs of Stargate but I do know that people can only travel in one direction to one destination at any given time, there only seems to be one per planet and the entire contraption is about the width of a single UHaul van.
As for colonization, the general reason nations form colonies is for resources or strategic reasons.
That said, it doesn’t even seem feasible or desireable to set up permenant colonies using this method. Unless the colonists wanted to live Sterbridge Village, MA style they would need a lot of trips back and forth to supply them. If the colony was sending resources back to Earth, you would have even more traffic through the gate. Imagine a dozen average sized towns all being supplied by a single one-lane road and you get the idea.
I would not even consider doing something so silly. There is one gate that is the way to return to Earth, nobody REALLY knows how or why it works, and plenty of aliens that don’t like humans.
I think they would be better off trying to figure out a way to build faster than light ships before trying to colonize anything.
As was mentioned by msmith537, there really isn’t any reason for the govenment to set up colonies.
Military Base? There is no advantage that could be gained by putting a base on another planet. The Stargate itself means that the concept of a “front line” is meaningless; the front line for Earth is the Stargate facility itself (Cheyenne Mountain?). All bases elsewhere would do would be to spread the forces out more.
Resource Base? Even if there were useful resources on another world, how could you exploit them given that the only way to retrieve them would be through the Stargate? You can’t exactly run a pipeline through it to get oil and it looks a bit too small to hold a set of train tracks. You would be limited to carrying very small amounts of whatever through the gate at irregular intervals. Not really practical.
Colony? Historically, most colonies have either been created by people looking for new or different opportuniities or by people who have been forcably relocated there for one reason or another. Since the Stargate is top secret there aren’t a lot of new opportunities there. And a prisoner colony really isn’t practical, if for no other reason than you don’t want to send a group of people who have reason not to like you to where the Goa’uld can get to them. Besides, is it really practical to try to set up a colony whos only access is via the gate?
About the only things the Stargate is really good for are scouting missions and scientific research/information exchange and this is exactly what the SG teams are already doing. Until someone figures out how to reproduce the Stargate and our technology advances to the point where we can stand against the Goa’uld it doesn’t make sense to use it for anything other than what they are already doing.
Within the context of the show, there are two obvious reasons for not setting up bases or colonies on the empty worlds. Tanstaafl talked about one reason, i.e. that there really isn’t anything to be gained. The other reason is that the base/colony would be terribly vulnerable to Goa’uld attack; just because the world is empty, that doesn’t necessary mean that the Goa’uld never visit it. Put those two together and it would be pretty stupid to try to colonize.
I actually was talking to my roomie about this earlier today. According to him (he’s watched the show more than I have) the show already has people setting up bases, some of which have already failed due to such things as planet proximity to black holes.
There is also apparently a second Stargate on Earth, placed in Russia.
Maybe people who have seen more/know more about Stargate will confirm or deny this one.
I ran a pen and paper role-playing campaign set in a near future where magical portals appeared connecting our planet with others. The military established bases on the far side of the portals wherever they could for several reasons. First, the areas effected by the portals were rather large (if you were within a mile or two of one you could transport to within a mile or two of the other side), and you couldn’t feasibly block off your end of the portal (yes, this is different from Stargate), and to prevent surprise invasions you wanted to have people on the other side to see if there is an army coming towards your portal. Also, since most planets had more than one portal in some cases the governments of Earth establish bases at other portals on worlds Earth is connected to, to keep hostiles from coming through, building up an army on the far side of the portal to Earth, and then attacking.
Most of this would make sense with the Stargate setting. Since the only way to detect what’s on the other side of a stargate is to send something through it, you would want listening posts on the far side.
Within the Stargate universe, we already have an “Alpha Site,” a planet to send some of “the best” of humanity in the event of a Goa’uld invasion or other calamity. I’d take that a step further and maintain a permanent, self sufficient base there and rotate the personnel on a regular basis. That way, if something really bad happened and we lost the Stargate, we’d have a viable breeding population of humans to start over.
At places like the Nevada Test Site, there are lots of people with security clearances that go to & from work everyday w/out telling their families or friends about what they do there. There are thousands of people with Top Secret clearances. You could easily have a core group of several hundred people doing temporary “training someplace they can’t talk about.”
The Stargate can stay open 38 minutes. With a people-mover similar to the ones used in airports running on both sides of the gate, you could get a lot of people & supplies through quickly. Or, think of those Australian Road Trains. How many of those could we send through at 60 MPH? That’s assuming we built a roadway or very large lift down to the stargate.
The only reason we haven’t colonized space is the cost/pound of getting out of Earth’s gravity well. Moving things through the Stargate costs nothing beyond the maintenance of the SGC itself, as I understand it. It would take no time to transport all the materials to build a whole city.
There’s still the chance that the Goa’uld could invade our new site, but there are worlds we know of that the Goa’uld haven’t found in thousands of years. If they haven’t found them yet, who’s to say they’d find them after we set up shop there?
Lastly: Earth is now a protected planet of The Asgards, right? So other than the replicators, we don’t have much to worry about now, as far as invasion.
Three, I believe. Well, not anymore, but there have been. The original one from the Giza dig, the one from Antarctica in Season One which was shipped to Nevada, and the Russian gate. I believe the original was destroyed somehow.
As someone mentioned earlier, there have been resource bases set up. Naquda mines, for example. They generally tend to either be attacked or to piss off the local populace.