The full complement of Stargate Atlantis.

[icarus]

Since wildernessguru and I have been arguing about this for a while, I've no doubt you all are dying to know the answer.

The full complement of the original team sent to Atlants:

60 people, military and civilian (assuming all but a few were on hand for Weir's speech in Rising; yes, we counted heads).

12 military, not counting Sheppard, which WG tells me would be a 12-man special forces A-team. Yes, looks like Ford was special forces. Hard to believe, but perhaps he was an assistant demolitions expert.

Then of the civilians (this is up for more debate, and I would love it if you have more ideas or could parse this) we estimate:

6 medical staff, headed by Carson Beckett.

6 engineers, headed by Peter Gorodin?

20 assorted hard sciences staff members, including Rodney, Chief Scientist, of course.

16 assorted life sciences staff members, not sure who heads this group or if they're (sadly for them) under Rodney's jurisdiction.

Since we have brilliant scientists there are probably overlapping specialities between these groups.

So there you have. The mystery is now solved. You can go on with the rest of your lives, assured of this knowledge.

In other news... kitty was very well-behaved and didn't bite the vet once (kitty treats for you, Fuzz) and wildernessguru is baking cookies. Because he cross-specializes between military hardware and home ec. *shares warm chocolate chip cookies with f-list*

In other other news, this sga_flashfic Mission Report is well underway, 2,300 words. But the story is odd. Very odd. There's something strange about the structure.

Comments

[florahart]

...it's very very wrong that I now want to read about Rodney baking chocolate chip cookies because he has been told he needs to cross-specialize, isn't it?

I thought probably.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Do we want to eat those cookies? Because this is a man who can eat year-old Fritos without flinching.

"Here, they're done," Rodney said proudly, removing the oven mitts and dusting off his hands.

Sheppard sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. "Is it supposed to smell like that?"


Icarus

[mz-bstone.livejournal.com]

okay, yeah ... but could people have been out in the hallway, too?

Hrm.

Because 12 seems small for military.

B

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

True, but then that puts us into total guess land, where the buffalo roam free.

But! Given the size of the hallways, calculating two of them, that still only makes another, oh, half-dozen per hallway. They would have had only 38 minutes to gear and people through so that would seriously limit the size of the group.

We counted heads (and uniforms) and calculated nine people not present, probably busy throughout the base, working with Siler and whatnot, a couple of those military.

Now once the Daedalus reached Atlantis and they knew of the Wraith, you bet most of the people that beefed up the base were military.

And there would have been less attention to the male-female balance as well. As a geneticist, Carson would have probably calculated a minimum sustainable population ("The story of Adam and Eve is all very nice, but we require genetic variation....").

Icarus

[auburnnothenna.livejournal.com]

Must butt in. Your reasoning is sound, but there's a bit of first season canon - in The Gift (Also, wow, thanks for the excuse to go through S.1 episodes looking for that scene, I just killed at least forty minutes!) - where the senior personnel are all meeting and Kavanagh mentions 'tens of thousands of life-sucking aliens in highly advanced spaceships on their way to destroy us. And we have what, 200 people? Most of whom are scientists who've never even fired a gun before?' And Rodney, reluctantly, agrees with him. So, unless Kavanagh's counting Athosians, which seems unlikely given his personality, that's probably the original number of people in the expedition, before they started taking casualties.

Your numbers, of course, make more sense. But I've always operated on the idea of 140 civilian, 60 military and Sheppard the last minute addition.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you!

Am I wrong about 38 minutes being the maximum window for a Stargate? Is that just a maximum window for an unattended Stargate, where matter isn't continually being thrown into it?

No, then the events in "38 Minutes" would make no sense.

So how did they get food and equipment for 200 people, plus the people themselves, through the Stargate in 38 minutes?

By the way, I have the mission report basically done. After a couple more passes I'll send it along.

Icarus

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

You're right about the 38 minutes. I am forced to conclude that the writers were not thinking with the logistical parts of their brain.

I thought twelve sounded low for the military as well -- that wouldn't be enough to have people patrolling the city in shifts and still have military available for every Stargate team.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The 12 is from doing a head-count (and uniform count). From a military perspective it does make sense.

It is standard to send a 12-man A-Team into a country and then train the locals, the people you have. That's what A-Teams were created for during and just following Vietnam, and they're highly effective.

They would not have assumed that the Atlantis expedition would have found themselves in possession of a entire city that would be under siege. Holding a city takes a lot more people (as Rumsfeld has learned the hard way in Iraq).

They expected ruins, of course, which is what you find across the Pegasus Galaxy. The only reason Atlantis was perfectly preserved was because it was protected by forcefield at the bottom of the ocean.

Icarus

[fleurrochard]

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<iSo how did they get food and equipment for 200 people, plus the people themselves, through the Stargate in 38 minutes?</i>

I guess they rehearsed that before - 38 minutes is not <i>that</i> short and 200 people are not <i>that</i> much - if you rehearse it, so everyone knows what to do and when to do it, I can see that.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The people're not so bad -- I'm thinking about the gear. They didn't run out of ammo even after a year's worth of action, and that's not counting food, weapons, laptops, hardware, medical supplies in such abundance they were trading them, the personal item, multiple MALPS... it's a staggering amount.

I've done planning for backpack trips, where you have to carry everything. Stripped down for a one-week trip, food, fuel, sleeping bag, and only two sets of clothes (plus inclement weather gear), you're looking at upwards of 40 lbs. per person, and that's not considering cold weather clothing, weapons, or extra medical supplies. (You can ultra-lite, but then you make sacrifices.)

I could say more, because the really long trips like hiking the Pacific Crest Trail which goes from Mexico to Canado, requires supply caches.

Equipment, ammo, and medical supplies for 200 people for a year? I'd estimate four hours to get it through the gate, if it's all loaded up on tracked vehicles.

As the Romans said: The larger your army, the slower it moves. Your group can only move as fast as your supply train.

Icarus

[auburnnothenna.livejournal.com]

It's not that I'm obsessed by sticking with canon, but there's so little of it I tend to grab onto and build off the bits that do exist. The only explanation for the 200 number is they had people and equipment backed up in the corridors and halls of the SGC and started pushing things through as soon as the people were on the other side. Forklifts were probably involved.

The 38 minute window is canon. I think it's been mentioned in SG-1 now, too.

Whenever something like the stargates letting radio waves go both ways but not bodies comes up, or the 38 minute window? I just handwave it with the idea that the Ancients deliberately engineered the limitations in for some reason of their own. Security? Maybe they didn't want anyone to be able to open a gate and leave it permanently open, which would lock everyone else out? Maybe the power systems in the DHD will burn out otherwise?

So how did they get food and equipment for 200 people, plus the people themselves, through the Stargate in 38 minutes?

This is one of those questions like who is styling their hair and why aren't their clothes worn out and what the heck are they trading for food on these other worlds, because medical supplies are a wee bit precious when you're marooned in a hostile galaxy.

By the way, I have the mission report basically done. After a couple more passes I'll send it along.

Anticipating it eagerly.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, the 38-minute window was established in SG-1, season one, "Singularity," when opening a gate on a black hole warped spacetime in the SGC, stretching that 38-minute limit. SG-1 has much more canon than Atlantis of course.

It came into play in season four's "Watergate," again in "Chain Reaction," and then came up in season five's "48 Hours." If the gate has a powerful alternate power source connected -- such as an entire planet's naquada-laced soil exploding around the gate -- it will stay connected past the 38 minute window for as long as the power continues.

There are contradictions about gate travel though. In season one's "The Enemy Within" Jack was able to shut off the gate and slice off the top of (Goa'uld infested) Kowalski's head. But in "Shades of Grey" he kept his hand in the gate to "keep it open" and prevent people from dialing another gate. Then in Atlantis' "38 Minutes" we have another ep that goes with the "Shades of Grey" version, as matter wouldn't rematerialize until all the units were together.

And also, where did Sheppard get the hair gel? *g*

I'm not entirely happy with the mission report, but it's incoming.

Icarus

[goseaward.livejournal.com]

Well, given 38 minutes, that means they only have to get 5 1/4 people per minute...even if we assume that travel took 3 minutes so they really only had 35, we're still talking 5 3/4 people per minute, more or less. And at least 4 can fit abreast, probably more. Maybe...10-second intervals to keep from running into people on the other side...4 people at a time...that's 24 people per minute, 21 minutes. So they've still got another 15-17 minutes for all the gear, and some of it probably went through with all the people, too....

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'd say that each person was carrying at least 40-50 lbs. of their own gear. What has me squinting is the ammo (which they had plenty of even after fighting the Wraith for a year) and the medical supplies (which they were trading for food). The amounts needed to equip and care for 200 people for a year... a couple months worth of MREs for 200....

... right. This is Atlantis. They don't think through these details. *hand wavy gesture*

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

auburnnothenna has pointed out that Kavanagh said in The Gift that they had 200 people, most of them civilians. Which they obviously didn't think through logistically, because there's no way you could get supplies and ammo for 200 through the gate in 38 minutes.

The 12-man A-Team is logical, if you understand what an A-Team does (outside the TV show *g*).

They were developed at the tail-end of Vietnam to go into a local population and train insurgencies. They would turn the locals into their military force.

Sending an A-Team meant they planned to use the scientists for routine military tasks. It also implied that they expected ruins and mobile camps, not an intact city to defend from an active invader -- which Rumsfeld has learned, takes more people.

But if they really had an A-Team there would have been no qualms about making use of the Athosians, because that's what A-Teams are trained to do.

Icarus

[abigail89.livejournal.com]

Ordinarily, I rarely post about dreams because I never remember then or set much store by them, but I had to tell y'all about the one I had early this morning.

Wildernessguru showed up. Now, how the hell YOUR boyfriend ended up in my dream is beyond me. He was faceless, but had blond hair, and --get this--he sounded just like Tim Treadway (the Grizzly Bear guy). He was in a hotel room, moving suitcases. And he was puking. I was talking to him, but he was puking everywhere. It was really awful! And then I had to wake up because I think I was reacting to it. Anyway, I woke up and my stomach was hurting. It took a while to get back to sleep, and then he went away.

To my knowledge I've never had any contact with WG, other than through your LJ. Maybe you were there, but I can't really recall. I remember making a mental note to tell you about it.

*rolls eyes* I think I need to spend less time reading LJ.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I think I've got to watch what I post about WG. Although I suppose it could be worse and he could have been in a dress....

Icarus

[abigail89.livejournal.com]

*giggles* Maybe it was the post you made about him not long ago...I don't know. All I know is that I was just gobsmacked that he was in a dream.

Oh, don't stop posting about him! You two are one of my favorite couples...

[ansku]

Great, now I don't have to do that :) Not that I need the information anywhere right now, but I love details... Thanks :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Well, it looks like I need to do an ETA: "This is all wrong." Apparently in The Gift we learned they somehow got 200 people (with supplies) through the gate in less than 38 minutes.

Icarus

[slybrarian.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, in 'Hot Zone' Weir says that 20%. of the population is infected, and there looks to be about 20 people in the mess hall. This will fit a 60 Jesus expedition. I do think that we saw more than twelve military people in the season, though, because there seemed to be at least that many even after loosing two in 'The Storm' plus Markham and his copilot.

[slybrarian.livejournal.com]

Erm, sixty person expedition. I wrote that with a tablet pc, and sometimes the handwriting recognition sees things oddly.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

You know, I filled in the correct word automatically and didn't even notice the "Jesus" reference. Though on second glance, that is pretty funny.

*g*

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I think the real explanation is that they only had 12 military costumes on hand in wardrobe, so that's how many military we count, and the "gateroom set" only held about 60 people in such a way that they could light the place properly.

And, clearly, the writers need to talk to each other more. Or make an Atlantis bible they consult to do these figures. *snerk*

Icarus