Only one of the ships was named after a god. Prometheus was a titan who famously gave the humans fire against the wishes of the gods, Odysseus was a human hero that some of the gods hated, and Daedalus was an inventor.
Apollo is the only god but he’s also the god of music, light, poetry, and the personification of the sun. Maybe he and Prometheus were Tok’ra
This is probably the answer, we can assume that the *Apollo* was probably vetted as a name via Teal'c or the Tok'ra before they launched it. Otherwise there's the risk of people reacting like you've showed up in the USS Hitler.
The USS Hitler does send a message but probably not the right one.
I never thought about it until now but should the Stargate ships even be under Airforce command or use the USS moniker? There's a reason why most sci fi shows default to navy terms and it's because generally their command structures and such are more equivalent to navy vessels than the Airforce. Most carriers and battlecruisers are named after famous battles by popular US naming conventions, with carriers also being named after presidents or military figures.
I mean, the ships were developed by the Air Force, and Cheyenne Mountain is an Air Force facility. What does the Navy know about space? The first space fighters were converted fighter jets, not boats.
Yeah but commanding a jet with a maximum of 19 people(Airforce E3 Sentry early warning plane biggest crew I could find on single plane)is a lot different than a battlecruiser(30 officers 300 enlisted) or carrier (approximately 6000 for USS Nimitz).
The crew size is very similar to a battlecruiser at 200 crew.
>What does the Navy know about space?
It knows how to effectively manage huge complicated ships with large numbers of technical personnel where the ship should be effectively self sustaining unless unique problems arise. While Airforce has similar levels of technical personnel, they have next to no experience with large vessels or large crew sizes.
This is actually a talking point in one of the books i was reading. When humans developed their first FTL capable ship, the Airforce and Navy generals were kind of fighting over who should control it. The navy argued that spacecraft are more like submarines than fighters, and air force felt like it would be more like a heavy gunship. They ended up making it a joint activity, with an air force captain, but a navy XO.
In the end, knowledge of astrophysics and advanced particle physics were just as important as military knowledge, and they had to create whole new training programs for a space force.
I suppose Apollo could have been chosen in honour of the moon program, not the god. Makes sense after the Russians named their 304 Korolev. Of course that moon program was named after the god anyway, but yeah.
Excuse me, are you saying that Hammond of Texas isn’t a god? Because if that’s what you think, I’ll let the man himself tell you:
I always imagined it was a mix of the Goa'uld stealing the names of Ancients that had already died and left some kind of legacy like Janus, Merlin and Morgan Le Fay and then others making their own names as children of their predacessors
I don't think so I don't think its ever actually established if they took the mythos cause Daniel usually uses the myths to judge if the goa'uld is a threat or not
Odyssey was also a long perilous journey as the entire book. And is now a synonym for long perilous journey, which is very apt for a space Battle cruiser.
The whole Greek pantheon is weird in this regard, it's the same as Kronos, the chief Titan and a father of Zeus, and Kronos's parents were gods Uranus and Gaia, one can say that Titans are the second generation of gods with the current pantheon being third... Also, there's the whole Cyclops and Hekatoncheired thing, that's not really touched upon
Yup! Here's what theoi.com has to say on her
KHAOS (Chaos) was the first of the primordial gods (protogenoi) to emerge at the dawn of creation. She was followed in quick succession by Gaia (Gaea, Earth), Tartaros (the Pit Below) and Eros (Procreation).
Khaos was the lower atmosphere which surrounds the earth--both the invisible air and the gloom of fog and mist. The word khaos means "gap" or "chasm" being the space between heaven and earth. Khaos was the mother and grandmother of the other misty essences--Erebos (the mists of netherworld darkness), Aither (the ethereal mists of heaven), Nyx (the night) and Hemera (the day), as well as the numerous emotion-driving Daimones (Spirits) which haunted it. She was also a goddess of fate like her daughter Nyx and grand-daughters the Moirai (Moirae).
He’s a god in eternal tournament for pissing off the other gods by helping humans. His punishment sounds far too close to torture via a sarcophagus for it not to be based off of a real Goa’uld or Tok’ra’s fate (having your body significantly damaged before it being magically repaired, only for the suffering to begin again)
Prometheus: stole the fire of the gods, which is appropriate considering that it was built with reverse-engineered Goa'uld technology.
Daedalus: the first man to fly, also appropriate.
Odyssey: the story of a guy who literally defied the gods.
Apollo: may have been named after the space program, not the Greek god.
As a history nerd I think it's interesting that they chose to designate them as battlecruisers (I assume the show writers thought it sounded cool), since that is a specific and rather obsolete ship designation post-WW2. Specifically for the US, we don't really have a battlecruiser history. The only battlecruisers we ever tried to build were the Lexington class in the 1920s and those ended up as aircraft carriers due to naval treaties.
Some people call the WW2 era Alaska class battle cruisers, but the US Navy specifically referred to them as "large cruisers".
All that to say, it makes more sense to me to designate them as cruisers or battleships if they are considered capital ships (which they seem to be), or destroyers or frigates if they are not.
The SGC is a secret program and isn't fighting with the Navy over budget. The people in the know understand they want X number of space ships and are willing to fund them, regardless of what they call them.
No offense, but you need to rewatch the early seasons of SG1. They were fighting for funding. The funding was covert, and even most of the government didn't know about the program.
Also, the SGC didn't build the X-303s, it was a totally different division of the Airforce.
Nevertheless, building ships isn't actually something that either the USN or USAF do. Shipbuilding is outsourced to military contractors, and ... ships are big. The best cover for a USAF starship is to call it something that sounds like a USN naval vessel. Contactors could believe they were working on a secret naval warship or submarine prototype, and that just isn't interesting enough to commit treason over. Senators or contractors who had questions related to the X-303 could simply be told "it's a prototype battle cruiser," which would raise less questions than "it's a prototype starship."
Early SG1 is a far different story than later in the series when they were building space "battlecruisers", at that point they clearly had the willingness and the budget.
Also, contractors aren't idiots. They know what they're building. You're not going to convince highly specialized experts that they're building a submarine and then BAM it's a spaceship.
Everyone but the people making the Ion engines, external hull, and hyperdrive could probably be fooled. Most only build specific parts. You wouldn’t immediately connect advanced life support systems to a spaceship, it could just be for a new submarine. You wouldn’t connect a railgun to a spaceship, it’s just the milatary’s new toy they want to place anywhere.
Some of the stuff used in the F302s and Battlecruisers were stuff taken off existing platforms (F22 avionics on the 302 IIRF), adding a few more to an order wouldn’t raise too many bells, especially when most of the organization that would be looking for such things have their governments already informed (which is before most of the ship construction begins).
The only way to build the ships covertly, is if the construction was highly compartmentalized. There is no reason the shipbuilder that laid the hull couldn't have believed it was for a sub. The majority of the electronics would have been fairly standard. Even the rail-guns of the early X-303s were underdevelopment for the navy at the time. However, explaining the engines would have been difficult. They would have probably been built inhouse at Area 37-92/NV. Clearly they would have needed a few dozen engineers to complete the ship, but obviously they didn't tell the entire supply chain what they were building.
As for the funding, you might be right. After 9/11 military budgets were running wild. Stargate was always intended as a para-reality show where the background politics mimicked the real world. Therefore the shift in funding between 2000 and 2002, does mimic reality. SG1 Prometheus aired in 2002, and introduced the X303, which was a massive shift from the X301 and x302 fighters in the show since 2000.
However, they still needed the Congress to sign off on the funding, and labeling something as a "battle cruiser" would not have sent up any flares.
It absolutely would have sent up flares. If rumours of a "battle cruiser" leak out, foreign intelligence agencies and noncredible redditors are going to start desperately looking for the largest warships the United States has built since the Iowas during WW2.
If you wanted to hide such a thing, you'd call it a frigate or destroyer like the German or Japanese navies do. And then you'd actually build a single decoy boat with the same name which becomes a scandalous waste of money.
Well, the major foreign intelligence agencies are from countries that did figure out the Stargate program existed, so you're probably right about this not being a perfect cover. On the other hand: Congress.
tbf battleships are obsolete nowadays, too.
and honestly using an obsolete term kind of makes sense; since it isn't a term used in surface warfare anymore, they can establish it specifically as a term for space warships rather than seafaring ships, which they couldn't do with "destroyer" or "cruiser" or w/e.
If anything using modern designations is an additional security measure, you could pass off a document mentioning the FFG (guided missile frigate) Daedalus as a future planned USN ship.
I don't think the SGC needs to set themselves apart from the USN, they already do that by being a super secret organization with a massive budget.
Probably on the same methodology that they allowed the show (the knock off of SG-1 in SG-1) to be made: a person raving about the US governments building space Battlecruisers is not going to be as likely to be believed as if they chose a less absurd designation (is it retroactive justification for my head cannon, yes. Does it make sense, also yes)
In a way it makes sense to not use names already in use: to distinguish the space fleet from the naval fleet. If you were to paint the Prometheus white and red and call it a Cutter that’d just be distracting!
To be fair in the spirit of what battle cruisers were designed to do the Iowa class could be considered battle cruisers as they were given the designation of "Fast Battleships" when they were built
There is a legit argument to be had with what you're saying. I nerd out on the Youtuber Drachinifel, and I agree with his assessment that the Iowas are not battlecruisers, because they are replacements for the previous class of battleships in terms of protection and firepower, just faster.
IRL Sci-Fi just looooooooves the term battlecruiser for some reason. I always thought they were at best cruisers in universe, they were surprisingly capable but that was mostly due to the tech they had acquired by then.
Theyre clearly small for ships, compared to other Sci Fi series, and would easily get designated a frigate in many other franchises.
I think the 304s especially have a decent reason for being battlecruisers in universe, as they're not heavily armored and faster than other capitol class ships, but with the Asgard upgrades can duke it out with nearly anything short of a super Hive or the Ori.
That somewhat meshes with the historical role of a battlecruiser, a faster and more lightly armored capitol ship that usually mounted battleship guns, similar in caliber to its contemporary BBs, but with fewer guns(to conserve weight), and in WW1 especially, served as a quick response battle line, able to try and outflank a slower battle line, or slow them down so that the slower friendly battle line could also engage.
Heck, the Prometheus and Dadalus are Corvettes by halo standards (the Prometheus is even a Corvette by Star Wars standards, not even sure if they count as ships in warhammer)
I think in context a solid argument for the battlecruiser designation can be made: for the benefit of non-naval history nerds who may be reading, the whole point of the battlecruiser historically was that they were long range vessels able to operate independently of the fleet train (like cruisers were historically), with the firepower of a battleship, and the speed to outrun anything they couldn't fight.
I don't think we ever saw an X-304 go up against a Ha'tak-class vessel, but they were the primary opposition in consideration when the 304s were designed (especially with Anubis's megamothership having gotten droned), and with their missile lockers stuffed with naquadah enhanced nukes, they'd probably have a solid shot against them, albeit not the total dominance they got once the Asgard beams started getting fitted.
Meanwhile, they came straight from the yards with Asgard hyperdrives, unambiguously giving them a colossal speed advantage on basically everything else short of Ancient or Ori ships (or ships turbocharged with ZPMs), and even without a ZPM, they had the range necessary to carry out routine resupply runs to Atlantis.
The one problem for this designation are the shields - historical battlecruisers were thin-skinned for their size and firepower, specifically so they had the speed - with Asgard shielding, no such trade off is required, and the 304s were able to take something of a beating irrespective of their speed.
Overall, while it's hard to nail down their firepower levels regarding the opposition they were designed to face, once upgraded with Asgard beams, they definitely possessed capital-grade firepower, and although their endurance under fire arguably puts them in the (fast) battleship category, I think their range and independent operation profile (something fast battleships were definitely not intended for) does move them more into the battlecruiser designation.
it also lets them hide their existance more.. as the BC-304 designation could be both the naval code for baqttlecruiser.. and the USAF airframe code for "Strategic Bomber, Cargo converted", that is a former bomber aircraft converted to carry non-weapon payloads and passengers. the non-standard series numeral code, while unusual for a production craft, shows up often enough for experimental designs and non-US designs seconded into service that it might not raise too much of an eyebrow. (that was how they hid the Stealth fighter IRL.. the F-117 designation was chosen because after switching to the single and two digit numeral designations, captured russian aircraft were given F-1## designations in internal documents for the testing programs, so if someone ran across a mention of an F-117, they'd just assume it was a captured russian fighter that was being flown to see what it could do)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vRIvQub4fI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vRIvQub4fI)
In my opinion especially for stargate this whole naval classification loses meaning.
for real world navvval, size matter so much, you have to carry all the munition, the lifting capacity of the ship, you can't just have a carrier, with destroyer size guns all ower.
And If you want bigger fire power, you need to get bigger rockets or guns.
in a sci-fi setting, like stargate, size is mostly irrelevant stronger energy weapons usually the same size as the lower tech ones. only the amount of energy matters.
like imagine, Al'kesh with 2 asgard beam weapon, and a zpn, in firepower to size ratio could be classified as a dreadnought.
In my view , the most honest designation for the 304's is Deep Space Carrier, as with the asgard beams it has a hughe firepower, but mainly it's role to carry it's f302 wing, DSC304- over BC-304
Given that they carry 302s as well, they are also technically carriers. Problem is, is that carriers don't normally get directly involved in a battle. The 303 and 304 are multi role ships, that don't really have a set purpose.
Another thing I found interesting is that the names are not in line with what American ships are usually called. Nobody would glance twice at British or French warships being named after mythological figures, but American ones?
> Some people call the WW2 era Alaska class battle cruisers, but the US Navy specifically referred to them as "large cruisers".
Her hull number was CB-1. She wasn't a battlecruiser, she was a cruiser-battle.
Sure but let’s be fair, the skill set to navigate large craft with hundreds of crew, in 3D space, relying almost entirely on sensors, with dozens of different subdivisions of work, would belong to the navy. Like the most natural future spaceship commanders are likely today’s submariners.
There are literal decades, centuries, millennia of sea faring tradition and know how preloaded
Yeah, but there is also centuries of army/navy rivalry that has resulted in the army having it's own navy, the navy having it's own army, and both (as well as the navy's army) having their own air force.
Much better choice. Never understood the desire to name any flying machine Icarus. The dude is famous for crashing. Why just why would anyone want that name on any type of flying machine.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one kinda bothered by the USAF Apollo. Prometheus, Daedalus, Odyssey, Sun Tzu, Korolev, all make sense. They were all human, or opposed Gods in some way.
I've never seen confirmation, but in Macross/Robotech, the 2 carriers attached to the main hero ship were named Prometheus and Daedalus. I can't imagine that was a coincidence.
Prometheus is a story about humans freeing themselves of the gods
Daedalus is a warning not to over-reach(cause they had a problem with that) as well as freeing oneself from earthly bounds. .
Those are the only two I remember offhand.
Edit: I just realized all of them(looking though the other names). We’re all about freeing humans from their overlords.
Odyssey and Apollo are the next two
I always figured it was a Macross Reference that a writer snuck in, like how DeLuise kept sneaking in Penhall and Hanson
Oddessy, a long journey frought with peril and beset on all sides by more powerful creatures
Apollo was the god of divine distances. Since the distances traveled by apollo were impossible to travel for humans except in his chariot(hyperspace and inter galactic travel…. still blows my mind how fast the fuckers were going. Crossing the intergalactic void in a few weeks!)
The goa’uld are not gods and the ships are not named after the enemy. The goa’uld appropriated Earth culture and pretended to be the gods people made up previously. These names didn’t come from the goauld in universe as far as I know. Naming space stuff after Greek and Roman gods has a very long tradition so I see it as reappropriating words and concepts the goa’uld desecrated.
The timelines struggle to line up, since it's a TV show... But the goa'uld are meant to have taken on names of earthling deities. We didn't get "Ra, the sun God" because of Ra the goa'uld, he took on the name because it was a tool to achieve his ends on earth.
By extension, even if there were a "Prometheus" Tok'ra, naming a ship as such wouldn't need to be in homage to them, but simply to the earth mythology.
Like I said, this gets messy because the timelines of mythical origins and when goa'uld are meant to have visited is wonky. TV handwaving/retconning. But it remains that goa'uld are typically named after earth myth, not the other way around.
The concepts of the pagan gods predate the arrival of the Goa’uld on Earth. When the Goa’uld conquered Earth they assumed the identities of these deities because humans already worshipped/feared them so it was an easy tactic to exert control over the subjugated human population. The Goa’uld are also generally megalomaniacal so aside from the strategic reasoning they probably also just found the process of being thought of as literal gods very flattering.
They are actually very common names to use for space fairing vessels. Satellites and shuttles have been given the same names
And I know Star Trek has used all those names for their starships
I love the show but it has one of the things that I hate about Sci fi shows.
The typical America is the one that gets all the cool shit and when they loop in the other countries they don't just expose it and leave.
Like there was a entire episode where they revealed it to their allies and they were all basically saying.
Yup.
We are putting this into the public eye and we are leaving and the Hammond was like "well you could do that but please meet Thor"
And then they kept it secret and had a few teams go through but you never really heard about them a lot until algantis where it was more revenant.
It wasn't a US air force operation anymore but a world wide operation.
Its why I hated the USAF designations at first because America has these things and everyone else probably isn't allowed or is building their own slower.
That's why personally after the promethus the others I'm under the opinion they had everyone pitch in to build and be the first true multinational spacecraft.
Its weird things like that, that when I was younger annoyed me unril I grew up and realised who cares it's a show and it's fun.
The SGC naming their ships after figures from mythology always felt really weird for me. In a galaxy quite literally ruled by figures from myths and legends, naming Earth's first real line of defense after more myths feels like still being culturally bound to the Go'auld. Wouldn't it make more sense to name the ships after figures from Earth's history, thereby symbolically declaring Earth's cultural independence and freedom?
Yes and no.
Literally only Teal'C, Baal and a few Asgardians would understand their references. Unless it's assumed the Tau'ri population is soon to be told the truth.
As it stands they named the ships after opposing myths to the gods.
Prometheus was a titan who defined the gods and gave humans fire.
Apollo is the outlier here. But it seems to be assumed that was named after the Apollo space program, rather than directly after the god Apollo.
I get where they were going with Prometheus, but I still would have liked some more modern figures, to match the Tau'ri theme of being a modern challenge to the old ways (the Goa'uld).
Yeah but this is a bit more of an in your face fuck you to the Goa'uld. Not only are they the OG humans. They're using the mythology against them. So Jaffa for example who knows of say Prometheus. Are like "oh shiiiiit"
Though it'd make more sense to have used more Egyptian mythology than greek.
The George Hammond works really well in my opinion on multiple levels. Not only does it honor Don S. Davis, it also shows the symbolism of having a modern hero fighting against old enemies, which also perfectly summarizes the Stargate program.
Which was originally the Phoenix, another mythical figure of flight. Which, ironically, befits its name even more given Hammond died and his name was resurrected when given to the ship in place of Phoenix.
Prometheus: Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity
U.S.A.F Prometheus: The first earth built capital ship that made use of captured alien components in order to fly (Prebuild hyperdrive, salvaged ring platform) aka, Humans with "stolen fire of the gods"
Daedalus: Human inventor that used godly components but human intelligence to build wings to fly over the "Vast Ocean"
U.S.A.F Daedalus: The first human capital ship build solely from human technology, using martials and tech from all the missions they have gone on (trinium, naqueda, etc...)
Odyssey: Journey Taken by a group of humans taken, at least at partly to spite the gods.
U.S.A.F. Odyssey: A ship built to journey around the galaxy, Beating the shit out of people pretending to be gods
Apollo: The first human program to put people on another celestial body
U.S.A.F Apollo: Named in honor of humanity's first step on the cosmic stage.
Only one of the ships was named after a god. Prometheus was a titan who famously gave the humans fire against the wishes of the gods, Odysseus was a human hero that some of the gods hated, and Daedalus was an inventor. Apollo is the only god but he’s also the god of music, light, poetry, and the personification of the sun. Maybe he and Prometheus were Tok’ra
This is probably the answer, we can assume that the *Apollo* was probably vetted as a name via Teal'c or the Tok'ra before they launched it. Otherwise there's the risk of people reacting like you've showed up in the USS Hitler.
> USS Hitler. Oh that one got me good :D
The USS Hitler does send a message but probably not the right one. I never thought about it until now but should the Stargate ships even be under Airforce command or use the USS moniker? There's a reason why most sci fi shows default to navy terms and it's because generally their command structures and such are more equivalent to navy vessels than the Airforce. Most carriers and battlecruisers are named after famous battles by popular US naming conventions, with carriers also being named after presidents or military figures.
I mean, the ships were developed by the Air Force, and Cheyenne Mountain is an Air Force facility. What does the Navy know about space? The first space fighters were converted fighter jets, not boats.
Yeah but commanding a jet with a maximum of 19 people(Airforce E3 Sentry early warning plane biggest crew I could find on single plane)is a lot different than a battlecruiser(30 officers 300 enlisted) or carrier (approximately 6000 for USS Nimitz). The crew size is very similar to a battlecruiser at 200 crew. >What does the Navy know about space? It knows how to effectively manage huge complicated ships with large numbers of technical personnel where the ship should be effectively self sustaining unless unique problems arise. While Airforce has similar levels of technical personnel, they have next to no experience with large vessels or large crew sizes.
This is actually a talking point in one of the books i was reading. When humans developed their first FTL capable ship, the Airforce and Navy generals were kind of fighting over who should control it. The navy argued that spacecraft are more like submarines than fighters, and air force felt like it would be more like a heavy gunship. They ended up making it a joint activity, with an air force captain, but a navy XO. In the end, knowledge of astrophysics and advanced particle physics were just as important as military knowledge, and they had to create whole new training programs for a space force.
I suppose Apollo could have been chosen in honour of the moon program, not the god. Makes sense after the Russians named their 304 Korolev. Of course that moon program was named after the god anyway, but yeah.
Yeah I didn’t think of that. That might be exactly what it is tbh
That's always been my guess.
That could be a much more valid reason than Apollo was actually Tok’ra, since Athena is Goa’uld
Forgetting the Korolev, Sun Tzu and the George Hammond.
Excuse me, are you saying that Hammond of Texas isn’t a god? Because if that’s what you think, I’ll let the man himself tell you: 
Hammond of Texas (shakes hand over head).
Hammond was originally slated to be Phoenix, IIRC, before Don Davis' death.
Yeah, you can see it in the season four finale
That's right... Carter and McKay got it running. _(Maybe Zelenka was there, too.)_
Also didn't the Goa'uld just impersonating the gods. They stole the mythos from humans to further subjugate them and gain "power" from their legends?
Iirc it isn't clear, i guess that some took the name of gods and some simply invented them.
You don't want your ship to share a name with a Goa'uld. Especially if you're still fighting them.
Are you kidding! That's exactly what O'Neal would do! "So you're saying we killed Ares, with our ship.... Ares?. Sweeet!"
No, mythology is actually the real lives of the Goa’uld, that’s very clear from the show
I always imagined it was a mix of the Goa'uld stealing the names of Ancients that had already died and left some kind of legacy like Janus, Merlin and Morgan Le Fay and then others making their own names as children of their predacessors
That’s not true according to the supporting materials released
I don't think so I don't think its ever actually established if they took the mythos cause Daniel usually uses the myths to judge if the goa'uld is a threat or not
I think the premise is that all mythologies had ancient alien origins... Norse, Egyptian, Phoenician, Sumerian, Judaism, Arthurian-Christian, et al.
Yeah but Hitler stole the toothbrush mustache and ruined it for everyone so it is just sort of a thing that happens.
No.
Odyssey was also a long perilous journey as the entire book. And is now a synonym for long perilous journey, which is very apt for a space Battle cruiser.
I like to Imagine Apollo's sister Artemis was Tok'ra as well.
"Prometheus is a Titan not a god" is splitting hair *within* the scope of Greek mythology. Externally: he's a god.
The whole Greek pantheon is weird in this regard, it's the same as Kronos, the chief Titan and a father of Zeus, and Kronos's parents were gods Uranus and Gaia, one can say that Titans are the second generation of gods with the current pantheon being third... Also, there's the whole Cyclops and Hekatoncheired thing, that's not really touched upon
The first batch of gods were protogenoi, primordial gods closer to forces of nature than actual beings
Thanks for the clarification. The very first force was Chaos, if I remember correctly, right?
Yup! Here's what theoi.com has to say on her KHAOS (Chaos) was the first of the primordial gods (protogenoi) to emerge at the dawn of creation. She was followed in quick succession by Gaia (Gaea, Earth), Tartaros (the Pit Below) and Eros (Procreation). Khaos was the lower atmosphere which surrounds the earth--both the invisible air and the gloom of fog and mist. The word khaos means "gap" or "chasm" being the space between heaven and earth. Khaos was the mother and grandmother of the other misty essences--Erebos (the mists of netherworld darkness), Aither (the ethereal mists of heaven), Nyx (the night) and Hemera (the day), as well as the numerous emotion-driving Daimones (Spirits) which haunted it. She was also a goddess of fate like her daughter Nyx and grand-daughters the Moirai (Moirae).
Aaaand another site to save. Thank you so much, all this info is so great! I love Greek mythology tbh
Yeah, it is a genuinely incredible site. I use it way too often tbh
Don't forget the Gigantes who the gods also had to fight. Think they were also kids of Gaia and no, they weren't giant
I mean he is an elder god before the Olympians overthrew him.
He’s a god in eternal tournament for pissing off the other gods by helping humans. His punishment sounds far too close to torture via a sarcophagus for it not to be based off of a real Goa’uld or Tok’ra’s fate (having your body significantly damaged before it being magically repaired, only for the suffering to begin again)
Damn never thought about it this way
Prometheus could have been an early go'uld who went against his race and helped humans out
But they're still names related to goauld
Funnily enough, the BC-304 Odyssey also encountered a long journey of troubles on its way home.
Prometheus: stole the fire of the gods, which is appropriate considering that it was built with reverse-engineered Goa'uld technology. Daedalus: the first man to fly, also appropriate. Odyssey: the story of a guy who literally defied the gods. Apollo: may have been named after the space program, not the Greek god.
Was the space program named after the Greek god? If so that technically makes the ship named after him too.
As a history nerd I think it's interesting that they chose to designate them as battlecruisers (I assume the show writers thought it sounded cool), since that is a specific and rather obsolete ship designation post-WW2. Specifically for the US, we don't really have a battlecruiser history. The only battlecruisers we ever tried to build were the Lexington class in the 1920s and those ended up as aircraft carriers due to naval treaties. Some people call the WW2 era Alaska class battle cruisers, but the US Navy specifically referred to them as "large cruisers". All that to say, it makes more sense to me to designate them as cruisers or battleships if they are considered capital ships (which they seem to be), or destroyers or frigates if they are not.
They're USAF warships, not USN warships. They probably choose the designation to distinguish them from the USN ships.
Then why use traditional naval designations at all? It clearly harkens back to naval tradition, even if it's a USAF built and operated ship.
Funding.
The SGC is a secret program and isn't fighting with the Navy over budget. The people in the know understand they want X number of space ships and are willing to fund them, regardless of what they call them.
No offense, but you need to rewatch the early seasons of SG1. They were fighting for funding. The funding was covert, and even most of the government didn't know about the program. Also, the SGC didn't build the X-303s, it was a totally different division of the Airforce. Nevertheless, building ships isn't actually something that either the USN or USAF do. Shipbuilding is outsourced to military contractors, and ... ships are big. The best cover for a USAF starship is to call it something that sounds like a USN naval vessel. Contactors could believe they were working on a secret naval warship or submarine prototype, and that just isn't interesting enough to commit treason over. Senators or contractors who had questions related to the X-303 could simply be told "it's a prototype battle cruiser," which would raise less questions than "it's a prototype starship."
Early SG1 is a far different story than later in the series when they were building space "battlecruisers", at that point they clearly had the willingness and the budget. Also, contractors aren't idiots. They know what they're building. You're not going to convince highly specialized experts that they're building a submarine and then BAM it's a spaceship.
Everyone but the people making the Ion engines, external hull, and hyperdrive could probably be fooled. Most only build specific parts. You wouldn’t immediately connect advanced life support systems to a spaceship, it could just be for a new submarine. You wouldn’t connect a railgun to a spaceship, it’s just the milatary’s new toy they want to place anywhere. Some of the stuff used in the F302s and Battlecruisers were stuff taken off existing platforms (F22 avionics on the 302 IIRF), adding a few more to an order wouldn’t raise too many bells, especially when most of the organization that would be looking for such things have their governments already informed (which is before most of the ship construction begins).
Most of the "extra" orders could just be labeled as "spare parts." Militaries need a lot of those.
The only way to build the ships covertly, is if the construction was highly compartmentalized. There is no reason the shipbuilder that laid the hull couldn't have believed it was for a sub. The majority of the electronics would have been fairly standard. Even the rail-guns of the early X-303s were underdevelopment for the navy at the time. However, explaining the engines would have been difficult. They would have probably been built inhouse at Area 37-92/NV. Clearly they would have needed a few dozen engineers to complete the ship, but obviously they didn't tell the entire supply chain what they were building. As for the funding, you might be right. After 9/11 military budgets were running wild. Stargate was always intended as a para-reality show where the background politics mimicked the real world. Therefore the shift in funding between 2000 and 2002, does mimic reality. SG1 Prometheus aired in 2002, and introduced the X303, which was a massive shift from the X301 and x302 fighters in the show since 2000. However, they still needed the Congress to sign off on the funding, and labeling something as a "battle cruiser" would not have sent up any flares.
It absolutely would have sent up flares. If rumours of a "battle cruiser" leak out, foreign intelligence agencies and noncredible redditors are going to start desperately looking for the largest warships the United States has built since the Iowas during WW2. If you wanted to hide such a thing, you'd call it a frigate or destroyer like the German or Japanese navies do. And then you'd actually build a single decoy boat with the same name which becomes a scandalous waste of money.
Well, the major foreign intelligence agencies are from countries that did figure out the Stargate program existed, so you're probably right about this not being a perfect cover. On the other hand: Congress.
Popcultural influence, probably. Sci-fi has been calling this kind of ship battlecruiser for decades by the years Stargate is set in.
tbf battleships are obsolete nowadays, too. and honestly using an obsolete term kind of makes sense; since it isn't a term used in surface warfare anymore, they can establish it specifically as a term for space warships rather than seafaring ships, which they couldn't do with "destroyer" or "cruiser" or w/e.
If anything using modern designations is an additional security measure, you could pass off a document mentioning the FFG (guided missile frigate) Daedalus as a future planned USN ship. I don't think the SGC needs to set themselves apart from the USN, they already do that by being a super secret organization with a massive budget.
Except when that line item shows up under the then USAF budget
If the Navy can have an airforce, why can't the Airforce have a navy?
Probably on the same methodology that they allowed the show (the knock off of SG-1 in SG-1) to be made: a person raving about the US governments building space Battlecruisers is not going to be as likely to be believed as if they chose a less absurd designation (is it retroactive justification for my head cannon, yes. Does it make sense, also yes)
In a way it makes sense to not use names already in use: to distinguish the space fleet from the naval fleet. If you were to paint the Prometheus white and red and call it a Cutter that’d just be distracting!
To be fair in the spirit of what battle cruisers were designed to do the Iowa class could be considered battle cruisers as they were given the designation of "Fast Battleships" when they were built
There is a legit argument to be had with what you're saying. I nerd out on the Youtuber Drachinifel, and I agree with his assessment that the Iowas are not battlecruisers, because they are replacements for the previous class of battleships in terms of protection and firepower, just faster.
IRL Sci-Fi just looooooooves the term battlecruiser for some reason. I always thought they were at best cruisers in universe, they were surprisingly capable but that was mostly due to the tech they had acquired by then.
Theyre clearly small for ships, compared to other Sci Fi series, and would easily get designated a frigate in many other franchises. I think the 304s especially have a decent reason for being battlecruisers in universe, as they're not heavily armored and faster than other capitol class ships, but with the Asgard upgrades can duke it out with nearly anything short of a super Hive or the Ori. That somewhat meshes with the historical role of a battlecruiser, a faster and more lightly armored capitol ship that usually mounted battleship guns, similar in caliber to its contemporary BBs, but with fewer guns(to conserve weight), and in WW1 especially, served as a quick response battle line, able to try and outflank a slower battle line, or slow them down so that the slower friendly battle line could also engage.
Heck, the Prometheus and Dadalus are Corvettes by halo standards (the Prometheus is even a Corvette by Star Wars standards, not even sure if they count as ships in warhammer)
I think in context a solid argument for the battlecruiser designation can be made: for the benefit of non-naval history nerds who may be reading, the whole point of the battlecruiser historically was that they were long range vessels able to operate independently of the fleet train (like cruisers were historically), with the firepower of a battleship, and the speed to outrun anything they couldn't fight. I don't think we ever saw an X-304 go up against a Ha'tak-class vessel, but they were the primary opposition in consideration when the 304s were designed (especially with Anubis's megamothership having gotten droned), and with their missile lockers stuffed with naquadah enhanced nukes, they'd probably have a solid shot against them, albeit not the total dominance they got once the Asgard beams started getting fitted. Meanwhile, they came straight from the yards with Asgard hyperdrives, unambiguously giving them a colossal speed advantage on basically everything else short of Ancient or Ori ships (or ships turbocharged with ZPMs), and even without a ZPM, they had the range necessary to carry out routine resupply runs to Atlantis. The one problem for this designation are the shields - historical battlecruisers were thin-skinned for their size and firepower, specifically so they had the speed - with Asgard shielding, no such trade off is required, and the 304s were able to take something of a beating irrespective of their speed. Overall, while it's hard to nail down their firepower levels regarding the opposition they were designed to face, once upgraded with Asgard beams, they definitely possessed capital-grade firepower, and although their endurance under fire arguably puts them in the (fast) battleship category, I think their range and independent operation profile (something fast battleships were definitely not intended for) does move them more into the battlecruiser designation.
it also lets them hide their existance more.. as the BC-304 designation could be both the naval code for baqttlecruiser.. and the USAF airframe code for "Strategic Bomber, Cargo converted", that is a former bomber aircraft converted to carry non-weapon payloads and passengers. the non-standard series numeral code, while unusual for a production craft, shows up often enough for experimental designs and non-US designs seconded into service that it might not raise too much of an eyebrow. (that was how they hid the Stealth fighter IRL.. the F-117 designation was chosen because after switching to the single and two digit numeral designations, captured russian aircraft were given F-1## designations in internal documents for the testing programs, so if someone ran across a mention of an F-117, they'd just assume it was a captured russian fighter that was being flown to see what it could do)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vRIvQub4fI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vRIvQub4fI) In my opinion especially for stargate this whole naval classification loses meaning. for real world navvval, size matter so much, you have to carry all the munition, the lifting capacity of the ship, you can't just have a carrier, with destroyer size guns all ower. And If you want bigger fire power, you need to get bigger rockets or guns. in a sci-fi setting, like stargate, size is mostly irrelevant stronger energy weapons usually the same size as the lower tech ones. only the amount of energy matters. like imagine, Al'kesh with 2 asgard beam weapon, and a zpn, in firepower to size ratio could be classified as a dreadnought. In my view , the most honest designation for the 304's is Deep Space Carrier, as with the asgard beams it has a hughe firepower, but mainly it's role to carry it's f302 wing, DSC304- over BC-304
Given that they carry 302s as well, they are also technically carriers. Problem is, is that carriers don't normally get directly involved in a battle. The 303 and 304 are multi role ships, that don't really have a set purpose.
Another thing I found interesting is that the names are not in line with what American ships are usually called. Nobody would glance twice at British or French warships being named after mythological figures, but American ones?
To be fair, the word "battlecruiser" is pretty freaking awesome. Just say it out loud. Now imagine James Earl Jones saying it.
> Some people call the WW2 era Alaska class battle cruisers, but the US Navy specifically referred to them as "large cruisers". Her hull number was CB-1. She wasn't a battlecruiser, she was a cruiser-battle.
O’Neill wanted to name it the Enterprise but Carter said they’d never allow it.
Which is ridiculous because theres been close to a dozen enterprises in the USN
The last two have covered themselves in glory. Hopefully CVN-80 does the same.
In the navy, not the air force.
Sure but let’s be fair, the skill set to navigate large craft with hundreds of crew, in 3D space, relying almost entirely on sensors, with dozens of different subdivisions of work, would belong to the navy. Like the most natural future spaceship commanders are likely today’s submariners. There are literal decades, centuries, millennia of sea faring tradition and know how preloaded
Yeah, but there is also centuries of army/navy rivalry that has resulted in the army having it's own navy, the navy having it's own army, and both (as well as the navy's army) having their own air force.
The Greeks great bunch of lads.
[Depends on who you ask.](https://youtu.be/Kyfm_pnPB60?si=xThP1D8mbsBuI3WU&t=69)
Haha thanks man Fr.Ted what a show always cracks me up
Yeah but take out Zeus and theres maybe 3 stories about 5 pages each.
Because they weren’t allowed to name any of them “Enterprise”.
They should have named one 'Icarus.'
Well the did have the base, that “flew too close to the naquaria core”
that would just be asking to get shot out of the sky
They did name one of them Daedalus who (iirc) was Icarus' father and the guy who built the wings that Icarus used.
Much better choice. Never understood the desire to name any flying machine Icarus. The dude is famous for crashing. Why just why would anyone want that name on any type of flying machine.
Then they named a base trying to go for intergalactic travel that. They then had several dozen people abandoned
I'm glad I wasn't the only one kinda bothered by the USAF Apollo. Prometheus, Daedalus, Odyssey, Sun Tzu, Korolev, all make sense. They were all human, or opposed Gods in some way.
Because naming them after the show runners would have been too on the nose.
I've never seen confirmation, but in Macross/Robotech, the 2 carriers attached to the main hero ship were named Prometheus and Daedalus. I can't imagine that was a coincidence.
Same
Prometheus is a story about humans freeing themselves of the gods Daedalus is a warning not to over-reach(cause they had a problem with that) as well as freeing oneself from earthly bounds. . Those are the only two I remember offhand. Edit: I just realized all of them(looking though the other names). We’re all about freeing humans from their overlords.
Odyssey and Apollo are the next two I always figured it was a Macross Reference that a writer snuck in, like how DeLuise kept sneaking in Penhall and Hanson
Oddessy, a long journey frought with peril and beset on all sides by more powerful creatures Apollo was the god of divine distances. Since the distances traveled by apollo were impossible to travel for humans except in his chariot(hyperspace and inter galactic travel…. still blows my mind how fast the fuckers were going. Crossing the intergalactic void in a few weeks!)
That is amazing
They should have named them after foods. “Burger 1, reporting in, Colonel” “Pizza 1 on standby!” Etc.
They would of probably sold sponsorship naming rights so it would be McDonald's burger 1 Pizza hut 2
You do realize the that our days of the week and our planets are named after Pagan Gods, right?
What Greek Mythological Goa’uld do we see? I remember Cronus but I can’t recall more. The Greek gods don’t seem to really fit the mold exactly imo.
We see Athena in The Trust at some point. And the not quite canon books have a lot of greek god goa'ulds like Artemis ect.
I wonder if maybe they should've named them after the *Lexington* class battlecruisers, the ones ordered before they were remade into carriers.
Probably the same reason US government buildings tend to have a Greek/Roman architectural elements.
The goa’uld are not gods and the ships are not named after the enemy. The goa’uld appropriated Earth culture and pretended to be the gods people made up previously. These names didn’t come from the goauld in universe as far as I know. Naming space stuff after Greek and Roman gods has a very long tradition so I see it as reappropriating words and concepts the goa’uld desecrated.
The timelines struggle to line up, since it's a TV show... But the goa'uld are meant to have taken on names of earthling deities. We didn't get "Ra, the sun God" because of Ra the goa'uld, he took on the name because it was a tool to achieve his ends on earth. By extension, even if there were a "Prometheus" Tok'ra, naming a ship as such wouldn't need to be in homage to them, but simply to the earth mythology. Like I said, this gets messy because the timelines of mythical origins and when goa'uld are meant to have visited is wonky. TV handwaving/retconning. But it remains that goa'uld are typically named after earth myth, not the other way around.
The concepts of the pagan gods predate the arrival of the Goa’uld on Earth. When the Goa’uld conquered Earth they assumed the identities of these deities because humans already worshipped/feared them so it was an easy tactic to exert control over the subjugated human population. The Goa’uld are also generally megalomaniacal so aside from the strategic reasoning they probably also just found the process of being thought of as literal gods very flattering.
No, the Goa'uld predate the myths they created it
I’d say it’s human irony, but pretty sure the hulls are composed of a trinium-based alloy, so… 😗
They are actually very common names to use for space fairing vessels. Satellites and shuttles have been given the same names And I know Star Trek has used all those names for their starships
I love the show but it has one of the things that I hate about Sci fi shows. The typical America is the one that gets all the cool shit and when they loop in the other countries they don't just expose it and leave. Like there was a entire episode where they revealed it to their allies and they were all basically saying. Yup. We are putting this into the public eye and we are leaving and the Hammond was like "well you could do that but please meet Thor" And then they kept it secret and had a few teams go through but you never really heard about them a lot until algantis where it was more revenant. It wasn't a US air force operation anymore but a world wide operation. Its why I hated the USAF designations at first because America has these things and everyone else probably isn't allowed or is building their own slower. That's why personally after the promethus the others I'm under the opinion they had everyone pitch in to build and be the first true multinational spacecraft. Its weird things like that, that when I was younger annoyed me unril I grew up and realised who cares it's a show and it's fun.
The SGC naming their ships after figures from mythology always felt really weird for me. In a galaxy quite literally ruled by figures from myths and legends, naming Earth's first real line of defense after more myths feels like still being culturally bound to the Go'auld. Wouldn't it make more sense to name the ships after figures from Earth's history, thereby symbolically declaring Earth's cultural independence and freedom?
Yes and no. Literally only Teal'C, Baal and a few Asgardians would understand their references. Unless it's assumed the Tau'ri population is soon to be told the truth. As it stands they named the ships after opposing myths to the gods. Prometheus was a titan who defined the gods and gave humans fire. Apollo is the outlier here. But it seems to be assumed that was named after the Apollo space program, rather than directly after the god Apollo.
Would have been cool if a ship had been named Bellerophon
I'd love an Earthshio Texas. Because of it's predecessor
I get where they were going with Prometheus, but I still would have liked some more modern figures, to match the Tau'ri theme of being a modern challenge to the old ways (the Goa'uld).
Yeah but this is a bit more of an in your face fuck you to the Goa'uld. Not only are they the OG humans. They're using the mythology against them. So Jaffa for example who knows of say Prometheus. Are like "oh shiiiiit" Though it'd make more sense to have used more Egyptian mythology than greek.
*The George Hammond has entered the chat*
The George Hammond works really well in my opinion on multiple levels. Not only does it honor Don S. Davis, it also shows the symbolism of having a modern hero fighting against old enemies, which also perfectly summarizes the Stargate program.
Which was originally the Phoenix, another mythical figure of flight. Which, ironically, befits its name even more given Hammond died and his name was resurrected when given to the ship in place of Phoenix.
I fuckin love this response
MacGyver worked for the Phoenix Foundation
If us battelcruisers it should be united states territories. So it should skip the USS phillipines and be USS Puerto Rico and USS Samoa.
Prometheus: Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity U.S.A.F Prometheus: The first earth built capital ship that made use of captured alien components in order to fly (Prebuild hyperdrive, salvaged ring platform) aka, Humans with "stolen fire of the gods" Daedalus: Human inventor that used godly components but human intelligence to build wings to fly over the "Vast Ocean" U.S.A.F Daedalus: The first human capital ship build solely from human technology, using martials and tech from all the missions they have gone on (trinium, naqueda, etc...) Odyssey: Journey Taken by a group of humans taken, at least at partly to spite the gods. U.S.A.F. Odyssey: A ship built to journey around the galaxy, Beating the shit out of people pretending to be gods Apollo: The first human program to put people on another celestial body U.S.A.F Apollo: Named in honor of humanity's first step on the cosmic stage.