In "Pain", one of the Air Force members becomes erratic with the belief that there are snakes underneath his skin. Scary enough a thought on its own, when recalling what the Air Force dealtwithbefore, one begins to understand just how horrific that scenario would be.
Of course the inhabitants of Novus have a cure for Motor Neuron Disease. A sizable portion of the population is descended from TJ after all, thus it must have been a lot more common on Novus than on Earth.
Not to mention, of course they would have a greater understanding of genetics than we do. Due to their entire population being derived from less than 80 people, they would have been forced to find ways to sustain their population through genetic engineering, otherwise the genetic bottleneck would have caused them to interbreed themselves into extinction within a few generations.
And, they started out with all of the knowledge that their ancestors could record. Due to the aforementioned inbreeding issue (and certainly someone in the group would understand the 50/500 rule) genetics would have been a high priority. Then add a couple thousand years of development, even despite having to bootstrap their infrastructure before they could actually advance the sciences.
When Amanda Perry accidentally traps Dr. Nicholas Rush's consciousness inside Destiny she tells him that the program didn't work because Rush did not truly love her. This seems contradictory towards Rush's actions and his own statements, but then I realized some very off-putting things about their relationship: mainly, in all the time he has known her, he probably never once touched her. Since she was a quadriplegic Rush never had the opportunity to shake her hand or share any sort of those innocuous, casual touches that occurs between colleagues (and Rush is not the sort to put a supportive hand on the shoulder or instigate anything like that anyway). Every time that Rush has touched her she has either been A) in another person's body or B) a virtual computer program. It seems that even her, arguably one of the very few people to have ever really gotten to know him, was kept at a distance.
The ninth chevron wasn't built specifically with Destiny in mind, but to allow for dialing stargates onboard ships. Rather than carrying a regular stargate on a ship and orbiting a planet to establish a wormhole — and having to know in advance where and when the ship will be to avoid dialing the local planet instead — you dial a specific gate stored onboard a specific ship no matter where it is or its proximity to another stargate. The Ancients probably had other ships with stargates onboard, but they were all destroyed or lost except for Destiny. Think how useful a shipboard stargate would be in a war: You can resupply a ship in deep space rather than at a planet, deploy a military base's worth of fighters and missiles out of a small ship, or use it like the Asuran gate weapon. The massive power requirements for dialing Destiny are only because it's so far away, which means you can send anything that fits through a stargate anywhere in the galaxy.
While rewatching "The Hunt", in which Eli opens one of the countless storage crates from the Ancients aboard Destiny before the stasis pods are found, I noticed that at least one box has at least two of the power relays that were so desperately needed during Twin Destinies. Further, while I might be wrong, the box seemed to contain a full set of parts for the repair of at least one (maybe more) stasis pods. In fact, it's entirely possible that that room might have contained multiple complete pods in component form, ready to assemble and use. There is every possibility that Eli, on taking a good look and getting a bit desperate, would remember this and could actually repair his pod completely, well within the time limit since he wouldn't have to rig bypasses or anything but could just plug working components in to replace broken ones.
Eli having to quarantine Ginn and Amanda Perry's programs in the computer to save Rush makes sense. However once Rush is free why can't he just them them out of quarantine? So long as Rush stays away from the chair he won't be trapped in the simulation anymore just because the programs are running.
The implications of those body switching stones are terrifying if you really think about it. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that consent has ever been given for the Destiny Expedition to have sex in their donor bodies, and it seems to be implied that there isn't as Eli has to remind Dr Rush and Dr Perry of this after walking in on them kissing. But even if you are perfectly fine with this (and perfectly fine with a complete stranger and/or someone that you'll have to work with every day seeing your naked body) the moral implications are never explored. Who would technically be the parent of any child accidentally born from this union? Who would have the final decision on an abortion? What would happen in the event of an STD? It is all just glossed over just so we can have some fanservice. One also has to wonder what the job description actually entailed for these volunteers, because would anyone reading this willingly let someone go off in their body to get drunk, eat junk food, start fights and potentially get seriously injured in an accident? It is you who has to deal with the long term consequences - imagine being rendered a paraplegic for life because Eli crashed the car coming home from the nightclub.
One of the Kino web videos [1] dealt with this exact issue. Eli interviews an airman who has swapped bodies with Chloe, and she explains that all of them are volunteers who sign a consent form granting the visitor from Destiny full use of their body, and they all understand that might include sex with the visitor's partners. They are also given standing orders not to do anything on the ship that might make things awkward or complicated for the visitor after the body swap ends.
You would think in real life it would be very hard to find volunteers in the Air Force (especially in the already narrowed pool of those with clearance to know about the stargate) who were willing to allow that sex clause, and that they'd get more volunteers if it wasn't there. In fact, why put it there in the first place? What kind of person would want to use someone else's body that way? Realistically, they'd be more likely to have to sign a form saying they wouldn't.
How exactly did the U.S. government explain the Lucian attack on Homeworld Command? Gonna be kind of hard to cover up a second major terrorist attack on the Pentagon without resorting to lying about who pulled it off. Who is the American government gonna blame for this one?
What on earth are they doing for birth control or other daily, continuous medications? One guy runs out of his sleeping pills with pretty severe consequences. These people weren't supposed to be on the ship, so they couldn't have been selected to avoid this issue.
All the people who went to Destiny came from an off-world military base only reachable by ship, so most of the people there would have been selected for that. Its probable the guy with the sleeping pills had some kind of difficult to find specialty that made the logistics of getting him his pills worth it.
In "Human", why does Chloe expect to find human remains on a planet billions of light years from Earth, when no other humans or Ancients were known to have been in that region of space before Destiny's arrival?
Turns out to be a possible case of foreshadowing when they discover their own future descendants, the Novus.
TJ's Lou Gehrig's disease is a real non-dilemma. Put her in stasis, wait for them to get home, give her one of their many bottles of Tretonin that will grant her a 100% immunity to all sickness and disease. This is a plot line about five years too late.
Then again, this means the crew would be without a medic. Better in stasis than dead, but given how indispensable TJ is on the ship, there would be a strong desire to delay putting her in or to pull her out for every crisis, which gives the disease more time to progress.
Also, you're assuming they're ever going to get home. Destiny's situation seemed pretty impossible.
dealt with this exact issue. Eli interviews an airman who has swapped bodies with Chloe, and she explains that all of them are volunteers who sign a consent form granting the visitor from Destiny full use of their body, and they all understand that might include sex with the visitor's partners. They are also given standing orders not to do anything on the ship that might make things awkward or complicated for the visitor after the body swap ends.