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SG Atlantis #1

If you are not familiar with the science fiction series Stargate Atlantis, it involves a group of people from earth who have managed to travel to another galaxy, the Pegasus Galaxy, by means of a "Stargate". There they encounter a race of life-sucking aliens referred to as the Wraith who just love to "feed" on human beings by sucking the life out of them, leaving a shriveled corpse behind.

In one episode of SG Atlantis, "Childhoods End", a group of our people travel to a planet inhabited only by young people. This is because everyone on the planet commits suicide on the eve of his or her 25th birthday. The reason they do this is that they believe this keeps the Wraith from "culling" their planet, that is, showing up to suck the life out of many of them. (Apparently suicide is preferable to having an alien suck your life away.)

The episode starts out with the group's spaceship crash landing because of some mysterious force that stops the craft from operating. After the group meets the young inhabitants of the planet they discover the machine which generates the power field that caused them to crash, which the young inhabitants of the planet were not even aware of, and realize that this is the real reason why the Wraith have avoided culling the planet.

They temporarily turn off the machine and, by doing so, inadvertently activate a signaling device that alerts the Wraith. The Wraith send a probe to check it out. The young folks are ready to kill our people because they think we brought the Wraith. It doesn't help that the machine is very difficult to get set back up and working, but one of our heroes, the brilliant but very arrogant Rodney McKay, finally manages to get it restarted, whereupon the Wraith probe falls from the sky, demonstrating that the machine, and not the kids' ghastly ritual, is the real reason the Wraith avoid them. The kids allow our people to live and to fix their spaceship, and also agree to give up their gruesome tradition.

All is well at the end of the show. The planet's protection has been reactivated, the kids are happy that they don't have to go on killing themselves, and our people are ready to get in their spaceship and leave. But there is one slight problem here that the story writers seemed to overlook. What is it?

Hint:
Being effectively children, the occupants of the planet have no technical expertise.

Answer:

Now that the machine is back on, how will they get their spaceship off the ground? (Remember: It took our brilliant scientist a valiant effort to get the machine restarted. Those kids will never get it restarted if our heroes turn it off long enough to get out of there.)