Flare Sci-fi Forums
Flare Sci-Fi Forums Post New Topic  Post A Reply
my profile | directory login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Flare Sci-Fi Forums » Star Trek » Starships & Technology » Federation Transporter Facilities? (Page 2)

  This topic comprises 3 pages: 1  2  3   
Author Topic: Federation Transporter Facilities?
Woodside Kid
Active Member
Member # 699

 - posted      Profile for Woodside Kid     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
It's probably not as common as we'd like to think. Given the amount of computer processing and energy needed to transport someone at quantum resolution, it seems reasonable to assume it's only done where some other means of transport is not economically viable or practical. That's why we see it all the time in Starfleet; it makes more sense to beam someone down than to land a 5 million ton starship.

BTW, one of the first novels to come out after TMP (The Abode Of Life) had a society where transporter travel was as common as phone calls. The Enterprise had a hard time beaming down a landing party because there was so much transporter traffic going on on the planet. That's another factor to consider: the bandwith necessary for widescale transporter usage.

--------------------
The difference between genius and idiocy? Genius has its limits.


Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709

 - posted      Profile for capped     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
and bandwidth problems in a transporter could ruin your whole day. I'd hate to end up as a 404 file not found

--------------------
"Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"

Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Harry
Stormwind City Guard
Member # 265

 - posted      Profile for Harry     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
Ouch!

"Your limbs have made an illegal operation and will be shut down."

--------------------
Titan Fleet Yards | Memory Alpha


Registered: Dec 1999  |  IP: Logged
TSN
I'm... from Earth.
Member # 31

 - posted      Profile for TSN     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
"Blue Screen of Death" takes on a whole new meaning...
Registered: Mar 1999  |  IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709

 - posted      Profile for capped     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
Just because they have the technology on state of the art exploration and military ships doesnt mean everyone has it at home.

I'll list some things i would like that they probably have on an aircraft carrier right now: a helicopter; massive radio transmitter/recievers& high speed satellite linkups, global positioning; neat hats with pins on them.

I could get some of those things if i had more money, but i dont think that every person in america would be able to have all of them at once

--------------------
"Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"


Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621

 - posted      Profile for OnToMars     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
There has always been a transporter operator whenever possible behind controls. No matter how easy it looks, it simply can't be as simple as sliding a few bars. Can't. Musn't. And we're talking about incredible bandwith/energy/power issues. Consider that the average Terran home doesn't have a dedicated antimatter reactor working for it. We know there are power grid(s) that power many places like power plants today. Most homes are not likely to be given an infinite amount of energy to use. Also consider the sheer logistics of people beaming everywhere all the time.

The smoothest and most logical way for things to run is to consider planetside transporter systems like a planetwide subway system. There are stops at every significant enough location (and there would be a lot of them) and it would be possible to beam manually, away team style to anywhere on the planet as a special case.

Obviously, Starfleet would receive a special ability in the use of transporters as far as would be needed. This would be regulated by the Terran Local Government and the Federation Government. Reason for the Terran Local is that it seems to me that we often confuse the Federation Council as the ruling body for the UFP with whoever runs Earth. The Whitehouse runs the Federal Government, not the District of Columbia.

Deciding on whether to use a transporter or not seems to be a matter of time. Would it be simpler to go to a transporter facility (would there be lines to wait in in the utopian future?) or go to a shuttle facility (probably more shuttles than transporter pads on Earth) and fly it to Fiji or orbit or wherever. Or take a subway from San Fran to NYC or Tokyo, etc. Or a hovercar across town.

Finally, I'd think there would be transporter enhancer satellites in orbit and at Lagrange points so that it would be possible to beam from Earth to Mars or other places in the inner solar system or even whole solar system. The beaming might be twice (or more) as long, but hell, seems like an easy think to do.

Does that make sense?

(edit: written after a long night of drinking)

--------------------
If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.


Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Timo
Moderator
Member # 245

 - posted      Profile for Timo     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
Contrary to what CaptainMike says, I feel that Starfleet is in the hind end of receiving high tech in some respects. Militaries in general tend to be, in the real world.

The state of art of communications and computing devices in the military is typically abysmal compared with what the civilians have available. There's a much greater need for standardization and independence from complex fixed support infrastructures, and then there's a double inertia of manufacturing the sort of robust stuff that has no civilian market value, and accepting NIH tech in general.

I guess holotech is also far more advanced in the civilian world than aboard starships or starbases, and Starfleet is only now realizing the full possibilities - holo-decoys, training simulations etc. This is a technology that is obviously commercially attractive, and less obviously militarily so.

Transporting could also fall into this category. If at first you needed a machine the size of Pentagon to transport a person, you'd use it dirtside and possibly forget about shipboard applications for a goodly while - but you *would* use it dirtside, because teleportation is commercially attractive once safe. When starships would get their first teleporters, their development would probably branch into completely different directions, creating "tanks" instead of "sedans". There could be later convergence if civilians found "SUV" style transporters perversely attractive, but in general, a civilian transporter would be a completely different beast. The military would have no use for the "sedan" transporter, and might neglect technologies related to "sedan-like" transporter operations.

Timo Saloniemi


Registered: Nov 1999  |  IP: Logged
Woodside Kid
Active Member
Member # 699

 - posted      Profile for Woodside Kid     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
quote:
Finally, I'd think there would be transporter enhancer satellites in
orbit and at Lagrange points so that it would be possible to beam from
Earth to Mars or other places in the inner solar system or even whole
solar system. The beaming might be twice (or more) as long, but hell,
seems like an easy think to do.

I'm not sure I'd want to risk a very long range transport like Earth to Mars, if for no other reason than beam dispersal. I remember reading in high school that a laser beam the width of a pencil will spread out to roughly half a mile in diameter by the time it reaches the moon. A transport from here to Mars is about 140 times as far; can you imagine how far the matter stream would spread out over that distance?

I think the key to transporter usage on a wide scale would be economic viability. Would there be enough of an incentive to send passengers using a transporter versus more conventional means? As i stated in my earlier post, for Starfleet its more resonable to beam down personnel rather than land a starship.

I use passenger transport as my example because I don't believe quantum resolution transporters would be economically viable in shipping cargo. It makes much more sense to simply replicate what you want where you are, rather than manufacturing at point A and beaming to point B.

--------------------
The difference between genius and idiocy? Genius has its limits.


Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621

 - posted      Profile for OnToMars     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
quote:
I use passenger transport as my example because I don't believe quantum resolution transporters would be economically viable in shipping cargo. It makes much more sense to simply replicate what you want where you are, rather than manufacturing at point A and beaming to point B.

Depending upon power availability. Remember, shit costs energy. Does it take less energy to transport things using cargo transporters or to use that energy to store an energy pattern and then transfer that energy pattern from computer memory to reality. Choosing one above the other must be a case by case basis.

Re: Earth-Mars transporters.

Voyager fucked up Mars.
In the future, Mars will be the North America of the solar system. There could be over a billion people living on her and there will be an entire civilization based there. But above all it will be terraformed. It will be green and blue and white and NOT red.

But thats a different thread entirely; my point is that Mars will be such a center of Sol culture/population/commerce/etc. that working out a reliable and effective transporter would be a very useful thing to have. Its not just Earth in the Sol System. Earth is the city and the rest are like the suburbs in the Trek universe. Having a reliable transportation system between Mercury/Venus/Earth/Mars/Asteroid Belt/Galilaen moons/Titan/and maybe even out into the outer moons and the Kuiper Belt would be extremely economical.

--------------------
If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.


Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709

 - posted      Profile for capped     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
Did an episode reveal the maximum safe distance for transporting? wasnt it like 20,000 km? or did i imagine that.
Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Siegfried
Fullmetal Pompatus
Member # 29

 - posted      Profile for Siegfried     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
I'd just like to point out that, in Voyager's defense, The Next Generation also showed Mars to be a brilliantly red planet. "Parallels" shows a surveillance scan of the land-based portion of Utopia Planetia. It's sitting in a field of red Martian soil. So, it doesn't look like it was terraformed there either. However, the viability of terraforming is another thread altogether.

Getting back to the thread's subject, it's probably less power-intensive to transport cargo at a molecular resolution than a quantum resolution. With the former, a less perfect pattern needs to be stored. That means less stress on the computer and machinery which equals less power consumption. However, would it still be economically feasible to chose transporters over freighters?

For interplanetary transporters to work, you'd definitely need a satellite system or booster relay system in place. I think you'd probably lose too much of the beam integrity without them. However, the booster relay chain would have to be immense. Earth and Mars revolve around the sun at different rates. Therefore, it'd be possible for the two planets to be on opposite sides of the sun. Imagine all of the boosters that'd be needed by doing that.

For the interplanetary transport of cargo, I still think that freighters would be the choice. Beam the cargo up from the planet, take a short hop to the next planet, and then beam it down. I just don't think that transporters would be a very good method.

--------------------
The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.


Registered: Mar 1999  |  IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709

 - posted      Profile for capped     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
I still dont think transporter mass-transit use is safe.

Geordi says thats its safer to use a transporter in a couple of transporter accident(!) episodes, 'Datas Day' & 'Realm of Fear'.. and maybe 'The Next Phase' too.

But remember, statistically, in our century its safer to fly than to drive.
but
a) When you fly you do it in groups with a highly trained professional doing it for you
b) Flying short distances is a ridiculous use of resources, so driving is more efficient and can be done personally

So i suggest that these are paralells.. statistically it is safer to transport than it is to shuttle (esp. if Chakotay pilots)
but
a) transporting needs a professional doing it for you (i.e. not everybody can run your own pad, just like not everybody flies your own plane

b) transporting short distances is a waste of resources and shuttling is more beneficial, and can be done personally (like a 'flitter' like everybody has in the novels)

i started a new thread for terraforming and mars

--------------------
"Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"


Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
TSN
I'm... from Earth.
Member # 31

 - posted      Profile for TSN     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
"I remember reading in high school that a laser beam the width of a pencil will spread out to roughly half a mile in diameter by the time it reaches the moon."

That's a technological limitation. We just can't make a laser better than that (or whatever the actual figure might be). That doesn't mean, in the future, someone couldn't make a laser that stays much more in line. And Trek's idea of the annular confinement beam would probably be even easier to keep cylindrical.


Registered: Mar 1999  |  IP: Logged
Timo
Moderator
Member # 245

 - posted      Profile for Timo     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
A couple of counterpoints:

Mars could probably be terraformed by Trek tech, but I can't think of a NEED to do so. Terraforming is for people who cannot travel to the stars, or who can but happen to live in a galaxy where each and every star does NOT contain class M planets, most of which harbor no native life that would hold a credible previous claim or would otherwise hinder colonization.

Or then terraforming is for people who want to show off. Or for people who desperately need a food source right next to their own planet. Trek does a lot of showing off, but Earth isn't suffering from hunger and does not need a farming world next door. And whoever wants to leave Paradise for some reason is free to do so aboard a warpship that will take him far, far beyond Mars.

Transportation is indeed best equated with air travel, I guess. But the argument that professionals run the aircraft and that individuality is suppressed sound hollow to me. Surely "private" commuting is a step to the worse, while commuting by buses or trains that are run by professionals (sometimes by remote control) liberates you from a need to pilot a vehicle or park it or take care of it. I can easily see a role for transporters-operated-like-subways in commuting, in addition to transporters-operated-like-airliners in long-distance planetary travel.

Use of transporter relays probably presents safety hazards or it would be more aggressively pursued in interplanetary applications. But I don't think the range of a Starfleet shipboard transporter ought to be representative of transporters in general.

There are cars that are faster than an Abrams tank, airliners that take aboard more people than an F-15, houses that offer better accommodation than an NBC-secure bunker. I trust there could be superior-ranged civilian transporters as well, through tradeoffs the military is not willing to make. Perhaps Earth transporters use landlines instead of beams, and a long enough landline can take the signal across a million kilometers, not just X0,000? Perhaps one could run a landline to a geostationary anchor and an outreeled relay beyond that, and reach the Moon that way?

Timo Saloniemi


Registered: Nov 1999  |  IP: Logged
Yakaspat The Trekker
Member
Member # 355

 - posted      Profile for Yakaspat The Trekker     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
Personnally, I have always thought of the Fed Public Transit System like this:

Transporters are found in every city, or near every major public utility/rec area/etc. I think a Transporter Center would be as common as US Post Offices. Every little town has one, and in between you have little private run establishments, like Mail Boxes Etc. So, in every city you have a free to the public government run Transport Center, which would have a person there operating it like on the show. Then, you may have many other small Transport Centers, like Transporters Etc., located near stadiums, parks, train stations, etc. These would be fee based, costing a couple credits.

At the Starfleet Academy, each student gets an allotment of "transporter credits", and can use these at his or her (or its) discretion to transport home, go on a short trip to Jamiaca, or whatever. This is what Sisko was talking about.

Then, for short trips within or between cities, you have maglift trains and hover cars. This is what we saw when Kim was walking down the street and what we saw in All Good Things at Cambridge (or whatever school that was).

There are also aircars, for fast transit across continents, for those who don't want to get there instantly for whatever reason. Perhaps it is free to transport up to so many times a month, but after that the government begins to charge you (to pay for the system...they still cost *money*, or power (the two are interchangable), to operate). For that reason, people wouldn't just beam around all the time. There would be a finite source of power for every to beam about, so the government would place cost-restrictions on the populace. This would force the general public to use the maglev and the air transit system.

Of course, the rich folks, whatever that means in a Utopian society, would and probably could have their own pad installed in their garage. Why not? Michael Jackson has a theme park and most stars have their own jets!

That's just my two cents...

Lance
TheTrekker's Officer's Bible
www.thetrekker.org

--------------------
TheTrekker's Officer's Bible: A Concise Review of the Starfleet
http://www.thetrekker.org


Registered: Jun 2000  |  IP: Logged
  This topic comprises 3 pages: 1  2  3   

Quick Reply
Message:

HTML is enabled.
UBB Code™ is enabled.

Instant Graemlins
   


Post New Topic  Post A Reply Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


© 1999-2008 Solareclipse Network.

Powered by UBB.classic™ 6.7.3