I've wondered after that episode where Seven created a holographic life for herself and a crew quarters if Voyager and other Federation starships have industrial replicators onboard. Large items such as furniture can't exactly be made with the ones available in the quarters unless you get them in an Ikea put together box.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
We see in TNG "The Wounded" that there are places where people go to replicate stuff, using table (well, nightstand) sized replicators. For all we know, there's just such a dedicated replication room for larger objects on many starships, with variously-sized replicators for non-biomatter type objects. It may even be a sort of gift shop or PX store, with a dedicated interface for more exotic items like crystal birds or stuffed animals...
Mark
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
I have no idea how Seven's holographic quarters have anything to do with this, but I think "industrial replicator" probably refers to something capable of making things a bit heftier than a couch: my guess would be they can do some pretty large stuff (I picture them zipping backwards and forwards like a flatbed scanner) but more importantly do it in steps, so that some pretty complex things can be made. Considering that a half-dozen or so (can't remember the episode) was enough to help in the reconstruction of an entire planet's infrastructure, they're probably a bit too valuable to be on every scutty little ship in the fleet. Maybe not even a Galaxy.
That said, a "replication centre" was referenced onboard the E-D in both TNG and the TNGTM, and so it's quite likely that couches and the like get zapped into existence in several oversized replicators buried in the bowels of all Federation ships. Fitting them in the turbolifts would be the next problem. Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
"Industrial" replicators may also be able to handle items of a greater complexity, or something along similar lines.
Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
Some classifications could be:
domestic replicator = home use "tea, Earl Grey, Hot"
bulk replicator = larger volume(size) items, couch, non-technical material like struts, shuttle hull sheeting, etc.
technical replicator = technobabble parts for engineering and medical, etc.
industrial replicator = mass production of goods and equipment/parts, sort of Ford motor company in a box.
Of the above we'd likely need at the top first three to replicate what we see on the screen.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
It's interesting that all the quarters about most of the starships we've seen seem to furnished whether they're being used or not. This seems to be a huge waste of resources as well as unecessary mass added to the ship.
Now, it's entirely possible that only several guest quarters are kept fully furnished and others are simply thrown together by the ship's Interior Decoration Officer (he wears a purple unifrom with a scarf) when they know they will be used.
Either way, I'd say that most every ship has at least one larger scale replicator, but it would likely be limited to simple, non-technical things, at least without higher clearance.
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
quote:Interior Decoration Officer (he wears a purple unifrom with a scarf)
Yes I heard they were starting a new book series.
Star Trek : S.D.C. Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Starring Christopher Lowell?
An episode of "Trading Spaces" aboard a starship...
"The crews of the Starships Harare & Godsfire have agreed to take the day & redo the other's residential areas!"
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
I love that show ...
Mark, YOU'RE WRONG! I think you're thinking of Data's Day, when Worf & Data are trying to select presents for Keiko & O'Brien's wedding. Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Grokca: [QB][QUOTE]Interior Decoration Officer (he wears a purple unifrom with a scarf)
Worf: "I want the internal security sensor cluster *here*."
IDC : "Oh, thilly, that would ruin the fabulouth lighting effect I made for the . . . "
(Whine of a phaser on level 10)
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I think, for that situation, Worf would prefer a bladed weapon of some kind
What's S.D.C., Grocka? I'm just woefully behind on my terminology.
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
Starfleet Decorating Corp.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
quote:Originally posted by Snay: I love that show ...
Mark, YOU'RE WRONG! I think you're thinking of Data's Day, when Worf & Data are trying to select presents for Keiko & O'Brien's wedding.
Oh yeah... "The Wounded" was right after that. Duh..
Mark
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Gotcha.
It could be told in the manner of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" with the Decorating Corp. stories taking place in and around several key events from the series.
Every once in a while, they'd bump into Picard or Troi, but mostly they'd be off doing their own thing Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
Ok, I was also wondering how Voyager was able to replicate so many shuttle parts over the years. Perhaps they recycled the furniture that dead crew members left behind? But in that episode with Seven's holographic quarters, that place was spartan with only a bed and apparently counters for cooking. So perhaps the crew quarters are kept empty til they are filled, at least when it came to Voyager. I do remember hearing several times before on the show someone saying prepare quarters for so and so.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
If we're talking about holographic quarters...it was probably on the holodeck, there, duder.
Are you talking about the episode where she makes out with a holographic Chakotay to get some practice?
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge: Ok, I was also wondering how Voyager was able to replicate so many shuttle parts over the years.
Shuttle parts? They replicated entire shuttles, from the looks of things. Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Trading Spaces is a 2 day event, according to my wife, that has the show blatting in my ear often....
The back wall of my 'office' is the entertainment center, so I hear all the home & garden TV shows...
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Yeah, Seven's "quarters" were actually on the holodeck, so furnishing them was no problem for Seven.
The problem is, Seven probably created this fake with the supposition that it would also be doable in real life. Then again, we can naturally argue that she tickmarked every holo-character template at the box that says "Character will ignore certain blatant conflicts with reality without as much as a shrug"...
I doubt that starship furniture is really replicated, though. Just because the replicator exists doesn't mean it should be used for everything. (Similarly, just because the bridge is a detachable module doesn't mean that whenever the coffee mug holder on the Captain's armrest is changed, we should yell "a new module!") Even comfy couches can be collapsible, perhaps stored in quantity in some cargo hold.
Or then every room is in fact pre-furnished. It need not be wasteful - it's just a point-of-view issue. It would be more wasteful to leave them undecorated if the energy and materials for decorating them had to be taken away from a pool of vital shipboard resources.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Nim Pim (Member # 205) on :
I seem to recall the Delta Flyer being constructed with many replicated parts, when Tom summed up the project to get it cleared with the Captain. Of course they must have heavy-duty replicators.
Posted by Jack_Crusher (Member # 696) on :
quote:Originally posted by The_Tom: That said, a "replication centre" was referenced onboard the E-D in both TNG and the TNGTM,
Well, I believe starships do have heavy replicators, seeing as how Voyager was able to replace all of the shuttles Chakotay crashed. At the end of the TNG episode "Phantasms", Geordi tells Picard that He could replicate a new plasma conduit (a big conduit). As for the point about the replicators being mentioned in the TNG TM, I can now look it up in my new copy. Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
plus we could always go back and watch the episode where they visited the replication center.
or would that be too easy?
In 'Data's Day' (speaking from memory) Data and Worf were in a replicator room that had a few stations trying to pick a wedding gift for the O'Briens. While they had their discussion, i believe that in the background an officer came in with his family and a child walked up to the selector and picked a large teddy bear or some shit, then hugged daddy thankfully when it appeared and left. When Data was flipping through the screens of things he could replicate for a gift, i believe one of the options was a molded glass swan looking gravy boat type thing.
I remember all this from a TNG ep i havent seen in eight years, but i cant really work through my German vocab exams for info i learned two months ago. Go fig...
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Um, CaptainMike, "Data's Day" has already been mentioned, repeatedly.
Why does everything have to be replicated? Can't there be a machine shop somewhere on the Enterprise just for replacing components? I mean, replicating every single thing is rather power intensive. You can probably save a lot of energy by machining the parts you need, though it'd take a lot longer than a commercial break.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I'm sure they *have* a machine shop for making just about everything the old fashioned way. Rick Sternbach has posited that there are certain components of things which must be precision made and machined, such as shuttle warp cores and coils, in order to be customized to certain other things, such as shuttle physical parameters (anyone who's assembled lawn furniture knows that no two chairs are assembled exactly alike).
Logically, the more complex a meterial is, the more energy it would take to replicate, to the point that really complex stuff like warp components and latinum simply can't be replicated on a practical level. There probably is a physical limit to the size of some objects being manufactured, too; we've never seen people replicate stuff any larger than what can be manhandled.
And finally, remember that replication of most (if not all) materials involves the re-organization of matter that's already existing - we know that food replicators on staships utilize vats of stuff from which food is synthesized, and into which waste is converted to for re-use. Even if you could easily replicate stuff at the quantum level, it would probably be less energy-intensive to rearrange proteins than quarks to create your salisbury steak. This same principle could be applied to metals for construction.
Mark
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
I did remember reading that the Enterprise-D stored items that the replicator couldn't make due to the difficulty of recreating them. But I'm really talking about stuff that wouldn't be complicated like seats for a shuttle or Captain Janeway's book collection. Going back to what I first posted on this thread... if starship quarters are generally empty, then the furniture in it would be replicated. If not, well just add what looks good. But now, power consumption plays into how practical it is to have replicators make everything. From watching Voyager all 7 years, it seems like replicators are as practical as buying stuff online.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
From watching VOY for all 7 years, one would come to believe all sorts of silly things.
Posted by Treknophyle (Member # 509) on :
In my schematic/deckplans for various 24th century ships, I've assumed at least one heavy-duty replicator in each ship - logically in the shuttle storage/repair bay (so said craft could be repaired or replaced).
Regarding moving couches - consider this:
- After a couch has been replicated in the shuttle repair bay, it could be point-to-point transported to the destination quarters, using the small replicator waveguides within the starship's structure to transfer the pattern, and the small replicator within said quarters as a waveguide endpoint/focussing coil. As I've said before, a replicator system is just a transporter system with a hard drive containing pre-stored patterns. The closest analogy is a copier/printer vs a fax machine.
I'd think that most quarters were pre-furnished - especially in small ships. Larger ones such as Galaxy-class and Sovereign-class have entire decks which are simply bulkheads and service ends - so they can be quickly refitted to meet special species/event needs (Tech Manual).
Posted by Treknophyle (Member # 509) on :
Oh, and regarding Industrial Fabricators - the size of the finished product (in mass and dimensions) would be only one limiting factor in how a few of them could radically improve a planet's economy.
More important would be the templated patterns already loaded into the systems memory. Such things as medicines, vehicles (or parts/engines for same), power systems (components for mid-sized fusion generators which could then be relocated across the planet and assembled to power communities), communications systems, medical equipment (biobeds).
Size-wize, I'd think a materialization 'stage' about 4 meters cubed would be sufficient - with a mass capacity of about 3 tons. Some stored components might be sized on the order of a 20th century minivan - and that is the largest easily relocated component size - fits into a cargo ship.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
Maybe Industrial replicaters are carried aboard support vessels; ought to be enough room on a stripped down Miranda. That way replacements could be replicated to order and the repair ship wouldn't have to return to dock to restock as often.
Posted by Treknophyle (Member # 509) on :
What a good idea!
The enormous hangar bays could each accomodate one of these large machines - and the stripped-out decks could hold raw materials cubage (trititanium, dilithium, etc.), powerplants, and computer pattern storage.
Plus they'd need quarters for the construction engineers, and small hangar space for workbees.
Posted by Treknophyle (Member # 509) on :
What a good idea!
The enormous hangar bays could each accomodate one of these large machines - and the stripped-out decks could hold raw materials cubage (trititanium, dilithium, etc.), powerplants, and computer pattern storage.
Plus they'd need quarters for the construction engineers, and small hangar space for workbees.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Hiccup......
That would give Starfleet the ability to do near major overhauls in deep space.... make colonizing easier...
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I just re-read the section on industrial replicators in the DS9TM. The units mentioned in the series are also the ones illustrated on p.82, and they aren't terribly large. Sternbach suggests that the very largest replicators are only 50x72 meters large - this seems to imply that replication of stuff much larger than the household units gets really tough.
Mark
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
164 feet by 236 feet.... that isn't very big.... 38,704 feet square....
most houses have 800 to 2000 square feet....
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
Why heck, you could practically replicate a Defiant in one of those... *ducks*
Posted by Chris StarShade (Member # 786) on :
Before you get too carried away, please note that they cannot replicate starships.
As Gene Roddenbery said, when you have the power to replicate starships, you are not likely to need them.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
As for the "Mobile Replimat" idea regarding a stripped-down Miranda . . .
You'd probably have to design a whole new ship from the ground up, given the engineering requirements involved. The main thing that comes to mind would be the simple fact that you'd have to seriously upgrade the Miranda's engines and powerplant . . . not just to power the replicators, but also to move all the bulk material around. Most of the internal volume of a starship is empty space, but a dedicated mobile replicator would be quite a bit more massive, assuming a mostly-full load and the density of the materials involved for the duties suggested.
Just a thought
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Oh, I dunno - we've gone over it before how there would be tons of space available in older starships now that crews for non-combat functions could be a mere handful. Just convert all the extra crew quarters into cargo space, add in a bunch of low-rez cargo transporters, another bunch of CFI replicators, and Bob's your uncle. You should easily be able to cart around whatever raw materials the replicators need in standard cargo containers, which are never that big in the Trek universe..
Mind you, there would be only so many uses for a replicator ship - I mean, if you were gonna replicate medical supplies, it'd probably make a hell of a lot more sense just to send a ship full of medical supplies instead. We're probalby talking about industrial-only usage - making construction materials and such over the short term, or perhaps even to create the infrastructure for a refinery that will do the work more efficiently. I imagine that making industrial stuff the old fashioned way is always going to be more efficient than replication, and that replicators are used only to help set up critical stuff faster - as in the case of Bajor, where they obviously needed the help in recreating their infrastructure following the Cardassian retreat.
Mark
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
That's not a bad idea for setting up colonies & the like. Perhaps that's why Enterprise was given the relatively humdrum task of helping to settle people at times--because she had the larger repcenters that could be used for things . She loiters in orbit a week or 2, zaps out a few things that are needed should they come up until the colony's power grid is 5-by-5...
Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
Certainly a ship (converted Miranda or not) that is able to convert local raw materials into supplies/equipment would be handy in colony set up.
Also disaster response, fleet deployment (don't ship stuff for a forward base, replicate it), terra-forming.
Now who's going down a couple of forums to draw us a picture?
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
Sorry, I can't draw to save my own life...
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Why would a modified Miranda or other starship look any diffeent on the outside, anyway?
Mark
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
It might have a beefed up or otherwise modified set of transporter emitters (assuming the TNG-era visible emitter technology), but other than that, no, no reason comes to mind.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
This idea of a "replicator starship" made me think of the current theory about self-replicating machines. (A theory by Van [Somebody]. I forget the name. Van Geldar? ) Where you use one replicator to set up the process, and it produces more machines that can continue the process. For instance, if a replicator starship can fabricate an industrial replicator to ship down to the planet, then that would make things a whole lot easier for a fledgling colony.
Or, as C-3PO put it, "Machines making machines... how perverse!"
I also thought about some of those really huge fleet tenders that the US Navy operates -- ships that can almost function as a floating dockyard for field repairs, as I understand it.
Hey, I just had an idea... if Starfleet used one of these replicator ship ideas, combined with the traveling dockyard, they might be able to field-repair some of the seriously-damaged starships during the war, for instance the USS Fredrickson in "A Time to Stand" or other ships with major structural damage.
Just no one bring up the USS Voyager, okay?! Posted by The BWC (Member # 818) on :
Or if they coverted the shuttlebays into really huge transporters, cut the crew to a minimum, convert a couple dozen replimats, turned the bridge into transporter and replicator controls and a navigator, split it into manageable parts, shipped it to starbase, put it together and kept engineering and junk and was ready to go to the colonies.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Hyde: "When you speak....does it make SENSE to you?"
Kelso: "SOMEtimes...!"
Posted by Treknophyle (Member # 509) on :
Don't forget - a really large replicator is still just a transporter with a hard drive. Therefore, the finished item could be transported via the ship's transporter emitters.
(might take one bitch of a buffer...)
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Von Neumann, who, aside from coming up with those (worrisomely absent) machines is so important in the history of the medium at hand that he should probably get a holiday or a temple or something.
Posted by Jack_Crusher (Member # 696) on :
I am looking at my DS9 TM, and yes, on page 63, it says, "Smaller, transportable units [industrial replicators]have been installed on starbases and fleet vessels and are used mainly to produce original and replacement hardware for space and planetary operations."
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