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Federation Transporter Facilities?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Timo: [QB] While we're waiting, I'd like to speculate that civilian transporters are in fact far more advanced than Starfleet ones. In certain fields, that is. Think of Starfleet transporters as M-113 APCs: they will get you to the destination across rough country under enemy fire, but you definitely won't like the ride. Civilian models would be more like passenger trains: very smooth ride, ten times faster than M113, but you have to go where the rails take you, you have to share with a couple of hundred others, and you have to live by the timetables. LaForge insists in "Realm of Fear" that transporters are the safest form of travel. This need not directly mean that they are the most used, back on Earth - after all, air travel is the safest form today, but partially exactly because it ISN'T used all that much. Yet I could see Earth dwellers using transporters far more frequently than Starfleet heroes. Ordinary people would use home or communal platforms in one end and gigantic rapid-throughput terminals near malls and parks and stadiums and whatever draws the crowds in the 23rd-24th century. Privileged folks would have armbands like the one Paris had snatched in "Non Sequitur", for effortless site-to-site. And instead of transporter chiefs and "energize!"'s and pattern buffers and emitter arrays, there would be streamlined automation and hardwired connections from pad to pad. If this sort of system was in place, then many people would probably prefer *not* to use it. It's a great incentive to take a walk when you know that if your feet get tired, you can beam back to your armchair instantly. If you have to haul groceries, just let the system haul them for you and go take a walk in the meantime. If you want to visit gramps at Palo Alto, you take the scenic route for the thrill - the maglev train or the airship. Only the dull commuting would be done by the transporter. Things like subways would probably be retained as historical curiosities, in addition to serving as active means of public transportation. A romantic ride on a horse-drawn carriage in Vienna, a scenic tour of San Francisco aboard one of those rustic air trams... The thing that would probably disappear would be "roads through nowhere" - highways between cities etc. People would skip the roads when going from city to city, using either hovercars or public transportation. Timo Saloniemi [/QB][/QUOTE]
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