-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Well this point is almost interesting enough to resurrect this thread, moreso than the DS9 DVD thread. I know its not exactly about Enterprise, but, oh well...
In "Explorers" while Ben and Jake were talking about Ben's first year at SF Academy, Ben said that during the first few days&weeks he was homesick and that he would transport home every night at 6pm for dinner as if he was still living there. Jake then said, "You must have used up a months worth of transporter credits", apparently suggesting that on Earth each person/family has an allotment of 'transporter credits' per month.
Maybe this opens up a few doors on those topics.
I guess the questions would be why there would be such an allotment on anything, as I cannot believe there would be any sort of shortage of power due to transporter consumption on Earth, considering how freely it is used aboard starships throughout TNG and beyond. Having transporter credits or even limiting or defining how many time you use a transporter seems to give the Federation a sort of Socialistic approach.
-------------------- Hey, it only took 13 years for me to figure out my password...
Registered: Jan 2003
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Since Sisko was a cadet at the time, it's very reasonable to assume that the Academy rationed the freedom of cadets based on performance. Restricting travel time based on an allowance of transporter credits would require cadets to spend more time on Academy grounds, and foster bonding with their fellow cadets.
My point is, since Sisko was involved in a military organization at the time, it probably explains the terminology without touching much on "every-day" use by civilians.
posted
Alternatively, the transport requirements of a bunch of people living on a starship is going to be very different to the transport requirements for a bunch of people living on a planet.
Everyone on a starship lived where they worked, and lived where they played. They didn't need to transport on a daily basis.
People on planets though might not feel like catching the hover tram to go and see Uncle Phil when they could just beam there.
And when you consider that a crew of a thousand had at least 20 transporter rooms (my memory fails), imagine how much a planet of 9 billion odd would need.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
The Enterprise's transporter complement (how ever many you believe the ship had) was probably to facilitate quickly loading or unloading cargo, crew, refugees, etcetra. If you've got a crew of 1,000, and the ship is about to explode, and each transporter can handle up to six people, you could reasonably expect to evacuate the entire crew in a matter of seconds. OTOH, if you've got to evaccuate a bunch of people from a world or from another starship, you could quite quickly do so with the transporter resources of the Enterprise.
All I'm saying is, again, that the useage of transporters in the military probably isn't representative of civilian life in the Federation. Starfleet might demand a ratio of one transporter for every 50 people on a Galaxy-Class starship, but the Federation Transportation Administration might not.
quote:Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: If you've got a crew of 1,000, and the ship is about to explode, and each transporter can handle up to six people, you could reasonably expect to evacuate the entire crew in a matter of seconds. OTOH, if you've got to evaccuate a bunch of people from a world or from another starship, you could quite quickly do so with the transporter resources of the Enterprise.
Maybe, except I don't think that's quite how episodes show it. In "11001001" it certainly took longer than seconds to evacuate the crew, and I'm sure there's at least one episode where the crew talk of evacuating the people on a planet, and Worf mentions that it would take days, or even weeks.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Yes, I know. Of course, post-1100101, the number of transporter rooms went from 20 to 6. And if you'll notice in 1100101, at one point, with a line of people out the transporter room door, there are only FIVE on the pad waiting to be beamed out. Seems like some transporter operators needed to be slapped around a bit. "Hello, we're trying to evac the ship, beam as many as you can off at the same time, m'kay?"
Also as regards evacuations, you've also got to factor in providing living spaces for the evacuees aboard ship. I mean, you could just start beaming up people six at a time and shoving them into the corridor, but it strikes me that there is probably some sort of procedure for the Enterprise to follow to accomodate thousands of evaccuees aboard -- i.e., setting up bunkbeds in cargo holds, cots in the corridors, etc. So while it might theoretically be possible to beam up 36 people per transporter room per minute (assuming one cycle lasted ten seconds, including getting the people out of the transporter room, and could bring up six people every round), bringing seven hundred and twenty people aboard every minute would facilitate some sort of "where we gonna put 'em" system beyond "shove 'em into the corridor" because at that rate, the corridor is going to get filled pretty damn fast.
OTOH, consider that if the USS Arizona is getting shot up by Zeroes, the Enterprise could drop her shields and every ten seconds transport one hundred and twenty friendly crewmen aboard.
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
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posted
i've timed the scenes from 11001001.. the evac takes a helluva lot longer than the 3-5 minutes they said it did.. Geordi and Data even spent some time for chit-chat before they were the last ones to beam off
Registered: Sep 2001
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And people were also walking off the ship in that situation too.
There might be some other reason why they can't simply run 100% of the transporters at 100% capacity as often as possible. Maybe they overheat?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
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posted
bandwidth.
you're converting people to data right? the emitters are like people-modems.. upload time can be a bitch, and if it's not quick enough the signal degrades and they end up like that good lad Matt Franklin.
Registered: Sep 2001
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Concerning Sisko's transporter credits, that may have been just an educational restriction.
Still, the general problem of availability remains. If people travel as frequently as in our times, several million transporters would have to run all the time, with several million people operating and servicing them, consuming huge amounts of energy that must come from somewhere.
-------------------- Bernd Schneider
Registered: Mar 1999
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I really don't think most people use a transporter to get from Typical Destination A to Typical Destination B. Or at least, I wouldn't. The journey is half the fun. Mind you, I live out in the country. If I had to deal with gridlock on a daily basis I could see how my attitude might be different. Of course, we've seen so little of your average Federation township that we're pretty much free to imagine it organized along whatever lines we like.
As far as energy goes, the Federation surely has a lot of it. Were it up to me to make such decisions, I'd say they probably harvest huge amounts of solar energy. (Really efficient solar cells should be child's play to people with transporters and warp drives.) Pave Mercury with them and use your fancy power transmission techniques to juice up the solar system. (Juice up?) Or just build a nice thick cloud of independantly orbiting solar collectors. You can tell a Federation world because its primary is 5% dimmer than it should be. And so on.
Registered: Mar 1999
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But transporters are a peripheral concern, we were talking about cold-hard cash-money. What do people here think about the concept of Meritocracies? Not, like, with regard to rule as the 'cracy' would lead you to believe but in the 'ism' sense of this is how people get things for themselves and their families and how they distinguish themselves as worthier mates, etc.
Perhaps because it's in Bernd's sig, but it got me thinking that Barclay's might be a good example to take up. He's Starfleet but he's not living on a starship, he's got a day job. Clearly from VOY he's a sporadically excellent engineer. But his holo-addiction nearly gets him 'fired' from his job. If he lost this job would he also lose his INCREDIBLE split-level apartment in SF with that impossible view (that would in actuality right now go for about $12 Million a month). Would he lose other priveleges? Is Starfleet a meritocracy, not in the sense that people's positions and priveleges are assigned by their IQs, but by their accomplishments and efforts? Is that even a Meritocracy/ism? What's a gift-economy? What's a reputation-economy? What kind of 'ocracy/'ism would the Federation be?
Incidentally, my curiosity isn't entirely speculative. I'm developing a series of my own and I'm still researching and puzzling out the way the money works. It's supposed to be all egalitarian and utopian and semi-anarchosocialist, but ugly humanity has twisted it all up (as humanity inevitably will) and so the class barriers and caste-systems still exist. So understanding the Federation would go a ways. Please kindly lend me your insights and help me, oh smarter and better educated ones than me.
-------------------- "Nah. The 9th chevron is for changing the ringtone from "grindy-grindy chonk-chonk" to the theme tune to dallas." -Reverend42
Registered: Sep 2000
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I guess the Neo-Victorians from The Diamond Age might qualify. I should note that I haven't read either Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom or any of Iain Banks' Culture novels.
Registered: Mar 1999
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