how many people on a transporter

[RB_Kandy]

On the transport of the Enterprise (Kirk's ship), what would be the maximum amount of people that could be beamed off the ship at one time?

[Bry_Sinclair]

On Kirk's Enterprise the dais had places for six people. Though a lot of ship specs also have larger evacuation/emergency pads as well, which can beam around 20 people at one time.

[Timo]

The question of maximum number never really arose, but it's remarkable that we never saw more than six people beamed at a time. Indeed, in "The Apple", it appears that at first, six people beam down, and only then do three more appear - and no explicit story logic is provided for why the latter three (McCoy and two guards) would have opted to be delayed.

On the other hand, the number of pads on the transporter platform doesn't seem to be closely related to what is being transported, considering that people and objects may extend past the limits of a pad or cover several of them (say, when lying down injured). Which makes for an odd contrast with "Where No Man Has Gone Before" where the unconscious Gary Mitchell is deliberately held standing upright within the supposed "confines" of a single pad, and our other two characters pull their supporting hands away for the duration of the transport! Such a weird maneuver would seem to require pretty pressing reasons, which are never given.

On a separate issue, the ship probably had several of those six-pad transporters, as the single set underwent modifications that more or less force us to assume it represented several separate spaces. Moreover, the transporter was indicated to be on different parts of the ship in different episodes - for example in "Dagger of the Mind" it brings van Gelder to the lower levels rather than to the more familiar saucer Deck Seven. But perhaps only one platform could send its signal down to the target planet at a time, explaining "The Apple"? Certainly some transporter resources were bottlenecks and single points of failure, as seen in "The Enemy Within"...

Timo Saloniemi

[Wingsley]

Let's not forget "Day of the Dove", in which significantly more than six people were successfully. Also in "The Apple", Spock gets attacked by the Rose of Sharon from Hell and Kirk orders everyone beamed up simultaneously.

[Timo]

Oops, I did forget. Thanks for the correction; "Day of the Dove" would seem to make it clear that one transporter console can beam up at least nine people simultaneously - although one transporter platform is only shown materializing five people at a time, while the others are "on hold", perhaps being interpretable as the combined use of two transporter platforms and their separate "hold areas" or buffers.

What might be the largest number of people beamed up or down at one go with UFP technology? Supposedly the entire Baku village was to go in ST:INS, and there were plenty of refugees inside the system in "Counterpoint", but the simultaneous materialization or dematerialization was not demonstrated in those cases.

Timo Saloniemi

[Mark_Nguyen]

In VOY "Prophecy" they beamed the entire shipload of Klingons off their exploding ship, and rematerialized them all in the shuttlebay; however this had some to-do associated with it.

Mark

[Mars]

Timo wrote:

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The question of maximum number never really arose, but it's remarkable that we never saw more than six people beamed at a time. Indeed, in "The Apple", it appears that at first, six people beam down, and only then do three more appear - and no explicit story logic is provided for why the latter three (McCoy and two guards) would have opted to be delayed.

On the other hand, the number of pads on the transporter platform doesn't seem to be closely related to what is being transported, considering that people and objects may extend past the limits of a pad or cover several of them (say, when lying down injured). Which makes for an odd contrast with "Where No Man Has Gone Before" where the unconscious Gary Mitchell is deliberately held standing upright within the supposed "confines" of a single pad, and our other two characters pull their supporting hands away for the duration of the transport! Such a weird maneuver would seem to require pretty pressing reasons, which are never given.

On a separate issue, the ship probably had several of those six-pad transporters, as the single set underwent modifications that more or less force us to assume it represented several separate spaces. Moreover, the transporter was indicated to be on different parts of the ship in different episodes - for example in "Dagger of the Mind" it brings van Gelder to the lower levels rather than to the more familiar saucer Deck Seven. But perhaps only one platform could send its signal down to the target planet at a time, explaining "The Apple"? Certainly some transporter resources were bottlenecks and single points of failure, as seen in "The Enemy Within"...

Timo Saloniemi

I have the official blueprints to the Enterprise D and indeed there are multiple transporter rooms, and also multiple cargo transporters as well, and multiple holodecks as well. The holodecks have built in replicators as well, so if someone eats something that came from the holodeck, it was real food he ate, same reason why Wesley Crusher fell into the pond on the holodeck in the first episode, and was still wet when he stepped out of the Holodeck.

Another interesting thing is there are tanks for dolphins on the lower decks of the Enterprise even though they weren't seen in the series. Also this ship has a Captain's Yacht, which was never used during the Next Generation series. The Enterprise E version of that Yacht was used in the subsequent movies.

[Timo]

The fact that there are multiple transporter rooms aboard Picard's E-D was never really in dispute: basically every time they used a transporter room, they specified its number ("Room 3" was over-represented), and for example "11001001" included dialogue about a very large number of transporter rooms, up to "transporter twenty".

However, the transporter rooms of Kirk's ship were never mentioned in plural or given numbers. So we have to go for speculation and deduction in this case (which is closer to what the original poster was interested in).

Timo Saloniemi

[T'Girl]

Timo wrote:

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Day of the Dove" would seem to make it clear that one transporter console can beam up at least nine people simultaneously

In The Apple perhaps the transporter could have dematerialize the first six and held them, then dematerialized the additional three, and rematerialized all nine at the same time?

Using this method, the Enterprise with only a single six pad transporter could materialize a hundred "Starfleet Marines" on a planet's surface all at the same time.

[blssdwlf]

T'Girl wrote:

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In The Apple perhaps the transporter could have dematerialize the first six and held them, then dematerialized the additional three, and rematerialized all nine at the same time?

Using this method, the Enterprise with only a single six pad transporter could materialize a hundred "Starfleet Marines" on a planet's surface all at the same time.

It would depend on how much power was available and the number of clear transporter frequencies. I think the TOS-E had multiple transporter rooms but only one was active at a time. If all were active, they could be all used to do a "tactical" aka fast beam down.

[Wingsley]

Timo wrote:

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The fact that there are multiple transporter rooms aboard Picard's E-D was never really in dispute: basically every time they used a transporter room, they specified its number ("Room 3" was over-represented), and for example "11001001" included dialogue about a very large number of transporter rooms, up to "transporter twenty".

However, the transporter rooms of Kirk's ship were never mentioned in plural or given numbers. So we have to go for speculation and deduction in this case (which is closer to what the original poster was interested in).

Timo Saloniemi

If you go strictly by on-screen canon, there are some contradictory signs, but never anything conclusive. There is the repeated reference by Kirk and others to "the transporter room" generically, but never anything conclusive that it was singular or plural in terms of the overall ship's equipment.

Now, Stephen Whitfield & Gene Roddenberry were conclusive in "The Making of Star Trek" in '68. They specified multiple six-man transporter rooms, as well as 22-man and cargo facilities as well.

[scotpens]

Wingsley wrote:

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. . . Stephen Whitfield & Gene Roddenberry were conclusive in "The Making of Star Trek" in '68. They specified multiple six-man transporter rooms, as well as 22-man and cargo facilities as well.

Specifically:

There are eleven personnel and cargo transporter stations aboard the vessel. Four are the familiar main operational stations, two are cargo transporters, five are emergency personnel transporters which can handle twenty-two people each but involve a risk factor at such power loads and are limited to use in ship-abandoning emergencies.

[Wingsley]

Which page was that on? I don't have my book handy right now...

[scotpens]

Wingsley wrote:

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Which page was that on? I don't have my book handy right now...

It's on page 192 of my copy (1968 edition, 10th printing).

[Avro Arrow]

Timo wrote:

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"Day of the Dove" would seem to make it clear that one transporter console can beam up at least nine people simultaneously - although one transporter platform is only shown materializing five people at a time, while the others are "on hold", perhaps being interpretable as the combined use of two transporter platforms and their separate "hold areas" or buffers.

In a similar vein, at the end of The City on the Edge of Forever, we saw seven people dematerialized simultaneously from the planet's surface. Of course, we never saw how they materialized back aboard ship.