Baggage you wish Star Trek could be free of?

I had in mind some kind of unmanned lander, something that could perhaps return to the ship later under it's own power. While it was dispatched and traveling to the surface, the crew would be going about their day, or engaging in a pre-mission briefing. A shuttle traveling to the surface takes time, beaming takes seconds.

As for the "spike" hitting something, if we can guide a bomb into a speeding motorcycle, I'd wager they could guide a transponder down to the ground without hitting anything.

 

This doesn't address the issue of beaming into a building. All of your landing parties would land outside? And how does this "unmanned lander" build the transporter thingy - an automated "add water and stir" and poof! - there it is and ready for use?

 

To something much earlier on teh military aspect of Star Trek. The nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise was brought up as a point in having the show be military because it was the biggest most powerful ship at the time. I would point out that in 1964, the USS Enterprise was unarmed. She had no weapons installed until the late 1970s refit installed defensive weapons. USS Enterprise only had the defense of whatever aircraft she was carrying and her escorting ships.

If used I would assume it is a preassembled pad that unfolds once it lands. A prefab unit that can be dropped anyplace.

 

I like the idea of the transporter needing a platform to work. The fact that the matter stream's somehow programmed with rematerialization coordinates has always stretched my suspension of disbelief a bit too far.

 

20th Century technology could send a probe to Mars with all kinds of scientific gear. Surely 23rd or 24th Century technology could send a lander with a detachable transporter pad and power source.

 

Oh, not in the least.

It doesn't build anything, the lander IS the surface transporter unit.

And how many of it's aircraft had no internal gun (like early Phantom F4's), only hard points?

An unarmed ship with unarmed planes.

 

I agree that getting rid of transporting into thin air would have defeated the point of saving time and money in TOS with their limited budget.

But the point of making it so you can only transport between two transporter fixtures would be to stop transporters from breaking the story. It would put an end to the questions like "Why hasn't anyone ever thought of using the transporter THIS way?"

The writers would stop having to make excuses why the transporter doesn't work in this particular case where it would end the story. "Oh, oh, there's so much omega pi epsilon radiation on this planet we just can't get a lock! Oh nevermind, we managed to compensate!" It would make it harder to get into and escape from structures, and thus would make the process of doing so more dramatically interesting.

Transporters are the biggest story-breaker in Trek tech, and frequently require technobabble to prevent them from ending the episode instantly. They need to be limited more.

 

Magic is unlimited. We are simply not sufficiently advanced with our technology and imagination to make "Trek Tech" indistinguishable from magic. It ain't possible until it is. Like Earth orbiting the Sun. Like the sound barrier. Like the speed of light. Any argument put forth against ideas has a history of proven ignorance in retrospect.

 

The point is WHERE IT LANDS.

If someone is going to send one of those things to my living room so they can later beam there, they'd better warn me when to open the balcony door and step back, because otherwise this transporter-pad-to-be is going to smack into the side of the building.

So no - it can't be dropped "anyplace." And if it's dropped outside, it better be onto a surface that can take it without causing harm to the surface, or accidentally dropping it on someone's head and killing them, or causing other trouble. And what happens after the crew leaves - do they take it back with them, or just leave transporter pads littering everywhere?

 

*Achem*

I think that's the point is that people wouldn't be able to beam into your living room. They would have to land the pad outside and then walk over to your front door.

I think this is how transporter should have to operate in the earlier era's. The very first transporters would have to be pad to pad transporters. Only way more advanced version could be site to site.

I see transporters being used early on as cargo only transportation devices. Then after a few decades transporters are finally capable of transporting living things.

At this point hey would be better in some situations than shuttlecraft and the "landing party pad pods" would be used.

The next advancement would probably something similar to the transport enhancers. A device is sent down to the surface but doesn't require a pad.

 

I say only three angels per pinhead.

Science fiction can do whatever it wants, so long as it is self-consistent in the rules it sets up for itself.

 

Magic isn't unlimited, it's arbitrarily limited. Any time you don't want a wizard to have access to a spell, you can handwave it much more believably.

Stopping magic from breaking a story:
Stannis: "Why don't we just make another son?"
Millisandre: "You do not have the strength."
Audience: "Makes sense."

Stopping transporers from breaking a story:
Picard: "Can we get a transporter lock?"
Data: "No, because the planet has too much (Insert random Greek letter) radiation!"
Audience: "Lame."

The narrative difference between magic and made up science if that magic is known work based on rules known only by the wizard that apply differently per individual, per situation, per area, per planetary alignment, etc. Made up science that you use in one context should be equally applicable to every context and if you have to constantly make excuses for it not to work when it would break the story, it is lame.

 

Yup.

 

The idea that Trek is/was/should be some high-minded cerebral exercise for the elite, rather than an entertaining television show or movie franchise.

http://io9.com/was-star-trek-ever-really-intelligent-grown-up-science-1563605154

 

Like, 'the replicator can make anything you want'.

'We need this substance immediately'.

'We can't do it. The replicator can't make it'.

 

I wish they would have done away with the technobabble. Take Asimov for example, most of the science discussed in his sci. fi. books is real science. The fictional part is either a reasonable extrapolation or limited to a minimum. You don't need that insane crap that is mostly scientific words put together in random order. to make a sci. fi. story work.

 

Well, that rules Trek out.

 

Regardless of how advanced it is, having a transporter that only works outside would be a major problem on a planet with a toxic atmosphere.

 

Enviromental suits or encounter suit get used more often than.

 

They would be, but it would be really inconvenient from both an in-story pov and a production pov. If that were the case, I would think that the "environmental belt" things we saw in TAS would have come up a lot sooner, in the live-action show.