Thermodynamics and Transporters

[Plutodawn]

I'm recalling the episode from memory, believe it was Hellyear.... Captain Janeway wanted to put her watch into a replicator, to use as energy.

For the longest time, Voyager had to ration replicators, not enough energy if I'm recalling right. I know the holodeck ran off a different kind, so wasn't effected, but I don't think Janeway wanted to destroy that watch for increased replicator time.

Why didn't Voyager just get close to a sun, astroid, or planet, and beam up a cargo bay full of the most dense matter it could find, and shovel it like a coal powered steam engine into a replicator, for the sake of keeping the replicators running fuel?

Would beaming matter from outside the ship, to a storage bay, to be claimed yet again for the replicators, break the laws of thermodynamics? If so, couldn't they just blast a chunk of metal rich astroid off, tractorbeam it into a cargo bay, and proceed to everyone having steak dinner afterwards?

I recall another Roddenberry show, Andromeda, had these odd issues too. Dylan Hunt pops out of a black hole, decides he is going to restart a Tri-Galactic Commonwealth from scratch, finds a new first officer- she begs him to use his cargo bay to carry a astroid they would mine, for profit. Dylan, completely dependant upon modern capitalism, with no useable currency or assets, says no.... then humbles off into crusade after crusade till his ship breaks, with no support or home port to limp off to. He discovers he has to pay for stuff, and then literally, I'm not joking at all, he literally has a garage sale as a dangerous storm capable of destroying his ship approaches!

Why? Just why?

If I was one of the Maquis, during these rations, everytime I'm on duty and can see a astroid or anything in my way, I'm bringing that up. If I'm merely near a window, and Janeway is nearby, I'm gonna point out it and say "look, I see steaks floating by, steaks. We need food, please silly woman, go bring some of that material inside so we can eat already.

What us she gonna do? Cut my rations, deny me home leave, throw me in the brig? If you can recycle a watch for energy, and those replicators operate off energy, then that woman needs to park alongside a rock or two and get everyone some food. No more silliness of Delta quadrant home cooking, I want some dependable earth food. I will shovel whatever I need in to get a steak dinner in return. Watch me.

 

[Sophie74656]

It's not just finding the matter. Bulk matter is plentiful. It's the energy used to covert that matter into other objects with the replicator.

 

[psCargile]

I would say don't look to far into Trek for scientific accuracy. Essentially they are using tremendous amounts of ubiquitous energy to transform a watch into energy for a net gain of energy. So yeah, nonsense.

 

[Timo]

For the longest time, Voyager had to ration replicators, not enough energy if I'm recalling right.

More like the things were broken. Energy was available for all sorts of other applications that supposedly would consume more, including warp drive. Although if any energy hog should compete with warp drive, replicators might well be candidates.

Noteworthy is that transporters were not being rationed. Nor do they appear to consume a lot of energy in any other Trek context. It might be a lossless, self-contained process where immense energies are being recycled, or it could be a low-energy process overall.

Why didn't Voyager just get close to a sun, astroid, or planet, and beam up a cargo bay full of the most dense matter it could find, and shovel it like a coal powered steam engine into a replicator, for the sake of keeping the replicators running fuel?

We have no reason to think that replicators would run on matter.

They get their energy from the same source as every other doodad aboard - the primary, antimatter power plant or the secondary, fusion power plant, or the batteries storing those energies. They may operate by converting stores of matter into other matter, or by converting energy into matter. Shortage of the former was never suggested. Shortage of the latter may have played a role in the rationing.

As for laws of thermodynamics, I don't see a reason to break any of those over this particular issue. But it's not as if our heroes should obey those laws too strenously - they don't live in a closed system, after all, what with their starship having access not just to the universe around them, but to other realms altogether. No law of conservation may remain strictly in force in Trek as long as there's "subspace" or "phase space" nearby for use.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Prax]

Why didn't Voyager just get close to a sun, astroid, or planet, and beam up a cargo bay full of the most dense matter it could find, and shovel it like a coal powered steam engine into a replicator, for the sake of keeping the replicators running fuel?

They do...many, many times. In fact, it's often them acquiring raw materials that lead to the episode's shenanigans.

Parallax
The Cloud
Phage
That episode where Kim switches places with the death cult people.
-Just to name a few.

 

[Plutodawn]

So a watch is matter, can be shoved into a replicator (or reclaimer of some sort) and made into energy, but space rock, made of matter, can't?

I thought even poop and pee was reprocessed into replicator food, and that air was made from replicators?

Why "ration" replicated materials when you can just replicate the parts you need fast, and proceed not to ration at all?

And I agree, subspace and all- Thermodynamics- they are mostly on the Bridge punching in nonsense commands to nonsense situations. I'm sure if you look closely you might see Tetris on a screen somewhere in the heat of a battle.

As to Anti-Matter.... I dunno. I don't know where you get it, how it's made. Sure they can make some limited amounts, might be a case that they could only make so much as their SubSpace Anti-Mattee Configurator was leaky or something made up....

That being said, if Matter converts to energy in replicators and teleporters, shouldn't energy be converted fairly simply to Anti-Matter too? I know that's not what Einstein necessarily said in E=MC2, but ummmm..... geeze, come on really, seems equally valid and compatible. Make some Anti-Matter. Shouldn't technically be that much harder that matter. I've seen Wesley beam himself around on a ship, can't tell me you can't targeted aim antimatter from a transporter into a holding field or into the.... the.... the antimatter holding place on the ship.

What is that place called? Anti-Matter Reserve, Pion Resevor, 10 Forward? I'm not certain about the terminology here.

All I know is, they had no good reason as long as the replicators worked, not to near instantly have replicators running again. Go gut a shuttle craft and cannabalize its systems if you gotta. I've seen shuttlecraft with them before, you should be able to rebuild half of voyager from one.

I'm sure some of the crew was sneaking off to eat in them too during this rationing period, once they saw how nasty the food was. Where's the shuttle bay at Hmmm....

Voyager should of been swamped in feces had they NOT been able to reclaim matter.

 

[Sophie74656]

They're not rationing the matter but the energy. I'm guessing in an extreme case like in Year of Hell with so many things broken they probably had to resort to rationing the matter as well

 

[UssGlenn]

The real issue is that the writer didn't think it through. Janeway should be pissed at Chakotay for using his replicator rations to make the watch rather than something more useful. However, once the watch has been made, it's a waste of energy to send it back into the replicator system. You shouldn't come out ahead.

 

[Sophie74656]

The real issue is that the writer didn't think it through. Janeway should be pissed at Chakotay for using his replicator rations to make the watch rather than something more useful. However, once the watch has been made, it's a waste of energy to send it back into the replicator system. You shouldn't come out ahead.

He said he had replicated it a while back before they had so many issues

 

[Triskelion]

The ship has storage tanks for deuterium slush (and tritium) which it breaks down into matter and antimatter. The "antimatter storage system" would be a separate system from these. Deuterium was a non-renewable resource that required replenishment from space (via the Bussard collectors) or planetary reservoirs (apparently using transporters). The material fuels the reaction for the warp nacelles; and it also feeds energy through the plasma/power conduits to the smaller Electro-Plasma (EPS) conduits for powering systems like shields and weapons. The EPS conduits. could also draw energy from the fusion reactor. Smaller Power Transfer Conduits (PTCs) connected to this grid to take energy in the form of microwaves to use for the ship's electrical system for more mundane appliances like replicators and computer stations, lights, etc.

Being both antimatter and fusion-powered, there would be presumably little need to ration due to "running out of energy" - however, I would surmise that the concern here would be the lifespan of the system components. The Intrepid Class was designed as a long term ship of exploration - Starfleet's cutting edge - but Voyager was only the second ship of this line. Voy had a 70+ year journey to make with no access to any Starfleet facilities for its scheduled maintenance and repair cycles. So the decision to use energy would always be weighed against its long-term mission requirements, since all ships required time at starbase for refits at some points well within a 70 year period. As it was, Voyager's seven-year journey was still unprecedented and owed in large part due to their careful rationing of not only energy - but wear and tear.

As for recycling a pocketwatch for a bowl of ramen: by that time the crew had probably pawned off all non-essential materials just to survive; as in, they were constantly under attack and losing energy reserves, ship components, and people to maintain them. Janeway's mission in YoH was not only to survive, but to protect her overarching mission to preserve enough of the ship's irreplaceable parts, such as the bioneural gelpacks, to get them home. A fed crew member in a desperate time of war could do a lot more toward that end than a pocketwatch. IE, it's not just about the energy - but the wear and tear, maintenance, and sudden and unexpected depletion of resources. And each crew member doing the job of five people on an empty belly because you're overtaxing your electrical system on things like shields & weapons, large component replacements, and structural-integrity support.

And also, because plot.

If you run out of deuterium in the vast distances between matter - you're finished. The fusion reactor only powers the sub-light impulse drive.

 

[Timo]

When Janeway in "Year of Hell" tells Chakotay to recycle the watch, there is no mention of replicators being involved.

Certainly a watch being worth "a meal" or "a hypospray" or "a pair of boots" would be asking a lot from any recycling process we can imagine. But that still doesn't mean we have to start thinking in terms of replicators. Indeed, we have two possible interpretations here:

1) "It could mean a difference between life and death" means Janeway thinks the act of recycling might save a life one day.

2) The phrase means that by replicating the watch, Chakotay has potentially placed a future life in jeopardy, and there's nothing he can do about it any more. So being told to destroy it is simply punishment for a foolish act that already cost the ship precious, unrecoverable resources; the meal, the hypospray and the pair of boots are lost forever now, and the recycling will not yield anything comparable.

There's no independent reason to assume that putting the thing back in the replicator would gain the heroes anything. The replicator simply is what they use for waste basket in the 24th century, and putting stuff into it is never stated to result in anything positive other than a tidier dinner table.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jedman67]

There's no independent reason to assume that putting the thing back in the replicator would gain the heroes anything. The replicator simply is what they use for waste basket in the 24th century, and putting stuff into it is never stated to result in anything positive other than a tidier dinner table.

When she says "recycle it," she means "put it back in the replicator so we can replicate something else later that's needed."
It's pretty explicit, despite making no objective sense in real life scientific terms.

 

[Timo]

It's obviously not explicit by the definition of that word. We can argue it's implicit, but we can argue otherwise, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Triskelion]

I'm thinking of Tucker's reply to a schoolchild about where the ship's food comes from in Breaking the Ice. From Memory Alpha:

A bio-matter resequencer was a device which recycled waste products aboard 22nd century starships such as Enterprise NX-01. In this process, waste matter was sterilized and broken down for reuse in manufacturing boots, storage containers, and other necessities.

Granted, this was retconned after the Voyager series. But prior to Voyager, Picard's Enterprise D had two water and solid waste recycling subsystems - which was a subsystem of the life support system (Conundrum). They provided a nominal ship's function - which may suggest a high efficiency and low waste of energy in the conversion process. (That's part of this utopian fantasy: abundant resources without the energy costs).

In the early days of Voyager's journey, Janeway had ordered replicator rationing to conserve energy for use in other systems. In YoH, the Krenim attacks had damaged the replicator system, and forced the crew to go onto emergency rations. So...I'm not sure how she would have recycled the watch at that point anyway. However, there would be no need to assume a direct correlation between the watch matter and another replicated item, like a meal. Replicators were used to create ship components, and the convertible thermodynamic matter/energy needed for other systems like the transporters. The gain from recycling would be felt in any number of onboard systems - which in turn could indirectly generate a meal, or a blanket.

But yes, it was pretty well established since TNG that the crew recycled household goods, food, dirty dishes and clothes using the replicators. There are any number of onscreen demonstrations of this in probably every series.

 

[Sophie74656]

I think it was more symbolic that anything. When people didn't have enough to eat and they were struggling with the basics of survival she could not accept that watch.