General Trek Questions and Observations

[Gingerbread Demon]

Why don't people use the transporter to cure things like disease?
It's got a biofilter which supposedly gets updated with whatever new pathogens are on record, so I'd assume one go through and you're cured of whatever ails you?

Also if they were available now would you use one for travel?

 

[at Quark's]

Also if they were available now would you use one for travel?

I think it would depend on their degree of maturity. I'd hesitate if we were talking ENT-era state (the very newest line of top models only just approved for human transport), less so if we were talking TNG era state (centuries of experience).

 

[Oddish]

It's like air travel... it might be safe statistically, but when stuff goes wrong, you're a couple hundred pounds of paste.

 

[Orphalesion]

Which kind of transporter are we talking about?
The ones from Trek that actually transport you to a different place?
Or the way it would most likely work in reality, where the transporter vaporizes you and creates a clone with your memories at your "destination"?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Which kind of transporter are we talking about?
The ones from Trek that actually transport you to a different place?
Or the way it would most likely work in reality, where the transporter vaporizes you and creates a clone with your memories at your "destination"?

I was referring to TNG era transporters and beyond.

 

[Orphalesion]

I was referring to TNG era transporters and beyond.

Then I'd use them. They seem mostly safe.

 

[dupersuper]

Then I'd use them. They seem mostly safe.

Mostly is a disconcerting word in this context...

 

[Oddish]

I'll take a nice safe shuttle.

 

[Oddish]

OK Bones.

That'll be just fine... me, Bones, Pulaski, and Barclay, riding in that shuttle together.

 

[at Quark's]

Mostly is a disconcerting word in this context...

The safest forms of travel I'm aware of are still just only mostly safe ...

 

[Orphalesion]

Mostly is a disconcerting word in this context...

But mostly safe is the best anything can be.
Even walking down the street is only mostly safe. There can ways be a car that, for whatever reason, skids onto the sidewalk and mows you down, for example.
And @Oddish 's shuttle can explode, fall onto a planet, be swallowed up by some space oddity, the life support system could fail, they could be crushed by a meteor, or lightly tapped by a meteor and fried when their consoles explode...

 

[Tim Thomason]

That'll be just fine... me, Bones, Pulaski, and Barclay, riding in that shuttle together.

Yeah, no thanks. I'll take the suicide machine. My double can deal with them when they reach the planet.

 

[Timo]

I may be wrong, but even in the TNG era, site-to-site transport within the ship was still considered rather risky.

Actually, site-to-site has never been called risky in any episode or movie, in any era. Even Archer was doing it without comment, back in his day.

What elicits a single comment of worry in a single instance is intraship beaming, in TOS "Day of the Dove". But
a) it starts on a pad,
b) it takes place while the ship is careening out of control at high warp, and
c) the people involved are being made crazy by an alien entity anyway, and speaking nonsense of various sorts.

I don't think we ever hear of a site-to-site that would have gone wrong, either. It's pad-to-pad that fails miserably in ST:TMP...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Oddish]

Dis you know that Stephen King had his own version of the transporter? It was called the Jaunt. I think the short story in question is in Skeleton Crew, but not dead certain; he has a lot of story collections.

 

[fireproof78]

The safest forms of travel I'm aware of are still just only mostly safe ...

Maybe someone can run the statistics on the transporter in Star Trek?

 

[at Quark's]

Maybe someone can run the statistics on the transporter in Star Trek?

Does it really matter? As soon as they cite how safe a certain technology is, you can be virtually certain something will go wrong with it that very ep.

 

[Oddish]

Given that it effectively kills you and makes a replica elsewhere... I'd say 100.0000%

 

[fireproof78]

Does it really matter? As soon as they cite how safe a certain technology is, you can be virtually certain something will go wrong with it that very ep.

Yeah, that's true.

Good thing it's just space magic and we can just laugh about it later at the end of the episode.

 

[Kor]

Probably still safer than driving a car, statistically speaking.

Kor

 

[Tim Thomason]

It'd be an interesting but daunting project to sift through the 788 episodes and 13 movies and see how many successful transports occur versus unsuccessful ones (both fatal or non-fatal injuries).

Given that transporter eps are fairly rare, in the grand scheme of things, I suspect that the safety rate is in the high 90s (probably >99%) as almost every episode features mostly successful transports without comment. The amount of mishaps might be exaggerated for drama, but perhaps it is still safer than vehicle travel and maybe airplane travel.