Do replicators use any transporter technology, that might explain storage capacity onboard starships? JDW
Well, replicators operate on the principles of matter conversion technology which is used in the transporter and holodeck systems. Essentially the only thing replicators of the 24th century need are energy and the chemical composition (formula) of a specific item that you want to make. At least that's how they have been portrayed on screen. The more complex a material you want to make is, the more energy a replicator with require. And then of course there is a question which materials a replicator cannot reproduce. When it comes to actual storage capacity and transporters ... we know that things can be stored in the pattern buffers. Living people patterns degrade faster and require a lot of power to maintain. When it comes to food supplies and various materials on the other hand, I think they could be stored without too much trouble or any serious pattern disruption, but of course, in order to do that, you would have to provide necessary power ... unless of course they keep a separate pattern buffer for the food/supplies which stores data and can be disengaged from the system. Although, how would they preserve the patterns without power ? Would they use micro units specifically made for that ? Possibly in the future, but for now, that does not seem to be the case. I would sooner say that large amounts of time the crew can go on with the food supplies goes directly from the fact that 1 cargo hold of Voyagers size is more than enough to provide enough room for food supplies that would last years. A second cargo bay could be used for storing extra materials for ship maintenance/repairs/upgrades.
I wonder if it makes any difference whether the subject in the buffer is living or not. I mean, if it's food, it's gonna be rather lifelike in chemical structure anyway. In VOY "Counterpoint", storing of people in the buffer required a fully functional starship, and had a time limit, and still resulted in some degradation. In TNG "Relics", though, Scotty was able to maintain cohesion for seven decades straight in an essentially powered-down starship. Some sort of a happy medium might be struck with 23rd century technology already, at least for storing stuff that can be allowed to degrade a bit. The 24th century also offers the option of stasis. On the DS9 morgue and in the VOY episode "One", it seems such a stasis can literally stop time from proceeding, or slow it down - perhaps akin to the Slaver technology of TAS "Slaver Weapon", or perhaps as a natural outgrowth of the ability to manipulate gravity and toy with relativistic speeds. This would seem like a good way to preserve foodstuffs, and perhaps live tissue as well. It wouldn't solve problems with the volume or (probably) mass of the material, but it would solve issues of degradation. Timo Saloniemi
True, but Scotty heavily jerry-rigged the transporter system on the Jenolen. His companion wasn't so lucky.
True ... but that technique was never used again to our knowledge. Would have saved Voyager crew a lot of time ... then again, no one says they didn't do it ... and Torres had to mask the signatures of the individuals in the buffer, not to mention there were far more of them in comparison to Scotty and his companion which might have created new problems that accelerated the signal degradation.
There's a lot of little "numbers" things we are supposed to assume improved. Thing like tensile strength and durability of materials, actual sublight speeds, lightspeeds (in terms of real ly per hour), range of the transporters and various weapons, damage of weapons, absorption rates of shields, and so on. These things don't LOOK all that different on screen, especially if an advanced phaser is hitting the advanced shields of a Klingon ship. But pit the Enterprise-A against the Enterprise-E and that's where you will see the devastating difference (unless Kirk is on board, in which case he will always be victorious!)
Some tech progression I can think of is listed in rough order of probable deployment aboard starships. ENT to TOS: deflector shields, tractor beams, transtators?, internal forcefields, duotronics, dilithium crystal focus warp cores TOS to TNG: warp scale recalibration (perhaps transwarp program related), 2315 (NX-10521) - impulse driver coil, phaser strip-emitters?, 2319 - multiplexed transporter buffer, replicators?, 2329 - isolinear chips, holodecks?, dilithium re-crystallization processes in warp cores (allowing high intermix rates that would actually destroy the crystals over time otherwise), 2358 - interphasic generator (Pegasus), ablative(replicator replenished?) armour (Defiant), pulse phaser cannons (Defiant), quantum torpedoes (deployed 1st on Defiant?), 2371 - bio-neural gel-paks and variable warp geometry (Voyager), ~2373 - Borg temporal rift and shielding tech (ST:First Contact, though 1st Fed timewarp in close orbit over Psi 2000 in 2266 TOS:Naked Time), ~2375 - multi-layer regenerative shields (Prometheus) Post TNG: transwarp tech (derived in part from that brought back from Delta Quadrant by Voyager), transphasic tech (authorized follow-on to 2358 Pegasus experiment), holo-armour (as with transphasic torps, may or may not be influenced by "Admiral" Janeway's temporal incursion in VOY:Endgame), Quantum O point cores, transwarp (interstellar) transporters (realization of ill-fated 22nd century sub-quantum transporter project), Temporal applications/drive, transdimensional tech (what we see in those 31st century pods in ENT) After this, the need for any sort of ship is probably eliminated for any sort of travel - physical distance, temporal, dimensional, quantum reality or alternate universe hopping (and lord knows what else )
Didn't they call them protein replicators in some TOS ep? -anyways: I always figured them to work on the principle of infusing some tasteless goo with different chemicals to make it taste and look like known foods and then shape it into either the familiar cube or the (as seen on tv) ice-cream shape -not entirely unlike the thing being done with tofu in today's industry. What I don't get is the galley in TFF! In Clues Crusher is doing some sort of experiment -presumably in her lab. And of course there's the whole building Worf a whole new spine thing; some serious laboratory would be needed for that I think. Presumably five years (and that's canon, not from some book!) And after reading the thread I forgot what I actually wanted to say -or perhaps someone else already said it -oh well…
That could be. We've seen that some people do still cook their food in the 24th century, so perhaps the galley isn't all that unusual. Picard said that he felt the replicator couldn't do proper justice to dishes like caviar, so he presumably is familiar enough with the real thing.
On in case the space escargot wanted to try humans? Then what facility was? I mean, we never saw food dispenser stations in the personal cabins of the crew, save perhaps for that replicator prop in Kirk's cabin in TUC. The crew ate in a communal space. And whether that space was equipped with replicators or dumbwaiters, it would make sense for all of it to be operated and coordinated from a central facility for maximum efficiency. The galley of a 23rd century starship might no longer have stoves, but it would exist as a facility, a workstation for the people who decide what is on the menu, who load, operate and maintain the machinery that actually makes the food, and who maintain the dining facilities. When did this happen? Timo Saloniemi
Surely "This is my chicken sandwich and coffee, I want them off my ship..." was spoken in the mess room when Kirk has some tribble (hehe).
One or more messrooms that we never saw on screen, but nevertheless must have existed. I don't recall in TOS if we ever saw non-Officers in the messroom scenes, but in theory you'd have an Officer's Mess, a Petty Officer's Mess and an Enlisted Mess. I agree, but I imagine it is a much larger facility as found on modern naval vessels like a Ticonderoga Class CG. Assuming the crew ate in shifts, you'd need to feed around 150-200 people at a time and I do not believe that galley was large enough to handle that level of food production, even with the support of automation and replication. When did this happen?[/quote] "The Trouble with Tribbles" at least.