From Cracked: Transwarp beaming makes starships obsolete!

[bryce]

From Cracked: Transwarp beaming makes starships obsolete(?)

Huh...not sure *when* Scotty discovered transwarp beaming in the Prime Universe (it's likely that he did *after* being transported to the future - since it didn't seem to exist by early TNG's time, as far as we've seen)...but in any case, now that it was introduced in TOS' time - at the very least a few decades earlier if not a century - then by TNG's time, starships would be unnecessary for travel from star to star (but I would argue they still would be needed for exploration of worlds and systems we don't know much about)...

Anyway, from Cracked.com:

#6.
Star Trek (2009 version) Has Eliminated the Need for Starships

After young Kirk gets marooned on an ice planet, he enlists the help of Spock Classic and young Scotty (who are there for no adequately explored reason) to teleport aboard the Enterprise.

Hang on a second ...

For about 40 years, smartasses have been saying, "If the transporters have the ability to teleport people from place to place, why do they need ships?" And, through every episode and every film since the 1960s, the show explained it away as the transporters having some basic limitations: namely that they have a relatively short range -- only 40,000 kilometers, max. Essentially, it's useful only for getting on and off the Enterprise without the producers having to acquire the kind of budget they would need to animate the ship actually landing.

Now, the 2009 film has a major plot point where Kirk needs to be teleported onto the Enterprise, but the Enterprise is moving at warp speed at the time. Scotty figures out a way to do it, and the movie celebrates this achievement as being the first time anyone has ever been transported to an object moving that fast. But that isn't the point.

The Enterprise is shooting off at Warp 3 just before Scotty and Kirk beam aboard. Warp 3, by the way, is 27 times the speed of light. Or 5 million miles a second. That means that by the time Kirk has finished saying, "I really liked you in Shaun of the Dead," the Enterprise would be out of the solar system. A distance Scotty has no trouble overcoming with his transporter.

So, uh, why do we need spaceships again?

For the same reason we need classic cars and the Beastie Boys.

The characters don't seem to realize that what Scotty has actually done for space travel here is what e-mail did for the envelope industry. Any means of transportation that has more than zero mass and moves slower than literally instantaneously has suddenly become obsolete. We're only halfway through the first film of a new Star Trek franchise, and already we don't need the Enterprise anymore. By the time Picard is born, spaceships will be a relic of an older era.

Basically, they'll be the Star Trek equivalent of Betamax.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_1903...world-changing-discoveries.html#ixzz1FCFDWBpe

 

[BDJ]

Re: From Cracked: Transwarp beaming makes starships obsolete(?)

Y'know, as much as I enjoyed JJTrek, I must admit that this was one plot device I immediately disliked. Because I too thought the exact same thing.
If you can do that, then why the heck do you need a ship? Why do you need a fleet?
Just build bigger and better transporter platforms and they you don't have to waste the time and energy on ships!
But to keep on enjoying the film, I just shrugged it off since it was (in my mind anyway) a cute nod to Scotty's giving that guy in Trek 4 transparent aluminum.
Jus' Sayin'

 

[F. King Daniel]

1. Scotty almost died when it was used in STXI.

2. TNG's "Bloodlines" has near-identical "subspace beaming".

According to the timeline in the latest SCE novel, Scotty perfected his transwarp beaming formula in the 2380's, well after his resurrection in "Relics".

 

[BlobVanDam]

I found the whole idea of the transwarp beaming to be a clear contrivance of the movie to get Kirk back on the ship, and I doubt they thought through the future ramifications of being able to beam insane distances like that. I remember discussing this very point with my friend as we left the cinema.

But it doesn't remove the need for a starship. You still need to know where you are beaming to, and I haven't seen any indication that it could beam you back over that distance. You'd need to know that where you are beaming to is safe, or can send you back, so they're useless for exploration. And not everywhere you'd want to be is on a planet. You might want to sit in space observing something.

 

[Timo]

...Just watch the Stargate shows for a plausibly continuing need for starships even when one has fantastically fast teleportation. And that's a wide range of starships, with a wide range of speeds and missions.

It's just that something cobbled together from junk using a shuttlecraft transporter unit as the basis isn't how I'd envision the Federation's first steps into becoming the Iconians. If it were that easy - if it were virtually hardware-independent and all you needed was an idea and a formula - then there would be an immediate tech revolution of such a magnitude that starships might well be abandoned overnight. In an ill-thought-out move that would soon be reversed, but still.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

I agree it was a really stupid moment in the film (and it wasn't alone).

But you'd still need ships for exploration. How could you beam somewhere if you didn't know what was out there first?

 

[Pauln6]

By my rough calculations the Enterprise would have been less than a light year away at the time of transportation, which is hardly a distance sufficient to make starships obsolete. I also loathed the plot device, although it isn't the first time that long distance transportation has been referenced (Gary 7; several occasions in TNG) so it might be unjust to ridicule the idea itself. It is of course ludicrous that it was such a simple process to implement with less than state of the art technology and resources of the era (let alone when compared to the tech used to perfect it a hundred years later). Whether subspace beaming or not, the limitation is still going to be your scanning technology and the strength of your anular confinement beam. It might be possible to beam between transporter substations within range (a method similar to the network of gateways built in later Stargate episodes) but I don't think that what occurred in the movie is likely to be repeatable more generally. The fact that it was a federation transporter beaming to a federation ship that was locatable by its transponder probably helped too.

 

[Vance]

I agree it was a really stupid moment in the film (and it wasn't alone).

But you'd still need ships for exploration. How could you beam somewhere if you didn't know what was out there first?

How did they know exactly where to beam the Captain and Scotty (they missed Scotty for 'comedy' reasons by a couple of meters, tops) when you're talking about a ship going FTL that's over a light-year away. Your vector for mistakes here would be something again to .00000000000000000000001 degrees.

If they can do that, and since no real range limit was indicated, then inter-system beaming seems like it would be easier to do. Your targets are relatively stationary and mathematically much more easy to pinpoint a destination. All your crew would need to get back is a subspace communicator for which the beam-platform to lockon to for retrieval.

 

[Pauln6]

Yup, the issues of transwarp and distance are separate. Beaming onto a vessel at warp is indeed extremely dangerous and is only ever going to be used in emergencies. The dumb part of the story is the distance factor and Scotty spends a large chunk of dialogue explaining that planet to planet beaming isn't a problem at all (Since when? Oh right, since alternate timeline). Even then, planets are usually only a few million or billion km apart, so far but not mega-far. They could certainly have mitigated the problem if Kirk hadn't spent several hours treking through the snow, sitting round a campfire in a cave, and starting the transwarp beaming process from scratch when they finally meet Scotty. A light year is a ludicrously long distance at which to maintain a quantum-level scan. The caveat is that 'subspace transporting' is less well defined in universe. It would have been more realistic if they'd been aiming for a transporter pad and both ended up off course. In Kirk's time they often didn't really like beaming at all inside ships if it wasn't to a transporter pad.

 

[VidiianSkinRash]

Yeh this was one serious balls up by the writers/producers.

I keep trying to think of excuses and reasons why they could have this then and why it doesn't become in widespread use later on but I can't honestly think of anything viable or sufficient enough to explain it away.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I keep trying to think of excuses and reasons why they could have this then and why it doesn't become in widespread use later on but I can't honestly think of anything viable or sufficient enough to explain it away.

It's simple. The theory was wrong and the reason it worked anyway is unexplainable. In other words: it's engineering, not science.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Y'know, as much as I enjoyed JJTrek, I must admit that this was one plot device I immediately disliked. Because I too thought the exact same thing.
If you can do that, then why the heck do you need a ship? Why do you need a fleet?

At the end of the day, even a transporter needs a destination solution so you can reliable beam to the planet of your choice. You have to scout and map the planet first at a bare minimum before you can start beaming people there from San Francisco. OTOH, even transwarp beaming seems to have a discrete range limit or else Kirk would have used it to beam onto the Narada before it actually entered the solar system.

Just build bigger and better transporter platforms and they you don't have to waste the time and energy on ships!

Tell that to the producers of Stargate SG-1.

I keep trying to think of excuses and reasons why they could have this then and why it doesn't become in widespread use later on but I can't honestly think of anything viable or sufficient enough to explain it away.

It's simple. The theory was wrong and the reason it worked anyway is unexplainable. In other words: it's engineering, not science.

And thus we have our explanation for 90% of the crap that happens on Star Trek.

 

[Pauln6]

At the end of the day, even a transporter needs a destination solution so you can reliable beam to the planet of your choice. You have to scout and map the planet first at a bare minimum before you can start beaming people there from San Francisco. OTOH, even transwarp beaming seems to have a discrete range limit or else Kirk would have used it to beam onto the Narada before it actually entered the solar system.

I keep trying to think of excuses and reasons why they could have this then and why it doesn't become in widespread use later on but I can't honestly think of anything viable or sufficient enough to explain it away.

I think generally speaking it is hard to detect individual ships in the vastness of space unless you have the frequency of their subspace transponders (per DS9). So Scotty could detect and scan the Enterprise only a light year away but the Enterprise would have little opportunity to locate the Narada until she was close to the solar system.

Given the additional risks involved in beaming onto a ship at warp it's understandable that they waited for the vessel to drop out of warp before beaming aboard although it isn't clear why they waited until the very last minute to beam only two people on board. I would have thought that simultaneously beaming security teams to the bridge and engineering while beaming explosives onto the drill as it was lowered to be deployed would have been better but what do I know?

They should have added a caveat, such as the energy consumption would fry all the outpost's systems or something. We didn't see what happened after the transport so there is your excuse if you really need one: it blows your system up.

 

[Timo]

Scotty's little engineering friend survives the departure of the two heroes, though. As does Spock Prime.

We can always choose to think that the Enterprise was very, very close to Delta Vega. Apparently, the younger Spock had to fly the ship from Vulcan to Delta Vega at warp, but he was very concerned about the state of the engines; he may have stopped at Delta Vega not only for the illogical marooning of Kirk, but also because he needed to stop somewhere for a couple of hours to get the engines working properly (even if only at warp four). The older Spock might have anticipated this, or gleaned this from his discussions with Kirk, and thus realized that Scotty's super-short-range into-warp transporter would have a chance of working here.

That way, Delta Vega -> Enterprise could well be argued to be just as short as the later Titan -> Narada...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Lol - well when I said it blew up I didn't mean it went nuclear; I was thinking more like Chekov in TMP.

One other possibility is that Spock paused for movie night. Vulcans do so love Captain Proton!

 

[Deks]

Starships becoming obsolete?

Lol...
So, how are you going to explore deep space?
How are you going to defend the Federation from external threats that posses ships (such as the Borg?)?

I can definitely see the usefulness of transwarp beaming, however, to say it would eliminate ships as a need is a bit presumptuous and shortsighted.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Starships becoming obsolete?

Lol...
So, how are you going to explore deep space?
How are you going to defend the Federation from external threats that posses ships (such as the Borg?)?

With drones.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, what good is a ship when you can beam it away, or beam parts of it away, or beam nasty things into it? With a really long-range transporter, you have a divine hand that can squeeze the life out of all your enemies, rummage through their belongings and take what you wish. The divine hand can also sift the sands of unknown planets, bring back samples, deploy remote eyes and ears, and enable communications with distant peoples. It will also take care of your waste problems and raw material and fuel shortages...

Scotty's into-warp transporter is a big step towards this sort of a divine hand. It may be lacking in range, though - we saw nothing comparable to, say, the Sikarian device from VOY "Prime Factors" there. It may also be lacking in the ability to penetrate shields; the Dominion devices didn't yet make their starships (or those of their enemies) obsolete, despite having multi-lightyear range and fairly good shield penetration. The pirate folks from "Concerning Flight" did have shield penetration down pat, but they in turn lacked in range, so they needed ships anyway.

Obsolescence of starships is behind the corner in STXI, but the corner isn't quite as close as some may think. Scotty needs to keep on working on range and penetration issues here. And targeting, because his new toy failed to beam out Pike from Nero's ship until Kirk carried a homing beacon to the target. (Penetration of Nero's shields appeared to be no problem, though.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Obsolescence of starships is behind the corner in STXI, but the corner isn't quite as close as some may think. Scotty needs to keep on working on range and penetration issues here. And targeting, because his new toy failed to beam out Pike from Nero's ship until Kirk carried a homing beacon to the target. (Penetration of Nero's shields appeared to be no problem, though.)

Yeah there is plenty of scope for inconsistent limitations on the technology, although it can waste precious seconds of dialogue to do so. I think Nero lowered his shields to deploy the drill though.

 

[Deks]

Starships becoming obsolete?

Lol...
So, how are you going to explore deep space?
How are you going to defend the Federation from external threats that posses ships (such as the Borg?)?

With drones.

Not the way humanity would want to explore the stars in Trek.
They want to be out there on their own.
And for that, you would need ships (especially if you want to roam the galaxy and universe in order to see what's out there first hand).

Unless you want to beam a person in a space-suit with nothing but thrusters and have them float endlessly until they perish (which would happen very quick, depending on how long they can survive without food or water).