Possibly, but only if they were based on transwarp beaming (which should have been more than doable since Montgomery Scott [according to Spock prime from the 2009 movie] made it possible in the late 24th century in the prime timeline). So, transwarp beaming within the galaxy would likely have been a reality by the 25th century (in fact, I'm actually curious as to why we hadn't seen it in Picard because Spock prime was able to make the technology work in the 23rd century by modifying REGULAR transporters)... and transporters as a technology are very commonplace in the 24th century of prime timeline. But if personal transporters can work without matter-antimatter reactions or dilithium to regulate the reaction (like it appears they do), transwarp beaming should too... and as I said, this IS the 32nd century... technology and power sources would have advanced quite a lot in just 50-100 years... nevermind 800 years since Scotty made TW beaming doable to allow it for personal transporters.
Or then Spock lied, in order to motivate the engineer to do the dirty work, and it's actually Spock's own formula that is slated to die with him... He might have reasons to keep it out of the hands of his "own" people, even if these strangers from a strange timeline can go hang themselves in it for all he cares, as long as it helps him bring down Nero for sheer vengeance. Range might still well be a function of power, and you absolutely need a warp core for great ranges, which is why they used Scotty's big shuttle for it. But the Section 31 version came in a sports bag, and demonstrated even greater range. And no, Khan didn't have it plugged into his ride's warp core, because the little medicopter explicitly wasn't capable of interstellar flight. Doesn't mean there wasn't antimatter and dilithium in that bag, of course. Timo Saloniemi
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Transwarp_beaming According to the novelization of Star Trek Into Darkness, beaming to Qo'noS for Khan was a more complicated plot. The small portable transwarp beaming device on the jumpship only had enough power to beam Khan to an automated cargo station on Earth's orbit. From there he accessed a heavy-load transporter to beam onto an unmanned vessel in orbit of Luna. Khan had equipped the ship with another unauthorized transwarp device wired into the empty ship’s engine. Utilizing the entire energy output of the engine for a single massive burst, he could have beamed anywhere in our galactic region. Transporting to Qo'noS completely burned out the device, so no one was able to follow him using it.
The power generation of a late 24th century Warp core or engine is far greater (and much more efficient) than a Warp core or engine in the 23rd century. I also recall Nakhul mentioning (from Enterprise when they turned the Temporal Col War into a full fledged war) they have power cells in the 31st century the size of a coin (obviously, the 24th century has something like that too... power cells the size of a palm capable of powering temporal technology - but my point is the coin ones from the 31st century would likely be capable of generating many times more power compared to even a warp core from the 24th or 25th centuries (which would certainly provide more than enough energy to use transwarp beaming anywhere in the galaxy... if not well outside the galaxy or a nearby one - aka, more than enough to power a personal transwarp transporter from the 32nd century practically indefinitely across the entire galaxy and constantly recharge itself at its destination - you DO realize of course that power generation wouldn't be an issue for these people because first off, Fusion also would have likely advanced significantly in 930 years, then there are geothermal, solar, etc. - actually space based solar and geothermal would be two most potent power sources for any civilization as advanced as that - especially given the levels of efficiency we witnessed in Trek). First off, Spock wasn't the one to lie under such circumstances, and like it or not, he was better composed compared to his much younger Kelvin timeline counterpart. Still emotionally compromised yes, but better able to handle the situation than his younger version. Also, vengeance? Spock? I doubt it. Scotty's big shuttle has a proverbially tiny power source compared to a full fledged starship like the Enterprise (1701) from the 23rd century, and it was capable of beaming both Kirk and Scotty onto a starship moving at Warp. So, yes, even if large power generation is a needed factor for much larger range (which does make sense), the non M/AM and non-dilithium dependent power sources (lets say like fusion) of the 32nd century would have advanced to the point where they should be more than powerful enough to allow personal TW beaming within the galaxy (or at least have a range of 1 quadrant... so you can technically go anywhere in the galaxy with a few charges).
Well, vengeance would be the only thing he had left. And being so composed, he could proceed with it better than most. Also, Spock always lies. A culture of utmost logic is ideal for keeping the lies straight, fostering the impression of truthfulness, and ditching strange notions of lying somehow being wrong. And why not? The ship moves thousands of people at warp. The shuttle moves dozens. Moving just two is not that big a deal. But it does somewhat clash with the idea that a sports bag could achieve the same or better. Then again, we might assume the DSC thing, that S31 makes use of resources that are roughly one century ahead of the rest of the Federation. So basically the bag-sized device has a 24th century powerplant. We have seen fridge-sized ("Survivors") and then microwave oven -sized ("Quality of Life") replicators, which supposedly are about as power-hungry as transporters. We also see coffin-sized probes capable of independent warp acceleration, which may be more relevant here. So we almost have our alternate Khan covered. And compact power systems beyond that are certainly allowed to be better. The interesting question regarding the 32nd century tech is, how much power does that little chip really pack? We may argue it's not enough for interstellar (although we may also argue it used to be, before things went south), but there's also the implication that Booker has a Destroyer of Worlds on his palm. Or at least a bomb big enough to easily disable a starship from inside. That is, unless transporters of this sort (and of every sort) operate on some sort of a cheat. And if so, we might just as well argue that interstellar transporters cheat, too, and all you need to go Khan is a phaser power pack or two 25th century flashlight batteries. Timo Saloniemi
Perhaps it replicates microscopic transporter tech at every use, which stays behind for a few seconds then dissolves.
My point was that a coin based power source from the 32nd century (Burn or no Burn) would be far more powerful and efficient compared to a shuttle (or starship) Warp/power core from the 23rd or 24th century without needing M/AM reactions or dilithium (and as such, more than powerful enough to allow for Transwarp beaming across the galaxy - but for the sake of it, let's keep the 30 seconds recharge cycle). But of course, with transwarp beaming, it would be stupidly simple to beam supplies or people anywhere in the galaxy or build new space stations (or salvage, repair and upgrade existing ones - including long range sensors, etc.). But like with any more advanced technology that should have been implemented... I'm sure the writers would have conveniently forget about it or ignore it entirely.
Another consderation more ethical than technological: every sentient being alive that Spock-Prime encountered thereafter was another installment of his vengeance upon Nero. Every living world encountered thereafter? Same. Helping the rest of creation to live long and prosper thereafter? Same effect. A most logical, efficient and ethical form of revenge, if ever there was one. To Nero, this would be the infliction of ashv'cezh at Spock-Prime's hands, however indirectly. And with that, I return us to our discussion of transporter technologies.
That's such a simple fix for transwarp beaming I really wish they left that in the movie. They could have had it that he beamed straight to Luna orbit and then beam out to Qo'nos, to make it a faster scene. Have the final ship blow up from a warp core breach used to power the beaming. A power-range limit like that combined with obvious limits on knowing where you are going would keep ships important. It also means using transwarp as an escape hatch carries a lot of penalties because it might involve destroying your ship to reach home. In that case Discovery comes with a built in limit too, because for a lot of factions power production in the 32nd century might be about as limited as in the 24th. Only groups which can afford really exotic power production and storage would be able to afford transwarp beaming as a normal means of transportation.
The big problem with Foster's take there is that the heroes absolutely need to find out where "Harrison" has gone. That is, the heroes need to be the ones to find out. Marcus wants to sucker them into doing his bidding, and letting others in the loop would only serve to compromise that - why, one of 'em might even be reasonable and quickly talk Kirk out of it. Letting the heroes do the forensics along a lengthy chain of events, all the way to Luna, just isn't plausible, in a more concrete way than transwarp beaming straight to Qo'noS is implausible. Timo Saloniemi
(Disclaimer: Haven't seen any of the DISC material under discussion, so this is just a general remark that may be refuted by something we actually see in that series). What makes you so sure they won't hit a technological ceiling somewhere between the 24th and the 32nd century in this respect? Technology cannot be improved upon without any limitations, after all. And it wouldn't even need to be an 'absolute theoretical' ceiling, it could as well be a 'practical' one that's just very, very hard to break through. I mean, I don't think that today, we have any practical technology that can create a coin sized power cell with a greater power output than, say, a 13th century huge watermill.
|When you hit a limit with certain technology in the real world, you end up moving to something else - and realistically, we are only now starting to hit limits of lithium-ion based power cells (and other designs have already been proposed in the past decade that could replace them - except for the fact that in Capitalism, things are slow to change due to the socio-economic system we use and monetary costs - in the Federation, such 'limits' do not exist because they would be focusing on creating the best of what state of the art technology is capable of producing in a sustainable manner with minimal impact). Also, weapons, shields, Warp drive, etc. all conclusively require large amounts of power... especially Warp drive. Past Warp 9.9 for example, every increment results in doubling of speed as well as power draw. We know that alternate power sources in Trek do exist which pack a LOT of energy in a small frame. As for we having practical technology that can create coin sized power cell with a greater power output than a 13th century watermill... well, that depends. What's the energy output of a '13th century huge watermill' (difficult to estimate since electricity didn't even exist back then, and it would depend on the specific size of the watermill, the material it uses, how consistently it can produce energy, etc)? Also, we're barely at the dawn of battery/power cell technology... and we have conclusive data that shows us technology and science evolve exponentially (practical implementation is limited by the existing socio-economic system though). We know that the process of technical efficiency allows us to do more with less... so to assume that a technologically advanced space faring collection of alien species can't move on in 930 years is beyond absurd.
I suppose it depends how you look at it. In our universe, there are physical laws that cannot be violated, and that has certain consequences- though perhaps some of the consequences may be circumvented to some degree. One of those is that we'll never see a true perpetuum mobile, another that we cannot reverse the increase of entropy in the universe as a whole- from which it follows (for example) that a 100% efficient heat engine is theoretically impossible. That's true today, and that will be true in the 32nd century. Perhaps even more fundamentally, there are mathematical theorems (that have been proven) that tell us some of the things mathematics won't be able to do, now or in the 32nd century- which also may have consequences for devices. For example, about 20 years ago there was an inventor in my country that claimed he invented a device that was capable of storing any random high resolution movie of ordinary length in, (I believe) 5MB of storage space . If you understand some mathematics, it's quite easy to prove this is fundamentally impossible, simply by showing there are more movies possible (way more in fact) than the amount of different configurations possible in that amount of memory so that there's no way to 'map' all possible movies to all possible memory states of such a device. That's true today, and that will be true in the 32nd century, You perhaps might be able to store a particular subset of movies in that amount of space, but by no means all possible movies. Then again, this is not our universe, but the Star Trek universe. which very premise is based on the circumvention of just one such law - which is the speed of light as a 'top speed'. In our world, mainstream physics doesn't seem to think we'll be able to circumvent that with a 'warp engine' - no matter how popular such 'warp engine' theories of course will be on a board like this. So perhaps, if you choose to take that as a starting point, anything may be possible in the Star Trek universe. I didn't say that, did I? Of course they'll 'move on' and make progress. It's just that I believe there may be certain absolute upper limits they might not be able to exceed, just as in our real world. Or, barring such upper limits, even some really hard technology 'ceilings' they might ultimately break through, but perhaps not in 500 years time. Also, I don't believe technology truly is exponential. It only behaves that way as long as it doesn't run into one of these barriers. Any specific real-world technology usually follows an S-curve. Starting slowly, then starting to rise exponentially in efficiency as it matures, then the increase of efficiency slowing down again as it begins to stall against the limits of diminishing returns of further developments. For example, in 1900 we could probably build much better steam engines than in 1800. However, I doubt that the difference between a steam engine built in 1900 and one in 2000 would be as large. We often 'circumvent' that by going to an alternative technology. (For example we abandoned steam engines and we started using internal combustion engines). But that's assuming there is an alternative that's more efficient. Sooner or later, we'll be running out of those 'more efficient alternatives' because we're already using the best option at that point in time.
That's a pretty wild guess. I mean, yes, a lot of smart people have faith in that today. But a lot of arguably much smarter people thought that matter could not be energy and the most fundamental of particles would be found at deterministic locations. Finding convenient laws is one of the chief tasks of science. Typically, the laws are fundamentally wrong - they have a region of applicability and fall apart at the edges that either are of little practical relevance or are damned difficult to study. If anything, there's a pattern there: whatever we come up with, it will always be wrong, because it always has been. We already know that conservation laws, the most fundamental and powerful of our tools, are mere guesses, and at best we can dig up a more fundamental (if also more esoteric and narrow-scoped) conservation law to excuse our initial blunder, and then another, and yet another. That's a house of cards. But the point of science is that each card is so small and incremental that even if a hundred thousand fall, the whole pile will only shift a little bit. Yet the shifts may well matter, especially on the equally puny human scale. And, as mentioned, kill hundreds of thousands. Or perhaps make billions stop believing in what they see, and start buying new faces and lives. Now that's more believable. Nature will always pull a fast one on us, but mathematics is our own doing, and generally won't stretch into doing something we can't imagine (although there have been plenty of exceptions to that in history, too). But arguments about computing, based on how Turing thought computing would happen, will probably be invalidated in a jiffy when we simply come up with a new way of computing. Mathematics has been reinvented often enough, and most assuredly again will be. Well, there's empirical evidence of that. After all, they haven't made progress. And with "they" we can refer to the Feds of DSC or to every other corporeal alien that's explicitly stuck with the same subpar gear our heroes are. Then again, it sorta is: after 1900, there were absolutely massive leaps in turbine efficiency, and materials have developed since. The big leap was early on in the century, though. But the main thing there is that it's not steam that would be exponential - it's technology. Steam didn't just give us steam. It gave us the impetus to create internal combustion engines, nuclear powerplants, and Moon rockets. When a technology wanes and perhaps retires, it usually has plenty of kids on steep ascent... Why would we run out of outgrowth options? Many a technology has stalled. Few paths of progress have. If anything, we're short on means to invent new paths. And unlike in Trek, we have no peers, no competing intellect to judge the limits of progress by. Although we just might find out about such an intellect, at some not too distant point of time. It's just that we already can tell that the things currently remaining unseen and unattainable are so vast and all-encompassing that miracles could easily hide in there. The most idiotic idea science has ever come up with, the principle of homogeneity, was stillborn to begin with: we came up with it when we already knew the microscopic was fundamentally different from the macroscopic. We simply should know better, and accept that what lies beyond the horizon is unknown. Until known. Timo Saloniemi
I have a question about this then, we know that there were at least two types of personal transporters that already exited in the 2370s, one was the already mentioned 'button' that Data had been working on that saved Picard in Nemesis, remember that the Enterprise's transporters were down at this point hence the space dive Data did (although this could be explained that they managed to use a shuttle transporter, although if this is what happened why didn't they use it to get him across? The other was in the alternate universe of 'Non Sequitor' in Voyager where that universe's Tom Paris uses one that apparently doesn't need a standard transporter pad. While it is an alternate to the OTL, that's only because Harry wasn't assigned to a starship, so really there's no reason that it doesn't exist in the normal timeline. So why is this device in Discovery so impressive, this stuff is centuries old and can be acquired by normal civilians on Earth? (Albeit probably by less than legal means.)
It is relatively simple to argue that neither of those was a transporter, and was merely a portable console for a transporter system. I mean, starships have non-portable consoles for the purpose, and then commbadges for accessing the consoles (either the live operator thereof, or the computer of a runabout). Civilian systems wouldn't be that clumsy, though: no transportee should need to hire a personal transporter butler to handle daily commuting for him. Instead, people would have remotes that directly achieve the transporting - even though the machinery for it is city-sized and installed in the basement or under the streets or camouflaged into the fake trees in the park or whatever. What Paris had and Kim needed was a remote that had access privileges to a locked Starfleet facility. Authorized users would need such devices, unless they had the Starfleet equivalent (that is, a commbadge and all the necessary clearances for having the call go through and acted upon). Our brave Maquis did not have Starfleet clearances for using a Starfleet commbadge, so he hacked a civilian remote. Kim didn't need a portable transporter: the world was full of non-portable ones he could have used. What he needed was clearance, and the remote gave that to him. But nothing suggests the remote would have been exotic tech: Kim probably had one of those at home already, only without the clearance hack. As for the pip in ST:NEM, it could be nothing but a smaller and more powerful commbadge. Transporting through defenses is always difficult, but generally because it's difficult to get a lock. Sometimes the heroes come up with interesting ways to get the lock from afar, such as the "skeletal lock" from "Scorpion". But it's also a good solution to apply a pattern enhancer or comparable doggy tag. In ST:INS, the villains fire those from drones. In ST:NEM, the heroes pin those on each other by hand. Shinzon's ship would have been defended in both cases, so the tag was needed. But the E-E transporter system was additionally damaged in the latter case. Yet we only saw one console blow up. Instead of losing all the dozens of actual transporter pads of the ship, or the additional dozens aboard the shuttles, the ship probably lost its ability to get a lock (understandable in the murky Bassen Rift!). And the pip tag would help with that, more in the second case than in the first. Generally speaking, we don't see a self-contained portable transporter before DSC S3. Even VOY "Concerning Flight", which features a compact device, only ever has the heroes beam out with a remote, while the bulk of that compact device is shown remaining behind and is not available a second time. Are even the DSC devices self-contained? They are used aboard ships and on planets. Ships and planets could have transporter infrastructure controlled by remotes. Our main argument for independent devices is that Book manages to use his to escape the de facto rules of planet Hima. If he merely remotely controlled Emerald Chain assets, it wouldn't matter if he shook off pursuit at one juncture and then kept on using the remote... Timo Saloniemi
Don't forget that there are two major types of Transporting. The Traditional one disassembles you on a molecular level and streams your molecules to the target destination and reassembles your molecular pattern back to it's original form. The other one is the "Folded Space Transporter" which the Ansata Terrorists called an 'Inverter'. But their version did cumulative damage to their DNA with repeated use. With StarFleet R&D, I'm sure they can bypass the harmful effects and shield from it. But as far as a "Portable Transporter" system is concerned, the "Folded Space Transporter" seems to be a easier method to implement in a portable package. You don't need to perform all the steps of Molecular Phase Shift from Matter to Energy & back along with Disassembly & ReAssembly. Just Fold the space around the user and move them from point A to B while shielding from whatever harmful radiation is affecting the DNA of the user.
Those transporters are, I believe, single use and might require a predetermined destination given their lack of interface. In contrast, the DIS transporters can be used repeatedly with a somewhat brief cooldown period between beamings, and they have comprehensive interfaces for on the fly destination selection. The early ones are emergency devices while the DIS ones are full feature transporter systems.
Large scale availability and use in day to day operations is one larger advantage over what was shown. Data's device appeared to be extremely limited, with one way destination preprogrammed for use in emergencies. Which makes a lot of sense. The one in Non-Sequitur again, as you note, couldn't be acquired through anything that less than legal means. It also wasn't the default use for Starfleet personnel. So, the ubiquity of these devices, as well as their day to day use, make them far more advanced simply because it is everywhere. Compare computers or cell phones early vs. now in terms of accessibility for a similar idea of technological development.