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Could you use replicators and transporters to build ships or shuttles?

Ray Hardgrit said:
I feel like Star Trek's shown that the answer to every question here is 'yes, but it's more ideal to construct them properly and then store them in a big room'. (Except for replicating people, that's... a bad idea. Just use cloning for that if you really need more of someone).
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Yes but what about my idea in having all the crew of a ship have on them a file with their transporter pattern so if they get injured you can just bung them into the transporter and like magic injury is cured, or as I said lost limbs could be replaced right there on the spot.

Would that be a bad thing?
 
I feel like there must be union rules about using a transporter for medical reasons. That's why it could only be used on the CMO.
 
Ray Hardgrit said:
I feel like there must be union rules about using a transporter for medical reasons. That's why it could only be used on the CMO.
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Union rules? No they don't have union rules. Maybe there would be some ethical thing about doing that but I really don't see a big issue.
 
I have wondered why they don't just periodically use the transporter to eliminate any cancerous cells, aging tissue, bad germs, etc. Why do people with transporters get old? The problem with that tech and the replicator is its kind of story breaking. So everyone has to back peddle, or not use it, or suddenly have it not work in certain ways, or just not at all when the plot needs it not to.

I would much rather have had the transporter be some kind of small wormhole-bridge projected from the transporter room, and it still probably could have been something like that until TNG introduced pattern buffers (if the term showed up in TOS or TNG and I'm wrong, sorry). Those details have become inherent to many plots, and so it can't be retconned. It just doesn't allow for a lot of technologies that come with it.

Nog looses a leg? No big deal. Beam his last leg up from the last pattern buffer. Why aren't we keeping backups of those things?! They're clearly important. Sorry your dad died Wes. Thankfully we have his pattern buffer backup before he beamed down. He'll be home to see you shortly.
 
I remember reading that people involved in production would've rather they went with a wormhole to explain transporter tech as well, because of all the awkward questions that tearing people's atoms apart raises.

Then The Counter-Clock Incident and Unnatural Selection really opened a Pandora's Box that writers just had to pretend hadn't been opened. Unless it made their plots easier to resolve. I guess it's fair game to use the transporter whenever you need to make people older or younger, but if Nog loses a leg he just has to deal with it.*

*You can't cure natural aging because no one in the future fears dying of old age. Apparently.
 
So if I am dying of cancer and my stored pattern from a month ago which was clear is available why can't I do a cycle in the transporter and get my old body back?
 
I still remember the episode in ST:ENT "Dead Stop"
"It's ironic, in a way. The station can duplicate a dead Human body in all its exquisite detail, yet a living, simple one-celled organism is beyond its capability."
- Phlox, describing the station's bio-replicator
As far as Transporters, it can't give you extra living tissue, it can only "Phase" and move your existing atomic structure from point A to B.

As far as Transporter Patterns, remember in DS9, when they had to temporarily store the pattern of 4 officers, it took up every available memory on the entire station.

Storing the exact pattern of a person is a very "Memory Intensive" task and that's why the Transporter prefers to dump the pattern and rematerialize ASAP.

Let's say you're in the future like the 32nd century and data storage is abundant where you can store plenty of copies of your Physical Pattern Data. You would still need access to all your raw bio material if you lost a piece of your body.

And if your body gets cancer, how will the machine know what to revert, and what not to revert?

You would need to do a diff between your old data copy and your current state and choose what to keep and what not to keep.

Also, what part of your memories are you keeping.

That opens up a TON of questions.

If you diff one section of your body and not the other, mix & match.

What if there are incompatibilities due to the previous state and current changes?

There are ALL sorts of complications that can happen.
 
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I think they can and do build ships and shuttles with replicators and transporters, and indeed other stuff as well. This is a bit of a joke but I did wonder about a making a Tetris-style game or animation where you're Garak rebuilding Cardassia by replicating and transporting buildings in a Cardassian city.
 
somebuddyX said:
I think they can and do build ships and shuttles with replicators and transporters, and indeed other stuff as well. This is a bit of a joke but I did wonder about a making a Tetris-style game or animation where you're Garak rebuilding Cardassia by replicating and transporting buildings in a Cardassian city.
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Haha I would play a game like that. And hey slapping Star Trek on the name would get you instant sales even if it's not that great. But I'd definitely play this at least once.
 
All this exposes some dangers in using transporters and replicators as a narrative tool. These technologies totally made sense from a production standpoint—especially the transporter—but their implications for everyday life are so fundamental that it becomes really important to place restrictions on them, however contrived.
 
Focus Abbey said:
All this exposes some dangers in using transporters and replicators as a narrative tool. These technologies totally made sense from a production standpoint—especially the transporter—but their implications for everyday life are so fundamental that it becomes really important to place restrictions on them, however contrived.
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I concur, that's why I like the current limits implied by ST:ENT with Replicator Tech not being able to create living cells and Transporters only being able to "Move Matter" around by Phasing and not necessarilly restoring a previous state of a person or create new living matter.
 
It must certainly be possible in principle. Didn't we see entire ship components being replicated as early as the 22nd century in Dead Stop? (Enterprise)

I think it would be more a question as to whether 24th century Federation technology is up to it.
 
Gingerbread Demon said:
Yes but what about my idea in having all the crew of a ship have on them a file with their transporter pattern so if they get injured you can just bung them into the transporter and like magic injury is cured, or as I said lost limbs could be replaced right there on the spot.

Would that be a bad thing?
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It’s not so different to what goes off in Iain M. Banks’s Culture Series IIRC.

The problem would be constantly refreshing the backups so that crew members memories would be intact as well as their body. Someone may get an arm back, but lose 3 months worth of memories, which if you started dating someone say, 2 and a half months prior is going to cause problems.

Unless, you mean the person goes through the transporter at one end with an injury and rematerialises healed? I’m not sure we’ve ever seen transporters just recreate bits of people?

I guess as in The Culture, something to be deployed in the event of death as opposed to injury.
 
The problem is the transporters often work however a specific episode wants them to work. In one episode it's actually the person's molecules that get transported to the point that Barclay stays conscious the entire time and we can even see the event from his POV, and in another a transporter accident can create a whole new Riker.

Generally I think the idea of using the transporter patterns to re-create lost limbs and such might be that we don't know whether its possible to create living matter with the replicator (or do we?)
It might also be too risky to do that, and since the Federation does have technology to replace limbs, it might not be worth the risk.
 
Gingerbread Demon said:
So if I am dying of cancer and my stored pattern from a month ago which was clear is available why can't I do a cycle in the transporter and get my old body back?
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In Unnatural Selection (TNG), they didn't even need a full pattern to restore dr. Pulaski back to full health. Just a single uncorrupted cell (a hair follicle) was enough. And I would think the corruption of altered dna and aging would be far more difficult to repair than removing cancer, through means of a transporter.
 
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KamenRiderBlade said:
I concur, that's why I like the current limits implied by ST:ENT with Replicator Tech not being able to create living cells and Transporters only being able to "Move Matter" around by Phasing and not necessarilly restoring a previous state of a person or create new living matter.
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Limits schmimits...
The ST: ENT automated station had similar... albeit different (and probably inferior) technology vs 24th century UFP.

UFP replication and transporter tech were not suggested to have same limits... in fact, we have seen that in TNG, they were able to reconstitute Picard from his old pattern... revert Pulaski's DNA and restore her youth, and the fact that with a mishap it can easily revert people to a younger age with their memories intact, and modified to return them to their original age (again, with memories intact)... oh and the biofilters that are present in the transporters are there to filter out any unwanted pathogens.

I'd say the UFP would spend about a good amount of time studying and testing this option for the transporters before the modifications are allowed to be used by the population at large (at least, those who want it)... but I suspect that it wouldn't take very long amount of time for this to occur.
If algorithms were used to automate the R&D... then a few hours to days at most... with an extra amount of say 1 year to 'perfect' it.

The UFP replication technology in the 24th century was described to convert energy into matter too... this wouldn't be very surprising when you think about the premise that UFP is comprised of over 150 alien species working and sharing their knowledge, technology and resources openly.
Whereas most others organisations are 'empires' with 1 dominant species that seemingly can develop their own technology etc... but in some respects, woldn't be able to replicate the same 'quality' as UFP would because they don't share the same cooperation mentality or seeing 'smaller alien civilizations' as equals... this is probably going to be reflect in their R&D.

I would imagine that finer control of what to reconstitute from the older pattern would take a bit of finesse, but nothing too problematic (since it was already done).
Also, the transporter wouldn't need to be used for something like that... it would be mainly a last ditch effort to try in case medical technology and science failed and predominantly in cases of body regeneration.

Cancer for example is a non-issue in the 22nd century even... since then, most 'issues' that would threaten people would significatly reduce by the 24th century and wouldn't require a transporter.

The transporter could potentially be used for tissue regeneration... aka, revert the body to an earlier stage of development... not necessarily adolescence, but say late teens or early 20ties if it was wanted... or the age would be optional - but again, this doesn't seem to be used even in the 32nd century so its a moot point.
 
I dunno, I always felt it was possible to replicate shuttles, but that it isn't the preferred method of building them. Although ideally similar to transporters, I do think replicators are a minor step below them and can have occasional "bit errors" with some items. A single replicated shuttle might be fine in a pinch or crisis situation, but Starfleet may frown on the concept of regularly churning them out in huge batches for quality control and safety issues, IMO.
 
at Quark's said:
In Unnatural Selection (TNG), they didn't even need a full pattern to restore dr. Pulaski back to full health. Just a single uncorrupted cell (a hair follicle) was enough. And I would think the corruption of altered dna and aging would be far more difficult to repair than removing cancer, through means of a transporter.
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From what we've seen people don't die of cancer anymore in the 24th century. So they appear to have a way to heal it. It probably involves shining a blue light on it.
 
Deks said:
Limits schmimits...
The ST: ENT automated station had similar... albeit different (and probably inferior) technology vs 24th century UFP.

UFP replication and transporter tech were not suggested to have same limits... in fact, we have seen that in TNG, they were able to reconstitute Picard from his old pattern... revert Pulaski's DNA and restore her youth, and the fact that with a mishap it can easily revert people to a younger age with their memories intact, and modified to return them to their original age (again, with memories intact)... oh and the biofilters that are present in the transporters are there to filter out any unwanted pathogens.

I'd say the UFP would spend about a good amount of time studying and testing this option for the transporters before the modifications are allowed to be used by the population at large (at least, those who want it)... but I suspect that it wouldn't take very long amount of time for this to occur.
If algorithms were used to automate the R&D... then a few hours to days at most... with an extra amount of say 1 year to 'perfect' it.

The UFP replication technology in the 24th century was described to convert energy into matter too... this wouldn't be very surprising when you think about the premise that UFP is comprised of over 150 alien species working and sharing their knowledge, technology and resources openly.
Whereas most others organisations are 'empires' with 1 dominant species that seemingly can develop their own technology etc... but in some respects, woldn't be able to replicate the same 'quality' as UFP would because they don't share the same cooperation mentality or seeing 'smaller alien civilizations' as equals... this is probably going to be reflect in their R&D.

I would imagine that finer control of what to reconstitute from the older pattern would take a bit of finesse, but nothing too problematic (since it was already done).
Also, the transporter wouldn't need to be used for something like that... it would be mainly a last ditch effort to try in case medical technology and science failed and predominantly in cases of body regeneration.

Cancer for example is a non-issue in the 22nd century even... since then, most 'issues' that would threaten people would significatly reduce by the 24th century and wouldn't require a transporter.

The transporter could potentially be used for tissue regeneration... aka, revert the body to an earlier stage of development... not necessarily adolescence, but say late teens or early 20ties if it was wanted... or the age would be optional - but again, this doesn't seem to be used even in the 32nd century so its a moot point.
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That's your head canon, you're entitled to it.

You want the Transporters to be the "Eternal Fountain of Youth" where it can revert your body to a younger state while keeping everybody's memory in tact.

That's WAY too powerful and world breaking.

But it's your head canon.
 
KamenRiderBlade said:
That's your head canon, you're entitled to it.

You want the Transporters to be the "Eternal Fountain of Youth" where it can revert your body to a younger state while keeping everybody's memory in tact.

That's WAY too powerful and world breaking.

But it's your head canon.
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Except that it was established in TNG it can do just that.
Its hardly world breaking or too powerful, and there can still be some limits.

In fact, we know transporters can be programmed to respond virtually instantly if situations arise... problem is, the live action series never explored that fully... which is why you end up with hull breaches sucking people out and them not being immediately beamed back to a safe location on the ship (unless the transporters were damaged - but you can bypass this by activating shuttles during combat or dangerous situations just to be on standby in case main transporters fail).

For example, you wouldn't be able to reconstitute a person from death if they were vaporized (unless 'something' from the vaporization remained - such as victims of Metreon Cascade - it ALMOST worked). If someone set the phaser to 'kill' though... that might not work either - but if Borg nanobrobes can bring someone from 18 hours of being dead, therer's no reason why SF wouldn't be able to analyze that function and reproduce it after a few years with a transporter or medical nanites.

All in all, we're kinda talking about a technologically advanced society which HAS that capability.
And transporters have been used in medical procedures... just in a limited fashion.
 
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