A transporter-less Trekverse

[MAGolding]

As for Star Trek without transporters, maybe they would have so many shuttle like vehicles that there wouldn't be any hanger deck. Each shuttle would mate with the ship and perhaps be covered by a movable lid or hatch shaped to fit over the shuttle hull. Or perhaps the shuttles would go all the way inside the ship and be covered by sliding hull plates like the lifeboats.

In real life rockets might always be needed to land on and take off of planets that don't have beanstalks, etc. For traveling within a solar system advanced enough rockets might accelerate at one gee for half the trip and then flip over and decelerate at one gee for the second half of the trip.

For printed or visual stories the only scientifically known ways to have Earth like weight during a space strip is to either accelerate slowly and rotate part or all of the ship to simulate gravity or else to constantly accelerate at one gee if the rockets are powerful enough.

But of course many fictional space ships use generated gravity to make objects fall toward the decks. Whether or not that is scientifically possible, it is certainly common in science fiction. And if a fictional space ship can generate gravity to make objects fall toward the decks it can probably also generate gravity ahead of the ship to make the ship "fall" forward in space. Most fictional space ships, whether slower or faster than light, that have generated gravity inside should also use some type of generated gravity drive to take off and land and for interstellar travel and any slower than light interstellar travel.

So in the fictional universe of Star Trek the impulse drive and the drives on (sublight) shuttle craft should be some type of generated gravity drive unless it is something even more advanced and flying saucer-like.

 

[Tribble puncher]

You'd have a more compartmentalized Starfleet I think. More specialized ship designs because more internal space would have to be given over to food/cargo storage. You wouldn't have single "can do everything" ships. Quality of life on starships would be much less then what we've seen. No holodecks (they use transporter tech). Long duration exploration missions would be unmanned ships with interesting places being followed up by manned missions. Ships wouldn't be able to function away from starbases as long as they can't easily replicate parts so space would be needed for storage of parts and machine shops, personnel and raw materials to machine parts, plus the fuel to move all this stuff around. So the space needed would be taken from rec. Facilities and those cushy quarters on most fed starships. Transporter/Replicator tech is a lynchpin to the society depicted in Trek, equally as important as the warp drive, it enabled a post scarcity society and eliminated poverty. However, if we are just talking about they can beam organic material, just not have it come out alive on the other end. Then I don't think much would change, other than more shuttles and probably not being able to transport/replicate complex machinery already assembled.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You'd have a more compartmentalized Starfleet I think. More specialized ship designs because more internal space would have to be given over to food/cargo storage. You wouldn't have single "can do everything" ships. Quality of life on starships would be much less then what we've seen. No holodecks (they use transporter tech). Long duration exploration missions would be unmanned ships with interesting places being followed up by manned missions. Ships wouldn't be able to function away from starbases as long as they can't easily replicate parts so space would be needed for storage of parts and machine shops, personnel and raw materials to machine parts, plus the fuel to move all this stuff around. So the space needed would be taken from rec. Facilities and those cushy quarters on most fed starships. Transporter/Replicator tech is a lynchpin to the society depicted in Trek, equally as important as the warp drive, it enabled a post scarcity society and eliminated poverty. However, if we are just talking about they can beam organic material, just not have it come out alive on the other end. Then I don't think much would change, other than more shuttles and probably not being able to transport/replicate complex machinery already assembled.

I don't see replicators being out of the question, actually, since at a more basic level that's just really advanced fabrication technology. TOS' food slots and replicators weren't based on transporter technology and neither was any of the tech in Enterprise. Same for the cargo issue: you can manufacture all kinds of things without needing transporters. It's just a conveyor system for moving things around, which I suppose would be bulkier without the transporter waveguides in the replicator system being more compact...

Really, if you took transporter technology out of Star Trek you're pretty much right back in the Kelvinverse with a slightly greater emphasis on the importance of shuttlecraft.

 

[Tribble puncher]

I don't see replicators being out of the question, actually, since at a more basic level that's just really advanced fabrication technology. TOS' food slots and replicators weren't based on transporter technology and neither was any of the tech in Enterprise. Same for the cargo issue: you can manufacture all kinds of things without needing transporters. It's just a conveyor system for moving things around, which I suppose would be bulkier without the transporter waveguides in the replicator system being more compact...

Really, if you took transporter technology out of Star Trek you're pretty much right back in the Kelvinverse with a slightly greater emphasis on the importance of shuttlecraft.

I guess the question I have for the OP of this thread....because maybe I'm confused as to the degree transporter tech wouldn't be like the canon tech in their mind...is, If I beam a raw steak from the surface of a planet to an orbiting starship....would it still be the same raw steak on a cellular level? atomic level? there's still the hisenburg uncertainty principal in everything, organic or not. so have they fined tuned it to the point where they can safely beam organic matter but any living matter wouldn't survive the process? like if you beamed me somewhere I'd appear there just as I am now but dead? Just to clarify.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I guess the question I have for the OP of this thread....because maybe I'm confused as to the degree transporter tech wouldn't be like the canon tech in their mind...is, If I beam a raw steak from the surface of a planet to an orbiting starship....would it still be the same raw steak on a cellular level? atomic level? there's still the hisenburg uncertainty principal in everything, organic or not. so have they fined tuned it to the point where they can safely beam organic matter but any living matter wouldn't survive the process? like if you beamed me somewhere I'd appear there just as I am now but dead? Just to clarify.

I don't know that it even matters. What's important is, in this case, the ship doesn't have a device that can cause a steak to disappear on the surface and reappear in the transporter room. Doesn't really matter WHY that is; all the basic limitations of Star Trek are pretty much arbitrary anyway, so adding one more arbitrary limitation wouldn't change a whole lot.

 

[Go-Captain]

I don't see replicators being out of the question, actually, since at a more basic level that's just really advanced fabrication technology. TOS' food slots and replicators weren't based on transporter technology and neither was any of the tech in Enterprise. Same for the cargo issue: you can manufacture all kinds of things without needing transporters. It's just a conveyor system for moving things around, which I suppose would be bulkier without the transporter waveguides in the replicator system being more compact...

Really, if you took transporter technology out of Star Trek you're pretty much right back in the Kelvinverse with a slightly greater emphasis on the importance of shuttlecraft.

No replicators as a follow up to no transporters does make sense and is a worthwhile scenario, regardless of whether it would definitely be right or not.

Going with the idea, it can stand to reason that the matter to energy aspect of replicators only works thanks to transporter technology, without that it would require stockpiles of elements. In that case starships would have to carry carefully selected material stocks which would cut down on available ship's volume. As you pointed out, TOS food slots still work, and going back, ENT protein synthesizers also work.

We would probably see Star Trek ships scrounging and purchasing resources regularly so they don't have to keep as large a material stock.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

No replicators as a follow up to no transporters does make sense and is a worthwhile scenario, regardless of whether it would definitely be right or not.

Going with the idea, it can stand to reason that the matter to energy aspect of replicators only works thanks to transporter technology, without that it would require stockpiles of elements. In that case starships would have to carry carefully selected material stocks which would cut down on available ship's volume. As you pointed out, TOS food slots still work, and going back, ENT protein synthesizers also work.

We would probably see Star Trek ships scrounging and purchasing resources regularly so they don't have to keep as large a material stock.

Better yet: (re)introduce the Bussard Collectors as a major plot device. Fix it so that every couple of star systems the ship has to dip through the upper atmosphere of the gas giant or star and skim off the gases to replenish its internal stocks; make it part of standard operations that the fuel labs in engineering have to sort through all the chemicals the scoops are swallowing and see what they can actually make out of the stuff other than, you know, fuel. Add that some star systems and stellar nebula are chock full of good stuff you can use to make sugars and proteins, which makes those areas stellar "Watering holes" where starships from different races are more likely to cross paths; this also gives you a convenient explanation for why there are "neutral zones" between all the warring parties, because some of these watering holes are so popular and so important that hostile action around them would basically suck for everyone.

 

[Tribble puncher]

I don't know that it even matters. What's important is, in this case, the ship doesn't have a device that can cause a steak to disappear on the surface and reappear in the transporter room. Doesn't really matter WHY that is; all the basic limitations of Star Trek are pretty much arbitrary anyway, so adding one more arbitrary limitation wouldn't change a whole lot.

I don't know, I'd think it would change things quite a bit. If you can't replicate food, then you have to carry it around. i'm not saying the crew on a ship would starve...but that the quality of life on the ship would go down....esp. if you had a multi species crew. At least in the show "enterprise" All of the crew except for T'Pol and Phlox were human, so they type of food they carried was commonly enjoyed by pretty much 100% of the crew...I'f you had a crew of 20-30 different species with different nutritional requirment's/tastes/etc. you'd probably have to resort to "food cubes" like those seen in TOS. I mean, if they had an invention right now where you could throw waste into a machine, it breaks it down and can assemble it into something useful/wanted/or needed, Imagine how that would change our society in the present?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't know, I'd think it would change things quite a bit. If you can't replicate food, then you have to carry it around.

With the way replicators actually work, you'd have to carry SOMETHING around, and they never went into detail how or where that material was stored. Not even on ST:Enterprise, which definitely didn't have a transporter-based replication system. So from a production standpoint, it doesn't actually change anything unless the writers specifically wanted it to.

I mean, if they had an invention right now where you could throw waste into a machine, it breaks it down and can assemble it into something useful/wanted/or needed, Imagine how that would change our society in the present?

It would change it a hell of a lot more and in far more fundamental ways than Star Trek was EVER prepared to portray. In the end, replicators weren't actually all that crucial to the show's premise, they were really just a plot device whose implications were explored only vaguely at best. If they're going to do replicators AT ALL, then it needs to come with all the usual strings attached: the manufacture of the base material, the "perfect blend" of substances that all replicators use being incredibly valuable (and therefore the sources of them needing protection militarily and politically), and the fact that replicators can make so many different things that PROTECTIONS from their misuse become an issue, including but not limited to copy protection and licensing of different designs/recipes, and also the ability to track replicator use and who makes what and the inherent privacy issues that entails. And that's before you get into the issue of proliferation, the fact that anyone with a replicator can, in theory, replicate another replicator and cascade the process to build up a truly ridiculous manufacturing base in a short amount of time.

Star Trek doesn't treat replicators like they're real things, just magic vending machines that you can punch a button and whatever you wanted happens to come out. From a premise standpoint, that device can be just about anything and still serve the same purpose: it can be a set of elevators connected to the ship's storage bays, it can be wormhole connected to the manufacturing plant, it could be a non-sentient shape-shifting life form that also happens to be very nutritious.

 

[psCargile]

Food? Do what ever it is they do on submarines.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Food? Do what ever it is they do on submarines.

You mean "cook"?

 

[psCargile]

Mind-blowing isn't it.

 

[Go-Captain]

Better yet: (re)introduce the Bussard Collectors as a major plot device. Fix it so that every couple of star systems the ship has to dip through the upper atmosphere of the gas giant or star and skim off the gases to replenish its internal stocks; make it part of standard operations that the fuel labs in engineering have to sort through all the chemicals the scoops are swallowing and see what they can actually make out of the stuff other than, you know, fuel. Add that some star systems and stellar nebula are chock full of good stuff you can use to make sugars and proteins, which makes those areas stellar "Watering holes" where starships from different races are more likely to cross paths; this also gives you a convenient explanation for why there are "neutral zones" between all the warring parties, because some of these watering holes are so popular and so important that hostile action around them would basically suck for everyone.

I once read that Bussard collectors generate too much drag for practical interstellar travel, but within systems they make sense because of higher hydrogen density and lower achievable speeds. I agree that topping off every episode could be interesting as a matter of course. They don't need to focus on it every time, but just making it clear that it is something which has to be done at fixed periods would be interesting.

So, maybe they don't lose fuel while scooting around a system, and can top off that way given a few weeks of constant movement. But, like you wrote, for making big leaps quickly they either dip the whole ship into a gas giant, drop a hose (a little like the Narada's beam structure), or use one or more fuel gathering shuttles, or skim a sun (depending on how extreme the tech is).

If deuterium is that limited, it also means antimatter would be far more limited too. We could probably count on not having an antimatter generator on board, as with the Enterprise-D, so they need a network of fueling stations and the ability to skim naturally occurring antimatter in an efficient way. Fortunately, in real life, gas giants and Earth like planets capture antimatter at their poles and it can be harvested with magnetic traps, so a Bussard collector might work very effectively for that too.

For general resources, tapping an asteroid makes the most sense. The higher density gives the best return on time. The issue would be in a clean system, but they should know that going in.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

So, maybe they don't lose fuel while scooting around a system, and can top off that way given a few weeks of constant movement. But, like you wrote, for making big leaps quickly they either dip the whole ship into a gas giant, drop a hose (a little like the Narada's beam structure), or use one or more fuel gathering shuttles, or skim a sun (depending on how extreme the tech is).

I was kind of thinking of the fuel scoops in Elite Dangerous. A ship with a good enough (meaning "expensive enough") fuel scoop can just hang out in a sun's corona for a few minutes to tank off from that. It's basically a ramscoop operated in a hyper-dense medium and would be more than sufficient (when you get really good at fuel scooping you can travel thousands of light years without ever having to stop for gas).

If deuterium is that limited, it also means antimatter would be far more limited too.

While that's true, there's actually no reason to use deuterium at all. Ordinary hydrogen is plentiful, and the Federation has a sufficient grasp of fusion power that it shouldn't still have to be using neutronic fuel.

For general resources, tapping an asteroid makes the most sense. The higher density gives the best return on time. The issue would be in a clean system, but they should know that going in.

That's true, but for something like a replicator it might actually be more efficient to suck down tons of hydrocarbons and such rather than hydrates and minerals you'd find in asteroids. Aside from (obviously) water ice and ammonia, of course.

 

[B.J.]

But, like you wrote, for making big leaps quickly they either dip the whole ship into a gas giant, drop a hose (a little like the Narada's beam structure), or use one or more fuel gathering shuttles, or skim a sun (depending on how extreme the tech is).

Reminds me of the Destiny in Stargate Universe.

 

[Ithekro]

Perhaps deuterium is better suited for conversion into antimatter and thus used to fuel starships. Maybe they just need the little bit of extra weight to it the neutron provides.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Perhaps deuterium is better suited for conversion into antimatter and thus used to fuel starships. Maybe they just need the little bit of extra weight to it the neutron provides.

Any advantage to the extra mass is more than trumped by the overwhelming scarcity of deuterium in the galaxy. There's just no reason to use an incredibly rare isotope of a common element when the common element works just as well anyway (plus, neutronic fusion reactions produce a lot of neutron radiation, which is very very bad for everything and is hard to contain).

 

[Blip]

I guess the question I have for the OP of this thread....because maybe I'm confused as to the degree transporter tech wouldn't be like the canon tech in their mind...is, If I beam a raw steak from the surface of a planet to an orbiting starship....would it still be the same raw steak on a cellular level? atomic level? there's still the hisenburg uncertainty principal in everything, organic or not. so have they fined tuned it to the point where they can safely beam organic matter but any living matter wouldn't survive the process? like if you beamed me somewhere I'd appear there just as I am now but dead? Just to clarify.

You pretty much nailed it here (apologies for the vastly late reply!) What I'm proposing is essentially what the Trekverse might be like with a touch more realism. If you were to deconstruct my body using a Transporter in the real world, even if you could reassemble a working duplicate of me elsewhere, I as the original living, sentient organism would have already ceased to exist. I'm dead, Jim. Yes, the copy of me might look, sound, and type like me (if it comes out alive!) from your perspective, but from mine, I would quite simply, irrefutably, be dead. What my duplicate then thinks about it all is, to me, a moot point.

This of course, is before I get started on how the hell they expected to beam things into random locations of differing environmental properties, gravity, etc, and yet still expect them to materialise the right way up in the specified location :P

Replicators are just fine - the technology works perfectly with regards the stored patterns of dead/ inanimate objects, and within the confined space of the replicator itself. As mentioned in this thread, this is essentially a vastly futuristic method of synthesizing items - though I anticipate certain materials would be too difficult or even impossible to replicate.

I love some of the other ideas and discussion this has spawned re: refueling, and I'm equally curious as to how everyone thinks these issues would alter the look of this alternate Trekverse.

 

[XCV330]

The first time you're transported, you cease to exist (die, if you will) and are repliced with a near perfect replica. After that you're a copy of a copy of a copy, etc. But if you can't tell, who cares? If the universe is indeed holographic, the Star Trek transporter just plays with the concept and cheats.

Then again, apart from brain cells, how much of ME is the same me as when i was a baby? as when I was 10 years ago? I'm a bunch of extremely complicated chemicals, constantly changing but maintaining a certain form.

The idea of the transporter scanning (and having to break down what it scanned) and buffering and reassembling somewhere else without even a receiver doesn't make any more sense than it did in the 60's, but it's a staple and it saved the budget. Fortunately almost every world Trek ever visited had 1G, survivable temperatures, and breathable air. That's nice.

But rethinking the transporter so it almost sounds quasi-possible, we're left with maybe a device that generates a stable wormhole with a finite range and apparently only the ability to be focused in the location and not the actual time part of spacetime. The warp drive itself does something similar by creating a stable wormhole around the ship during FTL flight, though its called the warp bubble, and it CAN sometimes be used to alter spacetime in more than the spatial directions.

Anyway it would explain why the transporters sends you forward and back with your clothes and items and not butt naked.
"Beam me down to Alpha Centauri A.. also remove 50% of my cellulite. I'm feeling lucky"

 

[bolak]

But rethinking the transporter so it almost sounds quasi-possible, we're left with maybe a device that generates a stable wormhole with a finite range and apparently only the ability to be focused in the location and not the actual time part of spacetime.

That's a brilliant idea. Transporters-as-scanners ( as explained in TNG:TM ) have always bothered me as being too close to magic to sit comfortably in the Trek universe; how could a starship in orbit scan someone at a subatomic level to 100% accuracy? And don't get me started on the Dominion beaming Kira three light years away.

A small workhole sounds more 'realistic'. Perhaps beaming-up would require an apparatus at the landing-site to initiate the reverse. Maybe that's what communicators help to do.

I'd also like to have seen the beamed-object falling a few inches when materialised. How can they always have been placed so precisely on the ground, within nanometres, without actually merging them with the substance?

I'd also dispense with beaming into other ships and structures unless they had a receiving pad ( like in TMP ).