Food replicator produce.

[Crazy Eddie]

Except there's no reason to 'figure' that. If you replicate an orange and someone gets a grapefruit, you got an orange and they got a grapefruit. Replicators don't create foodstuff that looks like food, they create the actual food.

That's highly unlikely.

There's just certain substances that replicators can't (or more likely won't) replicate because the creators of the show realized how that would completely destroy several plot points.

Right. So for consistency's sake, we can figure that the REASON they can't create those substances is the same reason every time. The most likely candidate is that replicators can only reorganize molecules or recombine molecules from substances it already has in stock; the things it can't make are things whose chemical ingredients it doesn't have access to.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

That's highly unlikely.


Right. So for consistency's sake, we can figure that the REASON they can't create those substances is the same reason every time. The most likely candidate is that replicators can only reorganize molecules or recombine molecules from substances it already has in stock; the things it can't make are things whose chemical ingredients it doesn't have access to.

Would that cover items like tools and spare parts when they are needed?

What about that guitar they made in "The Neutral Zone?"

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Would that cover items like tools and spare parts when they are needed?

I'd be amazed if it didn't. Tools and hardware can be designed to make use of the same common materials to streamline a manufacturing process. Food can too, but tools, unlike food, doesn't have to taste like anything so the tolerances are a lot looser.

What about that guitar they made in "The Neutral Zone?"

I figure it's one of the items in the Enterprise Replicator Gift Shop (like the teddy bear and some of the putative wedding presents from "Data's Day.")

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Gift shop? Are you implying you have to buy stuff?

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

That's highly unlikely.

No, it really isn't.

Right. So for consistency's sake, we can figure that the REASON they can't create those substances is the same reason every time. The most likely candidate is that replicators can only reorganize molecules or recombine molecules from substances it already has in stock; the things it can't make are things whose chemical ingredients it doesn't have access to.

That's just patently wrong. Your incorrect beliefs for how replicators work is exactly that: incorrect. Likewise, trying to expand upon it to prove your equally incorrect assumptions about what a replicator can and can't do is meaningless since your fundamental understanding of them is -- wait for it -- incorrect.

Replicators create things from energy on a molecular level. Done.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That's just patently wrong. Your incorrect beliefs for how replicators work is exactly that: incorrect.

That's also highly unlikely, for reasons explained in exhaustive detail elsewhere. Summary of said reasons include:
1) Replicators cannot replicate things that have no security risk, and replicators' security features can EASILY be compromised by someone with the slightest bit of computer savvy
2) It is thermodynamically impossible for a replicator to channel that much energy in a short period of time without killing everyone within several hundred meters of it; the amount of energy used to create something the size of a, say, steak dinner would produce more waste heat than the Nagasaki bombing even at 99% efficiency.
3) Replicator technology cannot be used to power starships or shuttlecraft. This is arguably the most important reason, since the existence of volatile ship-destroying, eternally problematic antimatter aboard starships is a Trek McGuffin that would be totally unnecessary if replicators could actually convert objects into energy.

So to be consistent with the internal logic of Star Trek plus anything resembling the known laws of physics, there are only a few ways replicators could actually work. "Replicators create things from energy on a molecular level" isn't one of them. The only object aboard a starship that can convert matter DIRECTLY into energy is the Warp Core. Replicators can't, so the process is equally unlikely.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

That's also highly unlikely, for reasons explained in exhaustive detail elsewhere.

Again, only because your incorrect assumptions are being expounded upon. Namely by you.

You're wrong. That's not how replicators work. Period. There is no discussion there; you're actually, factually wrong on the subject. It's not subjective.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Again, only because your incorrect assumptions...
[snip]

When you are ready to provide counter arguments based on any logic at all, I'll be over here, sipping my coffee.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

Done. As has been done several other times in this thread and similar ones. You know, actual facts from the show and related products, not some kid's faulty understanding so he can rant on and on and on and on about something he clearly doesn't understand.

A replicator was a device that used transporter technology to dematerialize quantities of matter and then rematerialize that matter in another form. It was also capable of inverting its function, thus disposing of leftovers and dishes and storing the bulk material again.

Hell, the very first sentence of the description of the device, alone, completely destroys your faulty belief.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Done.

The first paragraph of your link says:
"A replicator was a device that used transporter technology to dematerialize quantities of matter and then rematerialize that matter in another form. It was also capable of inverting its function, thus disposing of leftovers and dishes and storing the bulk material again."

Which is exactly what I've been saying from the beginning: replicators cannot convert energy into matter, they use a bulk material to convert one form of matter to another form.

So I agree. You're done.

 

[Ithekro]

There seems to be a failure to communicate.

Basically the argument is that is the matter the ship has in store does not have the required atoms in storage, it cannot produce a product correctly due to a lack of material on the atomic level. If something require a small amount of say Niobium, and the ship doesn't have any, than it can't produce that item correctly. Or due to the use of fusion to build the more complex atom and compounds, the electron ion counts are not perfect (or there is some fundamental subatomic particle missing) that makes some flavors taste off, or some items can't be made correctly.

Or on a slightly different point of view, something like sturgeon eggs. Each one is at tiny bit different that the rest, so it might be that the replicator actually only reproduces one egg a hundred times or so and that makes the flavor seem off for someone like Picard.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

There seems to be a failure to communicate.

Basically the argument is that is the matter the ship has in store does not have the required atoms in storage, it cannot produce a product correctly due to a lack of material on the atomic level. If something require a small amount of say Niobium, and the ship doesn't have any, than it can't produce that item correctly. Or due to the use of fusion to build the more complex atom and compounds, the electron ion counts are not perfect (or there is some fundamental subatomic particle missing) that makes some flavors taste off, or some items can't be made correctly.

Sort of... I'm suggesting that the definition of "molecular resolution" means that the replicator cannot actually create new molecules in its construction process, it can only shift where the molecules are and -- to a degree -- how they are connected to each other.

So a replicator cannot MAKE glucose, but if its bulk material contains glucose it can create a food item that contains glucose.

Put another way: a replicator is basically an incredibly advanced, transporter-based 3D printer. It knows where to put each substance to create a working facsimile of whatever it's trying to make. But the "patterns" they're replicating are much much simpler than they would need to be if the replicator was manufacturing, say, a living being or a functional piece of equipment with all its internal memory intact. That and on a microscopic level, it would be pretty easy to tell that food item wasn't genuine and that the bone, gristle, capialries etc were machined artificially.

Of course, higher quality replications can be done if someone is intentionally forging an item, but even then it's hard to do it convincingly:

For the record, this nicely explains the long list of items that the crew has to manufacture in laboratories or with specialized equipment instead of just playing with molecules in a holographic interface. Other things -- like Worf's new spine -- involve a combination of lab work and replication.

 

[Ithekro]

The interesting question is, what was in the nebula that Voyager was stopping at to gather supplies for as Janeway put it "There is coffee in that nebula"? Just enough building matter so she could have her cup and twenty a day without having to suffer Neelix's interpretation of coffee using local plants and what equates to a used sock as a filter.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The interesting question is, what was in the nebula that Voyager was stopping at to gather supplies for as Janeway put it "There is coffee in that nebula"? Just enough building matter so she could have her cup and twenty a day without having to suffer Neelix's interpretation of coffee using local plants and what equates to a used sock as a filter.

Caffeine, probably. I would not be surprised if the food replicators don't actually warn people if their coffee is decaff or not. If it runs out of caffeine, it'll substitute with something other chemically similar material called "not caffeine."

 

[STR]

You wouldn't have to have a caffeine tank on board a ship to run the replicators. You just need the nitrogen and oxygen required to synthesize caffeine chemically.

I'd agree that replicators cannot and do not turn energy (whatever that is) into matter. The "steak with the power of a nuclear weapon" analogy covered that already. It could build a lot of the chemistry though. 99% of the energy in a steak is the strong force holding the atoms together. Skip that step and you skip most of the problems with instantiating a steak.

You also avoid the caffeine tank problem. There's thousands of different molecules in an organic item. It's not feasible to supply each of them individually. Even a Galaxy class ship lacks that kind of volume. Instead, you'd carry a handful of tanks (say...100 or so) which have both elements (not necessarily in pure form, a water tank does a great job of storing hydrogen and oxygen which are fire hazards when separate) and perhaps a handful of complex but commonly found molecules like the proteins found in a steak and other meats. However, you couldn't store every kind of protein. So a steak might simply be a combination of approximate proteins. It tastes steak-like enough, has similar nutrition, but as a whole simplified and more time and energy efficient to create than the real deal.

Pick the right "supply materials" and you could use chemistry to find the most efficient reactions to get your end product.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You wouldn't have to have a caffeine tank on board a ship to run the replicators. You just need the nitrogen and oxygen required to synthesize caffeine chemically.

Replicators don't seem to be capable of chemical synthesis; we've seen a lot of laboratory setups and some rather elaborate devices being developed that are supposed to be able to do all of that.

You could probably synthesize it from guanine, though, which is a pretty common amino acid (one of the four basic components of DNA). So to the extent replicators are able to chemically alter substances AT ALL, they would be able to pull this off. I just doubt that they can; texture and color are more likely to be the result of clever organization of structures, dyes and substances devised by the best food scientists in the galaxy. It's easier to make something SEEM authentic than it is to make a totally faithful copy of something authentic.

You also avoid the caffeine tank problem. There's thousands of different molecules in an organic item. It's not feasible to supply each of them individually. Even a Galaxy class ship lacks that kind of volume.

Does it? A typical cup of coffee has about 100mg of caffeine. So pure/powedered caffeine (not in solution) could be stored pretty much indefinitely in something the size of a milk carton; just 2kg of the stuff would get you about 20,000 cups of coffee.

If you remove all the things in that steak dinner that aren't made of water, the mass of the thing is ALOT smaller (goes from 400 grams to about 150). Since most of what the replicator would have to add to that steak to make it steak-like is, in fact, water, then most of the inert storage for the replicator system will actually BE water. The other chemical compounds are just vitamins, minerals, amino acids, sugars, proteins, all in ultra-concentrated form. The ship can replenish its water supply from all kinds of places, so the bulk storage of edibles can go A VERY long way.

 

[Idran]

Pick the right "supply materials" and you could use chemistry to find the most efficient reactions to get your end product.

Doesn't the TNGTM even say explicitly that under optimum conditions replicator raw matter is exactly this, some kind of substance that was quantitatively determined to be on average the most efficient base material or something?

 

[STR]

Does it? A typical cup of coffee has about 100mg of caffeine. So pure/powedered caffeine (not in solution) could be stored pretty much indefinitely in something the size of a milk carton; just 2kg of the stuff would get you about 20,000 cups of coffee.

1) 20,000 cups isn't much. Said Galaxy class ship (assuming the original 4-5,000 man crew and not GRs asinine downsizing) would go through about that much in a day. Maybe a shift if everyone was pulling a double. Extrapolate that out to a 5 year deep space mission and you're looking at 4+ metric tons of just caffeine for coffee. Add an additional allowance for chocolate and whatever the hell else uses that chemical.

2) Now multiply that out to every one of the thousands of compounds you'd need to stock for a functional system and the numbers get ridiculous. Millions if you have to replicate non-food items to exacting specifications, which Our Hero's did all the time.

3) The worst part of that system is it's not a closed loop. You do not get caffeine back from a user. You get whatever caffeine metabolizes into...which would vary with species. Now you have to handle THAT along with a rations manifest the size of a novel.

Nobody would design a system like this. The logistics are Goldbergesque. It'd be easier to simply pack dehydrated meals and let everyone deal with Starfleet MRE Spaghetti and Meatballs 6 times a month.

 

[STR]

Doesn't the TNGTM even say explicitly that under optimum conditions replicator raw matter is exactly this, some kind of substance that was quantitatively determined to be on average the most efficient base material or something?

No idea, I don't own any tech manuals, mostly because the shows ignored them as well so it's unreliable. TBH, I'm pretty sure early TNG implied direct conversion of energy into matter, which as has been pointed out, makes each replicator a potential nuclear weapon.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

1) 20,000 cups isn't much. Said Galaxy class ship (assuming the original 4-5,000 man crew and not GRs asinine downsizing) would go through about that much in a day.

1,014 wouldn't, especially if only a third of them even drink coffee (on average, that seems to be the proportion in any large social gathering, using my church group and sporting events as a sample). So call it a seven hundred to a thousand cups a day, give or take, and that'll give you a little less than a month's supply of coffee for that little 2kg container.

To supply, say, a 10-year mission for that thousand-man crew, at that rate of consumption, you would need 366kg of caffeine. Which would basically fill four of these barrels:

Which speaks volumes as to the efficacy of replicators, doesn't it? Because ll the OTHER shit that goes into ten years worth of coffee is equally compact when you reduce it down to base molecules and strip the water from it. And in anhydrous storage, most of it can be vacuum sealed and sterilized so it'll stay good for DECADES, totally inert, until you plug it into the replicator system for use.

And all that is before you consider the advantage of waste collection and recycling. Human waste contains a lot of the same basic molecules as human food; if you have a system for sifting through all of that, separating useful molecules and storing them away, you can stretch that food supply like crazy and only use the inert bulk matter to make up the inevitable losses.

No idea, I don't own any tech manuals

I do, and that's exactly what they say, in almost exactly those terms.

TBH, I'm pretty sure early TNG implied direct conversion of energy into matter, which as has been pointed out, makes each replicator a potential nuclear weapon.

I figure it's kinda like how otherwise perfectly intelligent people keep telling me that CRTs and GPS satellites have to account for relativistic effects in order to work properly. It's a pervasive myth, but it's one that gets a lot of traction because alot more people THINK they know how these things work than actually do.