Food Slots

[uniderth]

Theories have been proposed about what the food slots are. The one's I've heard are that they are replicators, or they are an elevator system linked to the galley.

I wonder if they could be better represented as an advanced 3D food printer.

I suppose that's what I like about the way technology is represented in the Star Trek series. It's not represented to too much detail.

Fifteen years ago no one would have thought that the food slots could have been 3D printers. Yet today we can propose that very sort of thing. Rather than a system of elevators, those food slots could be an advanced form of present day technology. It can still be seen as futuristic.

Granted, we still are left with the clickety-clack computer access. But hey, you can't win 'em all.

 

[robau]

It's people.

 

[Captain Rob]

The food slots are lifts tied directly to the galley. That's what TMoST says and that's the only reasonable and timely explanation that accounts for the tribbles in Kirk's coffee.
I think that the galley was located in the center of the ship probably below Sickbay and that the locations of the food slots were in the central areas of each deck. Such as the transporters and the mess areas. There would be a separate galley for the engineering section.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I love how it was never explained in TOS, it was just a magical future technology.

That said, I assume in retrospect that they're early replicators.

 

[SchwEnt]

I'd like to think they were small conveyors coming from a galley. But we've seen the slots go from empty to full in four seconds or less. I don't see how a tray of food and utensils could be physically arranged at one location and then conveyed to a designated food slot in that span of time. Unless we assume some artistic license and it wasn't literally a couple seconds but rather a minute or so.

Perhaps it is some form of early replicator.
It would fit in-between ENT's protein re-sequencers and TNG's replicators.

 

[Mytran]

We only saw the food slots used a few times and there's no reason to think that the Rec Rooms featured weren't situated directly above the food preparation facilities. I expect that most of the preparation work (laying cutlery with the plate and napkin on the tray etc) was done in advance by automation, so only the actual depositing of the diner's choice needed to be done at short notice.

The one in the Transporter Room (seen first in TIS and then destroyed by Spock in TSOP) was probably just installed by a bored engineer who got fed up of queuing for his lunch round the corner and took advantage of the close proximity of the galley below. I imagine the area was later repurposed into the scanner station we saw regularly in Season Two.

 

[Kor]

I think the word is "dumbwaiters." At least, when they are in a house.

Kor

 

[uniderth]

Imagine your soup zipping through the mini elevator system and sloshing everywhere. Or your ice cream falling out of the cup as it whooshes through the system.

Having the food made there in the slot seems a lot more practical (and logical) than sending it careening through an elevator system. It is generally agreed that replicator technology on that small of a scale was not practical either during this time frame. That leaves some sort of physical construction device such as a 3D printer or something similar.

 

[T'Girl]

But we've seen the slots go from empty to full in four seconds or less.

Perhaps it is some form of early replicator.

It took the replicator more than four seconds to do it's deed.

Imagine your soup zipping through the mini elevator system and sloshing everywhere..

Artifical gravity and inertial dampening. The mini-turbo lifts could (maybe) move faster than the big ones carrying people.

The big turbo lifts had to allow people to move about, the mini's inertial dampening system would be allowed to hold objects completely still, and they could move at hundreds of gees.

 

[Mytran]

Yep, the tray and food would have to be either frozen solid or (for a more sci-fi feel) encased in a stasis field.

Actually this idea doesn't come out of nowhere - the crew are forever munching sticks of celery or having fresh, green leaves adorn their plates. While there is talk in TMOST about refrigeration facilities on board, this only extends the life of fresh fruit & veg by a matter of days. What you need is something that could (potentially) last for years. Voila - the stasis field. It was mentioned by Dr Crusher in TNG as a common medical technology, and the concept gets a mention in 3 TAS episodes (Bem, Slaver Weapon, More Tribble More Troubles). A stasis chamber also appears in Mr Scott's Guide To The Enterprise, again for medical purposes (even if non canonical, it shows that the idea was still floating around then)

But what about TOS? Naturally the crew don't talk about how the food is made (its everyday technology to them) but I do believe we get to see the stasis field in action, after a fashion:

In The Naked Time we get a good close-up of the food slot in action and the tray arrives with a cloud of steam gusting out of the top of the chamber (you can just see it on the top left here). It can't be steam from the (hot) food because the plate is covered with a lid, so where does it come from?

Why's its the remnants of the stasis field of course!

So, food is taken from long term storage (or stasis if fresh), prepared into a dish in the galley, loaded into the delivery system and kept in stasis until called for by the crew upstairs. simple!

 

[Kor]

^ Or hydroponics bays for growing "ve-ge-ta-bles," as Kor would say. The ship has an arboretum with real plants (or was that in one of the novels?), so I think that would be reasonable.

Kor

 

[Mytran]

Possible (especially for speciality food) but then you would need crew to grow, tend, harvest etc. A starship ought to be a bit more efficient in my mind, hence things like antimatter, replicators etc - more energy intensive to produce at first, but take up less space once on board ship.

 

[Melakon]

Behind the back wall of each food synthesizer unit was a team of hard working Keebler Elves.

 

[GSchnitzer]

For what it's worth, we learn a bit more about these food selectors/synthesizers in the book The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry:

"The primary hull’s eighth deck level contains four major facilities: a large recreation area, the main food preparation area (similar to the galley aboard our ships today), ship’s laundry, and a rather exotic entertainment center….From the central food preparation area, the [food] selection is transferred via a small turbo lift that connects the several dining and recreation areas scattered throughout the ship."

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's hard to imagine how tribbles could appear in the food were the flood slots replicators.

 

[22 Stars]

The food could have materialized, and simply programmed not to override any organic matter in the slot by accident, like a hand or in this case a tribble.

 

[Shawnster]

I'm liking the idea of 3D printers a lot better than the mini-turbo lift concept. I think it's much more plausible and practical to have the raw materials stored in tanks that feed to the food slots.

Still doesn't get around the fact that the E had a galley with chefs. Synthetic turkey, but chefs nonetheless. Maybe the food slots were limited in what they could produce (like your vending machine only serves what is inside it) and the galley served other or larger meals.

Soup and sandwich or ice cream is no problem for a food slot. For a full turkey dinner with the trimmings, you gotta go to the galley.

 

[Mytran]

But the tribbles were in the coffee cup and all over the plate - I doubt they were hovering in mid air, awaiting the tray!

A mechanical delivery system requires much less in the way of complex explanations, IMO.

 

[Wingsley]

Nothing about TOS food slots made any sense.

In "Tomorrow is Yesterday", Kyle uses a slot in the Transporter Room to retrieve some chicken soup for the Air Force security guard. In "And the Children Shall Lead", we see Nurse Chapel help the kids retrieve ice cream sundaes from the food slots in the crew lounge / commissary / rec room / chapel. And in "The Trouble with Tribbles", Kirk tries to get a chicken sandwich and coffee for lunch and instead gets tribbles. Each time we see the slots used, the user programs in his/her meal by using one of those uber-SD cards (or micro-tapes, or diskettes; whatever) and the little door opens and there's the order, all in less than five or six seconds. Even if high-speed robots were involved, there's no way food could be prepared and delivered across multiple decks in just a few seconds.

I like the idea of a 3D printer / proto-replicator. Perhaps, to reconcile the notion of 3D printing to what was said in the Whitfield book, the "galley" is an automated center that supplies organic compounds under pressure through supply lines to food slots throughout the ship. The compounds are probably raw food materials kept in liquid form so they can be conveyed through the pipes. The pipes form a network of high-pressure supply lines to each food slot. The slots are plugged into the supply lines, the lines supply the "ink" for the 3D printing, converting the raw organic fluids to digestible substances that the user will touch, smell, and taste as recognizable foods (bread, broth, meat, beverages). So each food slot is itself a "kitchen in a box" with the raw material ("3D ink") supplied from the robo-galley through the pipelines.

Since we've seen numerous examples of starships loosing their equilibrium and causing the artificial gravity to go off-kilter (the ship listing during a collision or other disturbance), this seems to be the only way the keep the food from jamming up a network of nonsensical dumb-waiter micro-turbolifts.

 

[Mytran]

Coloured cubes, soup, sandwich, ice cream. We've no way of knowing just how much choice there is with TOS' food slots - it may not be that varied, limited to perhaps 20 standard options (and Chapel lied to the kids). As such, it would be feasible for automated systems to advance prepare the meals in advance and hold them in stasis until such time as called for.