This makes a lot of sense to me in the tos universe
Food Slots
- Thread starter uniderth
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This makes a lot of sense to me in the tos universe
Q
The computer was doing all sorts of strange stuff in that episode, including replacing the scanner scope at Spock's station. It was operating outside the box.
Yes, but what mechanism would allow that to be possible? A replicator or printer probably couldn't create food at that volume and speed and then propel it our of the machine at that rate. a mini turbolift system couldn't cause a continuous stream of food, plates, and cups. Although, depending on how it approaches the access, it could propel the food out.
If every dumbwaiter, or enough of them, serviced that one slot, perhaps they could make a continuous train of full trays coming up from the galley, whose contents are successively whipped out the open slot?
Mirror universe Tribbles are.
Food moving through the mini-turbo lift shaft without the benefit of the mini-turbo lift car.
...Indeed, it might be a bit wasteful to transport trays along with the food. The various food items might arrive at high speed and acceleration inside sabots of some sort and then be artistically plopped in place for the final product. Trays would be provided locally, by a machine that also receives the dirty ones and washes them up for reuse.
The technology might utilize multiple techniques and take all available shortcuts to cope with the requirements: soup would be made locally out of powders delivered at leisure plus water plus heat, simple items such as eggs perhaps assembled in like manner, so that trunk time or bandwidth could be freed for delivering items such as celery or turkeys. Hence a wall-sized machine when mere dumbwaiters today require little or no machinery around them.
How Spock's viewer got smeared is a bit more difficult to explain. Perhaps the computer bribed a yeoman to do it?
Timo Saloniemi
The technology might utilize multiple techniques and take all available shortcuts to cope with the requirements: soup would be made locally out of powders delivered at leisure plus water plus heat, simple items such as eggs perhaps assembled in like manner, so that trunk time or bandwidth could be freed for delivering items such as celery or turkeys. Hence a wall-sized machine when mere dumbwaiters today require little or no machinery around them.
How Spock's viewer got smeared is a bit more difficult to explain. Perhaps the computer bribed a yeoman to do it?
Timo Saloniemi
Exactly the point I was trying to make, thanks!
Its only a brief line TMOST that suggests any different, and as we have seen it is not a very practical scenario.Except that the machine is not wall sized- the food slots are simply embedded in a wall of the room.
Fuzzy land piranhas.
Although I think a printer type device would also need to localized just as a turbolift system. The raw materials would need to be pumped through tubes. Having the raw material just sitting around in a lengthy piping system would probably want to be avoided.
I think this is going to need a much more in-depth analysis to determine just how this fictional future technology actually works.
Maybe the slots are all centered around a galley. But there are actually doors on the back and every time an order is placed a lowly crewman has to quickly prepare the meal and stick it into the slot. Maybe the slots are just futuristic automats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
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I figure half the time we see service personnel(in the jumpsuits) moving containers around, they're carting bulk storage around the ship to the various food slot access points. Admittedly, we don't see that very often, and as we got into the third season, not at all. But it's plausible.
And as far as the food slots merely being embedded in the wall, this is a starship. Do you really think the only thing behind the wall in-universe are the studs the wall surface is attached to? Even it there are only service conduits, they take up space somewhere. Why not the walls where they end up?
And as far as the food slots merely being embedded in the wall, this is a starship. Do you really think the only thing behind the wall in-universe are the studs the wall surface is attached to? Even it there are only service conduits, they take up space somewhere. Why not the walls where they end up?
If the food system is automated, it does seem strange that in Charlie X that there is a chef in charge of the galley. Kirk moans about having to eat meatloaf for Thanksgiving, before Chef calls up to the bridge that Charlie has turned the meatloaf into live turkeys.
He didn't say they were live turkeys. He said there were real turkeys in the ovens.
Instead of tribbles on Kirk's tray, there would've been feathers everywhere and gobble-gobble-gobble!
I don't have a problem with there being a ship's galley, but it does seem at odds with random food slot orders being filled in less than five seconds. I do not see why a starship the size of Kirk's Enterprise can't have both an active galley and the pipeline-fed 3D organic printer mechanism, both connected to the network of food slots throughout the ship.
I don't have a problem with there being a ship's galley, but it does seem at odds with random food slot orders being filled in less than five seconds. I do not see why a starship the size of Kirk's Enterprise can't have both an active galley and the pipeline-fed 3D organic printer mechanism, both connected to the network of food slots throughout the ship.
A few of the larger sites that I have worked at had both a central cafeteria and vending machines located at various locations, so this makes sense.
THAT'S IT! The food slots are vending machines with potential orders all arranged above the door. When someone inserts a card the correct order is plopped down onto the tray. This explains the TAS scene. The computer simply released the mechanism holding all the food items there.
Actually, I'd hate to be the guy who orders bananas two weeks after they were put in there.
Anything held above, below, behind or otherwise around the food slots is probably in some kind of stasis field, if it is whole, and is kept in a vacuum or similar state if it is ingredients. The idea that the food slots are rudimentary, first or second generation attempts at replication using a technology other than the transporter is not a bad one. And it makes more sense than the 'automat' idea.
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