Intraship Transport

[Thomas Kelvin]

At least prior to the TNG-era, it seems that transporting from one part of the ship to another is not really plausible (and if it is, it's risky).

I feel like a really simple and easy solution to this would be to create s network of signal boosters throughout the ship, kind of like wifi range extenders. Thoughts?

 

[SWHouston]

As I recall, site to site transporting has been done numerous times, and I don't recall anyone stepping in and saying "don't do that" !

 

[Sgt_G]

Because transporters use a *bleep* load of energy. You can't have people beaming back and forth all the time.

 

[Thomas Kelvin]

Site-to-site transport has been done before, but it's never been "I want to get to Ten-Forward before they're out of chalupas".

 

[SWHouston]

I agree that it's energy consuming, and, not for frivolous reasons. But there shouldn't be any reason that it can't be used because it's more dangerous than a distant transfer. Kinda like taking the stairs rather than the elevator approach.

 

[Timo]

We never quite learned why intraship beaming (from pad to ship-internal location) was supposed to be dangerous. You could materialize inside a bulkhead - why? TOS transporters always were accurate down to the millimeter, or else Kirk would have ended up ankle deep in bedrock when beaming down to a planet. Why would starship bulkheads make a difference there?

Is it that TOS transporter beams or the sensors guiding them are somehow hyperopic, incapable of focusing up close? What does that mean in terms of beaming from Kirk's ship to the Romulan battle cruiser right next to her?

I wouldn't sweat energy. Transporters always work just fine in ships suffering from extreme energy shortage (runabouts about to crash, the BoP of ST4:TVH), and can be fired up with a flashlight battery anyway (TNG "The Hunted"). And TNG era people burn energy for sandwiches and napkins, in their replicators; clearly, energy consumption is a bygone concern for starship crews who can tap into the warp core that operates so many orders of magnitude higher that the summit is lost in clouds.

But perhaps starships are deliberately built to be difficult to penetrate by transporter, save for a few allowed pathways into and out of transporter rooms? Internal logistics would then indeed call for some sort of "repeaters" or "waveguides" that could be closed down at the flip of a switch when preparing against intrusion.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SWHouston]

Also, and just in case site to site is of any concern, one could just step into a TerboLift. I've seen those things go every which way besides to another Galaxy.

 

[MacLeod]

Perhaps it's something like sensor resolution. The ship has great sensors for outside the ship, but internal sensors weren't accurate enough. Sure internal sensors could detect life signs, but what about every peice of furniture etc...

 

[psCargile]

From pattern buffer, through waveguide, to another pattern buffer should work fine. There is no technical reason why deck one or two could not have dedicated intraship only pads.

 

[Timo]

Both blueprints and onscreen sets show the E-D littered with transporter pads, with three different types found in cargo holds in addition to the ones seen in dedicated transporter rooms. Dialogue also establishes dozens of transporters aboard. One might speculate that some of these are slaved to the primary ones and by themselves can only do intraship (such as juggling of cargo from hold to hold, or from an outside source via transporter room to hold).

We never saw similar things aboard ENT or TOS era ships. Doesn't mean they didn't already exist. But we did see cargo being explicitly and (for all we could tell) exclusively handled by the transporters in the transporter rooms. What happened to it afterwards? Some was hauled away by hand, but some was simply too big for such. Beamed intraship to eventual destinations? With or without "intraship pads" at the other end? Or merely stevedored around on antigravs, despite the various problems?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

We know that the Transporter operative needed to get a "vault assignment" before dealing with Van Gelder's big box in Dagger Of The Mind. but it is not clear how he intended to move it to the (supposed) cargo bay.
However, earlier in the same episode we see a crewman physically loading some equipment (destined for the self same colony) onto the Transporter platform; this suggests that they were physically manoeuvred from their original storage location, rather than just beamed in from elsewhere in the ship.

 

[Pauln6]

The writers were sloppy because they did not think through opening the Pandora's box. Why is so much stuff being loaded onto the ship manually in TMP? Why can't Starfleet simply beam crew over using their own transporters?

It makes sense to say that warp fields affect the accuracy/capacity of transporters and transporter pads prevent this. Job done.

This has the side effect of making beaming onto your enemy's ship dangerous while their warp engines are active unless you can remote link to their own transporter pad, which should have firewalls and security. This plugs a very obvious hole in Trek story logic (i.e. why don't more enemies just beam troops or bombs onto enemy ships before shields are raised)

So to infiltrate an enemy ship, you would first need to beam over and remote activate portable equipment ahead of your team. Any ship with decent security will have sensors in place to detect such incursions and suddenly infiltrating other ships becomes a lot more interesting! This also prevents those infiltrating from being beamed back out into space or to the brig (Star Trek 2009's Romulans with their superior future tech take note).

This has the further side effect of explaining how people can be beamed up from planets without sender transporter pads: communicators are required. No communicator, no beaming. And we've just closed another obvious hole in Trek story logic. If you want to beam up your enemies who have no communicators, you need to tag them like in ST: Insurrection.

With these simple limitations, a lot of the story abuses or omissions in Trek history could have been mitigated.

 

[Timo]

Why is so much stuff being loaded onto the ship manually in TMP?

Beats me. But:

Why can't Starfleet simply beam crew over using their own transporters?

Whaddaya mean, can't?

That Kirk doesn't beam to the Enterprise is not because he couldn't beam there at all. It's because he couldn't do that with the transporters of his ship, which is why he instead beams to Scotty to complain about it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

The writers were sloppy because they did not think through opening the Pandora's box. Why is so much stuff being loaded onto the ship manually in TMP? Why can't Starfleet simply beam crew over using their own transporters?

It makes sense to say that warp fields affect the accuracy/capacity of transporters and transporter pads prevent this. Job done.

This has the side effect of making beaming onto your enemy's ship dangerous while their warp engines are active unless you can remote link to their own transporter pad, which should have firewalls and security. This plugs a very obvious hole in Trek story logic (i.e. why don't more enemies just beam troops or bombs onto enemy ships before shields are raised)

So to infiltrate an enemy ship, you would first need to beam over and remote activate portable equipment ahead of your team. Any ship with decent security will have sensors in place to detect such incursions and suddenly infiltrating other ships becomes a lot more interesting! This also prevents those infiltrating from being beamed back out into space or to the brig (Star Trek 2009's Romulans with their superior future tech take note).

This has the further side effect of explaining how people can be beamed up from planets without sender transporter pads: communicators are required. No communicator, no beaming. And we've just closed another obvious hole in Trek story logic. If you want to beam up your enemies who have no communicators, you need to tag them like in ST: Insurrection.

With these simple limitations, a lot of the story abuses or omissions in Trek history could have been mitigated.

So much good stuff here. Have to double check, but it certainly seems to cover the lion's share of situations in TOS and movies!

 

[Pauln6]

So much good stuff here. Have to double check, but it certainly seems to cover the lion's share of situations in TOS and movies!

Star Trek Beyond uses a clunky plot device to inhibit transporters which in my view should have been the default all along. If you see the movie, you can get a sense of how keeping a lid on transporter capabilities can add much more drama and tension. Too bad the genie is already out of the bottle.

 

[Timo]

What clunky plot device?

Spoiler

The transporter of the Franklin, a ship resting on a rock ledge amidst mountains, can't beam through the multiple mountains between her and Krall's base. This is consistent with the transporter of an orbiting starship having difficulty penetrating into a cave - it's a line-of-sight machine that can be blocked by a kilometer or so of ordinary rock.

That ships resting on a planetary surface sometimes can beam people around (ST4, "Hippocratic Oath") can always be chalked up to level or high ground.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dilandu]

One possible explanation is, that the sensor relays, used for precise transporting, weren't designed to look INSIDE the ship.

I.e. while outside the ship the area could be analysed accurately enough so nothing may interfer with transpoter beam, inside the ship only the stored data could be used. And what if someone moved the chair onto the position, what was labeled inside the data storage as "free"?

 

[Pauln6]

What clunky plot device?

Spoiler

The transporter of the Franklin, a ship resting on a rock ledge amidst mountains, can't beam through the multiple mountains between her and Krall's base. This is consistent with the transporter of an orbiting starship having difficulty penetrating into a cave - it's a line-of-sight machine that can be blocked by a kilometer or so of ordinary rock.

That ships resting on a planetary surface sometimes can beam people around (ST4, "Hippocratic Oath") can always be chalked up to level or high ground.

Timo Saloniemi

Spoiler

I was referring to the clunky transporter enhancers with the giant buttons that the crew carried with them. Basically, my view is that this is what the communicators (or later bio-belts) should have been used for from the start. So no communicator to act as a localised scanner, no transport. This means you can't just beam your enemies into space unless you tag them first (like Insurrection) and you don't have to think of reasons why the crew didn't just use transporters to solve pretty much most of their problems. The plot device in this movie adds quite a bit of spice but requires a fair bit of contrivance, whereas I think it should be the default - just without the giant button.

 

[fireproof78]

We know that the Transporter operative needed to get a "vault assignment" before dealing with Van Gelder's big box in Dagger Of The Mind. but it is not clear how he intended to move it to the (supposed) cargo bay.
However, earlier in the same episode we see a crewman physically loading some equipment (destined for the self same colony) onto the Transporter platform; this suggests that they were physically manoeuvred from their original storage location, rather than just beamed in from elsewhere in the ship.

Well, they do have anti-gravs that are used to move heavy items. So, if transporters in TOS couldn't transport directly to the cargo bay, then the anti-grav would be used to move large items.

 

[Mytran]

True, but I'd still call the use of antigrav pads "physically manoeuvring" compared to the ease of pushing the "transport" button ;-)