Replicated Dishes, etc.

[Admiral_Young]

I suppose this is the best place to ask this question...something I've always wondered is, where in the future do people place their dirty dishes? Do they have some kind of dispenser thing? Do they put it back in the replicator and it beams it away or something?

 

[Timo]

IIRC, in DS9, we actually had some dialogue about the futuristic household chore of "putting the dishes back in the replicator"... Now which episode was that? Probably something related to the O'Brien kids (own, borrowed) growing up.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[sbk1234]

I imagine if the dishes aren't completely reduced to energy storage, they could at least use the replicator's transporter technology to beam away anything that isn't the actual dish, making it completely clean. I wouldn't mind having one of those for my kitchen. or bathroom for that matter.

 

[Deks]

I suppose this is the best place to ask this question...something I've always wondered is, where in the future do people place their dirty dishes? Do they have some kind of dispenser thing? Do they put it back in the replicator and it beams it away or something?

Dishes and virtually all kinds of material aspects are recycled into energy.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ I get that but my question was how? They simply just put the object back onto the replicator pad and give a command to the computer to dispose of it? I'm sure that civilian homes would have something akin to a dish washer. Picard's family home i'm sure Maire washed dishes and what and Robert and Rene were told to do the same.

 

[Timo]

But the Picards were characterized as Luddites of some sort - apparently, they didn't even have a replicator in the house.

Aboard a starship, "recycling" of dishes and utensils would seem rather pennywise. The holodecks supposedly constantly create and uncreate matter for entertainment purposes; while the system may be optimized to recover some of the energy, it would appear that replication is not a significant concern in the energy budget of a starship. And probably rightly so, as one would imagine the warp drive to consume several orders of magnitude more.

Dishes are probably "recycled" merely for the sake of convenience, to get rid of them; recovery of energy or raw materials wouldn't be of major interest. The same probably goes for DS9, and one would imagine UFP cities, towns and villages to have similar power reserves in general.

We have seen a "standalone" household replicator, in TNG "Survivors", but we don't know what sort of a power system it hooked on to. The Uxbridge household might well have been expected to have a high output fusion reactor in the basement, or perhaps next to the fridge in the kitchen. Or perhaps the power source was built into that dishwasher-sized machine? Doesn't look or sound like a major investment, at any rate.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral_Young]

Also the Enterprise-A had a galley and dining room along with early replicator technology...I suppose the closest we got to that on TNG was Ten Forward which was undoubtedly the officers mess that Guinan transformed and made more a laid back lounge.

 

[Timo]

Dunno about "officers' mess": the facility occupied but a tiny part of the saucer rim, and could simply have been one space among dozens that was reserved from the very start for commercial enterprises such as Guinan's bar. When the facility appears in the second season, our heroes treat it more or less like a new business opening, not as if an earlier non-business facility had been converted.

In the "Yesterday's Enterprise" universe, the facility serves all sorts of personnel, too. Perhaps it would have been a longstanding Starfleet policy to outsource part of the food/entertainment business to commercial operators, so that even a "serious warship" would have these cafeterias in addition to whatever standard feeding facilities the ship sported - a policy that would be in force in both timelines, by the sheer weight of historical precedent.

Also, I wonder about replicators on the E-A. Janeway in "Flashback" explicitly associates the era of ST6 with the lack of replicators. Granted that Kirk has a cabinet in his quarters that looks like a 24th century replicator - but it could simply be that 24th century replicators were shaped like late 23rd century cabinets as a fashion statement. Much like one might build an oven today that resembles a 19th century wood-burning stove in design, just for the heck of it. Indeed, much of the E-D interior design could be severely retro from the 24th century viewpoint, in order to keep the personnel happy; the utilitarian look of the day might be quite different, and seldom seen because the camera only visited the more luxurious Starfleet installations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral_Young]

The galley of course was included because Nicolas Myer was fully aware of the replicator technology (or what was used for it in TOS and on Next Gen) he just wanted to see the crew eating real food. He also states in the audio commentary that he did think the Enterprise-A had replicators and would use them to replicate mass quantities of food the galley was prepping. I'm not relating what he said in the commentary but he did think they used the replicators on the ship but served the food like we would in our time.

 

[Timo]

It sounds plausible that the ship in the TOS movies would have something similar to what she had in TOS: a dedicated galley responsible for making the food, and also tasked with making it more appetizing on special occasions ("Charlie X" and ST6 both feature this), yet also possessing the means to provide quick'n'dirty meals directly to the mess halls via impersonal food dispenser (and preparation?) machines.

Whether the food production or food distribution technology in the TOS movies was more advanced than in TOS, we don't know. What we do know is that it didn't yet amount to replication, not if we believe Janeway and all those who failed to contradict her in "Flashback". It was no doubt vastly more advanced than today's technologies, though. And probably also vastly more advanced than what they had in ENT...

It's easy to believe in Shane Johnson's (and others') speculation that the movie era food dispensers featured transporter technology to some degree - even if only in the delivery role, not in the preparation role. That would nicely account for the machine in Kirk's quarters that admittedly did have what looked like a transporter pad (with dishes suggestively piled on it to indicate a food-related function). Closed-circuit transporters delivering the food prepared by the galley and its centralized machines would be a natural technology for the 2270s-90s - and probably also for the TOS era, come to think of it.

In contrast, the idea that the TOS dispensers relied on mechanical dumbwaiter tech, on small corridors snaking through the ship to deliver the meals from a central location, doesn't smack true at all. Such pipe mazes would waste gigantic amounts of useful space; if they were the best they could have, then the mess halls should simply have been clustered directly around the food preparation facilities. Yet we saw detached dispensers such as in one of the transporter rooms. There's no reason TOS couldn't have had closed-circuit transporters already...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Do they put it back in the replicator and it beams it away or something?

Dishes and virtually all kinds of material aspects are recycled into energy.

It might make more sense that dishes and glasses and utensiles are recycled and stored as base materials, so that every time you need a saucer or a fork the replicator isn't having to make one completely from scratch. Also in term of recycling, there probably is a recycle intake located below every toilet.

In contrast, the idea that the TOS dispensers relied on mechanical dumbwaiter tech, on small corridors snaking through the ship to deliver the meals from a central location, doesn't smack true at all.

Problem is the dumbwaiter network would likely consume less room aboard the Enterprise than the alternative. The transporter seems to be a fairly bulky piece of equipment, even allowing for the food transporters being smaller, you're talking about having several dozen, if not a few hundred scattered around the ship. And the transporters are (let's be honest) notoriously cranky.

 

[Timo]

But the transporters would only take up as much room as the machinery on the spot does - and we already see these wall-sized slot machines there. The dumbwaiter network would require the space of the terminals, plus the space of the piping, and the latter would be the big problem.

And so what if the transporter is a bit cranky in moving your sandwich? The thing will probably still be edible even if it's split into good and evil halves... And you can always eat just the good one (I know I do, often enough!).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS Jack Riley]

With regard to the galley seen in ST VI, why can't it be for those who like to prepare their own food rather than for preparation of the food for the entire ship. It looked to small to fill the function of servicing the ship (although we didn't get to see the entire set). Perhaps it was used for the Klingon reception and was in the middle of preparing for another dinner "party" later in the voyage.

YMMV

 

[T'Girl]

But the transporters would only take up as much room as the machinery on the spot does - and we already see these wall-sized slot machines there. The dumbwaiter network would require the space of the terminals, plus the space of the piping, and the latter would be the big problem.

But the point of delivery for a dumbwaiter would be simply the end of the shaft, each and every transporter point of delivery would require a full up transporter the size of what? A couple of modern refrigerators? The dumbwaiter system wouldn't have to go everywhere on the ship, just took a look at my (non-canon) FJ blueprints, the delivery system might just service the "core area" of the saucer section and not the out laying part of decks six and seven (just a few lounges anyway), nor the bridge or the lower cargo decks. A relatively small area. A similar arrangement in the engineering hull, limited service area.

 

[Mytran]

From what I recall, we've seen "food slots" in the standard Rec Rooms (numerous episodes, such as Naked Time), the Arboretum Rec Room (And the Children Shall Lead) and the Transporter Room (Tomorrow is Yesterday).

As T'Girl has said, there's nothing to say that any of these rooms weren't immediately adjacent to (either vertically or horizontally) the food preparation room. FJ's notion of mini-dumbwaiters snaking through the ship is now quite unnecessary. Any food slots in the Secondary Hull can be managed by a second food prep room (which would also be essential in the event of saucer separation!)

The only thing that points to something other than a simple human operated galley and dumbwaiter system is the speed of the service. In Naked Time, Tormolen puts the food card in and has his plate of steaming food within 3 seconds, barely enough time for the plate to be put onto the tray! Clearly there must be some sort of mechanical aid in operation. Bearing in mind all the problems with TOS era personnel transporters, perhaps the food slots use a cruder but more reliable type for non-living subjects? This would jive with McCoy's line in Arena about "reconstituted meals", because clearly they don't taste right!

Finally, Kirk's cabin was also seen to have a food slot in Mirror, Mirror (and remained afterwards), although it was smaller and only ever dispensed drinks (and then only once) so I don't count that in the same category - it's probably just a 23rd century drinks cabinet

 

[Santaman]

There always is a significant amount of dirty dishes around to be cleaned by cadets who manage to piss off their commanding officer...

 

[Admiral_Young]

Again though how would one go about dispensing of a glass or a plate after finishing drinking or eating. The thing that triggered this thought in the first place was I was watching the episode where Barcley has transporter phobia and sees the crewmembers as energy creatures. He orders himself a glass of water and then places it down on the table before walking away. Now obviously we never see what happens to these dishes after a crew member uses them. At the risk of repeating myself do they just bring it over to the replicator and say "Computer recycle" and the thing vanishes and is recycled into matter via the transporter component of the device? I'm for some reason insanely curious about this. Sorry guys and gals

 

[T'Girl]

"Computer recycle"

Regardless of what the replicator does with them, yes the replicator alcove would take away the dirty dishes.

 

[seekertwo]

TOS: Food is replicated at central point and distributed via "dumbwaiter turbolifts" to location.

ST6: Same thing, but galley maintained for special events and/or special dietary requirements that the replicator can't do.

TNG: Self-contained replicators in different locations replace centralized replicator. Raw material piped to replicator location and created on-site. Galley/banquet hall still maintained for special occasions (remember Troi's arranged marriage dinner?)

Plates & cups: Made of same raw material as food and recycled. Someone's cereal bowl gets recycled into someone else's sandwich....

How's that?...

 

[USS Jack Riley]

^Why a dumbwaiter system? Why can't it be a transporter, but the door is there for the protection of the person ordering the food (e.g., some kind of radiation that does not affect the food, since it isn't there yet, but is there while the transporter is spooling up to receive the food).

By the time we get to TNG, that problem is either solved, or there is a weak forcefield that pops up that we can't see ('cause it's a forcefield ) and when the transporter finishes, the forcefield drops as the person ordering the food reaches in and grabs it.

Both units are about the same size and could be considered the same, but for the door.

As for the tribbles that get stuck, they are now highly mutated and now require 2 sexes to replicate.