Scrapping starships?
- Thread starter Lyon_Wonder
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For instance, the USS Phoenix: commissioned in 1938, survived Pearl Harbor, sold to Argentina after World War II and renamed General Belgrano, and finally sunk by the British submarine HMS Conquerer during the 1982 Falklands War.
That's so weird that you mention the Phoenix; I was just reading about it yesterday and contemplating the practice of selling-off obsolete warships. It would be very surreal to be fired upon by a ship that formerly belonged to your ally, or even one of your own.
Yeah like someone buying an old Miranda class star ship, giving it a cool paint job and going into business for themselves as a privateer!
You really would love reading up on the Falklands if that gives you a happy!
Apart from anything else BOTH sides used the Type 42 Destroyer!
I wouldn't call it a happy per se, but I actually did do some reading about the Falklands. Very, very strange. While I understand the logistical reasons for selling off obsolete warships, I'm not sold that it's a good idea.
Imagine it on the "Star Trek" scale...
Regarding actual scrapping, I had a thought: I can't help but wonder if materials recycled via replicator retain their original structural integrity after? Imainge, for example, the Enterprise-D's saucer. Masses of tritanium, durianium, pergium, fed into replicators, converted into raw matter, and then reconverted into whatever else. Imagine for example that a piece of tritanium is replicated back into a piece the same size and mass as the original piece. Would it be as "strong" or would their be a loss in molecular cohesion?
Certainly some people seemed to think that replicated food wasn't as good (and true, this may have been psychological only) but what about replicated materials?
For one thing, I doubt it's psychological. Actually it appears to be similar to the difference between ground coffee and instant coffee, though in the latter case it's more likely some kind of resequenced protein concoction that only TASTES like coffee and happens to be caffeinated.
As for recycled materials, I can only say they require a degree of precision that is probably only possible in an industrial replicator.
As for recycled materials, I can only say they require a degree of precision that is probably only possible in an industrial replicator.
I guess it is always possible that replicated metals (ie sent back into replicators and recycled) could have some of the qualities akin to recycled steel. The life span of it may not be the same, tensile strength, etc.
^That's along the lines of what I was wondering.
It does indeed seem like a fair limit that an industrial replicator would be required to get a relatively exact replica that goes beyond the "five senses test"... For example, I bet someone couldn't tell the difference between "real" caviar and caviar from a sufficiently powerful industrial replicator. I just wonder how close the replicated material could get to the "original" material.
Indeed, beyond the materials that we know for sure have to be mined, why not simply feed raw molecules into a replicator for "production" of whatever you want if there isn't some limit?
Come to think of it, perhaps power requirements would be an even more important reason why this wouldn't be done.
It does indeed seem like a fair limit that an industrial replicator would be required to get a relatively exact replica that goes beyond the "five senses test"... For example, I bet someone couldn't tell the difference between "real" caviar and caviar from a sufficiently powerful industrial replicator. I just wonder how close the replicated material could get to the "original" material.
Indeed, beyond the materials that we know for sure have to be mined, why not simply feed raw molecules into a replicator for "production" of whatever you want if there isn't some limit?
Come to think of it, perhaps power requirements would be an even more important reason why this wouldn't be done.
I don't think it has anything to do with power requirements. Actually I'm 100% sure that replicators don't make things from scratch, they're basically modified transporters that rearrange raw materials into new configurations. A food replicator can make caviar, therefore, because it is connected to a source of simple proteins it can reorganize in any configuration it wants (like the protein re-sequencers of the 22nd century). An industrial replicator would be larger but also more precise because of the higher tolerances of the things it has to manufacture; but the replicator cannot make steel, it can only make things out of steel without all that pesky machining and fabricating and smelting and so on. It's a factory in a refrigerator: insert the right ingredients and it'll spit out a shuttlecraft.
Remember that the Maquis had to steal gigantic quantities of selenium to manufacture a biogenic weapon. Eddington had already stolen several industrial replicators, so it stands to reason they needed the materials in order to use the replicators--programmed for the job--to make their weapons. Hell, if you had the schematics and some protomatter you could probably replicate yourself a genesis device, but getting those schematics is the tricky part isn't it?
^ I don't see why. It doesn't seem to take a particularly large amount of power to run a transporter, and in "The Survivors" Picard delivered a portable replicator to the Uxbridges. So it stands to reason their power requirements aren't particularly large, in fact they are necessarily smaller than the power requirements of conventional manufacturing processes, or else replicators would never have been feasible.
We can certainly say that efficiency is a factor, though, since the TOS Enterprise apparently fabricated meals in something akin to an industrial replicator and then turbo-carted them all over the ship. The TMP refit used a kind of closed-circuit transporter system for this purpose, which probably reflects a technological revolution in which matter-energy-matter transport for inter-ship service actually required less energy and/or maintenance than a network of miniature turboshafts. This same technological revolution probably made replicators more efficient overall, which is why by the 24th century the "foodslots" have been replaced with proper replicators that do the assembly work at the output end instead of beaming a finished product to the slot from the machinery belowdecks.
We can certainly say that efficiency is a factor, though, since the TOS Enterprise apparently fabricated meals in something akin to an industrial replicator and then turbo-carted them all over the ship. The TMP refit used a kind of closed-circuit transporter system for this purpose, which probably reflects a technological revolution in which matter-energy-matter transport for inter-ship service actually required less energy and/or maintenance than a network of miniature turboshafts. This same technological revolution probably made replicators more efficient overall, which is why by the 24th century the "foodslots" have been replaced with proper replicators that do the assembly work at the output end instead of beaming a finished product to the slot from the machinery belowdecks.
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