Something I've never really understood, if a site to site transport can be done what do they need the transporter pad for? Is it less reliable without the transporter pad?
Site to site transport
- Thread starter Sophie74656
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Generally better to have a pad I would think. Controlling things on both ends seems more reliable. Any time they beam onto a Fed space station or star base, there are pads at both ends. Considering that a beaming can take place with subjects not coming into contact with any pad at all, such as all the PotA mob bosses, they must not be absolutely necessary but helpful.
I've thought that it might be more interesting plot device if a transporter pad is needed in one end of the transport cycle, either end will do... but site-to-site transport somehow doesn't make sense.
Well they often do only have a pad on one end. Any time they beam to some planet they don't have a pad when they materialize there, and then they can beam out without the pad as well.
Given site-to-site beaming is supposed to be so risky, I never got why sickbays never had their own emergency transporter.
Because, drama, bro.
Still, you'd think installing a transporter would be less trouble than say, a hologrid.
Beverly had one installed, but Pulaski ripped it out when she took over.
It's not unreasonable to assume there are medical facilities located close enough to the transporter room that it shouldn't make a difference.
Also, I don't recall site to site being described as "risky" by the time of TNG. They beam a critically-injured Picard directly onto a biobed in "Tapestry".
Also, I don't recall site to site being described as "risky" by the time of TNG. They beam a critically-injured Picard directly onto a biobed in "Tapestry".
It's like hitting a bullet with a smaller bullet, while wearing a blindfold, while riding a horse.
For those who didn't click the Memory Alpha link, here's an important distinction:
1) Site-to-site means there's no transporter room at either end. Rather, our hero disappears at random spot A and appears again at random spot B, thanks to a machine situated at some separate point C entirely.
2) Having a transporter room at one end is the normal way to go. It's not called site-to-site.
Another distinction worth making:
1) The transporter is always involved in a transport.
2) The transporter room is seldom involved in a transport. That is, in site-to-site, it's not used at all, and in normal transport, the room is only involved at one end.
Considering both distinctions, we can't really know that Starfleet would ever use two transporters, one at A and another at B. For all we know, they only use two transporter rooms, one at A and another at B, and the actual transporter doing all the work is either at A or B, or possibly even at C.
It's just that transporter rooms are so darn convenient for embarking and disembarking a starship or a space station. They have confinement fields and scanners and other useful quarantine mechanisms, they have lockers for gear, they are no doubt optimally situated vis-á-vis what people will need just after arrival or just before departing. Probably beaming directly to K-7 Manager Lurry's comfy chair is considered so rude that Lurry's security systems are set to vaporize anybody attempting that, so Kirk and Spock beam to Lurry's transporter alcove instead, even though only using the transporter of the Enterprise for the task.
As for what happens in ST:TMP, well, there's explicit conflict over who does what there. The rest is speculation. The machine on the ship is broken, but we have every reason to think this is the machine doing the work anyway: things do go wrong. They wouldn't if the Starfleet HQ machine were doing the work. And Sdtarfleet wouldn't send people to the ship using just their own HQ machine now, when they didn't do it before (say, when Kirk wanted to get up there)...
Timo Saloniemi
1) Site-to-site means there's no transporter room at either end. Rather, our hero disappears at random spot A and appears again at random spot B, thanks to a machine situated at some separate point C entirely.
2) Having a transporter room at one end is the normal way to go. It's not called site-to-site.
Another distinction worth making:
1) The transporter is always involved in a transport.
2) The transporter room is seldom involved in a transport. That is, in site-to-site, it's not used at all, and in normal transport, the room is only involved at one end.
Considering both distinctions, we can't really know that Starfleet would ever use two transporters, one at A and another at B. For all we know, they only use two transporter rooms, one at A and another at B, and the actual transporter doing all the work is either at A or B, or possibly even at C.
It's just that transporter rooms are so darn convenient for embarking and disembarking a starship or a space station. They have confinement fields and scanners and other useful quarantine mechanisms, they have lockers for gear, they are no doubt optimally situated vis-á-vis what people will need just after arrival or just before departing. Probably beaming directly to K-7 Manager Lurry's comfy chair is considered so rude that Lurry's security systems are set to vaporize anybody attempting that, so Kirk and Spock beam to Lurry's transporter alcove instead, even though only using the transporter of the Enterprise for the task.
As for what happens in ST:TMP, well, there's explicit conflict over who does what there. The rest is speculation. The machine on the ship is broken, but we have every reason to think this is the machine doing the work anyway: things do go wrong. They wouldn't if the Starfleet HQ machine were doing the work. And Sdtarfleet wouldn't send people to the ship using just their own HQ machine now, when they didn't do it before (say, when Kirk wanted to get up there)...
Timo Saloniemi
Technically, it's actually site-to-site-thru-site (the transporter itself).
It's also nice to have transporter access regulated and not there for anybody to use whenever they want. Aside from it being a personnel nightmare, it can be dangerous.
Considering how many times we saw people override commands to do this and that, it's nice to know that some bad guy or general person with nefarious intent, can't utilize site-to-site transports as needed. They have to go a transporter room, where (as we've heard) a log is kept of who used it and when.
Now, that said, apparently all you have to do is walk in, back-hand O'Brien -- who is unarmed, and bingo-bango -- you got transporter access.
Considering how many times we saw people override commands to do this and that, it's nice to know that some bad guy or general person with nefarious intent, can't utilize site-to-site transports as needed. They have to go a transporter room, where (as we've heard) a log is kept of who used it and when.
Now, that said, apparently all you have to do is walk in, back-hand O'Brien -- who is unarmed, and bingo-bango -- you got transporter access.
Why wouldn't a log be kept of site-to-site requests, too? Tapping your commbadge or walking past O'Brien might both involve sufficient identity checks to make unauthorized use unlikely.
OTOH, most transporter misuse is by authorized people - and in those cases, having a live watchdog becomes a liability. O'Brien is less likely to know that Riker has been temporarily banned from beaming down than a fully automated system would be, and more likely to let him do it by default. Or be talked into letting him do it.
The other side of that bitcoin is that authorized people are more likely to be capable of circumventing security measures than unauthorized people. It takes extraordinary steps to stop somebody fairly insignificant like Jonas in VOY from forging the logs; it's apparently impossible to stop Jim Kirk from forging his, or having them forged for her by Spock or the Records Officer.
Timo Saloniemi
OTOH, most transporter misuse is by authorized people - and in those cases, having a live watchdog becomes a liability. O'Brien is less likely to know that Riker has been temporarily banned from beaming down than a fully automated system would be, and more likely to let him do it by default. Or be talked into letting him do it.
The other side of that bitcoin is that authorized people are more likely to be capable of circumventing security measures than unauthorized people. It takes extraordinary steps to stop somebody fairly insignificant like Jonas in VOY from forging the logs; it's apparently impossible to stop Jim Kirk from forging his, or having them forged for her by Spock or the Records Officer.
Timo Saloniemi
Perhaps I could still 'buy' a transport from transporter room A to transporter room B (hence, with transporter facilities on both sides). But a one-sided transport (with a transporter room on one side but not on the other) and a site-to-site transport equally strain credibility to me (how is that transporter supposed to remotely scan and dis/reassemble all these molecules with incredible precision over hundreds of thousands of kilometers? Unless of course there wouldn't be any disassembly at all, but I think that would be in contrast with some TNG dialogue).
But hey, it's established they can in countless episodes, hence I have to simply accept that.
But hey, it's established they can in countless episodes, hence I have to simply accept that.
I'm quite willing to believe that a machine can take me, push me into some sort of an alternate "phased" realm, then further push me into the direction of that building there, and then I'll float thataway through walls (goes with being "phased") till I bob back to the surface, so to say. No need for a machine at the "receiving" end, just a certain impermanence to the phasing effect.
It's more difficult to see how the reverse process would work. But it could be some sort of a cheat - the same as above but with time reversed because being "phased" allows for that sort of flipping, or whatnot.
I have a difficult time believing that scanning and disassembly would be involved, even after hearing all the dialogue. But perhaps scanning adds something to the experience, even if it's actually based on "phasing"?
Timo Saloniemi
It's more difficult to see how the reverse process would work. But it could be some sort of a cheat - the same as above but with time reversed because being "phased" allows for that sort of flipping, or whatnot.
I have a difficult time believing that scanning and disassembly would be involved, even after hearing all the dialogue. But perhaps scanning adds something to the experience, even if it's actually based on "phasing"?
Timo Saloniemi
The accident in Star Trek: The Motion Picture does present a problem. A couple of people (one the new Vulcan science officer and the other Kirk's main squeeze at the time, IIRC, not that his reaction really showed that) were beaming on board the Enterprise when an accident or circuit blow out or some such on the Enterprise caused a problem with the Enterprise's transporter, and Rand couldn't fix it, so Kirk took over and asked the starbase to boost THEIR signal.
I always thought it was weird since you shouldn't need more than one transporter, and if you have two, maybe as a back up or safety reason, even an error in one shouldn't kill like that as the second transporter could take over and could complete a normal pad-to-site transport, or site-to-pad transport.
I can only surmise the Enterprise's transporters were being used, and after the accident, by the time the starbase's transporter tried to take over, the signal had degraded too much, and Kirk only suggested they boost their signal on what they grabbed and were trying to rematerialize since his transporters were broken and incapable of doing that themselves.
But honestly, one, there was little reason to justify going on board via shuttle in the first place even if the ship's transporters weren't working yet since the starbase's would have been. It's just an excuse to have a good, long, slow look at the ship in stages of revelation. And two, if you have a redundant transporter, that should add an extra safety factor, but they needed to kill the new Vulcan for Decker to take up the slack and later to make room for Spock. So it's weird probably since they were less than well-written plot devices to cause problems that had pre-intended solutions, and it shows.
I would normally assume site-to-site is either more costly (in energy) or more dangerous, not so much in the odds are lower you will get there if the system works as it should, but if the system doesn't work or malfunctions, then the odds go way down that they can correct the problem before your signal is too degraded.
So, there must have been a reason why the starbase's transporters were off-line, or weren't working when Kirk came on board the big E. It's possible certain pieces of equipment that were being used to build/refit/repair the ship might interfere with transporters beams, so for a time, no transporter use was authorized, thus Kirk had to shuttle over. And two, the starbase's transporters were still offline since unlike the Enterprise, they didn't get the all clear that equipment had finished its job and was put away, so the rush job to bring it back on-line and lock onto the degrading signal failed and they couldn't boost it or clean it up enough, so whatever they got back didn't live very long – fortunately.
