Transporter as a fuel source?

[Pauln6]

I think that there is a lot of hydrogen is space and I think that on Earth, for every 6400 (or is is 64000?) hydrogen molecules we have 1 deuterium molecule. Having said that, compared to the size of space, hydrogen is still too thinly spread for the boussard collectors to take in much deuterium unless they're in a concentrated area.

I like the idea that ships have an on board process for creating anti-deuterium (presumably in the high energy physics lab) but I suspect it must be quite energy intensive. You would not want to waste a significant part of the energy you are creating on the creation process itself as standard practice, especially if it can be carried out more efficiently at an appropriate industrial facility. Presumably the disaster on Praxis involved an anti-matter leak in an energy production facility, so we do know that such facilities exist.

Replicators don't make that much sense to me overall. The templates for any objects must be stored in the database but if they can create a glass of water I can't see why they can't create hydrogen (which is a simpler molecule) and if they can make hydrogen, I can't see why they can't make deuterium. I preferred the simplicity of the protein synthesisers in TOS, which were more like chemical mixers.

 

[Christopher]

I think that there is a lot of hydrogen is space and I think that on Earth, for every 6400 (or is is 64000?) hydrogen molecules we have 1 deuterium molecule. Having said that, compared to the size of space, hydrogen is still too thinly spread for the boussard collectors to take in much deuterium unless they're in a concentrated area.

Easy enough to harvest it from the atmosphere of a Jovian planet, from the stellar wind of a star, from one of those absurdly dense nebulae they have all over the Trek universe, etc. Or, for that matter, to mine it from any of the millions of icy asteroids, comets, and moons you can find in the outer portions of a star system. Or to filter it from the oceans of a water world, which is how we get it here on Earth. Really, there are countless possibilities.

Presumably the disaster on Praxis involved an anti-matter leak in an energy production facility...

Not likely. If antimatter leaked, it would be uncontained, meaning that if it began to react with matter, the reactants would be free to get blown apart by the energy of the reaction, and that would quickly spread the particles so far apart that the reaction would fizzle out. The only way to get a big antimatter explosion is if the antimatter is somehow contained until it's all used up.

And even so, the amount of antimatter that would be necessary to blow apart a moon, as happened with Praxis, would be immense. It's unlikely any single energy production facility would have that much of the stuff in storage.

Replicators don't make that much sense to me overall. The templates for any objects must be stored in the database but if they can create a glass of water I can't see why they can't create hydrogen (which is a simpler molecule) and if they can make hydrogen, I can't see why they can't make deuterium.

There's a huge difference between synthesizing molecules and synthesizing elements or isotopes. Hydrogen gas is a molecule consisting of two hydrogen atoms (1 proton + 1 electron). If you have atoms of a substance, it's relatively easy to combine them into molecules, since you only need to deal with the kind of energies involved in chemical bonds between the electron shells of the atoms. But deuterium is a different isotope of the hydrogen atom. In order to change hydrogen atoms into deuterium atoms, you need to add a neutron to the nucleus of each atom. That's a nuclear reaction, and the energies involved are far greater (which is why nuclear energy is so vastly more potent than chemical energy).

Sure, it's theoretically doable to synthesize deuterium, but it's an energy-intensive process. If you have practical interstellar or even interplanetary travel, it's easier just to harvest deuterium. You can find it any place where there's hydrogen or water in any form, which means virtually anywhere in the universe. No point going to the trouble of making something that's so easy to find lying around.

 

[Timo]

I'm sure they can make deuterium at will (unless the ship is damaged, as in "Night Terrors"). But what good would that do? The deuterium would be created out of energy obtained by fusing or annihilating deuterium - and the net result would be less than zero (slightly less than zero if the original deuterium were being annihilated for the creation of that power, grossly negative if the deuterium were being fused for the power creation).

In turn, the process of converting deuterium to antideuterium ought to be worth the while if the net result is even a smidgen above zero. And the TNG Tech Manual suggests that it is. The manual doesn't claim that non-shipboard industries could do it any better than the shipboard machines - but then again, as said, there's no shortage of deuterium or power in the Federation, and so any fixed production plant could easily run at an efficiency of a millionth of a percent and still be perfectly useful.

Based on this combo of canon and backstage stuff, it would seem to make sense for a starship to tank both deuterium and antimatter at dedicated facilities whenever she can; to take aboard concentrated deuterium from natural sources whenever necessary (but not bother with unconcentrated interstellar stuff, or with a vain search for natural antimatter); and to resort to converting matter to antimatter only when no other source exists; and to transmute matter to more exotic forms of matter only when there's abundant fuel aboard (which is, most of the time).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kkozoriz1]

Presumably the disaster on Praxis involved an anti-matter leak in an energy production facility...

Not likely. If antimatter leaked, it would be uncontained, meaning that if it began to react with matter, the reactants would be free to get blown apart by the energy of the reaction, and that would quickly spread the particles so far apart that the reaction would fizzle out. The only way to get a big antimatter explosion is if the antimatter is somehow contained until it's all used up.

And even so, the amount of antimatter that would be necessary to blow apart a moon, as happened with Praxis, would be immense. It's unlikely any single energy production facility would have that much of the stuff in storage.

It wouldn't surprise me if Praxis was a weapons research station operating under cover of an energy production facility. Perhaps the accident was caused by an accident with zero point energy. If the weapon research was deep underground it could cause much greater damage to the moon than if it were on the surface.

 

[Pauln6]

Replicators don't make that much sense to me overall. The templates for any objects must be stored in the database but if they can create a glass of water I can't see why they can't create hydrogen (which is a simpler molecule) and if they can make hydrogen, I can't see why they can't make deuterium.

There's a huge difference between synthesizing molecules and synthesizing elements or isotopes. Hydrogen gas is a molecule consisting of two hydrogen atoms (1 proton + 1 electron). If you have atoms of a substance, it's relatively easy to combine them into molecules, since you only need to deal with the kind of energies involved in chemical bonds between the electron shells of the atoms. But deuterium is a different isotope of the hydrogen atom. In order to change hydrogen atoms into deuterium atoms, you need to add a neutron to the nucleus of each atom. That's a nuclear reaction, and the energies involved are far greater (which is why nuclear energy is so vastly more potent than chemical energy).

Sure, it's theoretically doable to synthesize deuterium, but it's an energy-intensive process. If you have practical interstellar or even interplanetary travel, it's easier just to harvest deuterium. You can find it any place where there's hydrogen or water in any form, which means virtually anywhere in the universe. No point going to the trouble of making something that's so easy to find lying around.

Cool - thanks for the science stuff!

But I'm still not sure I understand any logical reason why a replicator couldn't work. In order to replicate matter it has to construct molecules by materilaising the correct number of protons, neutrons, and electrons together. Why would it be any harder to just materialise an extra neutron? It's not as if the pattern for deuterium is complicated - hydrogen is one of the simplest molecules.

I'm sure they can make deuterium at will (unless the ship is damaged, as in "Night Terrors"). But what good would that do? The deuterium would be created out of energy obtained by fusing or annihilating deuterium - and the net result would be less than zero (slightly less than zero if the original deuterium were being annihilated for the creation of that power, grossly negative if the deuterium were being fused for the power creation).

In turn, the process of converting deuterium to antideuterium ought to be worth the while if the net result is even a smidgen above zero. And the TNG Tech Manual suggests that it is. The manual doesn't claim that non-shipboard industries could do it any better than the shipboard machines - but then again, as said, there's no shortage of deuterium or power in the Federation, and so any fixed production plant could easily run at an efficiency of a millionth of a percent and still be perfectly useful.

Based on this combo of canon and backstage stuff, it would seem to make sense for a starship to tank both deuterium and antimatter at dedicated facilities whenever she can; to take aboard concentrated deuterium from natural sources whenever necessary (but not bother with unconcentrated interstellar stuff, or with a vain search for natural antimatter); and to resort to converting matter to antimatter only when no other source exists; and to transmute matter to more exotic forms of matter only when there's abundant fuel aboard (which is, most of the time).

Ok - this does make quite a bit of sense.

 

[shipfisher]

Now, creating anti-elements seems like it could be worth the effort. Backstage material claims that 24th century tech can do that pretty efficiently: by expending ten units of deuterium, one unit of antideuterium is gained. And that's pretty nifty magic, because annihilating that one unit of antideuterium will liberate more power than fusing of those ten units of deuterium would have liberated. (Although the TNG Tech Manual is fuzzy on the details, it's obvious that those ten deuterium units aren't expended in annihilation, because the whole purpose of the exercise is to create annihilation fuel where none existed before. Apparently, the ten units are expended in D-D fusion of some sort.)

Of course, that's just backstage talk, and never verified onscreen. But if it's true, then it's obvious that a starship could operate simply by gathering deuterium and never worrying about antideuterium. What Kirk says about "power regenerating" in "Mark of Gideon" might be quite true, then: the ship would in theory fly forever. Assuming she flew through dense enough deuterium clouds, that is.

Probably there just isn't enough deuterium in space to keep the process on black ink, though. So all starships rely on pit stops at reserves of concentrated deuterium, and those only exist at star systems, many of which are off limits.

Timo Saloniemi

Well said as usual Timo.

I'd like to add my own more sketchy thoughts in believing that the warp nacelles themselves function as matter crackers to produce anti-matter in what would be a secondary operational mode. I offer the following points:

1.) You've already touched on the "power regenerating" comment in TOS:Mark of Gideon.

2.) Voyager was hurled most of the way across the galaxy and began what was originally estimated as a 70 year journey back to federation space with nary an off-hand bit of dialogue inferring this was in any way outside the ships range. Even if you allow that fed ships are stocked with enough AM to allow for total mission duration between refits (which seems inherently unsafe), a fuel load sufficient for the better part of a century would be a bit silly.

3.) The energy cost of bussarding up interstellar gas would exceed that produced by siphoning all the heavy isotopes of hydrogen off and fusing them. As I don't believe straight protonic fusion is even on the table here (I seem to recall reading that the energy density of protonic fusion in stellar cores is even below human metabolic reactions - stars are really hot because they are really big), then all that scooped up hydrogen is meant for something more energy dense. (granted, the deuterium would be siphoned off for the impulse engines)

4.) The bussard collectors are invariably located at the front of the engine nacelles and their rows of warp coils, which look not unlike linear particle accelerators. I don't think the bussard collectors are where they are to stand them off the hull because of any radiation associated with their use (ie. the Steamrunner, Defiant and the 22nd century Sarajevo class designs put paid to this idea). Warp cores and such are planted smack in the middle of inhabited areas of starships by at least 2151 - radiation shielding tech is past simple proximity by then.

5.) The idea that a coil assembly that can generate space/time warping stresses directed outward could also direct matter cracking stresses inward seems less outlandish than many concepts in accepted trek-tech lore. The nacelles may often be configured in pairs to allow one to run in "cracker" mode while the other maintains the drive field (at reduced warp capability in this flight mode of course).

6.) As he himself admitted in ST:First Contact, Zefram Cochrane was in it for the money (at first anyway). He would probably have been developing warp drive related precursor tech in the 2050s during the WWIII period. As is often the case now, the big bucks invariably follow defense projects. I can see it being quite likely that ZC was possibly working on some kind of anti-matter coil rail gun when he stumbled onto some of the more eccentric effects associated with subspace field generation.

The above may be mad ramblings, but at the end of the day, I hate the idea of starships in deep space being dependent on old supply tender buckets trudging out after them if they run out of juice.

 

[Timo]

1.) You've already touched on the "power regenerating" comment in TOS:Mark of Gideon.

...Although that might be valid only for the case of life support power regenerating when there are 2 out of 430 people present. Power for the impulse or warp drives might not regenerate.

2.) Voyager was hurled most of the way across the galaxy and began what was originally estimated as a 70 year journey back to federation space with nary an off-hand bit of dialogue inferring this was in any way outside the ships range. Even if you allow that fed ships are stocked with enough AM to allow for total mission duration between refits (which seems inherently unsafe), a fuel load sufficient for the better part of a century would be a bit silly.

OTOH, Starfleet might have learned that the Milky Way always caters for the daring backpacker - that there always are friendly ports at which antimatter can be purchased. A starship with a nominal propulsive endurance of three years might have no problem finding refueling points for a 70-year trip, at least if the already explored universe is anything to go by.

3.) The energy cost of bussarding up interstellar gas would exceed that produced by siphoning all the heavy isotopes of hydrogen off and fusing them.

Then again, we have never canonically heard that the Bussard scoops would collect interstellar gas. Twice they have ejected hydrogen instead, and once or twice they have scooped up relatively dense fluids from a nebula. Perhaps we're misunderstanding the role of the Bussards somehow?

Like you say, the placement of the scoops suggests an intimate connection with warp fields and subspace/spacetime manipulation. Perhaps the scoops are necessary simply for "scrubbing" the warp field, which otherwise would attract all sorts of dust and debris exactly where the nacelle front ends (the "sinks" of the field, as e.g. Franz Joseph explicitly designated them) are? Perhaps there are few if any options for actually utilizing the stuff that is scooped up?

I can see it being quite likely that ZC was possibly working on some kind of anti-matter coil rail gun when he stumbled onto some of the more eccentric effects associated with subspace field generation.

Agreed. Or we could say that impulse engines were created first, in the 20th century, as a side product of accelerator gun development: toying with high energies in both weapons research and particle physics may have revealed the existence of entirely new types of energy, and while the particle physicists went on to study those energies, the weapons researchers put them to use as propellant accelerators (thus obtaining interplanetary spacecraft) and projectile accelerators (thus obtaining beam weapons that eventually became phasers). So we get DY-100 first, warp drive next, and weapons applications only after another century of work.

Warp engine could simply be an impulse engine ramped up so much that the subspace energies start to bend spacetime big time, not merely "negating inertial mass" but sort of turning that mass inside out and making FTL movement an Einsteinian necessity...

The above may be mad ramblings, but at the end of the day, I hate the idea of starships in deep space being dependent on old supply tender buckets trudging out after them if they run out of juice.

To be sure, we've never even heard of tankers that would fill up starships on the field. That's good reason to look for alternate explanations IMHO. Today, we have all sorts of tankers, and some that tend to the needs of deployed warships - but we also have warships that cannot be fueled when deployed, because no tanker or tender could reload a fission reactor at sea. In Trek, all starships might be "nuclear", requiring portside facilities for refueling, while all tankers might be dedicated to running from port to port and would have nothing to do with refueling starships.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

But I'm still not sure I understand any logical reason why a replicator couldn't work. In order to replicate matter it has to construct molecules by materilaising the correct number of protons, neutrons, and electrons together. Why would it be any harder to just materialise an extra neutron? It's not as if the pattern for deuterium is complicated - hydrogen is one of the simplest molecules.

You're confusing atoms and molecules. Atomic nuclei are made of protons and neutrons; atoms are nuclei circled by electrons. Molecules and crystals are made up of multiple atoms of one or more types (elements).

Replicators, as a rule, do not create atoms out of subatomic particles. They take a pre-existing stock of atoms -- elements -- and combine them to create molecules. Or, when feasible, they take a pre-existing stock of molecular compounds and combine them into larger structures. For instance, food replicators draw from a raw stock of amino acids, proteins, etc. that are found in most foods.

The key difference, as I said above, is energy. Making molecules, crystals, or compounds only requires forming and breaking chemical bonds between electrons. This is fairly easy to do; it's the basis of all the chemical reactions that take place in your body and in the world around you. But changing one kind of atomic nucleus into another -- transmutation or nucleosynthesis -- requires forming or breaking the bonds between protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei. The energies involved there are orders of magnitude greater, which is why nucleosynthesis generally only happens in the cores of stars or in nuclear reactors. It's not impossible, no, but it's much, much harder to do because it takes so much more energy.

So as a rule, it's always going to be far more energy-efficient just to grab the nearest supply of water (whether liquid, ice, or vapor) or molecular hydrogen and just filter out the deuterium you need.

 

[JarodRussell]

Transporters don't "convert matter to energy." That was the original concept in the '60s, but it's totally infeasible due to good old E=mc^2, as discussed above. In the Sternbach-Okuda formulation of the tech, transporters merely break down matter into its constituent particles and move those particles around through subspace. The only thing that's "converted into energy" is the pattern, the quantum information defining the object, which is evidently stored in an energy matrix within the transporter beam.

Does such a thing as subspace exist? If not, then I see no problems with saying that transporters convert energy to matter and matter to energy.

 

[Pauln6]

But I'm still not sure I understand any logical reason why a replicator couldn't work. In order to replicate matter it has to construct molecules by materilaising the correct number of protons, neutrons, and electrons together. Why would it be any harder to just materialise an extra neutron? It's not as if the pattern for deuterium is complicated - hydrogen is one of the simplest molecules.

You're confusing atoms and molecules. Atomic nuclei are made of protons and neutrons; atoms are nuclei circled by electrons. Molecules and crystals are made up of multiple atoms of one or more types (elements).

Replicators, as a rule, do not create atoms out of subatomic particles. They take a pre-existing stock of atoms -- elements -- and combine them to create molecules. Or, when feasible, they take a pre-existing stock of molecular compounds and combine them into larger structures. For instance, food replicators draw from a raw stock of amino acids, proteins, etc. that are found in most foods.

The key difference, as I said above, is energy. Making molecules, crystals, or compounds only requires forming and breaking chemical bonds between electrons. This is fairly easy to do; it's the basis of all the chemical reactions that take place in your body and in the world around you. But changing one kind of atomic nucleus into another -- transmutation or nucleosynthesis -- requires forming or breaking the bonds between protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei. The energies involved there are orders of magnitude greater, which is why nucleosynthesis generally only happens in the cores of stars or in nuclear reactors. It's not impossible, no, but it's much, much harder to do because it takes so much more energy.

So as a rule, it's always going to be far more energy-efficient just to grab the nearest supply of water (whether liquid, ice, or vapor) or molecular hydrogen and just filter out the deuterium you need.

Ah ok - I just assumed that replicators were mini-transporters that reformed whatever pattern you wanted from energy stores. There was an episode of DS9 where some Al-Auran just input a pattern and produced a functional probability-altering device - presumably the writers just misunderstood how the replicators were supposed to work or maybe the devices were supposed to be charged up with energy 'off-camera'.

Mind you, it does raise the issue of space. On most ships the replicator resource isn't rationed so where do they store large supplies of necessary raw materials (we know where NuEnterprse keeps all its water)? I suppose raw soup is easier to store than specific foodstuffs and they must be keeping something in their large cargo bays.

Still, replicator rations in Voyager seem to be due to energy reserves rather than raw material shortages? Surely instead of Neelix's cooking they can just 'recycle' raw materials into the system like they do with their used mugs and plates. Are replicators really that energy intensive? If they are that energy intensive for as you say simple electron bonding then that would be a good reason why more complex, energy intensive operations could not be undertaken.

 

[blssdwlf]

1.) You've already touched on the "power regenerating" comment in TOS:Mark of Gideon.

...Although that might be valid only for the case of life support power regenerating when there are 2 out of 430 people present. Power for the impulse or warp drives might not regenerate.

For impulse engines, probably not since they could run out of fuel in "The Doomsday Machine" and other episodes where the warp drive was out. The Warp engines might "regenerate" although for TOS it's probably more from the matter-antimatter reactor power recharging the dilithium crystals

In anycase, there is reason to think that the TOS Enterprise either had an immense amount of antimatter fuel store or was able to make it's own antimatter without banks of deuterium gas to fly through since they were going on a 300 year trip to the Andromeda galaxy and it sure did not look like there were refueling stops. Or those Kelvans could really squeeze the mileage out of those dilithium crystals.

Come to think of it, didn't TNG's "The Emissary"? have a Klingon Battlecruiser cruise around for 75 years with it's crew in suspended animation? Where were they getting refueled?

How Voyager handled her fuel problems OTOH...

 

[Timo]

The impression I got from "By Any Other Name" was that the Kelvans specifically replaced the power source of the starship with their own tabletop model; the rest of the propulsion system remained the same, including the warp coils, and indeed it would have taken too many man-hours (let alone Kelvan-hours) to actually modify such extensive machinery.

The Kelvan power system might have been all that remained of their original ship - the one that had already made the trip between the galaxies. This ship might well have featured a fuelless power system, or perhaps several, so that even the one in its lifepod would be enough to propel a Starfleet ship forever. After all, it was a plot point that the Kelvans were vastly superior to the Feds technologically, and expected to wipe the floor with Starfleet once their main forces arrived.

As for the Klingon sleeper ship from "The Emissary", when our heroes found it, its propulsion systems were inactive - a status that the heroes (mistakenly) associated with the Klingons still being asleep. Possibly, then, the well-informed heroes thought that the Klingons had been sleeping in a coasting ship, not in one that would have been in danger of running out of fuel...

The other option is that the heroes thought that the Klingons would drop out of warp first before being awakened. That sounds odd and un-Klingonlike, though. And when the heroes searched for the Klingons with the intention of intercepting them before they awoke, they did so at impulse, not at warp. This would make little sense if the Klingons were moving at warp when asleep.

We know there was a seven-decade mission. We don't know its exact nature, nor its spatial reach. Quite possibly, the ship simply went silent for 75 years in a suitable corner of space, not particularly traveling anywhere but simply biding its time - a true "sleeper agent" with the very same assigned mission that K'Ehleyr feared would transpire, a wholesale slaughter of UFP assets in a time and place where the (23rd century) UFP did not expect any Klingon offensive.

Several other missions can also be imagined where a battle cruiser goes into hibernation for 75 years without actually traveling anywhere. There's probably an interesting story there, one that wasn't told in the episode.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

When I watched "By Any Other Name" the power source was for the paralysis projector that Kirk wanted to knock out. The power source for the trip was still the ship's power system although the warp engines and structural systems were clearly modified for Warp 11 travel.

It seems relatively "easy" to get a boost out of the TOS Enterprise warp engines. Nomad ("The Changeling") boosted (and later undid) the warp engine to Warp 10 just by increasing the antimatter injector efficiency. "That Which Survives" had a runaway antimatter reactor which was providing so much power that Warp 14+ was possible. The problems it would seem are that the ship isn't structured for Warp 10 and the engines typically will melt or burn out if run at that power level for extended periods of time. Apparently the Kelvans had a fix for both problems.

What is interesting is that at no point does Kirk, Spock or Scotty go "300 years!? We'd run out of fuel long before that! Ha, silly Kelvans..." Instead, it's "Wow, intergalactic travel in 300 years. Amazing!". So more than likely the ship's fuel stores might be virtually perpetual so long as they don't get burnt out or can not be regenerated.

As to how fast the Klingon ship was moving during the crews' sleep - we don't know for sure. They were probably cruising around at sublight so not to be picked up zipping around while at warp. Coasting seems to make the most sense to preserve their power though and you're right in that a story about that crew would be interesting.

"This is Captain K'Temoc addressing the crew of the T'Ong. It will be a good day to die in 75 years!"

 

[T'Girl]

Then again, we have never canonically heard that the Bussard scoops would collect interstellar gas. Twice they have ejected hydrogen instead, and once or twice they have scooped up relatively dense fluids from a nebula. Perhaps we're misunderstanding the role of the Bussards somehow?

The bussard collectors are named after the physicist Robert W. Bussard, who's most famous work was concerning using enormous electro-magnetic fields to collect fuel between stars, it safe to say that the bussards referred to in the show are for that purpose.

3.) The energy cost of bussarding up interstellar gas would exceed that produced by siphoning all the heavy isotopes of hydrogen off

A bussard collector scoop would have to sweep 10e18 cubic meters of space to collect one gram of hydrogen, or the scoop must sweep 64e27 cubic meters of space to collect one metric ton of deuterium.

In other words, you would have to bussard collector scoop 64 quintillion cubic kilometers of interstellar spaceto obtain one metric ton of deuterium (about thirteen hundred gallons of semi-frozen slush).

Even if the Voyager's bussard collection field is hundreds (or thousands) of kilometers across, the ship would have to travel a considerable distance to collect an significant amount of deuterium, and the field itself would have to be generated, which consumes power, power that has to be generated. Which consumes deuterium.

.

 

[Christopher]

Ah ok - I just assumed that replicators were mini-transporters that reformed whatever pattern you wanted from energy stores. There was an episode of DS9 where some Al-Auran just input a pattern and produced a functional probability-altering device - presumably the writers just misunderstood how the replicators were supposed to work or maybe the devices were supposed to be charged up with energy 'off-camera'.

Well, keep in mind I'm talking about practicality, not possibility. It's possible that, if necessary, a replicator could be programmed for a more fundamental level of synthesis than it normally uses; it would just require more energy to do it that way, and there's no sense in using such an inefficient method to synthesize something like deuterium that's just lying around all over the universe.

I'm not sure what the question of nucleosynthesis has to do with the question of how a handheld game is powered, though. For what it's worth, the early DS9 novel Fallen Heroes asserted that a replicator couldn't create a device that was already charged, but I think "Civil Defense" proved otherwise when the ops replicator materialized a functional phaser booby trap. And the fact that food replicators can produce food or drinks at any requested temperature proves that replicators have some way of controlling the energy levels of the particles they assemble. If you can put the molecules of a chicken breast or a cup of hot cocoa together with enough added energy to be piping hot, then it stands to reason that you could put the molecules of a power cell together with enough energy to be charged.

Mind you, it does raise the issue of space. On most ships the replicator resource isn't rationed so where do they store large supplies of necessary raw materials (we know where NuEnterprse keeps all its water)? I suppose raw soup is easier to store than specific foodstuffs and they must be keeping something in their large cargo bays.

Well, the Enterprise-D is immensely larger than it needs to be to support a crew of only 1000 people -- so much so that the TNG Technical Manual had to assert that a lot of its volume was empty space left as room for future expansion. So there wouldn't be any problems with storage in that regard.

In anycase, there is reason to think that the TOS Enterprise either had an immense amount of antimatter fuel store or was able to make it's own antimatter without banks of deuterium gas to fly through since they were going on a 300 year trip to the Andromeda galaxy and it sure did not look like there were refueling stops. Or those Kelvans could really squeeze the mileage out of those dilithium crystals.

Intergalactic space isn't completely empty. There are the haloes of globular clusters around the major galaxies, there are maybe a few small irregular galaxies more or less between us and M31 (though they'd require detours), and there's sure to be some tenuous gas and the occasional rogue object out there.

The bussard collectors are named after the physicist Robert W. Bussard, who's most famous work was concerning using enormous electro-magnetic fields to collect fuel between stars, it safe to say that the bussards referred to in the show are for that purpose.

Yep. Rick Sternbach did some work with Dr. Bussard, IIRC, and incorporated his concept into TNG tech as an homage.

Even if the Voyager's bussard collection field is hundreds (or thousands) of kilometers across, the ship would have to travel a considerable distance to collect an significant amount of deuterium, and the field itself would have to be generated, which consumes power, power that has to be generated. Which consumes deuterium.

Which is why the sensible thing is to stop off at some comet or ice moon in a handy star system and mine deuterium from it. (No "Demon-class worlds" necessary. How I wish they'd stuck with the original intention to build "Demon" around a dilithium shortage instead of the incredible inanity of a deuterium shortage.)

 

[Timo]

The bussard collectors are named after the physicist Robert W. Bussard, who's most famous work was concerning using enormous electro-magnetic fields to collect fuel between stars, it safe to say that the bussards referred to in the show are for that purpose.

The thing is, though, Bussard's original idea has been studied further, and now it seems that the only practical application of a hydrogen-collecting electromagnetic field would be as a braking system for interstellar spacecraft; it could never be harnessed to yield net thrust.

That assumes that the collected interstellar dirt is turned into power through efficient fusion, though; Star Trek technology might have other aces up its velour sleeves. Also, Starfleet ramscoops probably don't employ electromagnetic fields, but something deriving from the knowledge on "forcefields", "subspace" and "tractor beams". And the main objection against using Bussard scoops for propulsion (apart from our current understanding on the density of interstellar gas) is the Newtonian drag they create, whereas tractor beams are apparently rather non-Newtonian...

Still, it might be that Bussard's name lives in a technology that is only vaguely related to his original invention - much like the names of Venturi, Diesel or (to take a Star Trek example) Heisenberg. Indeed, Trek uses Heisenberg's name to imply ruination of that poor chap's life's work...

Which is why the sensible thing is to stop off at some comet or ice moon in a handy star system and mine deuterium from it.

To be sure, part of the "Demon" story was that Janeway had recently been through a series of "handy star systems", each of them proving inaccessible for one reason or another. We weren't told exactly what made these systems so handy, save for one where enriched deuterium was being denied from Janeway by the folks doing the enriching. Janeway might have been turned away from a couple of civilized ports, but also from a couple of star systems where her intention was merely to dock with an outlying iceball. The end result of the multiple (and possibly both scientifically and dramatically plausible) failures would be that her very last port of call would have to feature pre-enriched deuterium, not just the natural stuff, or else she couldn't get a net gain.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Ah ok - I just assumed that replicators were mini-transporters that reformed whatever pattern you wanted from energy stores. There was an episode of DS9 where some Al-Auran just input a pattern and produced a functional probability-altering device - presumably the writers just misunderstood how the replicators were supposed to work or maybe the devices were supposed to be charged up with energy 'off-camera'.

Well, keep in mind I'm talking about practicality, not possibility. It's possible that, if necessary, a replicator could be programmed for a more fundamental level of synthesis than it normally uses; it would just require more energy to do it that way, and there's no sense in using such an inefficient method to synthesize something like deuterium that's just lying around all over the universe.

I'm not sure what the question of nucleosynthesis has to do with the question of how a handheld game is powered, though. For what it's worth, the early DS9 novel Fallen Heroes asserted that a replicator couldn't create a device that was already charged, but I think "Civil Defense" proved otherwise when the ops replicator materialized a functional phaser booby trap. And the fact that food replicators can produce food or drinks at any requested temperature proves that replicators have some way of controlling the energy levels of the particles they assemble. If you can put the molecules of a chicken breast or a cup of hot cocoa together with enough added energy to be piping hot, then it stands to reason that you could put the molecules of a power cell together with enough energy to be charged.

I think practicality v possibility sums it up. Thinking about it, it's obvious that transporter tech can generate energy - apart from hot earl grey, we'd get cold, dead humans whose bodies were devoid of bio-electric energy if that wasn't the case. The real issue has to be one of energy consumption. I don't recall there being as much concern about rationing transporter use as replicators, although presumably that could be because it is used far less often.

 

[Christopher]

I think practicality v possibility sums it up. Thinking about it, it's obvious that transporter tech can generate energy - apart from hot earl grey, we'd get cold, dead humans whose bodies were devoid of bio-electric energy if that wasn't the case.

Not so much a question of generating energy as managing it. Transporters need to record, preserve, and duplicate the exact quantum information that defines the particles of an object -- not just their physical positions and chemical or nuclear bonds, but their energy levels, motion/kinetic energy, and so forth. (Remember that heat is molecular-level kinetic energy.) So those energy levels are stored as quantum data and restored to the particles at the destination. The transporter doesn't need to generate the energy, because it's already inherent in the object being transported. It just needs to contain, move, and restore it.

Another way in which transporters must manage energy is in cancelling the kinetic energy difference between the transmission and reception points. A starship in orbit is moving far faster than a beamdown/beamup site on the surface, so there's a huge kinetic energy difference. If that weren't compensated for, then the rematerialized bodies would go flying off in the same direction the ship was orbiting once they reached the planet -- or else would burn up from the excess energy in the beam, since heat is randomized kinetic energy. So presumably transporters must store the kinetic energy of objects that are beamed down and restore it when they're beamed back up. Although if something is beaming up for the first time, it would have to have kinetic energy added to it, so this is where a transporter would be called on to generate energy, or rather to deliver it from the transporter power systems.

 

[blssdwlf]

An early TOS episode, "The Enemy Within" hinted that the engines were used to compensate for the difference in kinetic energy (add or subtract) or as the episode called it "velocity balance".

I'd imagine that the TNG version does something similar.

 

[Mytran]

The idea that the main engines were involved was carried through to TMP as well, as key transporter control circuits were contained within the main engineering console.