Transporter chains

[Pauln6]

The problem with having transporter relays in the solar system, or any inner planets of a star system, is that the planets are constantly moving relative to one another, not to mention the transporter relays themselves. If you had a whole lot of them at one orbital radius, then they would switch out and you could use them. Still probably easier just to use a shuttle, and much much cheaper.

The issue would be the distance between them rather than their locations so I suppose you would either end up building in a fair amount of redundancy and have some stationary and some following the orbit of the nearest planetary body. If you are aiming for a moon orbiting a planet, your transporter window would be even more specific since planetary bodies block sensors.

The Stargate bridge works because Stargate range is huge compared to a transporter, even a NuTrek transporter.

 

[Ithekro]

Transporters seem to be limited to planetary systems like Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and its moons, or I would guess Earth and Luna. It may even be more limited and longer range transport is used in emergencies only, as it is only slightly less dangerous than death.

We know there are shuttle runs in the Sol system even to when Geordi was an ensign.

 

[Timo]

The fact that there was a long-range transporter at Mimas to rescue Wesley and pals from Titan might speak for such "local" networks covering Saturn, Jupiter and the inner planet-moon systems. Shuttle runs would then mainly be between these planet-moon systems rather than within them, Titan's Turn or not.

But we could also argue that Wesley's team was flying at Saturn exactly because that planet-moon system has no infrastructure or habitation to speak of and is therefore safe for harebrained maneuvers - and the Mimas transporter is a special case, not reflective of what Jupiter or Mars might have. Although it would be nice to have more such devices around... And nothing so far suggests fixed, planetside transporter installations couldn't and wouldn't regularly operate machines of much superior range to starshipboard installations. Perhaps Uhura in ST3:TSfS could have pressed a button that sent Kirk, McCoy, Sulu and Chekov to the Moon rather than just to Spacedock?

Timo Saloniemi