Where on the ship are the transporter beams emitted from?
CuttingEdge100
CuttingEdge100
Transporter Question
- Thread starter CuttingEdge100
- Start date
Well, the TNG-era ships have beige/tan colored transporter emitter strips at various locations on the hull. As for TOS/TMP... it's probably internalized or flush with the hull as per the design style established.
Tan strips?
Where?
Where?
Yo.
Quite. Such features were first seen on the E-D in "Encounter at Farpoint", I think, but have since been present on all Starfleet vessels and craft, including the runabouts and some of the shuttlecraft.
One might argue that the long, black triangles on the underside of Kirk's old ship served the same purpose. They do look like some sort of conformal antennas, after all (and not at all like the flying saucer landing legs that some sources would have them be).
Of course, since transporter beams are known to pass through solid matter (including starship hulls and up to a couple of kilometers of bedrock), there would be no reason to have these antennas pointing in any particular direction. But underside of saucer would be a preferable location, one'd think, considering how often we see Kirk's ship orbit the planet with the belly pointed down. That is, if we go by the viewscreen images that show the planet at the bottom; other visuals might favor the interpretation that the ship likes to keep her portside flank to the planet...
Timo Saloniemi
One might argue that the long, black triangles on the underside of Kirk's old ship served the same purpose. They do look like some sort of conformal antennas, after all (and not at all like the flying saucer landing legs that some sources would have them be).
Of course, since transporter beams are known to pass through solid matter (including starship hulls and up to a couple of kilometers of bedrock), there would be no reason to have these antennas pointing in any particular direction. But underside of saucer would be a preferable location, one'd think, considering how often we see Kirk's ship orbit the planet with the belly pointed down. That is, if we go by the viewscreen images that show the planet at the bottom; other visuals might favor the interpretation that the ship likes to keep her portside flank to the planet...
Timo Saloniemi
Herkimer Jitty,
The TV Series Enterprise had those too... A yellow circle underneath the secondary hull...
Timo,
The transporter beams definetly seem to be phased or operating on frequencies that can travel through stuff. Interestingly they can be stopped by shields though...
Out of curiosity, how much energy do the transporters use on the ship? Are they highly power-intensive in the show?
The TV Series Enterprise had those too... A yellow circle underneath the secondary hull...
Timo,
The transporter beams definetly seem to be phased or operating on frequencies that can travel through stuff. Interestingly they can be stopped by shields though...
Out of curiosity, how much energy do the transporters use on the ship? Are they highly power-intensive in the show?
I think they would have to be high powered. I mean were talking about taking a person apart on a quantum level, shoving him through the Heisenberg compensaters, pointing the resulting mess in one direction and putting him back together in a place where there might not even be a similar device to help the process. I wouldn't want to have too little power if I was being transported.
...However, the remastered version of "Operation: Annihilate!" decided that the yellow circle was a hatch into a hold that could dispense small satellites.
Me neither. But transporters seem to operate just fine even when a ship is damaged or otherwise very low on power. And in TNG "The Hunted", the rampaging supersoldier seems to be able to bring a transporter to life with the battery of a single hand phaser. Although we can also argue that he only brings to life the control console of that transporter.
Timo Saloniemi
I was thinking about the energy requirements to beam a person. Just the amount of energy released when a person would be converted into pure energy is enormous. Assuming a person is 80 kilograms. Every gram of matter turned into energy equates to 22 or 45 (I'm not entirely sure) kilotons or megatons of energy equivalent released. So 80,000 grams is 1,760,000 to 3,600,000 kilotons to 1,760,000 to 3,600,000 megatons energy equivalent.
And that's just a 170 pound individual. Now assume you have a fat person being beamed up, or a bunch of people... that's a *LOT* of energy. Then you need the energy to phase that stream of energy so it will pass through stuff, and shield that beam of energy that once it "unphases" itself it doesn't produce the biggest nuclear explosion we've ever seen, then turn all that back to energy.
I'm thinking some heavy-duty power is in order.
I've never really thought much about the power requirements for a transporter before as I never thought it to be very realistic technology (though some teleportation has been done with some particles -- however it's not clear that you're not just creating two copies and destroying the first) and I just assumed it to be "fiat" tech (Fiat - let it be done, roughly)
Timo,
The remastered version involves a lot of assumptions that may not have been explicitly explained in TOS.
And that's just a 170 pound individual. Now assume you have a fat person being beamed up, or a bunch of people... that's a *LOT* of energy. Then you need the energy to phase that stream of energy so it will pass through stuff, and shield that beam of energy that once it "unphases" itself it doesn't produce the biggest nuclear explosion we've ever seen, then turn all that back to energy.
I'm thinking some heavy-duty power is in order.
I've never really thought much about the power requirements for a transporter before as I never thought it to be very realistic technology (though some teleportation has been done with some particles -- however it's not clear that you're not just creating two copies and destroying the first) and I just assumed it to be "fiat" tech (Fiat - let it be done, roughly)
Timo,
The remastered version involves a lot of assumptions that may not have been explicitly explained in TOS.
If we're talking about the pre-TNG ships, The old FJ deck plans seem to indicate that the transporters were all located at the outer rim of whatever deck each happened to be on, presumably so they could beam "down" out of the ship without having much/any of the ship in the way.
Personally, I theorize that the transporter emitters were incorporated into the sensor suites in the domes on top and bottom of the saucer. As evidence, I submit "The City on the Edge of Forever" where McCoy beams into the heart of the time displacement because that's where the transporter happened to be focused at the time. Why in the world would you point it there if you had no plans to send anyone down there? If the emitters rode the same beam as the sensors then it would make perfect sense why they would be pointed that same way.
Also, in the TNG episode "The Mind's Eye," brainwashed Geordi manages to secretly beam down an illicit pallet of phaser rifles by rerouting the transporters through a sensor array, suggesting that the equipment is similar enough on the GCS to allow that sort of thing. Ergo, it doesn't seem too far-fetched that that's just the way it used to be done.
Personally, I theorize that the transporter emitters were incorporated into the sensor suites in the domes on top and bottom of the saucer. As evidence, I submit "The City on the Edge of Forever" where McCoy beams into the heart of the time displacement because that's where the transporter happened to be focused at the time. Why in the world would you point it there if you had no plans to send anyone down there? If the emitters rode the same beam as the sensors then it would make perfect sense why they would be pointed that same way.
Also, in the TNG episode "The Mind's Eye," brainwashed Geordi manages to secretly beam down an illicit pallet of phaser rifles by rerouting the transporters through a sensor array, suggesting that the equipment is similar enough on the GCS to allow that sort of thing. Ergo, it doesn't seem too far-fetched that that's just the way it used to be done.
It certainly isn't if you take the statements about matter/energy conversion literally, but I don't believe the transporter works that way. I think it is rather projecting a very narrow jacketed matter stream, grabbing bits from all over the body and using detailed imaging to place them back in the right spots. I cannot figure out why they had the transporter before the tractor beam on Enterprise, though, but perhaps they were able to work with such technology on a fine scale but not yet get enough juice into the tractor beam-like emission to make it worthwhile for towing ships and whatnot.
Albertese,
I had actually considered having the Nav-Dome being the source of the transporter emission (on TOS there was also a dome in between the nacelles -- on the top-side -- ) a few days ago actually.
I was planning to float that suggestion if nobody had a source of where the beam came from. Once it was said that TNG ships had the tan strips, I decided not to make that suggestion (the TOS enterprise has a yellow area on the bottom)
CuttingEdge100
I had actually considered having the Nav-Dome being the source of the transporter emission (on TOS there was also a dome in between the nacelles -- on the top-side -- ) a few days ago actually.
I was planning to float that suggestion if nobody had a source of where the beam came from. Once it was said that TNG ships had the tan strips, I decided not to make that suggestion (the TOS enterprise has a yellow area on the bottom)
CuttingEdge100
I assume you refer to the yellow circle on the lower "keel" of the engineering section? The only problem I would have with that is that the emitter pads of TNG+ have a very distinct and dimensional look while the TOS E just has a circle painted on it. I believe that Matt Jefferies himself once said that those shapes were meant to represent hatches of various sorts. It has often been speculated for years that they relate to the engine reactor equipment or cargo bays. Then TOS Remastered established it as a hatch to a payload bay where you can launch hundreds of satellites from. Of course, lots of fans seem to take TOSr as sort of "deutero-canonical" so you may feel free to ignore it if you wish.
JNG
It would be kind of difficult to set up the stream so it could pass through a significant amount of matter.
CuttingEdge100
It would be kind of difficult to set up the stream so it could pass through a significant amount of matter.
CuttingEdge100
And of course, no discussion of transporters would be complete without an analysis of TNG's "Second Chances" and the other Riker (or "The Enemy Within" for that matter). ...
I think of transporters as a quantum-level photocopier/paper shredder, which makes a copy while simultaneously destroying the original.
I think of transporters as a quantum-level photocopier/paper shredder, which makes a copy while simultaneously destroying the original.
Maybe it's one very little bit at a time
Or insert odd Trek-usage of term "phased" here
That's indeed what this "phasing" thing sounds like to me: a technique that turns you into a ghost at one end, then sends that ghost through walls and vacuum and whatnot, and then de-ghosts you at the other end. No "disassembly" or "reassembly" involved, just changing your physical characteristics so that for a while, you cease to be solid and instead start to move through walls.
In order to turn one ghost into two, significant effort is obviously needed. In the two known occasions, a weird planet's unique and nonrepeatable conditions contributed to this happening. And heaven knows the Trek universe is full of really weird weirdness: things that were seen happening in "The Enemy Within" and "Second Chances" might be flat out impossible by the general rules of the universe. Which is indeed how our heroes seem to view the situation in said episodes...
Whether turning you into a ghost means killing you is debatable. In any case, no sane person in the Trek universe appears to have a problem with that, including those folks who have watertight empirical verification for the existence of souls.
Timo Saloniemi
In order to turn one ghost into two, significant effort is obviously needed. In the two known occasions, a weird planet's unique and nonrepeatable conditions contributed to this happening. And heaven knows the Trek universe is full of really weird weirdness: things that were seen happening in "The Enemy Within" and "Second Chances" might be flat out impossible by the general rules of the universe. Which is indeed how our heroes seem to view the situation in said episodes...
Whether turning you into a ghost means killing you is debatable. In any case, no sane person in the Trek universe appears to have a problem with that, including those folks who have watertight empirical verification for the existence of souls.
Timo Saloniemi
