I think at one point it's specifically mentioned that only Academy cadets have transporter credits, so I don't think that's a general thing for everyone.
What is other transportation like in the 24th Century?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
Well, Transporters are useful, but it comes down to economics, and ability.
You may have transporter portal/booths in every city, but its not on every block, or even in every house. I'd equate it to a train station, you have a building that houses the transporter booths, and it can take you to the next city, or across the world, or whatever station is in range in orbit.
But going from your house to say 5 miles away, you cant use the transporter unless you have access to site to site beaming, which considering earth probably still has Billions of people, and they all have somewhere to go, would be not impossible, but quite a nightmare, so they have to take some type of transport, being a shuttle, a air car, or train to get around locally.
There may be a booth from say city center to a suburb.
To me, the regular civilian doesn't have Site to Site access, unless its an emergency. So they have to use whatever transport that is available.
You may have transporter portal/booths in every city, but its not on every block, or even in every house. I'd equate it to a train station, you have a building that houses the transporter booths, and it can take you to the next city, or across the world, or whatever station is in range in orbit.
But going from your house to say 5 miles away, you cant use the transporter unless you have access to site to site beaming, which considering earth probably still has Billions of people, and they all have somewhere to go, would be not impossible, but quite a nightmare, so they have to take some type of transport, being a shuttle, a air car, or train to get around locally.
There may be a booth from say city center to a suburb.
To me, the regular civilian doesn't have Site to Site access, unless its an emergency. So they have to use whatever transport that is available.
I would imagine that by the 24th century, ‘hobby’ classic cars would run on some form of environmentally friendly and sustainable hydrogen combustion engine, with their only emissions being H2O/water vapour. They may even burn vegetable oil? I guess that all of the Earths petroleum oil reserves would have been used up by the 24th century, anyway. Perhaps the Federation set up oil fields on other planets though such as Tellar and Andoria.
I doubt that everybody would have Tesla’s, but I could be wrong. The batteries are not easily recyclable and would not meet Federation standards unless some new technology was introduced to make them more environmentally friendly and sustainable?
Never mind converting classic cars - new cars with classic style bodies would be an item many people would own. You could have a Model T-looking hover car built/replicated from scratch, if you wanted.
I actually do not think that it would be so easy for someone just to replicate such a luxury item willy-nilly. People may need to save up replication credits in a similar way as to how Tom Paris needed to save up transporter credits as mentioned above. Some items may be quite complicated and energy intensive to replicate. If it were so easy to replicate large ‘advanced’ items, I am sure that everyone would be replicating shuttle craft just as easily. There would be industrial replicators for such things…. The USS Voyager must have had one of these installed for shuttlecraft, hehe.
It seems very unlikely for a society that is build on equality to only give credits to use an item to one specific group, while the rest of the society uses it for free...... And saying that it is a way of teaching them responsibility would be applying 20th/21st century way of thinking to a society 300 years ahead of us. We don't use the same rules of education and pedagogy as they did 300 years ago.
That's a fair point, but I don't think Academy cadet is a protected class.
I think that everyone in the Federation is allocated a set and equal amount of credits both for replicators and transporters. Credits can be accumulated to replicate ‘bigger things’, or in the case of transporters to transport ‘greater distances’. Credits *cannot* be used as currency, this is against federation rules and regulations. Energy and resources are not infinite, despite the advancement of replicators and warp cores; there would *still* need to be some form of managed distribution and fair allocation of resources and energy. Everyone may be given 100 credits (both transporter and replicator credits) per week for example, a bit like a ‘universal income’. These credits would allow for the population to survive being exchangeable for the basic staples of life such as food, clothing and local transport needs. If someone wants to save up two weeks worth of credits to transport to Australia from the US, or 1 years worths of credits to replicate a shuttle craft, then they would have to find alternate means of providing food for themselves, such as living off the land and growing their own food, whilst they save up enough credits for what they desire as a ‘luxury’ or ‘extravagant’ item.
Little of both? Once normal transportation is no longer Oil based (it's currently about 16% of global emissions), the amount of Co2 from collector cars would be insignificant. Even without a replicator you can turn plastic into gasoline now, so making small amounts for the collector market should be easy. And it's not like there wouldn't be crude oil around, it's just not at the volume for easy extraction we do now.
But needing your students to adjust to being away from their parents, and thus making trips home more difficult (but not impossible), is such a basic element of life I can't see that changing in 300 years.
Every mode of transportation, IRL or fictional, costs energy to operate.
It costs Credits Energy & matter to create said Vehicle or Device, & Man Hours to train in operation and pilot / control it safely.
Short of fully automated things like the Transporter Arch Corridors that seem to be fully automatic, most of the other methods of transporation seem to require some form of piloting (be it droid or person).
Credits still seem to exist in the 24th century (Federation Credit).
Net Zero Synthetic Petroleum / Gas.I would imagine that by the 24th century, ‘hobby’ classic cars would run on some form of environmentally friendly and sustainable hydrogen combustion engine, with their only emissions being H2O/water vapour. They may even burn vegetable oil? I guess that all of the Earths petroleum oil reserves would have been used up by the 24th century, anyway. Perhaps the Federation set up oil fields on other planets though such as Tellar and Andoria.
I doubt that everybody would have Tesla’s, but I could be wrong. The batteries are not easily recyclable and would not meet Federation standards unless some new technology was introduced to make them more environmentally friendly and sustainable?
We're already starting the first factories.
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Yup, that's basically what I took from that as well.
To add to this, once a replicator or transporter credit is ‘spent’ it is in no way collected or banked. It is expended or ‘depleted’ along with the corresponding energy that the credit(s) represented. Whether the energy itself that the credits were spent on converted in to matter, or from one from of energy to another, it is still classed as ‘spent’ and ‘used’. *Unused* credits could still accumulate as mentioned in my original post, but once they are used they are ‘gone’, and *new* credits are issued to replace them - probably using some form of blockchain network which evolved from old earth cryptocurrencies.
This would all mean that there would be no need for ‘bankers’ as such in Star Trek/The Federation, but centralised and regulated credit allocators/auditors instead - but even this could all be automated with limited human interaction, with all citizens entitled to a ‘Federation Insurance Number’ (Like the UK’s National Insurance Number) being automatically enrolled in to the system. The ‘Federation Insurance Number’ would also allow people access to services within the Federation such as free public transport networks and medical care, though of course the Federation would *never* turn anyone away from medical care, citizen or not, out of moral duty.
Some people may need more credits than others for their job roles, for example if they needed to transport greater distances for work such as from Starfleet Headquarters in Paris to the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa, so credits would also have to be allocated to institutions and organisations within Starfleet for their ‘employees’; this would be a bit like having a company car on present day earth. Of course, all organisations holding credit allocations would need to be audited like I said, and all credit usage/journeys recorded to ensure that the extra ‘work’ related credit system is not abused for personal, non work related purposes.
That could just as easily be accomplished by 1) locking them out from transport for certain periods of time except in case of emergencies, in which case all who are evacuating would be able to do so with an "emergency override" that kicks in when there is danger, and 2) setting limits for how often you can use it and how many transports you get to make per week. It doesn't require fares, just quotas and lock-outs.
So it's like a phone contract, then.
No, because when you pay your phone bill the *money* is banked by the company that you are paying for the provided service. Federation credits cannot be used for payments in such a way that people or corporations would be able to a make a profit or ‘bank’ them in exchange for their provided service or authorised exchange of ‘energy’ - the credits ‘expire’ upon usage equal to their energetic value (transporter or replicator) and cannot be collected by a third party or even taxed. Credits are just a way of sharing resources fairly through a measured method of centrally managed fair exchange and recognition of usage, also allowing for resource usage and supplies to be audited and if necessary during energy shortages, natural disasters, emergencies or even more extreme situations similar to the Dominion War, rationed.
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What if the other member species that join the UFP in the future like "The Ferengi", "Klingons", "Romulans", "Cardassians" all want a Profit based economy?
How would you deal with them?
One would hope that aspiring Federation members would have evolved beyond the need to obtain wealth for self gain and greed. When other species see the vast benefits of the Federation Universal Credit System and come to the realisation that they would be allowing their citizens access to resources which could end poverty and other internal conflicts and struggles, they may think again as to which system of economics is of most value to their respective societies. The riches that come with Federation membership transcend monetary and even material wealth.
The destruction of Praxis and the resulting energy crisis that this caused within the Klingon Empire during the 23rd century would have been a perfect time for talks of Federation membership for the Klingon’s to begin, as would also have been the case for the Romulans after the destruction of Romulus and Remus in the alt JJ-timeline 24th century Trek. It would, however, be a shame if the larger galactic Empires and Alliances applications for Federation membership were only triggered in desperation as a last resort in order to help them recover from a devastating society changing internal crisis. Hopefully most species, including one day both the Klingons and Romulans, will be more willing to join the Federation after reaching a shared level of social, economic and technological ‘enlightenment’ and weighing up how membership would benefit their societies and cultures.
It is also possible that other non Federation members already have similar credit systems in place. Such systems may be the only way of sustaining large populations across vast galactic distances whilst at the same time allowing for the equal sharing and distribution of what at times can be limited energy and resources.
Isn't there that gig in DIS, that they travel to the 32nd century, get personal transporters, and that one of the crew members goes 'transporter happy' and transports himself every time even if he only has to walk a few steps to get there? (Not sure, only saw the series once a few years ago).
Any case, that led me to speculate that probably in the 23rd (and presumably the 24th as well) transportation is still not entirely 'free'. Of course it's free for those in Starfleet service, but not used for personal fun. Possibly it'll cost you a few credits as an average citizen (and possibly even for Starfleet officers when they use it for personal means), as it is the fastest and most convenient form of transportation available.
True. Then again, some principles are probably universally valid in any era (e.g. to not spoil resources needlessly, and to teach young people that even because something is 'free' it doesn't mean there's an infinite supply of it and those 'free' resources still have inherent value). This might be one way of doing that.
Any case, that led me to speculate that probably in the 23rd (and presumably the 24th as well) transportation is still not entirely 'free'. Of course it's free for those in Starfleet service, but not used for personal fun. Possibly it'll cost you a few credits as an average citizen (and possibly even for Starfleet officers when they use it for personal means), as it is the fastest and most convenient form of transportation available.
True. Then again, some principles are probably universally valid in any era (e.g. to not spoil resources needlessly, and to teach young people that even because something is 'free' it doesn't mean there's an infinite supply of it and those 'free' resources still have inherent value). This might be one way of doing that.
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Hm. That is a valid point.
Must be a bitch when it's pour down rain.
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