Would a real life transporter technically be 'murder' ?

[Pauln6]

LOL.

80kg x 50% = 40kg

Good kirk = 40kg + 40kg replicated = 50% replicated. I was talking about adding to each individual transportee (singular) but you are right, technically Kirk was a single transportee split into two so while each person who stepped off the pad was 50% replicated overall there would be 100% replicated material.

We're saying the same thing in different ways though. Let's leave it there and not be too pedantic. The concept of transporters is controversial enough as it is! ;P

 

[CorporalCaptain]

LOL.

80kg x 50% = 40kg

Good kirk = 40kg + 40kg replicated = 50% replicated. I was talking about adding to each individual transportee (singular) but you are right, technically Kirk was a single transportee split into two so while each person who stepped off the pad was 50% replicated overall there would be 100% replicated material.

We're saying the same thing in different ways though. Let's leave it there and not be too pedantic. The concept of transporters is controversial enough as it is! ;P

Yeah, you got it. The problem was that there was only one transportee to begin with.

 

[shipfisher]

In the Bill Theiss book "The Making of Star Trek" I remember the reference to having matter transmission devices on ships at the level of technology otherwise displayed in Trek was akin to Cleopatra's barge on the Nile packing an electron microscope. The transporter concept was a product of limited effects budgets and dramatic pacing. A camera trick involving sprinkling aluminium dust was much cheaper and moved the story along faster than a shuttlecraft landing sequence (and the full-size shuttlecraft mock-up hadn't been completed before the pilots and first episodes were shot).

The most recent plot-driven abuse of the transporter concept was CumberKahn's personal device delivering him to the klingon homeworld after shooting up a few fed big-wigs in ST:ID. I guess Section 31 got hold of some gear from someone like Gary Seven's mates.

Just to be clear - count me in the "transport is murder" camp, if for nothing more than the sake of technical consistency.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The most recent plot-driven abuse of the transporter concept was CumberKahn's personal device delivering him to the klingon homeworld after shooting up a few fed big-wigs in ST:ID. I guess Section 31 got hold of some gear from someone like Gary Seven's mates.

Well, let's see, no. It came from the previous film, Star Trek (2009). Spock Prime brought transwarp beaming into the new timeline from the Prime Universe, where it had originally been invented by Mr. Scott. That it was the same transwarp beaming used in STXI was, in fact, stated in STID.

With all the powerful technology that Scott had had to deal with over the years, including the Triskelion device besides just Gary Seven's, it would have been less plausible if Scotty Prime had never gotten a clue.

 

[Pauln6]

Well, let's see, no. It came from the previous film, Star Trek (2009). Spock Prime brought transwarp beaming into the new timeline from the Prime Universe, where it had originally been invented by Mr. Scott. That it was the same transwarp beaming used in STXI was, in fact, stated in STID.

With all the powerful technology that Scott had had to deal with over the years, including the Triskelion device besides just Gary Seven's, it would have been less plausible if Scotty Prime had never gotten a clue.

The use of long distance teleportation as a plot device for aliens of the week is only just about bearable IMO. Making it generally available to our heroes or the Federation is a plot-busting annoyance. Then trying to put it back in the box and say we'll ignore this from now on is dire in the extreme. If you are going to introduce plot-busting technology then build in a limitation off the bat.

I don't think that saying, this is really dangerous is sufficient, since it's usage to date has show limited negative consequences. They could have done this by overloading and destroying the transporter equipment on Delta Vega. It was a one off and 23rd century tech just can't cut it. If Keenser died in the explosion you have another reason not to try again.

 

[shipfisher]

Any trek tech introduced for the sake of TV/film production expediency (inertial dampers also come to mind, letting starships behave like sound stages - no padded surfaces or grab-rails required) or dramatic/plot-driven reasons (ie. poorly written reasons) - I'll admit I've got a hate-on for.

Transwarp beaming may have come from 2387 prime in story, but we're getting Star Trek converted to StarGate Lite here. Call me a bit of a purist, but I like my trekking done with an actual need for starships.

 

[The Green Mushroom]

I am not a physicist, but I suspect that a transport could work if, instead of converting you to energy, you entered the chamber and space folded around you.
So that, instead of you being beamed somewhere, somewhere is being brought to you, in effect. Maybe it amounts to the same thing, in the end. Who knows? Hopefully, no Spice is necessary ...

I am on the side of Death by Transporter as I have no other way to describe what happens to a person when he gets chopped into googleplexes of tiny little pieces and a photocopy of him appears somewhere else.

But if they made the transporter as a spin off of the warp drive where they simply warped space so that Points A and B go from being <24,0000 miles apart to a few inches apart, I could easily live with that and use such a system.

 

[Pauln6]

I agree with both the last two posts. The problem with space warp transporting is the energy requirements required to warp space to that degree (it would be exponentially more energy dependent like warp drive). Gary 7's transport was likely this kind of transport but it was nonetheless intercepted by a standard transporter. Perhaps this suggests that both use the same dimension as a medium.

Trek is so inconsistent though. Some have speculated that dylithium is a wibbly wobbly amplifier that boosts anti-matter output. More sophisticated amplifiers would boost energy output so races such as the Kevlans could travel faster and all Federation ships would need is stronger structural integrity fields to withstand warp stress. Presumably transporting a humanoid by warping space would require a strong structural integrity field to prevent the transportee from being ripped apart as well.

 

[shipfisher]

I also agree with the last two posts. A system that somehow excites matter temporarily to facilitate transferring or mapping it to another location, without having to crack any atomic bonds (not to mention allowing movement and thought in transit, as is often depicted), I can sorta' not hate so much, or at least with a pathology only slightly worse than Leonard McCoy's. It would also explain why the tech isn't used in warp cores instead of M:AM reactions for that whole converting matter to energy thing.

I've always thought it was ludicrous that only "terrorists" in the TNG era were reckless enough to use those DNA-damaging dimensional transporters, which seemed to keep them in one piece, and everyone else was happy being annihilated more completely than any dedicated weapons system usually did, just to get photocopied across the last hundred miles or so of a hundred light-year journey.

And don't get me started on "bio-filters": "Don't worry Commander Riker, you might be a venereal disease infested mess after your fun on Risa, but the reproduction of you we make from your pattern will be squeaky clean! Oh, and perhaps a lipo-deletion, dermal tuck, colonic and a beard trim on the new you sir?"

 

[scotpens]

In the Bill Theiss book "The Making of Star Trek" I remember the reference to having matter transmission devices on ships at the level of technology otherwise displayed in Trek was akin to Cleopatra's barge on the Nile packing an electron microscope. The transporter concept was a product of limited effects budgets and dramatic pacing. A camera trick involving sprinkling aluminium dust was much cheaper and moved the story along faster than a shuttlecraft landing sequence (and the full-size shuttlecraft mock-up hadn't been completed before the pilots and first episodes were shot).

The Making of Star Trek does discuss the dramatic and storytelling reasons for creating the transporter, though the Cleopatra's barge analogy is nowhere mentioned. Perhaps you got it from some other source? In any case, TMOST was written by Stephen E. Whitfield. Bill Theiss was Star Trek's costume designer.

 

[shipfisher]

The Making of Star Trek does discuss the dramatic and storytelling reasons for creating the transporter, though the Cleopatra's barge analogy is nowhere mentioned. Perhaps you got it from some other source? In any case, TMOST was written by Stephen E. Whitfield. Bill Theiss was Star Trek's costume designer.

Quite right. I've strung some memories together on that one. Hey, how 'bout that? All that stuff I smoked in the 70's did some damage after all.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

This may answer your question on the moralities of matter transportation:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc[/yt]

Yay for my country's National Film Board!

Mind you, this teleporter is more about creating a copy of the original and LITERALLY destroying the original, but the concept is essentially the same.

 

[YARN]

Suppose you had a precious family heirloom. Let's say it's a beautiful painting of your grandfather which was painted by your grandmother.

Now suppose a magician asks to use your painting in a local magic show. You agree.

In the show, the magician douses the painting with kerosine and sets it ablaze, leaving nothing but ashes. At the end of the show, what appears to be your painting is returned to you, no harm done.

After the show, you ask the magician how he did it. After further cajoling, he gleefully shares his secret. He has an expert painter in his employ who can create indistinguishable copies of paintings. The original painting was, in fact, consumed in the flames, but what matters was that at the end of the trick, an indistinguishable copy was returned to you.

Would you feel that you were wronged in this exchange?

 

[Pippin209]

I seam to remember a episode on TNG where scotty from TOS was found still alive in the transporter buffer on a shuttle or other spaceship for like 40 years and he did not remember or realise that he had been in there for that long. so i dont think that you are directly transferred from one place to another. again i remember once hearing about a hisenburg filter that allowed for the scanning and recontitution of the person from a spesific moment.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, Scotty rigged up the transporter in a way that it didn't normally operate in. Any issues in squaring the behavior of the transporter in "Relics" with the transporter behavior in episodes like "Realm of Fear" can, I think, be attributed to Scotty's jury-rigging.

The first time anything like storing people inside the transporter was done was "Day of the Dove". There it was called "suspended in transit." Naturally, they didn't elaborate on what that means, and Scotty's characterization of it as "non-existence" is sufficiently vague to allow for different answers to the question of how much time Kang and his party perceived to have passed.

Of course, if you go back to "Obsession", there are multiple attempts made to rematerialize Kirk and Garrovick, so arguably their patterns were kept in a similar place. Also, the rejoining process in "The Enemy Within" could have had the Kirk(s) in the same place, as well. Is it what was later called the "pattern buffer"? Oh, most likely!

 

[Lord Manitou]

Think of the DMA function in a computer. With Direct Memory Access one can stream movies and use the computer to play solitaire all simultaneously.

I would, too, feel a little squeamish if all of me is to be transformed into an electromagnetic transmission which would not , or I seriously doubt, would involve micro-particles(atoms and molecules). Either that or they made a carrier beam where atoms and molecules ride piggyback at the speed of light. I think this latter is closest to Star Trek Tech.