Star Trek Tech Questions

[mnmwmnm]

I was just wondering what nifty little piece of technology the transporter uses to compensate for relative speeds when beaming somthing down to a planet.

Seems to me that if you are orbiting against the rotation of the planet, the difference in velocity of the ship and the velocity of the surface would make the teleportee slam into the nearest wall with the velocity of an orbiting spaceship + the velocity of the rotation of the planet.

If both the teleport and destination were moving at the exact same velocity, I could understand how it would work without violent results, but that never seems to happen.

Keep in mind that I dont really have any real knowledge of physics, and I'm happy to accept FTL without nitpicking. I was just pondering this... But if there is a gadget that takes care of this question (provided this is a valid question) in Star Trek, does anyone know what it's called or how it works?

Thanks.

 

[Dave]

Is your point concerning when they beam down from a ship to a planet? It's just that I can't see a problem when they beam from a transporter pad to another transporter pad... the rematerialising atoms and the transporter pads would all be moving at the same speed.

By the way, I only have A'Level Physics and we didn't cover 'Transporter technology' -- things which Wesley, Nog and Icheb seem to cover in a single lesson!

The Brainz usually answers these questions but he hasn't posted in a while.

I know that there are a lot of other problems with Transporters. I have a book called 'The Physics of Star Trek' by Lawrence M. Krauss published by Boxtree. It has a great discussion on these and other pieces of Star Trek technology, if you are interested. It has a forword from Stephen Hawking.

This could be a very interesting thread if anyone wants to enlarge the discussions with other things covered in the book. Such as:

What warps at warp speed?
Are time loops really possible, and can I kill my grandmother?
What actually happens to you when you beam up?
Are inertial dampers, tractor beams, wormholes, deflector beams, dilthium crystals, holodecks and extra-terrestial life possible?

 

[Neo]

Ouch

 

[Dave]

Here's a Tech question of mine then:

The Doctor on Voyager has complained, more than once, about the possiblity of his program being irretrievably lost. Why don't they make backup copies of him? If they don't have enough space in Voyager's Gel Packs, why not delete some of the kitsch Holodeck programs? Do you think it's plausible that the Doctor could be at such risk in the 24th Century, when even we today can still retrieve freshly deleted files from our computers. Or maybe there isn't enough room on the Voyagers hard drive for more than one ego that large! Or maybe they just can't stand the thought of two of him around!
And why don't they replicate the mobile emitter he is always getting it stolen, one day he won't get it back again? I don't think that the fact that it is 29th Century technology has any effect on how the replicator works, do you?

 

[Neo]

I have often wondered why they dont replicate the mobile emitor..

I read somewhere that they cannot back up his programme as its far too big...

 

[KDogg]

Trek-nology

Transporters and 'beaming up': I believe that is the whole point of 'locking onto coordinates' - to 1) keep the person from being slammed into the nearest wall, and 2) to keep him from being stretched like a rubber band or from being beamed horizontally and scattered about as he rematerializes. When one is 'beamed', the transporter reads his or her signature dna and atomic makeup, seperates them and turns them into electronic data and carries them via transporter 'beam' to the locked coordinates, them reverses the process by which the individual was seperated to reassemble them into one piece. The bio-filters keep any unwanted critters from being combined with the individual (as in 'The Fly').

Time Loops: Well, if they are possible and you kill your grandmother, you better hope the loop is broken before you kill her again or you're gonna wind up in the Brig.

Extra-Terrestrial life? Ask a Klingon if he's for real and see what happens (better hope you're in a time loop)! There are millions of planets out there. And even though I believe in God and that we were created by Him I still think there is that possibility. I don't think God would tell all his secrets!

Warp: Being that warp speed is faster than light, and that everything we see is images of light reflection, move something that fast and see what happens - like wiggling a pencil by your finger tips and it looks as if it is bending...

Deflector arrays: Basically, yes. Take a positive end of a magnet toward another positive end of a magnet and see what happens. The same happens with a deflector array... except not with magnets.

Dilithium: Who knows? Maybe not here on earth, but as stated before, there are millions of other planets out there that have not yet been destroyed by strip-mines...

Holodecks: I believe that sometime in the near future they will figure this one out. The images will be simpler though at first. The tough part will be in creating the 'force field' that gives holographic images their texture...

Inertial Dampers: Hmmm.... artificial gravity. This is already in the works in the real scientific world, as is warp speed and the creation of antimatter for power source.

Wormholes: Black holes are there, and it is not truly known what's inside there - or on the other end. You can't count nothing out until space has been 100% explored. Let's just hope they don't find the Borg...

Tractor beams: Another something for the magnetic polarization field....

The Doc's backup program: Ever had your computer freeze up because of too much data and not enough memory? Can you see Janeway asking the Borg for memory chips.... Never mind, she got a way past them, didn't she? Well, she shoulda asked....

The Mobile Emitter: Maybe it had some 29th century stuff in there that had not yet been discovered in the 24th century, therefore the computer could not replicate a material for which it didn't have the proper atomic particles for....

Well, there's my input. Not a Starfleet engineer or scientist yet, but that's my scope of it....

K-Dogg

 

[Dave]

Re: Trek-nology

Originally posted by KDogg
Well, there's my input. Not a Starfleet engineer or scientist yet, but that's my scope of it....

K-Dogg

Hi K-Dogg,

All intelligent comments are welcome.

Please post some more here and have fun, the people here are really nice, they don't flame each other (even when they disagree strongly). There are threads for quizes, defaced images, fan-fiction. It's the best place to get a question on Scifi answered, and any news gets posted here very quickly.

 

[Neo]

just goot reiterate your post DAve....

KDogg that was a great post... i had to read it twice in order to fully take it all in...

I do hope you visit all the trek threads and participate more....

 

[Dave]

So, does anyone else care to nit-pick Star Trek Science and Technology? :rolly2: