Transporter biofilters

[Ted C]

Just out of curiosity but why do Ferengi still adhere to using Latinum in their own post-scarcity society? They're clearly comfortable with replicators, yet they track commodities across the known galaxy and use strips of Latinum for currency. Is it just a cultural thing or is it because they still see value in currency?

Replication often results in an inferior product. "Single-bit errors" and such.

[Ted C]

Just out of curiosity but why do Ferengi still adhere to using Latinum in their own post-scarcity society? They're clearly comfortable with replicators, yet they track commodities across the known galaxy and use strips of Latinum for currency. Is it just a cultural thing or is it because they still see value in currency?

Replication also appears to be painfully inefficient, since letting Neelix cook is more energy/resource efficient than letting the Voyager crew replicate their meals.

[Borgholio]

Gold and silver are elements, so they can't be replicated, either. Latinum is apparently just harder to find than gold (which is still used for some transations, anyway).

One DS9 episode I remember had Quark mentioning that gold itself was worthless. It was just used as a storage medium for Latinum which is normally a liquid at room temperature. So either normal elements CAN be replicated, or they are so common they would be as if someone found a nugget of iron in a river. Cool, but worthless.

[SilverDragonRed]

Any yet, there were Ferengi in TNG who talked about gold as if they still had a lot of value. I'll have to look up the episode name for the example(s).

[Crazedwraith]

Now some times inventions are the result of fuck-ups but not to the Federation. Take Moriarty, a sentient person created by literally speaking a couple words. What do they do with him? Stick him in the memory until he is forgotten and then stick him on a flash drive to be forgotten again.

Bad example, sapient holograms did become a thing in DS9 and VGR. Witness the EMH and Vic Fontaine for example. And the hirogen/hologram two parter.

The Doctor was a fuck-up from being left on so long. The Hirogen hunted holograms were the result of a fuck-up brought on by tampering.

I think only Vic was self-aware as the result of creator intent.

The Doc was a perfectly competent doctor and a self-aware being from the get go, a ridiculously advanced program. The only things he gained from being left on so long was an ego and a collection of crappy hobbies. The concept was further developed and a long term program was being developed over on DS9.

The Hirogen holograms were sapient by creator intent it's just that those creators were hirogen not starfleet. The point was the tech was not forgotten and it was developed and it entered general use in practical (emhs) and recreational (Vic) capacities.

[Ted C]

Any yet, there were Ferengi in TNG who talked about gold as if they still had a lot of value. I'll have to look up the episode name for the example(s).

And Lursa and Betor were expecting to be paid in gold for something or other.

[SilverDragonRed]

And Lursa and Betor were expecting to be paid in gold for something or other.

Past Prologue. The Duras sisters were selling a weapon to a Bajoran terrorist (Tahna). Interestingly, Tahna stole the gold from the Cardassians.

Any yet, there were Ferengi in TNG who talked about gold as if they still had a lot of value. I'll have to look up the episode name for the example(s).

One episode was 'The Price' where a Daimon representative said the FA would anyone else's bid with a bag full of gold ingot for the Barzan wormhole.

The only other time I can think of from TNG is 'Perfect Mate'. Two bumbling Ferengi try to bribe an amassabor from the culture of the week so they could kidnap Jean Grey.

[Simon_Jester]

Just out of curiosity but why do Ferengi still adhere to using Latinum in their own post-scarcity society? They're clearly comfortable with replicators, yet they track commodities across the known galaxy and use strips of Latinum for currency. Is it just a cultural thing or is it because they still see value in currency?

Latinum cannot be produced by replicators, which is probably the main reason it serves as a useful form of hard currency, as noted by others.

Meanwhile, we know that replicator use is energy-intensive. For bulk commodities it might be less efficient to, say, replicate a million tons of steel girders than to make them from raw ore. Conversely, for small, delicate items that are technologically complex, there may be "some assembly required" beyond what replicators are capable of. Either way, you end up with a commodity that has intrinsic value even in a replicator economy, and for the Ferengi that's worth tracking.

Gold and silver are elements, so they can't be replicated, either. Latinum is apparently just harder to find than gold (which is still used for some transations, anyway).

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure replicators can perform transmutation of the elements, at least in principle.

Otherwise, nothing could be replicated unless you had the exact right combination of chemical elements handy, which is possible but imposes an extra challenge we've never seen them worry about having to meet. There's no "what do you MEAN the replicator's out of magnesium" scenes I can remember.

The replicator means the Federation is "post-scarcity". They and the citizens don't have to worry about resources, working 9 to 5 to make that paper, or ever worry about starving. The replicator is both the ultimate tool to placate the masses and the tool to prevent innovation and conflict. Why work and build improved space iPadds when you can sit on your ass and eat replicated Cheetos and play Call of Duty Super Future Ops 27 on the holodeck? Some people will work just to be productive, like people who join Starfleet and Sisko's dad who may or may not have a been a Starfleet admiral, but the great mass of the Feddie populace may not.

I've heard plenty of this from the main site (which is sort of... atrophied but still there). But I would argue that a lot of people do have self-motivation to accomplish certain things. Moreover, there is little or no positive evidence for the majority of the population being couch potatoes.

Innovation is frowned upon to not risk upsetting the system. Sure they could build the most effective warships, create near impenetrable body armor, and plenty of other things but like Baffalo said there is not incentive to do so but also probably pressure to NOT do so.

Have we ever actually seen this pressure in the shows, or are you making it up in an attempt to explain why the 'technology of the week' seldom enters widespread service.

Mostly me just pulling a theory out of my bloated behind though there is some evidence to back that thing up.

Of course the fact that tech of the week never shows up again. It would be like the US inventing the atom bomb or jet engine (I know they didn't invent it but I'm warping the validity of history to make my analogy work) and then just shelving it and forgetting it was invented. Things like new weapons, new engines, new shields, and new life are just forgotten by Starfleet regularly. So either Starfleet is suppressing those things or maybe the Enterprise's computers just really really suck and keep crashing when Wesley downloads Nausicaan porn deleting all the info before it can be transmitted. Plus in the high tech future nobody makes any notes except on computers so recreating the super stuff is impossible.

I think you're overestimating this effect.

A lot of these exotic new inventions and ideas are things that only work under strange circumstances. Say, making use of a natural event or feature that either ceases to exist or exists only in one place.

Or they have serious practical drawbacks, like an advanced supercomputer technology that goes insane and evil and kills people. No wonder a technology like that doesn't end up in widespread distribution! Or a rifle that shoots teleporting bullets- there are so many ways in which such a weapon could (or misfire in the face of anti-teleport jamming fields) that it might well not enter universal use even if it seems powerful and effective.

Or they are used again, sometimes repeatedly- the crew of the original series Enterprise discovered a 'slingshot effect' method of time travel that they canonically used while interacting with various periods in the history of 20th century Earth at least three times that I can remember, plus other occasions in the TNG era where time travel was used.

So I think it's a gross generalization to say, in spite of this, that Star Trek reflects some kind of technological stagnation, given that we see innumerable examples of them testing and developing new technologies. The fact that a lot of these technologies don't hit widespread use within the next few years (i.e. during the same TV series) proves very little.

Then there is other things like relatively mundane tech that we never see explored to its fullest, like transporter tech and holo tech. Today any tech is pushest to it extremes by everyone from the government to corporations to some dude in his garage. We see how to fully exploit that tech, make it better, make it cheaper, make it bigger or smaller, combine it with other tech, and even see if we can put it in a watch.

In Trek new tech just exists and barring some accident or something it never seems to be played with and improved. We only know about transporters capability of cloning, de-aging, and removing foreign particles thanks to fuck-ups, same how we know the holodeck can create life.

Transporters' capability of cloning often comes with drawbacks- sometimes you get a perfect copy, but sometimes you get dramatically imperfect copies. That happened to Captain Kirk once. Or your transporter hiccup sends you to a parallel universe full of assholes. Likewise happened to him once.

The de-aging functionality may be likewise unreliable; I don't recall seeing that episode.

The removing foreign particles aspect is already in routine use in the biofilters, which is probably the only reason the crew of the Enterprise can gallivant around alien ecosystems at all without all dying of various plagues. The fact that some times some thing gets past the filter doesn't mean the technology isn't being used to the best ability of the people who developed it.

Your basic argument here sounds to me like this.

"Car technology exists. But cars haven't gotten significantly faster in thirty or forty years. Therefore modern Earth is stagnant! In a REAL technologically developing society everything is pushed to its logical extreme, and we'd all be driving Formula One racecars!"

Now, when we apply the argument to cars it's obvious why this is fallacious. There are good reasons why people don't normally drive faster than about 100-140 kilometers per hour. At higher speeds it is very hard to maintain control of a vehicle on turning roads. A car's fuel economy and efficiency declines rapidly. The driver has to spot threats and collision hazards from very far away in order to stop in time. The high power-to-weight ratio required to go that fast turns the car into a maintenance hog.

So no, the common-use practical technology we rely on from day to day does NOT push the edge of the envelope. Because that would be stupid and dangerous and unnecessarily expensive.

I see no reason to expect Star Trek to be different.

Now some times inventions are the result of fuck-ups but not to the Federation. Take Moriarty, a sentient person created by literally speaking a couple words. What do they do with him? Stick him in the memory until he is forgotten and then stick him on a flash drive to be forgotten again.

Well yes, because he's an inimical sentient person. He's hostile, being as how he's an AI program created to be an evil scheming criminal mastermind. Releasing him is actively dangerous.

Meanwhile, the exact same technology of self-aware AIs running hologram bodies is used in Voyager as the "Emergency Medical Hologram." So in direct contradiction to your claims, within a span of a decade or two Starfleet did in fact develop this unexpected 'invention' into something useful. Only they didn't willfully reproduce copies of an evil and dangerous criminal, as you suggest. Instead, they took their time, used a snarky but effective physician, and got a valuable result.

Now some times inventions are the result of fuck-ups but not to the Federation. Take Moriarty, a sentient person created by literally speaking a couple words. What do they do with him? Stick him in the memory until he is forgotten and then stick him on a flash drive to be forgotten again.

Bad example, sapient holograms did become a thing in DS9 and VGR. Witness the EMH and Vic Fontaine for example. And the hirogen/hologram two parter.

The Doctor was a fuck-up from being left on so long. The Hirogen hunted holograms were the result of a fuck-up brought on by tampering.

How do those objections even make any sense? The point is that the Federation is actively using this technology of making holographic persons, and clearly continues to have and use the ability to make them as intelligent as necessary. So that instead of being only a thing that happens inside holodecks, holographic personhood becomes a thing that can be used wherever the Federation needs it.

I think only Vic was self-aware as the result of creator intent.

So what? It's obvious that he is self-aware, the crew of DS9 sees no problem with that. No inspectors come to take away the self-aware hologram program or anything. How do you consider this in any way a 'fuck-up?'

[Ted C]

Gold and silver are elements, so they can't be replicated, either. Latinum is apparently just harder to find than gold (which is still used for some transations, anyway).

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure replicators can perform transmutation of the elements, at least in principle.

Otherwise, nothing could be replicated unless you had the exact right combination of chemical elements handy, which is possible but imposes an extra challenge we've never seen them worry about having to meet. There's no "what do you MEAN the replicator's out of magnesium" scenes I can remember.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that they CAN perform elemental transmutation. I can't think of any situation in which they've done that. We typically see lots of drums of material in the holds of starships, so they presumably keep whatever basic materials they need on hand for replication. Most things they make on a regular basis (food, clothes, and knick-knacks) won't require any rare elements, anyway.

We also know there are things that replicators just can't make, and the need for exotic materials may explain some of that.

And as others have noted, gold still does have value, just not as much as latinum. If it were possible to replicate gold cheaply and easily, Klingons and Ferengi wouldn't be using it in business transactions.

[Enigma]

Quark didn't care much for gold and he's a greedy bastard. That DS9 ep where the latinum went missing, he didn't care for the gold that housed the latinum. I got the impression that gold held no real value.

[Crazedwraith]

I think it's generally accepted that previous mentions of gold were retconned to referring to gold pressed latnum. Either that or gold was rapidly depreciating in value at the time since Quark describes it as worthless in ''Who Mourns for Morn'

[Ted C]

A sudden drop in gold value doesn't require it to be replicatable. Some government might have suddenly dropped a huge amount of gold into the galactic market, causing its value to drop sharply.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Or the fact their comm badges are made mostly of gold (TNG: Time's Arrow), it's very easily replicated. And why not? I

Pretty much the only things they seem incapable of replicating are "alive" life-forms and radioactive / nuclear / exotic particles.

They can beam antimatter and protomatter around quite happily. Transporters and replicators aren't *that* bad.

[SpottedKitty]

Pretty much the only things they seem incapable of replicating are "alive" life-forms

I though this was established as more of a self-imposed ethical limitation, not a technical limitation. TNG-era transporter/replicator technology can do it, but the Federation as a culture won't do it. Possibly as a result of the Eugenics Wars making the whole subject unspeakably icky for any human who knows their Earth history...?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not sure where you got the idea that they CAN perform elemental transmutation. I can't think of any situation in which they've done that. We typically see lots of drums of material in the holds of starships, so they presumably keep whatever basic materials they need on hand for replication. Most things they make on a regular basis (food, clothes, and knick-knacks) won't require any rare elements, anyway.

We also know there are things that replicators just can't make, and the need for exotic materials may explain some of that.

And as others have noted, gold still does have value, just not as much as latinum. If it were possible to replicate gold cheaply and easily, Klingons and Ferengi wouldn't be using it in business transactions.

That's fair.

I think I got hung up on a somewhat involuted argument involving latinum, and also on the fact that as far as I can remember we have never seen Star Trek be too hard up for the right chemical substance to make something in the replicator.

Moreover, since we know the Federation can do matter-to-energy transformations in a transporter beam, the idea that they can do transmutation of the elements seemed a bit less far-fetched than it might. To me, at least.

But I have no easy way of proving that they can do transmutation.

[Prometheus Unbound]

But I have no easy way of proving that they can do transmutation.

Well I thought that was the basis of how people thought replicators worked - that there is a "slurry" of matter which it reforms into whatever is asked.

It's either that, or they have every element in just the right amounts (as someone said, there's never been a case of "unable to comply - not enough magnesium in storage" situation). OR it's done entirely in an energy to matter conversion with no base matter - only energy as the input.

[Baffalo]

Just for the sake of number crunching, let's compute roughly how much energy would be required to convert energy into a single cup of coffee.

1 coffee mug (1 lb 11 ounces, or 0.765 kg) contains on average 5.07 fluid ounces (150 milliliters), which at 160o F (71.1o C) has a mass approximately 0.147 kg (water at 70o C has a density of 977.8 kg/m3). This gives us a combined mass of 0.912 kg.

To convert this into pure energy, using E = mc2...
E = (0.912 kg)(300 E 9 m/s)2 = (0.912 kg)(9 E 22 m2/s2) = 8.21 E 22 Joules

There's a teensy problem with that. The Enterprise outputs a maximum of 1E20 Watts, or 1E20 Joules/second. In order to replicate just a single cup of coffee, you would need to devote the total engine output for 821 seconds, or around 13.7 minutes. So I think we can safely discount the idea that it's pure transmutation.

That doesn't mean it can't be done for trace minerals, but I wonder if behind the scenes the crew who beams a lot has to get vitamin supplements and shots to make sure they have enough of the trace stuff lost in transport.

[bilateralrope]

But I have no easy way of proving that they can do transmutation.

Well I thought that was the basis of how people thought replicators worked - that there is a "slurry" of matter which it reforms into whatever is asked.

It's either that, or they have every element in just the right amounts (as someone said, there's never been a case of "unable to comply - not enough magnesium in storage" situation). OR it's done entirely in an energy to matter conversion with no base matter - only energy as the input.

They don't need to have the right ratio of elements in the slurry. They just need to have more of every element than they need. If the ratio of elements they use doesn't match the ratio in the slurry, that just means they have some excess that they can get rid of every time they restock the slurry.

That we haven't seen them run out of any elements during the show says that Voyager has the equipment it need to be able to restock the slurry from materials it runs across.

[Baffalo]

They don't need to have the right ratio of elements in the slurry. They just need to have more of every element than they need. If the ratio of elements they use doesn't match the ratio in the slurry, that just means they have some excess that they can get rid of every time they restock the slurry.

That we haven't seen them run out of any elements during the show says that Voyager has the equipment it need to be able to restock the slurry from materials it runs across.

According to Wikipedia, the chemical composition of naturally occurring seawater contains the following:

• Oxygen, 85.84%
• Hydrogen, 10.82%
• Chloride, 1.94%
• Sodium, 1.08%
• Magnesium, 0.1292%
• Sulfur, 0.091%
• Calcium, 0.04%
• Potassium, 0.04%
• Bromine, 0.0067%
• Carbon, 0.0028%

That also doesn't include the literal tons of gold, silver, and other elements just floating about in trace amounts. So if nothing else, between gas giants and standard Class M worlds, Voyager could always just beam up literal tons of seawater, sift it for vital materials, and return the rest.

[Batman]

For the nth time, if replicators/transporters work on matter-energy conversion, why the hell do they bother with Warp Cores? One system uses fuel with shitty energy density per volume (unless you can point out where they use metallic hydrogen) and requires an antimatter component when antimatter is really inconvenient to store and handle. The other can turn anything into energy, including lots of harmless materials that nevertheless have a much higher density than hydrogen. If transporters/replicators worked on turning matter into energy/the reverse , using rock for fuel would be massively more efficient and a lot less volatile than the Warp Core.

[Simon_Jester]

There's a teensy problem with that. The Enterprise outputs a maximum of 1E20 Watts, or 1E20 Joules/second. In order to replicate just a single cup of coffee, you would need to devote the total engine output for 821 seconds, or around 13.7 minutes. So I think we can safely discount the idea that it's pure transmutation.

Well, pure matter-from-energy transmutation.

Matter-to-matter is another issue. It might well be possible for the Enterprise to carry around a box of lead bricks, and whenever it needs a rare element heavier than iron, it simply transmutes lead into the necessary element. This would even be energetically favorable, at least in principle.

For the nth time, if replicators/transporters work on matter-energy conversion, why the hell do they bother with Warp Cores? One system uses fuel with shitty energy density per volume (unless you can point out where they use metallic hydrogen) and requires an antimatter component when antimatter is really inconvenient to store and handle. The other can turn anything into energy, including lots of harmless materials that nevertheless have a much higher density than hydrogen. If transporters/replicators worked on turning matter into energy/the reverse , using rock for fuel would be massively more efficient and a lot less volatile than the Warp Core.

It may not be possible for them to take the energy released from transporters and turn it into anything but more matter. Conservation laws (i.e. of lepton number or quark number) might be somehow temporarily suspended during the transporter operation thanks to its 'buffer,' but not be able to be outright violated and ignored by disintegrating the relevant matter entirely.

If transporter/replicator technology can transmute elements but can't violate conservation laws on particle number as part of routine operation, then at best, the technology gives you highly efficient fusion or fission reactors. At best.

[biostem]

There was that one episode where, I think it was Worf, went to some sort of "replicator station" to try and select a gift for someone. When he went there, he was presented with a selection of items to actually create. It wasn't presented as a verbal "describe what you want" type of thing, but rather an inventory of available designs. This, to me, implies that there is more of a limitation on what items they can select, than we are led to believe. We've also seen instances where something they *should* be able to replicate is instead imported - like when Picard had real caviar brought on board instead of just replicating some.

As for the Ferengi comment about gold - I chalked it up to them either recognizing that it had value at one time, and trying to paint the Federation as greedy/showy by using it for "decorative purposes". They were trying to sway a 3rd party to their favor, after all.

As for why they don't use the transporters for medical reasons, my feeling is that the de/rematerialization process seems to often "trigger" undesirable effects - like how some random contaminant made Picard and Gainan young that one time, or how it somehow integrated that organism into Barclay.

[bilateralrope]

There was that one episode where, I think it was Worf, went to some sort of "replicator station" to try and select a gift for someone. When he went there, he was presented with a selection of items to actually create. It wasn't presented as a verbal "describe what you want" type of thing, but rather an inventory of available designs. This, to me, implies that there is more of a limitation on what items they can select, than we are led to believe. We've also seen instances where something they *should* be able to replicate is instead imported - like when Picard had real caviar brought on board instead of just replicating some.

That sounds like the replicator needs to have the replication instructions programmed into it. If something isn't in the replicator, it can't be replicated until someone programs it in. If the programmed version of caviar is bad (taste is subjective), then it will only replicate bad caviar. Maybe there is a good version of caviar under a different name that nobody knows, maybe memory for replicator patterns is limited so someone had to decide what patterns would be standard across all Starfleet vessels and installations. A position which might have people making decisions for petty reasons. Like deciding that Starfleet replicators will produce a bad caviar to spite someone they don't like. Or to encourage people to visit a restaurant operated by a friend by making sure the replicator produces worse food than the friends restaurant.

Maybe it's the naturalistic fallacy at work.

[Baffalo]

There was that one episode where, I think it was Worf, went to some sort of "replicator station" to try and select a gift for someone. When he went there, he was presented with a selection of items to actually create. It wasn't presented as a verbal "describe what you want" type of thing, but rather an inventory of available designs. This, to me, implies that there is more of a limitation on what items they can select, than we are led to believe. We've also seen instances where something they *should* be able to replicate is instead imported - like when Picard had real caviar brought on board instead of just replicating some.

That sounds like the replicator needs to have the replication instructions programmed into it. If something isn't in the replicator, it can't be replicated until someone programs it in. If the programmed version of caviar is bad (taste is subjective), then it will only replicate bad caviar. Maybe there is a good version of caviar under a different name that nobody knows, maybe memory for replicator patterns is limited so someone had to decide what patterns would be standard across all Starfleet vessels and installations. A position which might have people making decisions for petty reasons. Like deciding that Starfleet replicators will produce a bad caviar to spite someone they don't like. Or to encourage people to visit a restaurant operated by a friend by making sure the replicator produces worse food than the friends restaurant.

Maybe it's the naturalistic fallacy at work.

It's interesting that in his Bioshock II review, Chuck mentions that they have small little replication stations where you pay for nanites, and even if you hack one of them, it still has a cost. What you want is irrelevant, so long as you have the nanites themselves to create it, meaning it's only the pattern that's stored, not the actual items themselves. If that's the case, then if it's the same here, you have pre-programmed items stored in a matrix, with new items coming out when someone refines a pattern or something. It would also explain why there are some items (like the aforementioned caviar) that don't taste right and so only the real stuff will do.

Of course, that could also just be an attempt to preserve the cultural diversity of Earth, since caviar is a rather pain-staking process to collect and obtain. It could be a mark of status that you're able to afford 'real' caviar, and the taste is deliberately off to encourage this. If that's the case, then some items, like hand-made pianos or violins, would be unavailable to the average citizen but to people like Captains and Admirals. How they would compute the 'worth' of these items and how much you get I have no idea, but I imagine it's similar to how they figure care in VOY: Critical Care.

[Simon_Jester]

There was that one episode where, I think it was Worf, went to some sort of "replicator station" to try and select a gift for someone. When he went there, he was presented with a selection of items to actually create. It wasn't presented as a verbal "describe what you want" type of thing, but rather an inventory of available designs. This, to me, implies that there is more of a limitation on what items they can select, than we are led to believe. We've also seen instances where something they *should* be able to replicate is instead imported - like when Picard had real caviar brought on board instead of just replicating some.

Or there may just be a finite amount of computer storage space available; the specifications for replicating a complicated object might be rather complex. I doubt Worf would have the engineering skill to modify an existing template in the replicator on the fly, and small Star Trek computers are (with conspicuous exceptions like Data) usually not smart enough to do complicated, creative, open-ended tasks like "give me a sweater that will look good on Counselor Troi."