h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

PP:

>>The first thing that I would probably replicate would be my bum.

When I worked or...a leading manufacturer of reprographics equipment...it was said that they'd had to strengthen the platen glass for just this reason.

Would the second bum be a false bottom?

Well then, I would have to replicate the whole starship, piece by piece, starting with detailed assembly instructions suitable for an idiot like me.
I'll pre-empt the next possible objection: Can replicators make dilithium crystals? I vaguely remember there being an episode with this as a plot point, but I can't remember whether or not it came down in favour.

I recall an episode where they created water in a replicator.
Thousands of gallons for a desert planet. (Voyager)

I wondered then - if they can replicate hydrogen and oxygen
in a liquid form (H20) then surely they can reproduce any of
the more complex compounds.

But in spite of all chemicals being variations on the hydrogen
molecule there were some things even the Voyager replicators
could not produce, resulting in a need to trade with unsavoury
characters. And dilithium crystals were not on the menu in other
series. Certainly not on the original series where they often ran
out of fuel.


~jwf~

First of all, dilithium crystals are not fuel. They're porous to anti-matter (rolleyes) so a dilithium crystal is the thing into which you feed a stream of matter and antimatter, and from which you can extract a stream of plasma that will power your warp core. Think of it like a fuel injector - it's not the fuel, but the engine won't work without it.

A replicator, TRiG, is essentially a transporter with nothing at the other end. A transporter disassembles something atom by atom, stores the resulting matter stream in a pattern buffer, and transmits the matter stream down a beam (as in beam me up) where it focusses and reassembles it, piece by piece, back into the original thing.

A replicator does the reassembly bit, without ever having something to disassemble. It can in prinicple produce almost anything. There's some blah blah explanation why it can't make living things or certain specific plot-based objects. This is to do with a transporter having quantum level resolution, but the patterns for replicators only being stored down to a molecular resolution.

Think of it like your flashy DSLR produces extremely high resolution RAW format pictures - that's a transporter. A replicator can, on demand, produce copies of those pictures, but only at VGA.

They don't replicate starships on the show for the simple reason there are quicker and less energy intensive ways of building them.

I think as of Next Gen you can in fact replicate dilithium. You can't replicate anti-matter, though (or rather, you can, but you need to USE more than you PRODUCE) so it's still possible to run out of *fuel*.

Other than that, the computer behind it is highly intelligent and has a massive library of patterns in its database. Anything that's not already in its pattern database you could simply describe to the computer and it would be able to make it for you. And of course if it's not *quite* right, you just pop it back it, it dematerialises and the updated prototype rematerialises. It'd be great.

Star Trek isn't real, you know.

(not seen it since the 1970s, btw. )

>>Star Trek isn't real,

Our technology has often brought their concepts into the real world. Star Trek gets more real all the time.

"Star Trek isn't real, you know"

In 1967 the production designers produced a futuristic looking communicator they thought looked fitting for the 23rd century. Nobody I know under 60 years old would be seen dead with a phone that looked as clunky and old-fashioned as that thing now does. Plus it did two way voice communication and very little else. Any recent iPhone does two way VIDEO communication and a whole shitload besides.

In 1987 the production designers produced a futuristic looking interface device they thought looked fitting for the 24th century, a wireless touchscreen pad for easily communicating with the ship's computer. In context, it looks poorly designed, underpowered and clunky next to an iPad from last year.

Some Trek tech (transporters) is physically impossible as it's portrayed. We'll never have something that works like that. I can say that with certainty, Clark's law notwithstanding. It just breaks too many laws of physics.

Some Trek tech (warp drive) seems physically possible but very, very difficult. We might have it one day.

But a good deal of it - replicators, holograms, phasers, tricorders, communicators, holodecks, ultra-powerful or even self-aware computers - we either already have in some form or another, or we'll likely have far, far sooner than the time shown in Trek.

And all that aside - it's fun to talk about.

>I've thought about this FAR too much, haven't I?<

If you haven't read it already, you should read 'One Step from Earth' by Harry Harrison.
It's a series of short stories about the development of similar technology (not quite a transporter in the Star Trek sense) and then going forward stepwise into the deep future on uses such technology could be put to.
Proper good hard Sci-Fi. And not at all like his more throwaway (but still good) stuff

I remember in one of Harry Harrison's 'Stainless Steel Rat' stories they helped to solve a planet's garbage problem by mailing an empty TV dinner tray to every person in another solar system's phone book.

Aren't they working on a medical tricorder just now ?

In one episode of TNG, when investigating a murder, a tricorder was used to sample the air in a room. By looking at all the dna traces and comparing them to records in the ship's computer (where the dna records of every person in the federation were kept ), they were able to conclusively say who had been in the room . That doesn't sound far fetched at all.

New thread idea.

I'd make a big pair of s. I'm shallow, *and*?!

They're not alive, so no problem there..

They'd go nicely with Pailey's (_!_)

Paisley's

>> Think of it like a fuel injector - it's not the fuel, but the engine won't work without it. <<

That all actually makes sense. Thanks Hoo.

Is the plasma the product of mattter/anit-matter
collision or are the crystals being converted? They
did seem to burn out frequently. And it wasn't
like a wee squirt of carb-cleaner would fix it.

~jwf~

IT'S ALL FICTION. But...

No, the crystals aren't being converted. There's a matter store above the intermix chamber, and an antimatter store below it. That big vertical cylinder you can see in the Enterprise D's engine room

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070119021011/memoryalpha/en/images/9/93/Warp_core%2C_Enterprise-D.jpg

Deuterium in the top, antideuterium in the bottom. Apply the right temperature and pressure to the crystals, and they'll focus the energy into a stream of electroplasma that can be routed round the ship in conduits. Apply the wrong temperature and pressure, and the crystals will shatter and you've got yourself a plot, as this is an incident hardly ever observed to happen right next to a working dilithium crystal factory run by generous friendly people.

>>IT'S ALL FICTION.

Oi! That's what I tried to tell you. But would you have it?


Here's an interesting thought. Why is that a better fiction that 'It's powered by faeries'? Just because it sounds science-y, even though it isn't?

Blake's 7 had a replicator in the episode Moloch, where Servalan wanted to replicate a vast space fleet with which she would conquer the universe, only to find out that the inhabitants had, in fact, replicated a wrinkly creature which had taken over the world.

The other thing that replicators can't replicate is gold-pressed latinum, which is why it is so valuable. (There was a Star Trek novel in which Wesley Crusher works out how to, only to be kidnapped by the Ferengi.)

What would I replicate? I'd like to replicate some of the world's lost buildings, such as the Seven Wonders of the World, Nonsuch Palace, East Cowes Castle etc, and then charge tourists extortionate prices to visit them.

<BB<

I think the reason it's better than "it's powered by faeries" is that the fiction still has some (self-imposed) rules of a sort, and makes some attempt at internal compliance with those rules most of the time.

That which explains everything explains nothing. If your device is essentially magical, then there are no implied limits on what it can do, so there's little dramatic tension.

Whereas with a fictional technology, there are invariably implied limits. Replicators can't make living things. Transporters have a limited range and a fixed cycle time. Warp drive, although FTL, isn't infinitely fast, so although we can get from here to Vulcan in a day or two, the galaxy is still a BIG place. Shields can absorb a limited amount of energy before breaking down, and phasers are pretty destructive by 20th century stanards, but not planet-busting.

It's a common feature of most of the sf that holds my interest that the tech in it is well-described, plausibly internally consistent, and limited.

Exploring and occasionally breaking the author-imposed limitations is part of the fun. You can't beam onto a ship travelling at warp... unless you've got a really talented engineer handy. You can't create a copy of a person using a transporter... unless there are particularly freaky atmospheric conditions on the planet you're beaming them up from. And so on.

Plus, if you have two different sets of rules in two different fictional universes, it can be fun to compare them. I had a slightly drunk conversation a long, LONG time ago (1988ish) along the lines of "who would win out of". The question proposed was: the new Starship Enterprise, vs. an Imperial Star Destroyer out of Star Wars.

It made for an interesting conversation, if a little upsetting for the Trekkies. Conclusion was, based on observable capabilities, even the biggest and best ship we'd ever seen in Star Trek would struggle to hold it's own against a single fighter craft from the Star Wars universe, let alone one of the carriers. It's only when you start thinking about it that the *massive* disparity of tech levels becomes apparent.

And yet - still there are rules and limitations and internal consistency to the Wars 'verse, so it holds interest. Well, it does for me at least.