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Why is there a transporter room?

allmyteeallmytee Member Posts: 0 Arc User
edited June 2013 in Ten Forward
Thinkin about Star Trek and all its glorious technologies, I was wondering why have a room for transporters?

I could understand a transporter pad for cargo, maybe even for dignified quest. However there seems to be no need for a transporter pad per say. People are constantly transported from the surface of a planet or another ship directly to sick bay. One could also arrange site to site transport.

The inner workings of the transporter could simply be stored behind a wall, or several walls freeing up space, since the bulk of the transporter room, the pad and controls, are not necessary.

Does any one have any insight to why there are several transport rooms on star ships when apparently they are not required for transport?
Post edited by allmytee on

Comments

  • janusforbearejanusforbeare Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    The most likely answer is that transporter pads and rooms have certain functions that aren't possible with simple site-to-site transports. For instance, they can use forcefields to contain hazardous materials or dangerous individuals - we've seen this in several episodes. Memory Alpha also states that transporter pads have four redundant molecular imaging scanners to prevent data loss, something that probably isn't the case with a basic transporter unit.

    I'm not 100% sure about this, but it's possible that transporter pads are required to deactivate phaser and disruptor weapons during transport. This was done in a couple of episodes, but I can't recall if the pads were used or not.
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  • dirlettiadirlettia Member Posts: 1,632 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Site to site is all well and good but you have to keep the machine somewhere. It may also be that the transporters are better at sorting mixed and degraded signals as we always see those going to a transporter pad rather than site to site.
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  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Well, AFAIK site-to-site transport is basically telling the transporter to beam the person or object twice in rapid succession. The first time it moves them to the pad, the second time it moves them off the pad to their final destination.
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  • hevachhevach Member Posts: 2,777 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    In TOS, there was no site-to-site, one end had to be on the pad (though I do believe they broke this once or twice, it was the official rule). Site-to-site is one of those things like casual time travel and deflector dish superpowers that the writers created but never fully considered the ramifications of. The tech manuals were vague on it, too. There were supposed to be benefits to having one end of the transport being a known, controlled location, but no disadvantages of not doing so were ever offered.
  • hfmuddhfmudd Member Posts: 881 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Holdover from the early days when transporters were much more finicky beasties. They want you right there in front of the targeting scanners and other equipment, for maximum safety and reliability. (And sometimes so that the operator, who gets a lot more long-term exposure, has a nice rad-shield to stand behind.) As time went on and transporters got more advanced, transporter rooms were kept out of a combination of tradition and for those times when you really need that extra precision.

    As hevach notes, and most of you youngsters may not know, but site-to-site transport, beaming directly to sickbay, etc was only introduced in TNG. This was an amazing new capability, 25 years ago. :p
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  • lonnehartlonnehart Member Posts: 846 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Now if only they'd fix this one little quirk with skirts... they're the first to beam out, but the last to beam in... :eek:
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  • fr0gurtfr0gurt Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    lonnehart wrote: »
    Now if only they'd fix this one little quirk with skirts... they're the first to beam out, but the last to beam in... :eek:

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  • sander233sander233 Member Posts: 3,992 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    hfmudd wrote: »
    Holdover from the early days when transporters were much more finicky beasties. They want you right there in front of the targeting scanners and other equipment, for maximum safety and reliability. (And sometimes so that the operator, who gets a lot more long-term exposure, has a nice rad-shield to stand behind.) As time went on and transporters got more advanced, transporter rooms were kept out of a combination of tradition and for those times when you really need that extra precision.

    As hevach notes, and most of you youngsters may not know, but site-to-site transport, beaming directly to sickbay, etc was only introduced in TNG. This was an amazing new capability, 25 years ago. :p

    Also it makes a handy assembly point for the away team leader to go over final equipment checks and planning with his team who would be coming from all over the ship.
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  • nightbaynnightbayn Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    The one of the pads main jobs is for scanning and decon. which site to site does not do.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    lonnehart wrote: »
    Now if only they'd fix this one little quirk with skirts... they're the first to beam out, but the last to beam in... :eek:
    and teeth... teeth are last out, first in....
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  • khanstruewrathkhanstruewrath Member Posts: 2 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    first one needs to understand basic transporter functionality. the transporter room and everything in it is required for moving people via teleportation.

    we are talking about seperate super computer systems that track and record every atom of your being, exact counts on the electrons and their orbital positions at the moment of engaging the beaming.

    not too mention all the back up power sources in case main power should fail.

    yes they have beamed people to other locations, but you beam into the transporter rooms systems first, and then move to the other location, basically in an instant.

    as a quirky side note there are massive moral issues involved with matter transportation, as you are scanned, recorded and recreated in a new location, and your old self is vaporized where it stood. failure to vaporize the original results in copy making, you can also be made out of transporter buffer data if you are still recorded within the buffer.
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  • teklionbenrashateklionbenrasha Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    The main reason, according to Memory Alpha, is that a site-to-side transport is actually two transports.
    First you are transported from your original location to the transporter matrix (but not rematerialised) and then from there to your new location. This takes twice the power of a normal transport.

    For this reason it is only used in certain circumstances. For example, an injured person would be beamed directly to sickbay; but evacuating a ship (e.g the Lakul in Generations) would not use site-to-site as the priority is to get people out faster.
  • rikevrikev Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    What I never understood with transports is why vaporize the original? Imagine you are a businessman, you are on Earth and you have a meeting on Mars. Why not upload your consciousness into the transporter buffer, let it appear on Mars with some form of identification that it is a copy and let you be in two places at once?

    Also how do they know what they are transporting when doing site to site? The original may not be on a pad or the destination may not be on a pad. How do they manage this with a lack of imaging scanners off-pad?
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  • earlnyghthawkearlnyghthawk Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    From the old tech manuals, as well as FASA's RPG, in both, it was stated that site to site beaming took more energy, than a site to pad, and the least energy was consumed by pad to pad transporting.
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  • maddog0000doommaddog0000doom Member Posts: 1,017 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    allmytee wrote: »
    Thinkin about Star Trek and all its glorious technologies, I was wondering why have a room for transporters?

    I could understand a transporter pad for cargo, maybe even for dignified quest. However there seems to be no need for a transporter pad per say. People are constantly transported from the surface of a planet or another ship directly to sick bay. One could also arrange site to site transport.

    The inner workings of the transporter could simply be stored behind a wall, or several walls freeing up space, since the bulk of the transporter room, the pad and controls, are not necessary.

    Does any one have any insight to why there are several transport rooms on star ships when apparently they are not required for transport?

    site to site isnt as safe as pad to pad transport, much less to go wrong.

    also it uses less power and is easyer to control disabling wepaons etc..
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  • voicesdarkvoicesdark Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    rikev wrote: »
    What I never understood with transports is why vaporize the original? Imagine you are a businessman, you are on Earth and you have a meeting on Mars. Why not upload your consciousness into the transporter buffer, let it appear on Mars with some form of identification that it is a copy and let you be in two places at once?

    Also how do they know what they are transporting when doing site to site? The original may not be on a pad or the destination may not be on a pad. How do they manage this with a lack of imaging scanners off-pad?

    Ummm....the "original" as you put it isn't actually vaporized, nor is it just your consciousness that is transferred.
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  • malkarrismalkarris Member Posts: 797 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    In universe, there is no vaporization, somehow everything one is is converted to energy, transmitted like that, and then converted back into matter.

    However, there is the fun little book called the Science of Star Trek, at least fun if you like science. In that, it pointed out that no matter how you did it, at least as we know physics now, the act of converting an average human into energy would require enough energy to equal the total output from several atomic bombs. I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but it was enough to really damage the real estate.

    Also, several times in Star Trek, the double effect has happened, one screen with Riker where there was a transporter accident and one of him when back to his ship, and the other of him got sent back to the ground where he was stuck for years until Riker came back on the Enterprise. But yes, in universe, everything is converted into energy and transfered, not just your mind.
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  • hevachhevach Member Posts: 2,777 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    malkarris wrote: »
    In universe, there is no vaporization, somehow everything one is is converted to energy, transmitted like that, and then converted back into matter.

    However, there is the fun little book called the Science of Star Trek, at least fun if you like science. In that, it pointed out that no matter how you did it, at least as we know physics now, the act of converting an average human into energy would require enough energy to equal the total output from several atomic bombs. I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but it was enough to really damage the real estate.

    Also, several times in Star Trek, the double effect has happened, one screen with Riker where there was a transporter accident and one of him when back to his ship, and the other of him got sent back to the ground where he was stuck for years until Riker came back on the Enterprise. But yes, in universe, everything is converted into energy and transfered, not just your mind.

    It's not from the same book, but a similar one exploring the implications of scifi technologies, that the best way we can think of that physics would let us teleport an object would be by some kind of large scale quantum entanglement. You can't actually teleport an object as far as we know (at least nothing as large as a hydrogen atom or larger), but you could create a duplicate of it out of matter already present at the destination.

    At that point you could vaporize the original and save it's matter to allow the same object or something else to be sent back.


    Star Trek does not do this, but it has been used in some fiction. Fredrick Pohl used it in the Eschaton Trilogy, with the added conceit that once you have a pattern stored, you can keep it indefinitely and just make more copies.
  • thlaylierahthlaylierah Member Posts: 2,987 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    Transporter room is from TOS when the ships were military and everything had it's place.
  • crypticarmsmancrypticarmsman Member Posts: 4,115 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    hfmudd wrote: »
    As hevach notes, and most of you youngsters may not know, but site-to-site transport, beaming directly to sickbay, etc was only introduced in TNG. This was an amazing new capability, 25 years ago. :p

    Not quite - in TOS - The day of the Dove Kirk did an intra ship beam in to Engineering. At the time Spock stated, "It has rarely been done because pinpoint accuracy is required.." (Yet, lets be honest here in that MANY times they beamed onto a cramped space in another ship; or a small underground, or small building space 10,000+ KM away; or from Standard Orbital distance.

    My point? Even in the TOS era, were Transporters not that accurate, they shouldn't have been able to do what we saw every week on the original Star Trek series anyway.:D It's something they should have (and actually had) always been able to do, be it in the TOS or TNG era.:D
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  • earlnyghthawkearlnyghthawk Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    malkarris wrote: »
    In universe, there is no vaporization, somehow everything one is is converted to energy, transmitted like that, and then converted back into matter.

    However, there is the fun little book called the Science of Star Trek, at least fun if you like science. In that, it pointed out that no matter how you did it, at least as we know physics now, the act of converting an average human into energy would require enough energy to equal the total output from several atomic bombs. I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but it was enough to really damage the real estate.

    Also, several times in Star Trek, the double effect has happened, one screen with Riker where there was a transporter accident and one of him when back to his ship, and the other of him got sent back to the ground where he was stuck for years until Riker came back on the Enterprise. But yes, in universe, everything is converted into energy and transfered, not just your mind.

    I'm not up on TNG too well, which season/episode was that one? (*I'll have to make sure to watch it....:cool:*)
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  • deaftravis05deaftravis05 Member Posts: 4,885 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    the way transportation works is that you are converted to energy and sent elsewhere.

    teleportation copies you.


    transporter room works as the hub.
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