Remove ads

Starfleet Design Bureau

Linked contents
Starship Design Bureau Starfleet Design Bureau
Reader mode
Lavaflow said:
Though amusingly, if I remember correctly the real world material was named after the ST material. Citation needed on that though, it could just be an internet story I ran into.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nah, the real material is called corundum, and has been that for a long time. It is a not entirely uncommon natural material afterall, covering the entire spectrum of rubies to sapphire. Transparent Aluminum is just a shorthand that is sometimes used.

I could absolutely see it completely replace glass in a society that solves the problem of making large panes of it though.
 
Last edited:
Fouredged Sword said:
I could absolutely see it completely replace glass in a society that solves the problem of making large panes of it though. It's lighter than glass by almost half and almost as hard as diamond.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's actually denser than glass, corundum is about 4 times denser than water while glass is 2.5 times denser. However you would likely need to use less of it than glass for many applications due to its high strength-to-weight ratio so it might be lighter overall in practice. Other than that though yeah corundum is the most likely candidate for transparent aluminum, pure aluminum would be a metal, metals are conductive due to their sea of electrons, and conductive materials are rarely transparent to electromagnetic waves like photons.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
I could absolutely see it completely replace glass in a society that solves the problem of making large panes of it though. It's lighter than glass by almost half and almost as hard as diamond.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah replicators might be a writers nightmare, but they make a load of things very cheap just by existing. Like precious metals can just be made in mass, bulk replicated, the Ferengi even think gems and gold are worthless. I don't think replicators are a thing yet in the TOS movies though, but there's still a sci-fi way to make big panels of the stuff obviously. I honestly did not know it was a real material, now I can't trust technobabble to be technobabble! :o
 
My head canon has replicators just being fancy 3D printers.

Mainly going off the TNG episode where the Enterprise is stuck in a rift and can't move. Troi kept getting visions from psychic aliens saying "one moon circles" because they need hydrogen to cause an explosion. At one point Data shows off a list of elements and says "these are the elements we have available... perhaps if we can communicate this inventory..." If they could synthesize everything in demand, the dialogue might be different? (Enterprise being low energy in the episode could mean they couldn't synthesize the other half of the explode-y bit with hydrogen.)

It makes me think the most ships keep an inventory of elements they can use to make parts and food. The TNG Technical Manual definitely says they keep replicator feedstock for food, air, and water and recycle that. The rest of the elemental inventory is for repair and parts manufacture through replicators.

It also ties in nicely why through all through TNG, DS9, VOY, and beyond there still exist Federation mining colonies. They still have to mine for all the elements they use, the replicator just helps manufacture stuff. What the replicators "can't replicate" is either the elements/compounds not being placed by the replicators accurately enough or parts are too detailed/too large to replicate.

(Though I think the Federation still has nuclear alchemy, but they may or may not do it through the replicator and the alchemy probably has a high energy penalty. The penalty could make it worthwhile to actually mine for stuff.)
 
AntiSanity said:
My head canon has replicators just being fancy 3D printers.

Mainly going off the TNG episode where the Enterprise is stuck in a rift and can't move. Troi kept getting visions from psychic aliens saying "one moon circles" because they need hydrogen to cause an explosion. At one point Data shows off a list of elements and says "these are the elements we have available... perhaps if we can communicate this inventory..." If they could synthesize everything in demand, the dialogue might be different? (Enterprise being low energy in the episode could mean they couldn't synthesize the other half of the explode-y bit with hydrogen.)

It makes me think the most ships keep an inventory of elements they can use to make parts and food. The TNG Technical Manual definitely says they keep replicator feedstock for food, air, and water and recycle that. The rest of the elemental inventory is for repair and parts manufacture through replicators.

It also ties in nicely why through all through TNG, DS9, VOY, and beyond there still exist Federation mining colonies. They still have to mine for all the elements they use, the replicator just helps manufacture stuff. What the replicators "can't replicate" is either the elements/compounds not being placed by the replicators accurately enough or parts are too detailed/too large to replicate.

(Though I think the Federation still has nuclear alchemy, but they may or may not do it through the replicator and the alchemy probably has a high energy penalty. The penalty could make it worthwhile to actually mine for stuff.)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, they fabricate antimatter, and the process to fabricate matter is basically the same if you want to do it.
 
Last edited:
Fouredged Sword said:
Well, theu fabricate antimatter, and the process to fabricate matter is basically the same if you want to do it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The TNG Technical Manual (LARGE PDF WARNING) has them synthesizing antimatter from regular matter, and it doesn't seem like it would be the same at all.
TNG manual said:
...antimatter is first generated at major Starfleet fueling facilities by combined solar-fusion charge reversal devices, which process proton and neutron beams into antideuterons, and are joined by a positron beam accelerator to produce antihydrogen
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
PDF page 70, actual manual page 87. Looks like they take regular protons and use a sci-fi method to flip them into anti-protons, then add neutrons, But it's super energy wasteful.
TNG manual said:
Even with the added solar dynamo input, there is a net energy loss of 24% using this process, but this loss is deemed acceptable by Starfleet to conduct distant interstellar operations.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The anti-matter synthesizing method doesn't seem like it would be the same as synthesizing other elements. They still have to start with getting the element somewhere before transforming it.
 
AntiSanity said:
The TNG Technical Manual (LARGE PDF WARNING) has them synthesizing antimatter from regular matter, and it doesn't seem like it would be the same at all.

PDF page 70, actual manual page 87. Looks like they take regular protons and use a sci-fi method to flip them into anti-protons, then add neutrons, But it's super energy wasteful.

The anti-matter synthesizing method doesn't seem like it would be the same as synthesizing other elements. They still have to start with getting the element somewhere before transforming it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's the "take protons and add neutrons" part that is the same. When you are assembling sub atomic particles into atoms, matter or antimatter, you are at the point where if you have enough time and energy any arom can be changed into any other atom.

Grossly inefficient compared to just harvesting that element from nature, but totally posible.
 
Last edited:
Fouredged Sword said:
It's the "take protons and add neutrons" part that is the same. When you are assembling sub atomic particles into atoms, matter or antimatter, you are at the point where if you have enough time and energy any arom can be changed into any other atom.

Grossly inefficient compared to just harvesting that element from nature, but totally posible.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They could do it yeah, but the original point is not doing it with replicators.
 
AntiSanity said:
They could do it yeah, but the original point is not doing it with replicators.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, the thing with replicators is they essentially make the consumer economy not need inputs except to grow. So long as something is eventually dereplicated society has lost nothing in it's creation and use.

That means for approximately closed economies like planets and starships during missions you don't care at all about what people within the system use. It will eventually return to the collective pool at basically zero loss even if you end up waiting until the person dies.

Planets only need to import bulk feedstock equal to the amount of material that leaves the planet plus the amount they need to account for growth.

And there is a lot of raw material on a planet. There is a LOT of raw material in a star system. Earth likely hasn't needed to import raw material for replicators from outside the Sol system.

Even if Starfleet does economically unoptimal things like declare the asteroid belt a nature preserve because the Sol system is supposed to have an asteroid belt and so you can't just hoover it up like you are playing hungry hungry hippos there are still enough dwarf planets and rocks in the ort cloud to construct another planet or two if you wanted to.
 
I assume it's a matter of energy efficiency - it's a lot more efficient to take existing materials and rearrange them a little like a super 3d printer than it is to do matter-energy-matter or atomic alchemy synthisis, which is in turn more efficient than direct energy-matter synthisis, even if the technology is technically capable of doing all three.


To put some arbitrary numbers on it, let's say making a one kilogram cube of pure gold costs 1 power unit to make if you draw from a store of existing gold on board and are just reshaping it, but it costs 100 power units to synthisize from other feedstock and 100,000 power units to synthisize with direct conversion. This would easily encourage you to use the first method wherever possible - after all, even if the combined cost of digging up the material and transporting it to where you're actually using it is 95 power units, you're still coming out ahead, and with the kind of scales involved even such a seemingly marginal increase in efficiency becomes a very large amount in absolute terms.
 
Last edited:
AntiSanity said:
It also ties in nicely why through all through TNG, DS9, VOY, and beyond there still exist Federation mining colonies. They still have to mine for all the elements they use, the replicator just helps manufacture stuff. What the replicators "can't replicate" is either the elements/compounds not being placed by the replicators accurately enough or parts are too detailed/too large to replicate.

(Though I think the Federation still has nuclear alchemy, but they may or may not do it through the replicator and the alchemy probably has a high energy penalty. The penalty could make it worthwhile to actually mine for stuff.)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

No, that's writers hating replicators.

The idea of replicators was unpopular with the writers of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Ira Steven Behr commented: "I'd like to lose the replicators. They're my least favorite thing in Star Trek. A society that uses replicators is a doomed, finished society." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. ?)) Ronald D. Moore added that "Replicators are the worst thing ever. Destroys storytelling all the time. They mean there's no value to anything. Nothing has value in the universe if you can just replicate everything, so all that goes away. Nothing is unique; if you break something, you can just make another one. If something breaks on the ship, it's "Oh, no big deal, Geordi can just go down to engineering and make another doozywhatsit." Or they go to a planet and that planet needed something: "Oh, hey, let's make them what they need!" We just hated it and tried to forget about it as much as possible." [1]
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The only canon bit is latinum, everything else is extrapolated from mentions. Canon just says "the energy requirements may not be worth it"
 
And of course this
KNakamura said:
No, that's writers hating replicators.



The only canon bit is latinum, everything else is extrapolated from mentions. Canon just says "the energy requirements may not be worth it"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think the most tragically funny part is that the comment about stuff not having value because you can just replicate it is the entire point of having Replicators to begin with. especially in Nextgen era, the whole thing is that the Federation is post-poverty and for the average person post-scarcity, so stuff just... isn't valuable intrinsically for them anymore.

Edit: or rather, the Replicator is something of a Take That to consumerism, the ultimate evolution of mass production, making mass produced items so plentiful and available they literally have no value. Hense why you get, for example, restaurants that boast "No replicated ingredients" and hand-crafted items being common again. It's a real deconstruction of the consumerist ideal, wrapped up in a single, game changing technology.
 
Last edited:
Mechanis said:
And of course this

I think the most tragically funny part is that the comment about stuff not having value because you can just replicate it is the entire point of having Replicators to begin with. especially in Nextgen era, the whole thing is that the Federation is post-poverty and for the average person post-scarcity, so stuff just... isn't valuable intrinsically for them anymore.

Edit: or rather, the Replicator is something of a Take That to consumerism, the ultimate evolution of mass production, making mass produced items so plentiful and available they literally have no value. Hense why you get, for example, restaurants that boast "No replicated ingredients" and hand-crafted items being common again. It's a real deconstruction of the consumerist ideal, wrapped up in a single, game changing technology.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko is pretty interesting here, as it tries to portray it as a deliberate historical preservation of a way of life.... minus capitalism.

Yeah, I don't get it either, and I often chant to myself the MST3K Mantra..
 
And then there's the issue that there should be no such thing as an item that can go through a transporter but cannot be replicated.
Because the most straightforward replicator is straight up a transporter with pattern of the item to be outputted taken from a stored or created file rather than a scan of the object used as input.

Because transporters are straight up matter-energy-matter converters.
 
Chargone said:
And then there's the issue that there should be no such thing as an item that can go through a transporter but cannot be replicated.
Because the most straightforward replicator is straight up a transporter with pattern of the item to be outputted taken from a stored or created file rather than a scan of the object used as input.

Because transporters are straight up matter-energy-matter converters.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Transporters and replicators are linked, but there's a difference in resolution (And energy uses).
 
KNakamura said:
No, that's writers hating replicators.

The only canon bit is latinum, everything else is extrapolated from mentions. Canon just says "the energy requirements may not be worth it"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not only "the energy requirements" since industrial replicators exist. It's a pretty reasonable extrapolation that the technology to make an isolinear chip is an order of magnitude or two more advanced than the technology to make glass knick-knacks. And then there are definitely odd bits and components - I know Data includes some - that require manufacturing capacity that the Enterprise D doesn't have.

It's also almost certainly true that something designed for a specific purpose will be better at that job than something built for a general purpose. So a factory in Star Trek may be the size of a house instead of taking up a hundred acres or something, but it can still be worthwhile if you need to crank a particular component out in bulk. Whether that's something which is worth it is an industrial process question, which is a whole field.

"Nothing has value because if it breaks you can just get another one."
*Looks at stores full of identical mugs, preweathered pants, picture frames, and decorations."
"Riiiight."

Seriously, had they never been to a store? "Irreplacable" never had anything to do with the physical object. For that matter had they never seen a parts warehouse for fixing cars?

Chargone said:
And then there's the issue that there should be no such thing as an item that can go through a transporter but cannot be replicated.
Because the most straightforward replicator is straight up a transporter with pattern of the item to be outputted taken from a stored or created file rather than a scan of the object used as input.

Because transporters are straight up matter-energy-matter converters.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ehhh... Transporters, there's pretty good evidence they AREN'T straight matter energy converters. At least not the way we think of it with modern physics. Because if you could do that, you wouldn't need antimatter and a transporter accident could take out an entire planet.

It seems much more likely that Federation Science has discovered several new states of matter, energy-matter hybrids where it stores energy densely like mass but can be transmitted coherently. It's a similar principle to holo-matter, where it doesn't exist outside the holodeck. And we see a few times that damaging a hologram can damage its data. Which is absolute nonsense for 21st century technology, but self-evidently not for 24th...

My guess is that there's actually a matter-energy hybrid state that is intrinsically linked to information.
 
Eh I kinda like replicators as more than just a 3d printer, the ferengi value latinum because gold can just be replicated while latinum can't (Latinum is a liquid stored in a valueless gold casing), I think there has to be some sort of alchemy going on with the replicators in order for the latimum thing to make sense. They may be hell for writers to work around, but they work well as a symbol of what the federation is.
 
LunaMoth said:
Eh I kinda like replicators as more than just a 3d printer, the ferengi value latinum because gold can just be replicated while latinum can't (Latinum is a liquid stored in a valueless gold casing), I think there has to be some sort of alchemy going on with the replicators in order for the latimum thing to make sense. They may be hell for writers to work around, but they work well as a symbol of what the federation is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not valueless - it doesn't corrode and is chemically inert!
 
LunaMoth said:
Eh I kinda like replicators as more than just a 3d printer, the ferengi value latinum because gold can just be replicated while latinum can't (Latinum is a liquid stored in a valueless gold casing), I think there has to be some sort of alchemy going on with the replicators in order for the latimum thing to make sense. They may be hell for writers to work around, but they work well as a symbol of what the federation is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It could just be that after asteroid mining became a thing the value of gold plummeted, something which is expected to happen in real life. Alternatively gold can be synthesized but elemental transmutation is expensive enough that it's almost always easier to just carry the element as feedstock instead of synthesizing it. However if a material is valuable enough it becomes worthwhile to synthesize it causing its price to crater which would make latinum an ideal commodity, for whatever reason it can't synthesized so its value isn't subject to inflation.
 
Iirc the usually given reason for not being able to replicate latinum is that it's too dense. I believe that's usually also given as to why all starship components aren't replicated wholesale.
 
It's also important to consider that atomic alchemy especially is likely very inefficient on account of all that inconvenient hard radiation what needs containment, as the Kazon likely discovered that one time in VOY.

And I imagine that as you get into PTUs and other really dense stuff the energy cost to synthisize it might get prohibitive.
 
Tank man said:
Iirc the usually given reason for not being able to replicate latinum is that it's too dense. I believe that's usually also given as to why all starship components aren't replicated wholesale.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Actually, at least in Archers time we see fully automated repair stations (even if not owned by starfleet/united earth), that do seem to be using Replicators to pretty much fully repair the ship.

I think it is actually just more likely that the early parts never thought about that use while the later ones as you said the writers hated them.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top