3-D Printed Pizza...IN SPACE!

[mellenORL]

Hell, I've been waiting for my flying car* since the '60's. Damn "The Jetsons" for setting my inner child's expectation bar way too high.


*(not a drivable plane, Moller!)

[Stormwarden]

I'll pass on the jetpack. I don't want to be a flying target for snipers, nor have to worry about the unenviable situation of my pack running out at a most unfortunate moment. I do, however, eagerly await the hovercar and transporter. It would be nice to be able to travel from home in, say, NYC, and work in LA and be there in moments.

[anti-nonsense]

Oh, the transporters go without saying, I love to travel, but I hate the process of traveling if you know what I mean, my dad likes to say that whoever said it's a small world has never gone anywhere on a plane. I know it's a lot faster then traveling on a boat like they used to but planes are so darned uncomfortable and you can't get a decent sleep.

[chitoryu12]

Oh, the transporters go without saying, I love to travel, but I hate the process of traveling if you know what I mean, my dad likes to say that whoever said it's a small world has never gone anywhere on a plane. I know it's a lot faster then traveling on a boat like they used to but planes are so darned uncomfortable and you can't get a decent sleep.

Well, transporters may be a little terrifying. Stardestroyer.net is one of a number of sites that discusses the ramifications behind teleportation, and the possibility that the transporter is a cloner rather than a teleporter: you're killed by your body disintegrating, while the person who shows up on the other side is simply a perfect replica with all of your memories from the moment you were beamed. That clone, in turn, is killed the next time it uses the transporter. And so on.

So in this interpretation, Captain Kirk, Riker, Seven of Nine, etc. all died every time we saw them using a transporter and we were catching up with the next clone body. Technically none of the Enterprise, Defiant, or DS9 crewmembers we saw were the originals. They had died years ago.

And there would be no way to tell that this occurred, because the clone would simply have the memory of beginning transportation and showing up in the right spot. You wouldn't realize that a transporter was an elaborate execution chamber until you hit the button...

[Art Vandelay]

I'll pass on the jetpack. I don't want to be a flying target for snipers

Are snipers a regular hazard for you?

[Askold]

I'll pass on the jetpack. I don't want to be a flying target for snipers

Are snipers a regular hazard for you?

Snipers going after flying targets? Unless that jetpack is huge and only moves slowly I'd be more worried about anti-air guns.

And possibly duck hunters.

[chitoryu12]

I'll pass on the jetpack. I don't want to be a flying target for snipers

Are snipers a regular hazard for you?

Snipers going after flying targets? Unless that jetpack is huge and only moves slowly I'd be more worried about anti-air guns.

And possibly duck hunters.

Yet another target for a misguided Dick Cheney.

[Sigmaleph]

Oh, the transporters go without saying, I love to travel, but I hate the process of traveling if you know what I mean, my dad likes to say that whoever said it's a small world has never gone anywhere on a plane. I know it's a lot faster then traveling on a boat like they used to but planes are so darned uncomfortable and you can't get a decent sleep.

Well, transporters may be a little terrifying. Stardestroyer.net is one of a number of sites that discusses the ramifications behind teleportation, and the possibility that the transporter is a cloner rather than a teleporter: you're killed by your body disintegrating, while the person who shows up on the other side is simply a perfect replica with all of your memories from the moment you were beamed. That clone, in turn, is killed the next time it uses the transporter. And so on.

So in this interpretation, Captain Kirk, Riker, Seven of Nine, etc. all died every time we saw them using a transporter and we were catching up with the next clone body. Technically none of the Enterprise, Defiant, or DS9 crewmembers we saw were the originals. They had died years ago.

And there would be no way to tell that this occurred, because the clone would simply have the memory of beginning transportation and showing up in the right spot. You wouldn't realize that a transporter was an elaborate execution chamber until you hit the button...

That is only a problem with Star Trek-style transporters, though. You could have, say, space-warping that connects two distant points in space.

But yes, the ethical issues with create-and-destroy teleportation get really weird, really fast. (although, I would argue, those ethical problems show up when you have the ability to create perfect copies of people at will, regardless of whether you choose to use that ability for transportation)

[chitoryu12]

That is only a problem with Star Trek-style transporters, though. You could have, say, space-warping that connects two distant points in space.

Then you read Stephen King's The Jaunt and it makes even THAT scary.

(click to show/hide)

Turns out that if you try to use the gateway while conscious, your mind experiences longer than the entire span of eternity by itself and you die and/or go completely insane when you come out the other side.

[Damen]

I just want to point out that the transporters on Star Trek weren't the clone-o-tron types, that was something that another scientist thought up. The transporters on star Trek worked in a more straight forward fashion in that they would deconstruct the person, convert their matter to energy, transmit it to a destination and reintegrate the person on the other side. Examples for this being:

In "The Savage Curtain," Captain Kirk describes to 'Abraham Lincoln' the transporter as being an "energy/matter scrambler" where the molecules in the body are converted to energy, beamed into the transporter room and converted back into their original pattern.

In the ENT episode "Strange New World" we saw a crewman getting transported up during a horrific storm and coming out on the other side with rocks embedded in his skin.

In Deep Space Nine we got to see transporters used to send people to the mirror universe.

In the Voyager episode "In the Flesh" Chakotay related a story about his uniform getting stuck in the pattern buffer and he rematerialized with only his combadge.

In several episodes it's stated that if a person remains in the pattern buffer for too long their signal will start to degrade and they will die if not rematerialized quickly enough; "Relics" and "Our Man Bashir" to name two.

But the most prominent example of the transporter keeping the original person original would have to come from the TNG episode "Realm of Fear" where Lt. Barclay thought he was suffering from transporter psychosis. In that episode, we actually got to see what it looks like inside the matter stream as the person is being transported.



So, yeah, the concept of a clone-o-tron is interesting, but that isn't what's going on with Star Trek.

Stop looking at me like that. You don't have to be a nerd or Trekkie to know this stuff.

...though it does help.

[JohnE]

I just watched that episode a couple days ago. I never bought it though that Barclay would be conscious, let alone able to see, when his entire body, including eyes and brain, have been disintegrated.

[Damen]

Yeah, from what I've read we get to see the inside of the matter stream in the Voyager episode "Prototype" as well, though those are the only two times it happens.

I just try not to think too hard about it.

[chitoryu12]

Well, we've also seen that transporters can split people into two separate beings based on their personalities. That implies that whatever's going on is more complex than "It just makes you into energy and remakes you into yourself on the other side."

Even if that's the case, it makes you question whether or not the process of turning the body into energy is truly fatal. I mean, we take it for granted that disintegration or transformation into another form of matter is going to kill you. It's very possible that you're alive up until it disintegrates you, but "you" come out "alive" on the other side because the body that's assembled doesn't actually have anything wrong with it and has all the necessary memories to make it last remember being transported.

Then again, I don't think anyone could ever come up with any set idea for how transporters work. The "vaporization" effect of phasers defies virtually all known laws of physics, and the same guy from Stardestroyer.net (who happens to be an engineer) wrote a long page on the physics of phasers to try and come up with a scientific explanation for their properties.

[mellenORL]

Think of it this way; Thinking, feeling, reacting, etc. are all just information processing in our brains. The personality of a person is not physical while it is ongoing in our fleshy brains. A person is a verb, not a noun, when referring to consciousness. If the over-all pattern - a person's OS, so to speak - is recordable and can be transferred live - while up and running - it makes that human identity potentially immortal if a physical construct capable of continuing the thought processes is itself non-mortal. Think about a tight beam cast (such as laser or fiberoptic cable, not broad cast) as a way of transporting/aiming that thought continuance/personality across  distance, or, as in the case of huge distance, sending that signal through a wormhole, or potentiating on a quantum level as some physics experiments are doing right now (though at short distances between transmittance and monitor/receiver devices). With that kind of tech, you have a more "realistic" teleporter device, and could transfer a personality to some destination with an artificial brain analog to maintain it. Leaving the original intact back at the starting point. I'd like to see the lawyers of the future figure out the implications of that one. Being John Malkovich comes to mind. 

Coming up with the ability to deconstruct, record, send and rebuild the body is the big sci-fi wooo in this.