There's also the possibility that they mass-produce organic material for no other use than as bulk material. Crops such as corn and wheat are no doubt still necessary, but there are countless plants out there that grow insanely fast in a variety of climates that are useless for human consumption, such as fast growing grasses. There's also the waste from corn and wheat, that which isn't used for manufacturing. Not to mention bacteria that can be grown in large cisterns. All of this can be used by the replicators as bulk material. In fact, given that you can re-purpose almost anything, there's essentially no trash to worry about. Everything used in the manufacturing process can be broken down and used yet again. It'd certainly make the environmentalists happy.Enigma wrote:I guess "bulk matter" won't be much of a problem. I kinda realized that they could use their own garbage and so forth for replicator material.Cesario wrote:I'm not sure that I agree with the "bulk matter" concept as it's commonly presumed around here to be the way Replicators work. In Voyager: Year of Hell, we get a subplot about a old style pocket watch. Chacotay replicated it for her before the crisis, and she was adamant that he recycle it, noting that doing so would mean another meal for someone, or a hypospray. Now, I don't know what you guys eat, but that watch looked like it was made of a lot more metal than I generally like in my cheese sandwiches.Enigma wrote: But I do think that not every home would have one simply for two reasons (other than personal ones like Sisko's dad and Picard's brother), one is the quantity of bulk matter needed and second, the unknown energy requirements to power the replicators.
If we are talking about needing bulk mass, it clearly isn't in the "you need to have food to make food" situation, since apparently a copper and glass watch could be turned into a meal, and be expected to provide more energy by recycling it than the process of breaking it down would have cost them.
And as far as energy is concerned, there's enough deuterium in the world's oceans to supply earth indefinitely. With fusion power, you have all the energy you want, which means you can distill water in regions with no natural aquifers, you can condense it from the atmosphere, anything you want to ensure adequate water, which is a definite commodity. Steel and heavier metals will no doubt become less and less common as lighter weight aluminum and titanium become easier to obtain and manufacture. Hell, the only reason we haven't entered the Aluminum Age now is because the cost to refine aluminum makes steel cost-effective, despite aluminum's relative abundance on the surface. If you wanted, I'm sure you could go roaming the woods, stumble across an old pile of rusted cars, and they could recycle every component simply by breaking it down into its base elements.