Thoughts on Star Trek Yorktown Starbase and "Later" Star Trek Federation?

[Composeure]

Just posting this here for rn, feel free to move it if it winds up not fitting here (though I will try to keep it on topic).

On the topic of the Starbase Yorktown, it seems to me to be one of the most advanced things (relatively speaking) that the United Federation of Planets has produced so far. What are your thoughts on that?

Finally, and this might verge into a bit of "debate" territory, but sometimes things like the 30th-31st century UFP* is brought up (though technically there is no Federation iirc in the latest show canon of these times). Namely, things like "programmable matter" and "personal transporters" and "detachable nacelles" get brought up (not counting technobabble materials or other assorted upgraded "Trek tech"). What are your thoughts on this?

*note-- this is not counting the frankly ridiculous widespread time travel also present which sort of retconned itself away. Hard scifi!11!!1!!

[madd0c0t0r2]

[img]https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Fi ... terior.jpg[\img]

At millions of people living there, it's far larger than the 7000 capacity of DS9, although probably worth noting that DS9 was more like a Cardassian orbital fortification than a purpose built city/economic center.

Beyond the sheer size, I'm not seeing why you would consider it more advanced. It's just making highly visible use of artificial gravity compared to most ST designs which 'feel right' to us, even though the entire ship is plated with it too.

[Composeure]

I don't, necessarily. I just wanted to note that it exists since it seems like one of the most visible things we have of UFP engineering, and it also has things like "public transporters" and such.

Any thoughts on anything else?

[bilateralrope]

Why wouldn't the Federation use transporters for their public transport system ?

From memory, Sisko mentioned beaming in furniture when he moved home at one point in his past. There has been one shot of the Golden Gate Bridge in modern Trek showing it covered in solar panels, which says that nobody uses it.

Even the Dominion War having planets conquered by surprisingly small numbers of invading forces make sense if you assume they took over the planets transporter network, giving them control over most movement across the planet. Including food shipments.

[Lord Revan]

Why wouldn't the Federation use transporters for their public transport system ?

From memory, Sisko mentioned beaming in furniture when he moved home at one point in his past. There has been one shot of the Golden Gate Bridge in modern Trek showing it covered in solar panels, which says that nobody uses it.

Even the Dominion War having planets conquered by surprisingly small numbers of invading forces make sense if you assume they took over the planets transporter network, giving them control over most movement across the planet. Including food shipments.

IIRC Picard season 1 showed beaming (via these door frame like things) being used as public transport system, also shouldn't this be in pure Star Trek and not Science Fiction as so far there's been nothing here that's not "Star Trek".

[bilateralrope]

IIRC Picard season 1 showed beaming (via these door frame like things) being used as public transport system,

When I'm imagining a planetwide transporter network, I'm imaging something that lets you beam away from anywhere. Just like calling a taxi. Though there will probably some limitations on where you can beam to, just to prevent things like beaming directly into someone's home.

So those doorways seemed a bit odd. Though those were at a Starfleet facility, so I can see transport inhibitors covering most of the site.

[Composeure]

IIRC Picard season 1 showed beaming (via these door frame like things) being used as public transport system, also shouldn't this be in pure Star Trek and not Science Fiction as so far there's been nothing here that's not "Star Trek".

I'd move it if I could but I initially was unsure.

Any more thoughts on the other parts of the op as well as "Yorktown starbase" itself?

[bilateralrope]

Go read through the thread where we discussed Beyond. Then tell us if there is anything more you'd like to talk about.

Or give us something more specific for a discussion.

[Composeure]

Ok, how about discussing the "later" Federation of the 30th-32st century? What are your thoughts on that?

[Crazedwraith]

The Federation in Disco S3-5 aren't exactly impressive. Their strength is entirely run by the needs of plot even more obviously than eslewhere in the franchise i'd say and the detached nacelles and programmable matter consoles don't seem necessarily more functional than 24th century tech just designed to have a futuristic style.

[Composeure]

Yeah ST is kind of a headache in terms of having too much overdesigned yet surprisingly limited and useless (as Wong analyzed on his site) ""Trek-nology"". Fwiw it seems those examples are basically ""upgraded"" Trek tech but are hard to really quantify in a meaningful way.

On a more personal note I really dislike that ""Time Travel omfg1!!1"" became the ST thing in 31st century to the detriment of literally anything else better thought through (although time travel seems ridiculously easy in ST so whatever-- ""hard scifi!!11!"" )

TBH I personally don't really like either SW or ST as they are (especially not with that horrid SW Rebels series or the travesties that are Picard or Lower Decks), but I do like using some themes and tones that can be found in them as possible inspirations.

[bilateralrope]

Could you please stop your ""hard scifi!!11!"" whining ?

We are talking about Star Trek here. A series that has never even pretended to be hard sci-fi.

Ok, how about discussing the "later" Federation of the 30th-32st century? What are your thoughts on that?

Check the discussion threads on Discovery if you want our general thoughts. Or ask some specific questions.

[Jub]

Composeure, honest question, are you here for discussion or here to vent about how [insert online group of nerds you don't like] has a different opinion than you do?

[Shroom Man 777]

It's like asking why we still have stairs and why everything isn't escalators or elevators or why ST vessels have halls when - barring catastrophic systems failure during combat or some shit - theoretically you could just get transported from your toilet to your post in seconds.

[Composeure]

Could you please stop your ""hard scifi!!11!"" whining ?

We are talking about Star Trek here. A series that has never even pretended to be hard sci-fi.

lol yeah but a non zero amount of people seem to think it is. I was just making fun of that and didn't actually mean that it was hard scifi.

It's like asking why we still have stairs and why everything isn't escalators or elevators or why ST vessels have halls when - barring catastrophic systems failure during combat or some shit - theoretically you could just get transported from your toilet to your post in seconds.

This wouldn't be a totally bad idea but I believe the main reason is that transporters work poorly enough in terms of targeting through things as it is.

I'm not here to "vent", I have little enough attachment to ST and SW as it is, as mentioned already. I feel that this forum however is more objective than most.

[Batman]

I'M aware Star Trek is infamous for always going the most pointlessly high-tech solution possible, but 'always beam everybody everywhere' would be overboard even for THEM. Besides, transporters are energy-intensive (more than once we've seen transporters only partially if at all operational due to power limitations, when was the last time a corridor conked out because they were running on batteries?). Besides corridors VERY rarely malfunction in interesting ways. At worst you get lost. Transporters can malfunction in the most CREATIVE ways.

[bilateralrope]

Discovery does show a lot more of people beaming between places aboard a ship/station. Especially the Federation HQ. It seems to have become routine, suggesting a major improvement in transporter technology over the centuries. One they don't talk about.

Meanwhile I'm not sure what difference exists between replicators and programmable matter to earn it a new name.

[Ralin]

Besides corridors VERY rarely malfunction in interesting ways. At worst you get lost.

Don't they have parts blow up/get loaded down with debris fairly often? At least in combat? Not a big Trek fan, but I think that happens more than transporter malfunctions.

I haven't been following New Trek, but I think one thing not being taken enough into account here is quality of life and sense of satisfaction. Lots of people would probably love to live in a city (or space city) where they can routinely travel from place to place by transporter solely because they want to be people who live in a city with on-demand point to point transportation. Wouldn't you? Assuming they can supply the power to do that without serious consequences like shortages elsewhere or fucking up the environment I can see Federation planners making that sort of luxury available on their space cities or most developed planets solely because their people want to have it

Yeah the Federation doesn't have unlimited power on demand. But surely 24th century people can put up with waiting a few minutes for their turn in the queue, just like 21st century people can wait 5-15 minutes for their Didi ride to show up.

[bilateralrope]

Yeah the Federation doesn't have unlimited power on demand. But surely 24th century people can put up with waiting a few minutes for their turn in the queue, just like 21st century people can wait 5-15 minutes for their Didi ride to show up.

Don't forget about travel times. Transporters don't leave people waiting for the vehicle they are in to reach the destination.

Also, I work nights. The ability to live somewhere that's dark when I sleep would be a major benefit of a transporter commute.

[Formless]

We know that in the 24'th century, transporters were part of the transportation system, but their use was not unlimited because Sisko talks about blowing through all of his Transporter Credits when in the academy going between San Fransisco and New Orleans for dinner. So instead of using long que lines or something to regulate the problem, it appears they simply came up with an economic solution-- sectoral currency-- and people naturally make the best decisions they can about how to use this currency for travel purposes. Is it really worth spending 20$ a month of transporter credits going to and from work when you could just walk and get some much needed exercise in the process, and save the 20$ over several months so you can go on vacation in whatever historic city that wasn't blown up in the 21'st century nuclear holocaust? I can easily imagine transcontinental transports cost more than local ones, after all. Falling off the side of a building and triggering the emergency transporter system would likely not count against your credit limit, for instance. That's just the safety system doing its job.

I always try to keep in mind when looking and thinking about Star Trek that our perspective on the setting is skewed because until recently, we didn't really see much of civilian life, or even of the situation lower deck officers on starships put up with. Its one thing to be a captain of a starship with access to a transporter at will, its another to be a civilian who may have never seen a starship up close in their life and has to pay for access to public transit systems.

[Ralin]

We know that in the 24'th century, transporters were part of the transportation system, but their use was not unlimited because Sisko talks about blowing through all of his Transporter Credits when in the academy going between San Fransisco and New Orleans for dinner. So instead of using long que lines or something to regulate the problem, it appears they simply came up with an economic solution-- sectoral currency-- and people naturally make the best decisions they can about how to use this currency for travel purposes. Is it really worth spending 20$ a month of transporter credits going to and from work when you could just walk and get some much needed exercise in the process, and save the 20$ over several months so you can go on vacation in whatever historic city that wasn't blown up in the 21'st century nuclear holocaust? I can easily imagine transcontinental transports cost more than local ones, after all. Falling off the side of a building and triggering the emergency transporter system would likely not count against your credit limit, for instance. That's just the safety system doing its job.

All fair points (though I think that the 'intercontinental travel costs more' bit shouldn't be assumed given that this is a planet-spanning and presumably centralized technology), but by the same token what do you want to bet there are all sorts of ways to get more transporter credits? What if someone has a more important job than being a Starfleet cadet?* Hell, what if the Federation decided that people who are unemployed for an extended period of time need more transporter credits to encourage them to travel and network and socialize for mental health reasons? Surely there are plenty of workers in a situation like bilateralrope whose well-being would disproportionately benefit from being able to transport to and from a remote location for work multiple times a week, and if so there has to be some sort of process for requesting an increased allowance.

I'd bet the same is true for replicator credits. Everyone gets only so many, but if someone needs significantly more to make a house or boat or major personal process there are probably ways to apply for more and I imagine the requirements are fairly liberal so long as someone can make a case for why they need them to do something.

*Come to think of it, they might give cadets less specifically because they want to start mentally toughening them up a bit by getting them used to more limits on their ability to travel from their posts and socialize with family and civilian friends.

[Formless]

I mean, as soon as they introduce any kind of currency it is implied there is a way to trade (labor, resources, time, etc.) for more. But I would expect that the reason for using sectoral currencies despite the insistence that "humans don't need money" is that it is very useful at conditioning people to behave in certain ways. Transporters aren't free because of energy, but also because of labor costs (a transporter requires a transporter operator, after all, and while a ship operator might be standing around most of the time with nothing to do, a civilian operator could easily be more busy than a modern cab driver). Routing across the transportation network appears at first to be simpler with transporters because you can ignore all points between the point of origin and destination, but destination points are still choke points for traffic. You probably can't just beam to any given street corner for safety reasons (pedestrians intersecting with transporter beams sounds like a bad time for all parties). And beaming into private areas is an obvious legal no-no. The whole system would have to be more complicated than it initially appears.

But the fun begins when you start looking at the potential for artificial scarcity. Even if transcontinental beaming is no issue for energy reasons (and remember, energy budget for the planet is likely the reason for transporter and replicator credits, since Star Trek is environmentally conscious, and this is an Earth recovering from nuclear warfare and a mass extinction) you still want to be wary of letting too many people visit one particular place at one time. Only so many people can visit a particular national park, for example, before you ruin the whole park. Visitors fees are meant to offset that. Transporter credits and transporter fees can serve similar purposes for keeping tourists from ruining historic landmarks, like again, any city that survived the 21'st century. Strange New Worlds made it clear that New York and Washington DC didn't make it, for example, and it appears many cities we see did make it were nevertheless damaged by the nuclear exchange. You also need to be aware of bioconservatism, especially in a place that is recovering from a mass extinction (I think Strange New Worlds mentioned over 6 million species of plants and animals died out). Modern mass transit systems like ships and planes make it frighteningly easy for invasive species to get from one place to another. Now imagine how much easier it becomes to destroy an ecosystem when any jerk can transport from Denver to New Zealand with a pet rat in their pocket. Sure, there are biosensors in the system to catch foreign contaminants. But that's just one more complication that needs to be taken into account and then the security costs paid for. So you increase the price of transporting to New Zealand to try and offset the costs of people visiting who don't respect the rules they're supposed to follow, especially because some of those people are going to be aliens without a full understanding of Earth's ecosystems and biological threats. You probably have to do the same with visitors to Starbase 1 and its biospheres that canonically predate the base, being how a lot of those extinct species of plants (and possibly animals) survived extinction after all. Of course, Starbase 1 has the advantage of being a space station that can only be visited by those who have access to spaceships AND its a Starfleet facility with all the security that implies. To keep Earth a utopia requires someone to foot the bill. And that's probably its own citizens.

To give an anecdotal example of how effective artificial scarcity tricks can be, right now where I live we've recently implemented a new law that says every major retail and grocery store has to charge 10 cents per shopping bag the customer wants to take out with them. The idea is to cut down on the amount of plastic bags that end up in the landfill, or worse, polluting everywhere. There is much grumbling about it... and the people who do the most grumbling aren't buying bags. Often the grumbling is by people who want it to be a political thing, you know, "Them Democrats are impringing on muh freedoms!" type of people. 10 cents. Per bag. That's all it takes to get people to stop taking these bags for granted. And the joke is ultimately on them, because every time they don't buy the bag, thinking that they're sticking it to the government that is supposed to collect on some of the profits, they're actually proving that the law works! Its not about the money, its all about getting them to change their behavior. Its put a price tag on polluting the environment, and that gets their attention better than all the anti-plastic pollution messages in the world.

That is the power of a properly used economic solution to a behavioral problem.

[bilateralrope]

Transporters aren't free because of energy, but also because of labor costs (a transporter requires a transporter operator, after all, and while a ship operator might be standing around most of the time with nothing to do, a civilian operator could easily be more busy than a modern cab driver).

I can remember several times when the transporter process operated without someone at the transporter controls, so it looks like it can be automated in normal conditions. It just needs an operator for when something unusual happens. Which would happen a lot more to the ships going out exploring and Earth will probably have less need to transport people during the unusual events.

Still, having a currency to limit transporter use does make a lot of sense. Nudge theory seems to cover it. Since it's there to modify behaviour, we might see things like short transports are more expensive to encourage people to walk even if the energy use doesn't matter.

To give an anecdotal example of how effective artificial scarcity tricks can be, right now where I live we've recently implemented a new law that says every major retail and grocery store has to charge 10 cents per shopping bag ...

New Zealand tried that 10c fee on plastic bags for a while. Then we switched to banning the single use bags for reasons I can't remember.

[Formless]

I can remember several times when the transporter process operated without someone at the transporter controls, so it looks like it can be automated in normal conditions. It just needs an operator for when something unusual happens. Which would happen a lot more to the ships going out exploring and Earth will probably have less need to transport people during the unusual events.

I try to ignore the existence of Voyager, because that was where we saw the most transporter automation, which creates an inconsistency with the obvious intention that a transporter is a mighty complicated machine that needs an operator to aim the beam, or at least to maintain the machine whenever it experiences faults. When Barclay thinks the transporter is experiencing some kind of glitch, its O'Brian who has to help him tear it apart because O'Brian is the transporter chief. Barclay may be an experienced engineer and an officer, but O'Brian is a specialist with specific experience with this thing. Even when Picard is asking for site-to-site transport, he usually is ordering whoever is manning the Transporter station to do it. Its not a totally automated process yet in TNG.

On Voyager, however, they established early on that their original transporter chief died early on after they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant. They had to find someone among the remaining crew who was qualified for the job. So no wonder they would find more ways to automate the process than other ships, and rely on the hacks of various crew members (like Bellana "I'll just lock onto your skeleton" Torres) to make up for the fact they have so few crew with the correct experience and qualifications for the job. That doesn't mean automating the transporters is standard procedure for most ships or for civilian facilities either. That means Voyager was forced to improvise with the crew resources they had.

Automated transporters likely wouldn't make the economics of it less strenuous in the civilian sector, because now the safest way to implement it would be from per-determined entry and exit points. Again, now you have choke points and traffic to consider. Wait periods. Crowds. Its like a bus, only more versatile. On the other hand, if you want a more flexible system, the best option for safety and security purposes is to have human operators involved. Just like on a starship. But now you have to deal with labor issues. At the start of the 24'th century, they don't have general AI, and they don't trust it either because of past experiences with stuff like the M5 computer and (behind the scenes/retroactively) Control. Certainly it would be hard to convince a civilian that Siri can safely deposit them at their destination when people are paranoid about transporters even when the statistics show it to be the safest form of transit.

[bilateralrope]

I can remember several times when the transporter process operated without someone at the transporter controls, so it looks like it can be automated in normal conditions. It just needs an operator for when something unusual happens. Which would happen a lot more to the ships going out exploring and Earth will probably have less need to transport people during the unusual events.

I try to ignore the existence of Voyager, because that was where we saw the most transporter automation,

But not all of it. Any time someone beams down from their ship and leaves it empty is an example of what automation can do when nothing goes wrong.

Even TOS showed transporter automation. In This Side of Paradise, Kirk nearly beamed down to the planet leaving the Enterprise empty. Everything points to him being able to beam down without anyone at the console.

Certainly it would be hard to convince a civilian that Siri can safely deposit them at their destination when people are paranoid about transporters even when the statistics show it to be the safest form of transit.

Is there widespread paranoia about transporters in Trek ?

Also, there are decades between TOS and TNG. Plenty of time for people to grow up with regular transporter use, which is going to do a lot to counteract any hesitations because it's not an unproven technology to them.