Brief ST Question

[HemlockGrey]

Where do replicators get the mass they use from? Are they as good/almost good as the originial? I know they can't replicate starships, but what's the biggest thing they could replicate?

Could, theoretically, Starfleet haul in an asteroid and use it to replicate spare parts?

[Master of Ossus]

SF replicators must use some kind of processed food-like substance in order to create their food. It is clear that they cannot manipulate matter on the atomic level, and their ability to manipulate things on the molecular level is also limited, but not non-existent. Some proteins and organic structures are beyond their ability to replicate, but only very complicated structures appear to be. It is also pretty clear that they cannot replicate certain starship components, and that they are able to replicate fairly large but simple industrial parts with industrial replicators. It may be possible for them to do this with asteroids, but it would strike me as being highly unusual for an asteroid to have appreciable quantities of all of the metals they need to make the proper alloys for starships out of.

[Alyeska]

IIRC replicators use two things. They can use pure energy, which is, well energy consuming. Using less energy they can use a replicator matrix of some sort of "slurry" that can be used to replicate just about anything.

Its easier to replicate metals then it is foods, but foods require less energy to replicate (don't ask why, I don't know) which explains why they replicate food while not as much hard materials. IIRC the largest thing a shipboard replicator has made was a Guitar and Sniper Rifle. Voyager hints at more replication based on the shuttles used and Cardassia was given several Industrial Replicators which hint at even larger replication capabilities.

[Knife]

I thought they used crap to replicate things, and lets face it there is alot of crap on a ST ship to use.

[tharkûn]

Actually this one makes sense. Foods are "made" in nature by kinetic controlled processes, the end products are not the lowest possible state (hence how we get energy during catabolism).

So one possible rationalization is that replicators can easily make things in deep thermodynamic wells (like say Fe), but has a hard time getting things in kinetic wells (like say certain folded proteins).

This of course means that replicators do not build up atom by atom, rather a set of components (which may have been just replicated themselves) is mixed and allowed to reach thermodynamic equilibrium under certain constraints. For instance let's say they want a large 100 kDa protein, the lowest state for H, O, C, N, S is oxides. Even for amino acids it might not be the tertiary structure they want, because the replicator may make it with a specific fold ... and not the one they want (like prions).

Could be wrong but are their is there anything that is very stable, thermodynamically, they can't make? It might just be their inability to use <replicator technobabble> to create susbstances derived from kinetically controlled mechanisms.

[Guest]

in one of the mirror universe books the Gar-stevens wrote Tiberius had developed a large replicator that could build 90% of a soverign class ship, it only lacked specialised parts.

[Kuja]

in one of the mirror universe books the Gar-stevens wrote Tiberius had developed a large replicator that could build 90% of a soverign class ship, it only lacked specialised parts.

You would be referring to "Preserver" written by WILLIAM SHATNER? Books don't count as canon information when it comes to ST.

[Patrick Degan]

SF replicators must use some kind of processed food-like substance in order to create their food.

Ah —just like the stuff found in high-school cafeterias and McDonalds.