Transportation Duplication

[BountyHunterSAx]

So I'm a self-avowed ST:TNG fan; didn't stop me from watching ST and SW, and certainly didn't stop me from readily agreeing with the tactical data on this site. Any civilization that can build the death star and blow up a planet can comfortably take out the Federation.


So now that I got that out of the way, here's the question. There is a lot of talk among Trekkies of stealing a SW star destroyer, tie fighter, X-wing, or some other hyperdrive-capable ship and duplicating its technology. It's difficult to imagine that such a course would be doable since:
1.) Getting the ship would be difficult.
2.) Maintaining possession of it would be even more difficult.
3.) Duplicating an entirely alien technology in any meaningful fashion; probably without any availability of the specific construction material needed would be near impossible.


ST theoretically mitigates the third one, as replicators could be programmed to produce correct material given an adequate pattern; and that adequate pattern could probably be found in using the original source materials itself. However this does nothing to address issues 1 and 2; which would bar their duplication mission entirely (As was discussed in one of the 'scenario' fights on this page).



So now I ask the flip question: Do you think - ethical/philosophical/moral ramifications aside - the StarWars verse could duplicate transporter technology, or could produce a technology that does the job as well or better? On the face of it I'd say whatever system they come up with will probably end up more effective. If you read a non-canon source (not admissible as evidence, but still) you'll see that the Feds speak of using Tachyon's to vastly increase transporter range (Ref: Spock Must Die). The key problems in the theory were lack of power availability - Scotty had to divert the engines and deflector dish to try to make it work.

With the unknown power sources available to an ISD or the DS, 'boosting the confinement beam' or 'allocating additional power to the pattern buffers' would seem to be no problem at. The usefulness of a long-range matter-energy transport system with the ability to punch through shielding and/or naturally occurring debris would seem to be quite useful; particularly given the ease with which sentry drones can scout out star systems. The trekkie fantasy of transporting bombs - except instead of pure fantasy; it would actually be combat-useful since it could punch through shields.


The reason I am not 100% on whether or not the duplication could occur is that just because a civilization is more powerful doesn't mean it can duplicate the acts of a less-powerful civilization fully. Expert gun-skills does *not* imply convenience of producing crossbows. And in a hypothetical super-modernized world with no trees; how would you make a crossbow?


-AHMAD

[BountyHunterSAx]

When the Federation needs to pull its own out of tighter combat situations, they often give some sort of beacon or transmitter - presumably to boost a signal through otherwise un-transportable materials.

I'd have to look up the details, but this seems to imply that with sufficient pattern enhancement (read: more power) it is possible to indeed transport through shields - - at the very least to transport from inside to outside of a shield. And perhaps the reason this has never been done in ST is simply because the power capacity of the ships we've seen has never been high enough.

-AHMAD

[NetKnight]

Off topic, but a fairly major nitpick:

ST theoretically mitigates the third one, as replicators could be programmed to produce correct material given an adequate pattern; and that adequate pattern could probably be found in using the original source materials itself.

This is reiterating a common argument in STvSW debates, but there seem to be two major problems with this suggestion. The first is the immeasureable technological advancement of Wars vis a vis Trek's Federation. One need only look at any time the Federation came across technology advanced by their standards, and fail to advance their own by studying it (any goodies on the Dyson Sphere, for one) to see that replacators cannot magicly reverse engineer technology far behind them. The second objection relates to replicators as even study tools. Replicators cannot even replicate rain water or ribosomes that are aparently within the limits of complexity resolution for Federation medical instraments. As, to name one thing, it is overwhelmingly likley that SW technology utilizes nano-scale circuits for computing, which would be of greater complexity then a large biochemical like a ribosome, replicators would seem to be of extreamly limited value in reverse engineering anything from the Empire.

Back on-topic:

The reason I am not 100% on whether or not the duplication could occur is that just because a civilization is more powerful doesn't mean it can duplicate the acts of a less-powerful civilization fully. Expert gun-skills does *not* imply convenience of producing crossbows. And in a hypothetical super-modernized world with no trees; how would you make a crossbow?

This actually makes a great example suporting technological duplacation. We make crossbows for hunting today, with modern materials, that are superior in preformance to pre-modern crossbows. In general, the only reason a civilization that has found a use for a 'primitive' technology would be unable to duplicate this technology would be a lack of specialized resourses necessary to build this technology. As SW depicts a galactic scale, ~Type 3 civilization, it seems inconcievable that with (literaly) a galaxy of resourses to draw from could not produce a resourse avalable to a tiny power with miniscule power generation and technology by Galactic standards. Thus, if the Empire found a use for transporters, they'd be able to build them.

[BountyHunterSAx]

That would be my conclusion; and the idea of a teleport that has large range and shield-penetrating capabilities is more interesting.

As for the nitpick - I haven't read the argument; so sorry to re-hash it; if you can point me in the direction of the replicator evidence that'd be great. If not...

I never intended to imply that replicators magically duplicated or reverse-engineered; clearly if that were the case then Data would have been able to offer "The Defector" Romulan ale. That said, raw-materials it can reproduce, and so the typical argument that given full scientific understanding of the device Newton could not re-build a computer since he lacked nanochip production technology would not be an issue.


That said; you say that replicators can't reproduce nano-scale particles. That's interesting; and rationally it makes sense that the replicator can only be programmed to work at some threshhold resolution - where do you get the evidence for that limit?


And back on topic;

the only reason a civilization that has found a use for a 'primitive' technology would be unable to duplicate this technology would be a lack of specialized resources necessary to build this technology.

Other than lack of specialized resources, what if the source of knowledge for that primitive tech was removed; then it could no longer be duplicated either? It's a moot point in the case of transportation technology, however, as everyone in the Alpha Quandrant seems to have it.

-AHMAD

[NetKnight]

That said; you say that replicators can't reproduce nano-scale particles. That's interesting; and rationally it makes sense that the replicator can only be programmed to work at some threshhold resolution - where do you get the evidence for that limit?

Sorry, here's the evidence:

From the SD.net cannon database:
[quote="TNG Season 3, Ep# 55: "The Enemy""]BEVERLY: "I'm setting up a schedule to test every member of the crew."
PICARD: "Why can't we use the replicator?"
BEVERLY: "The molecules are too complex."
[/quote]

Other than lack of specialized resources, what if the source of knowledge for that primitive tech was removed; then it could no longer be duplicated either?

The knowlege of the physics underlying transporters cannot be 'lost', because the physical theory 'beyond' that knowlege is built on it. While the exact technical specifications may be lost, this is irrelevent: the Empire only needs to duplicate the aplication of physical theory to reality, not the technical details. Analogously, if all designs for nuclear weapons were destroyed today, but the theoretical physics behind them preserved, this knowledge could be used to recreate such weapons a thousand years hence, given a civilization with this physical knowledge, technological advancement at least to the mid-20th century level, and sufficient resources. It would be irrelevant whether these weapons recreated the designs of 20th century fission of fusion devices, although the basic physics does indeed imply only a few viable designs.
As the Empire has a more advanced understanding of physics then the Federation, possessing specific designs is unnecessary for duplicating the technology.

[BountyHunterSAx]

*claps hands*

Incredibly lucid; I'd said in my post that it was a 'moot point' but even still, I hadn't thought about the fact that *how* you duplicate the technology's affect is more important than if you duplicate the technology.

So bottom line:
The Empire has - for whatever reason - not developed transport technology of any kind. Were the empire to be motivated to do such a thing, it undoubtedly possesses the material and the knowledge of theoretical/particle physics to do so; though it would be quicker to get one from any *number* of alpha quadrant agents and reverse engineer it.


So the other issue - does anyone know enough about how transporters broadcast a signal to know if they could indeed - with sufficient power - punch through shielding? Would the Empire-model transporter be better, then, than the Feds'?

And why hasn't the Empire built transport technology? Certainly warping humans from place to place is .. . .. ethically questionable at the very least. But the couldn't the trade federation benefit immensely from being able to transport combat-droid armies, for example, to places that are undefended; or to beam back crippled troops automatically rather than having to rebuild from scratch? Further, with the correct atmospheric and/or radiation conditions we've seen transporters perfectly duplicate fully sentient humans before (Second Chances). Well that probably was with a good helping of luck, but with the advanced understanding of Physics present in the SW-verse, couldn't they intentionally set up such a situation? Imagine beaming droideka and super-combat droid armies into battle; but storing them in the pattern buffer so that no actual droids were used.

-AHMAD

[Darth Wong]

Transporters, like most of Star Trek technology, are based on "subspace" magic tricks. However, we also know from onscreen precedent that there are regions of space where "subspace" doesn't work, or works very poorly. That's why they run into so many show-stopping "anomalies" which leave them without warp drive, sensors, or weapons. Even ordinary hand weapons and tricorders are often rendered useless by otherwise benign environmental conditions.

Out-of-universe, the reason SW doesn't have these toys is simply that the writers chose not to incorporate them into this universe. They ignore real physics in different ways than SW chooses to, so they're not there and the common Trektard non sequitur that this indicates inferior "advancement" ignores that fact. In-universe, if one has to weld the two series together, one could argue that the SW galaxy probably has an environment which is very hostile to Trek-style subspace-based technologies, which is why they never developed any of them despite being in space for far longer (this also explains why they so rarely encounter "anomalies" which fuck up all of their shit). If they were to discover these technologies and learn that they work in most regions of the ST galaxy, there's no reason they couldn't adopt them.

[Teleros]

So the other issue - does anyone know enough about how transporters broadcast a signal to know if they could indeed - with sufficient power - punch through shielding?

If SW shields can block transporters (likely, given how many natural electromagnetic effects can), then you'd presumably need to use orders of magnitude more power to penetrate said SW shields, which raises the question as to whether or not a ship can do that against a another unaided (assuming they're both fairly equal in terms of power generation & shields).

[Marko Dash]

it might be useful when the ship carrying it is more powerful than the ship its using it against. for example, the devastator could have sent boarding parties to the tantive before its shields failed or brought the escape pod aboard the devastator.

[Sidewinder]

it might be useful when the ship carrying it is more powerful than the ship its using it against. for example, the devastator could have sent boarding parties to the tantive before its shields failed or brought the escape pod aboard the devastator.

If my memory is correct, the escape pod was HUGE. I doubt a transporter would be able to beam up something that big, and even if the star destroyer had a transporter that could, why would they risk beaming up a bomb or some other kind of booby-trap?

[BountyHunterSAx]

@Sidwinder:

That actually makes a good bit of sense; even if the technology existed there's no guarantee it'd work.

Also - a quick point that I haven't read brought up anywhere - fed transports dont work so well with activated weapons. In one episode - 'The Most Toys' Data beams up with a discharging phaser, and the transporter chief has to stall him in the buffer and disable it before the transport can be successfully executed.

The whole 'bomb-warp' idea ignores this....quite apart from ignoring shielding.



Also, good point again that just because a Fed shield can be punched through by transport beams with sufficient power and under the correct conditions doesn't necessarily mean a SW shield can.

-AHMAD

[Darth Holbytlan]

That said, raw-materials it can reproduce, and so the typical argument that given full scientific understanding of the device Newton could not re-build a computer since he lacked nanochip production technology would not be an issue.

Replicators don't create its raw materials from scratch. Rather, they form preexisting raw materials into the objects they produce. (I know this is mentioned in the TM, but I don't know of a canonical source, off-hand.) Thus replicators can't help in producing exotic materials. In fact, there's a canonical example: latinum, which works as a medium of exchange only because it can't be replicated.

[BountyHunterSAx]

I didn't say 'create-from-scratch' ... my exact word was 'reproduce'. I was wrong in my prior assumption that a replicator worked at significantly lower resolutions - the post on inability to clone complex blood molecules saw to that.

Clearly if replicators to not work at the atomic level of resolution, there is no way to guarantee proper nanotech replication. And if the replicators do not work at the sub-atomic level, there is no way to produce one element/metal from a different one.


-AHMAD

[Darth Holbytlan]

My point is that much of SW tech (especially turbolasers, hypermatter reactors, and hyperdrive) may rely on exotic matter that can't be created even by atomic assembly. Even subatomic assembly of anything not composed of up and down quarks and electrons would be beyond the demonstrated capabilities of replicators.

[Batman]

If my memory is correct, the escape pod was HUGE. I doubt a transporter would be able to beam up something that big, and even if the star destroyer had a transporter that could, why would they risk beaming up a bomb or some other kind of booby-trap?

One word (acronym, actually)-TVH. And those were the transporters on a dinky little BoP.
As for replicators being able to recreate anything as has already been mentioned there's several naturally occurring materials they CAN'T so it's highly doubtful they can recreate the exotic materials inherent to Wars tech.

[harbringer]

On shielding Trek uses 'virtual' windows where they specifically do not shield some wavelenths on a rotating schedule this enables weapons and sensors to work as they cannot through the shield itself. Star wars on the other hand doesn't they might have a sheild that they compensate for or may physicly breach the shield with very small amounts of the gun barrel (even just a micron could be enough). The end result is with the ECM (which is even present on fighters) and shielding concept probably bars transporters on enemy ships or installations.

[BountyHunterSAx]

SW tech ..... may rely on exotic matter

See - here I openly reveal my ignorance and say that outside of the six movies and the novelization of ROTS and TPM, I lack any knowledge of SW-Tech. And for even more obvious reasons, I haven't taken the time or resource to go and buy more books on it. So I'm asking, when you say 'may rely on exotic matter', do we know this to be true? What do we know about the power source on the Death Star?

All I'm aware of is that - whatever source it is - to fit into so (relatively) small a size as a moon-sized battle station it must be truly immense to be able to destroy a planet; and suspension-of-disbelief leads me to believe that it probably isn't replicator-reproducible. Still, whence the details on this exotic matter source?

-AHMAD

[Teleros]

Well, the Death Star is powered by a hypermatter reactor... whatever the hell that is. There are theories, but you'd have to ask someone who knows more about SW tech than me I'm afraid.

As for other more exotic materials... I believe SW ships have or can have neutronium in their hulls - given the limits of replicators I can't see the Federation say easily producing the stuff themselves - at least not without a proper shipyard etc, and even then it may be problematic.

[BountyHunterSAx]

Problematic doesn't do it justice; if the federation could produce something from nothing they would have defeated thermodynamics. Since:

1.) They have to build out of some form of available matter.
2.) They cannot reproduce at the sub-atomic, atomic, or even complex-molecular level.
3.) They are notoriously bad at coming up with 'perfect' duplication (how many times has Riker complained that the replicated food just doesn't taste as good?)

It seems to me that reproducing exotic materials would be out of the question. Earlier on I was still under the impression that Fed replicators could modify nanotech (particularly on account of 'Evolution' where Crusher's kid replicated some nanobots). But it turns out that he never actually was seen replicating them - that was a false assumption on my part - and the quote about blood being too complex pretty much seals the issue, IMO.


-AHMAD

[amackie]

I was under the impression that replicators could recreate organic material, however, they created too many 'single bit' errors, that when dealing with molecule like DNA etc. were unacceptable as a single misplaced atom could mess up a batch.

Remember they did using a special system replicate a new spinal cord for Worf (granted it took longer than usual presumably for correcting errors (maybe they run them faster than they really should).

Also if i remember correctly they can reproduce any element providing they have enough power and raw material of another type, a lack of power creating problems became a plot element in one of the TNG episodes.

[BountyHunterSAx]

But don't you see the flaw in that reasoning? In order to recreate a functional bit of skin, one needs must recreate millions of cells; and each of those cells needs must have its own genetic code. Those single bit errors would still exist, and assuming that the frequency was the same they would cause serious problems to the organism.

Of course that doesn't explain how Janatronic Replication worked. Still, lest we forget; we don't know that it actually succeeded. In the episode there was no 'initial rejection', but it promptly stopped working and Worf *died*. The only reason Worf came back was his own super-hardy Klingon anatomy. Perhaps the spine contained a minimal amount of true DNA/Organelles with no fully correct cells, and Worf's super-immune system purged those and replaced them with functional ones.

That would explain why the replicators was seemingly able to function at the nano-level.

-AHMAD

[BountyHunterSAx]

Not to necromance, but this topic seemed the most fitting place to post this.

So I re-read the technology page, and it states clearly that transporters work in a manner that to me seems closely related to a "quantum-level" replicator. Further, in Second Chances, we saw that it was possible for the transporter to make two copies from one source material.

Is it, then, possible to use the transporter as a quantum-level replicator to solve the difficulties with reverse engineering? While the use of latinum seems to imply that this does not work, it could be that people in the ST-verse just haven't jury rigged that yet.

Lest we forget, in "Relics" we find out that Scotty invented effectively a stasis system out of a transporter jury-rigged on an old falling apart boat, and yet we have never heard of similar technology being applied elsewhere in the ST-verse. Point being - the Federation have not fully realized all the capabilities of their technologies even those as 'proven' as transporters despite having had them for generations so the simple fact that transporters are not used as quantum-level replicators doesn't mean they can't be.

-AHMAD

[General Zod]

Is it, then, possible to use the transporter as a quantum-level replicator to solve the difficulties with reverse engineering? While the use of latinum seems to imply that this does not work, it could be that people in the ST-verse just haven't jury rigged that yet.

They can't reproduce the Doctor's 29th century holo emitter through replicators, and that's only a few centuries removed. Why would they be any more successful with technology hundreds of centuries more advanced?
Besides, just because they can replicate something doesn't mean they'd know how to fix it on the field if it broke down or it's otherwise energy cost effective to replicate. Some materials could simply require a good deal more power than others to duplicate. And they sure as fuck can't replicate entire starships at will.

[Ryan Thunder]

What I don't understand is how they can reproduce a human with a transporter, but seem to use an entirely different technology for manufacturing. To make matters worse, its stupidly limited by comparison.

[General Zod]

What I don't understand is how they can reproduce a human with a transporter, but seem to use an entirely different technology for manufacturing. To make matters worse, its stupidly limited by comparison.

I can only remember one instance of them actually making another human, and that was a freak accident due to some weird planetary environment. (The Will Riker clone).