Teleporters on ships

[vengence]

I am designing spaceships that use teleporters(like person sized stargates) to travel between different areas of the ship. I wanted to see how many different ways the technology could be utilized.

It works like a stargate creating a wormhole between two gates. There are two types of teleporters possible single node and multi node. The single node gates have two gates that are permanently linked to each other and the multinode gates can be dialed to any other gate within range. the range for a standard gate is 50 km but more powerful ones can be created but are significantly more expensive and use large amounts of power.

[Q99]

Lesse, you can use it as a way to distribute materials throughout the ship- sensitive materials (ammo?) could be kept in well protected areas distant from people and you could teleport over only as much as you need, when you need it.

If they're reliable enough, you could use some bizarre design choices- like, the crew areas of the ship could be allowed to separate (either all of the time or moveable), thus making boarding actions moving section to section impossible if you turn off the wormholes.

Depending on how easy they are to make, it could be used to provide food to every set of quarters... waste disposal.... though flipside, a ship may want more concentrated mess halls and such for crew unity purposes and similar.

Brig and other high-security areas. Brig only accessible by teleporter. Turn it off, or the power goes out, and the person's trapped inside.

Endless fall room. Portal on ceiling, portal on floor. Stuff falls in a loop. Why? Why not. Recreation maybe. Oh yea, if you have a pool onboard you could have a portal at front and back so endless swimming- great exercise and it wouldn't even take up much space. Wormholes off and it's just an undersized pool.

[Tandrax218]

What about a wormhole Glory Hole as a form of crew relaxation

[Zixinus]

There is probably a way to weaponize it because you can weaponize everything. You can use it as a delivery mechanism, for say, anti-matter or something else nasty. You can use it as a weapons platform: send out a bunch of multi-node gates around the enemy on the battlefield and you can direct your fire through them rather than a simple straight line. You can massively increase the range of short-range weapons this way.

The biggest use would be getting in and out of gravity wells. Getting from the surface and to orbit is a massive energy drain and wormholes might be the most efficient way to do that, assuming you are using the power to solve any physics problems. Like making up the difference in velocity when you walk through a wormhole gate on the planet's surface into an orbiting space station. The same goes into infrastructure in general. 50km is not very much but the English channel is about 33km long for perspective. If its worthwhile to extend that limit, you can make shipping with actual (ocean) ships nearly obsolete.

Then there is the fact that docking would be unnecessary except for rare cases when you can't fit everything through a wormhole. This sounds trivial but this MASSIVELY simplifies spaceship and space station design and space infrastructure. Docking is a pain and potentially very dangerous simply because you have two objects that in them have pressured cans that have people die if they pop due to bumps.

[CetaMan]

Defense purposes? Absorbing and redirecting incoming enemy projectiles. Have small little gate drones that position themselves in an overlapping-ish wall in front of enemy projectiles

[Shroom Man 777]

Have PORTAL PUNJI PITS (the TRIPLE P) to kill unsuspecting boarders. Yes. The pits will STILL have bamboo spikes covered in shit!

[biostem]

A few ideas I had:

1. If it is possible to remotely place one of the gates, without needing physical hardware at each desired gate location, then you could create compartments that have no doors or hatches.

3. As CetaMan pointed out, you could have 1 set of drones intercept incoming fire, and other set releasing said fire back onto the originating enemy.

4. Create boarding drones that pierce the enemy's hull, open a gate, then either send in some explosives, chemical agent, a boarding party, or one of a multitude of uses.

5. You could use gates on the inside and one or more on the outside of the hull, as an emergency venting system.

6. Such gates would alleviate the need for docking ports/hatches/doors.

7. What happens if someone or something goes halfway through a gate, then it is shut off?

8. Just as in some fan stuff for the game Portal, you could setup a gate on the ceiling, then another on the floor, in order to accelerate objects - if the energy cost to maintain these portals is low, then this could generate additional energy.

9. You could use these portals to save on the massive infrastructure needed to route thrust in various different directions - imagine if your entire hull was lined with gate emitters, and you had some in the path of the main thrusters - you could maneuver the ship in highly precise ways - moreso if you could precisely control the diameter or shape of these gateways.

[The Romulan Republic]

-Defensive or fire suppression measures. Vent a section into space (one end of the gate opens inside the ship, on opens outside the hull), without actually opening a breach in the hull (especially useful if its an interior section on a large ship).

-Medical emergencies/evacuation. Transport someone out of a dangerous area/straight to sickbay. Trek does with with their transporters, of course.

-Create a really complicated maze?

[Q99]

Stealth In Space- If you can open a portal outside the ship, you can absorb all active sensors and let it pass through the other side.

[biostem]

Stealth In Space- If you can open a portal outside the ship, you can absorb all active sensors and let it pass through the other side.

The big question with that would be just how bulky the actual portal generating mechanism is, and whether it can project a gate that can totally obscure said device - if the portal has to be held/contained within a frame, which is still visible when said portal is active, then there will still be some detectable vessel there. Now, this isn't to say that you could make yourself appear smaller, (though in such a universe, they'd probably have algorithms to estimate a ship's true size/mass based upon known portal technology).

-Defensive or fire suppression measures. Vent a section into space (one end of the gate opens inside the ship, on opens outside the hull), without actually opening a breach in the hull (especially useful if its an interior section on a large ship).

Or just open a portal underneath/on any fire, and dump it directly into space. You could also open a small portal in front of some fire suppressant foam, and open the other end to spray it on said fire.

I could also foresee using some portals to launch fighters from many different directions, or if used at maximum range, as a means of evacuation - you drop off an escape vessel, with a minimal crew, which is connected to the main ship via a portal, and in the event of imminent destruction, everyone teleports onto the escape ship...

[vengence]

-Medical emergencies/evacuation. Transport someone out of a dangerous area/straight to sickbay. Trek does with with their transporters, of course.

The limitation on this is you have to take a gate with you and range is somewhat limited.

7. What happens if someone or something goes halfway through a gate, then it is shut off?

That is a very good point to address. Probably have anUPS to prevent that from happening.

The big question with that would be just how bulky the actual portal generating mechanism is, and whether it can project a gate that can totally obscure said device - if the portal has to be held/contained within a frame, which is still visible when said portal is active, then there will still be some detectable vessel there. Now, this isn't to say that you could make yourself appear smaller, (though in such a universe, they'd probably have algorithms to estimate a ship's true size/mass based upon known portal technology).

That is the case the portals are contained within a frame.

[Q99]

Hm, seems like you could disguise what type of ship you are at least... it might not be a common trick but it'd be an option.

[Tandrax218]

Ok i just had a brainstorm !

Why not "wormhole armor

If you have to have a hardware frame for the wormhole / teleports then instal them on the ship around its hul. The frames can create a "recieving" or "dispensing" portal i.e in/out.

So when a ship is fired upon then you have 2 options:
1. let the projectilee /particle/ energy beam "hit the ship" in a segment that is covered by a portal only for the shot to be absorbed and let through on the other side

or

2. create a loop that redirects all shots back at attacker.

[Enigma]

Teleporter gun - fire a projectile that once it makes contact with the enemy's hull, would teleport a chunk of it into space.

Or simply use the teleporter to teleport out a chunk of the enemy's ship, i.e. taking out the bridge.

[Tandrax218]

What kind of "teleports" are we even talking here ?

1. door type portals ( something like stargate SG-1) where you have to have a hardware component.

2. Startrek type stuff -beam me up/down

3. some kind of wormhole where you can make the entry/exit point appear "out of thin air"

[Loren Pechtel]

Short range missiles get a major rethink here, becoming high performance bombers instead.

Put three gates on them:

1) Empties into the fuel "tank" (not that there's much tank).

2) Incoming gate on the front of the missile, as big as it can be. It beams to the equivalent gate on the back.

3) The gate on the back also accepts stuff from the ship--EW packages and warheads.

While the missile may be shot down it does not ram, but moves aside before the lethal stuff it dropped impacts.

[vengence]

What kind of "teleports" are we even talking here ?

1. door type portals ( something like stargate SG-1) where you have to have a hardware component.

2. Startrek type stuff -beam me up/down

3. some kind of wormhole where you can make the entry/exit point appear "out of thin air"

door type portals

Short range missiles get a major rethink here, becoming high performance bombers instead.

1) Empties into the fuel "tank" (not that there's much tank).

9. You could use these portals to save on the massive infrastructure needed to route thrust in various different directions - imagine if your entire hull was lined with gate emitters, and you had some in the path of the main thrusters - you could maneuver the ship in highly precise ways - moreso if you could precisely control the diameter or shape of these gateways.

save space on the missile by instead of including fuel just have a gate to the engine giving it insane thrust potential for something missile sized.

[Venator]

You could create an extremely compact rail/coil/gauss cannon - just a short acceleration line, with linked portals at either end - rather than needing a huge (spinal?) gun mount consuming space. Once you've accelerated the projectile to extreme speed, just open any given exterior portal and shoot it in whatever direction.

[Tandrax218]

Ok So we are dealing with:

1. door type portals ( something like stargate SG-1) where you have to have a hardware component.

for the purpose of argument i drew this sketch of my concept here.



so if you have a ship that has a crew and different systems on board, you will have to have a good barrier or "shield" to keep a warship in action and hel it survive all sorts of nasty things trying to blow it up (beam weapons, mass drivers etc..)
How do you do that ? make door frames around the ship (see number 1 in the sketch)

when incoming fire is detected a portal is lit up and another is opened on another pat of the ship. The incoming fire is redirected away from ship. It depends how many door frame's a ship has on its hull and how they are arranged so in case of 2.b you could redirect incoming fire back at the attacker because you have a "window" that is looking at them... Notice that option 2a does not have that since only one frame is present

Notice the green circles ? those are weak spots that form on parts of the ship that are not covered by the portals emanating from the frames. Those can form as a gap when there is open space between 2 different frames or even if you manage to cover the whole ship with frames, the frames itself are the weak spot because if hit then said portal will stop functioning in that side of the ship...

3. ca you make portal frames that can be bent? The 3 picture is a side wiev of a portal frame that ha sits sides bent but when active the field has the red cross section. This is good because you can protect more parts of the ships hull with less frames.

[The Romulan Republic]

What is the effective range on these teleporters? If they can operate across interplanetary/interstellar distances, would there even be much point to having ships, as opposed to just gates along the lines of Stargate?

Maybe as forward recon. platforms, if sensors aren't effective over as great a range. But that's about it.

Same thought occurred to me with the transwarp beaming in the Star Trek reboot, actually. Why even bother with ships if you have that?

Edit: Unless the gates are so damn expensive that building ships is cheaper, and they only use a few gates for top-priority things. But that would rule out a lot of the stuff in this thread.

[vengence]

What is the effective range on these teleporters? If they can operate across interplanetary/interstellar distances, would there even be much point to having ships, as opposed to just gates along the lines of Stargate?

The personnel sized gates have a range of 50 km. vehicle sized to small aircraft ish will have a range of 500 km but draw significantly more power. Starship sized ones can jump between systems but require enormous amounts of power and can't be stationed on a planetary surface.

3. ca you make portal frames that can be bent? The 3 picture is a side wiev of a portal frame that ha sits sides bent but when active the field has the red cross section. This is good because you can protect more parts of the ships hull with less frames.

No. portal frames cannot be bent.