VOY - Concerning Flight

[Darth Wedgius]

So if the raiders have transporter technology can't they just take scans and make copies of the stuff? Eh, maybe not. They might be using the transporter without really understanding it.

There’s a difference between transporter and replicator technology, and even then, some things can’t be replicated. The replicator seems to work best with fairly simple molecular chains and elements. Food, simple items, basic elements and minerals. And it takes time to scan an object at the required resolution, and quite a bit of computer space to store the patterns.

Also, they were just grabbing stuff basically at random. They probably aimed for the main computer, but everything else was just as they could get it.

Incidentally, even if they did have transporters, that doesn’t mean they’d have replicators; they didn’t exist in the form they do now until some time between Star Trek 6 and TNG, at least for the Federation, while transporter technology had been in widespread use for the better part of a hundred years.

Part of that I don't agree with -- replicators are shown to replicate food, and that's pretty complicated stuff. But I think everything else you say (storage needed, that the Federation didn't appear to have replicators) makes a lot of sense!

[Kendrakirai]

Food is actually pretty simple when it comes to the finished product, you don’t have to replicate the complicated processes of cooking, just the end result. The computer can simulate the actual cooking process entirely in software. But it does also explain how some people claim to be able to tell replicated food, the process isn’t *exactly* the same, but it’s so close that anybody who claims otherwise is seen as just being like one of those people who says they can tell the difference between 150 and 160hz refresh rate, or the difference between a 4K and 8K display.

[Beastro]

I can see it going to another extreme. If the computer is smart enough to extrapolate information (such as in 'Remember Me' when it can define the universe), and can be used to run simulations without physical prototypes, then assuming you have a computer with enough processing power, it could be possible to have it essentially solve any problem given time. Paris could just go "Computer, construct a shuttlecraft capable of flight within the gas giant we are orbiting", let it number-crunch and add a few extras per his specifications, and sorry engineering design crew, you're not needed. Or Janeway could just make the ultimate torture chamber, with all the victims played by Harry. For purposes... Assuming Starfleet get mobile emitter technology ubiquitous, they could easily build a ship crewed entirely by holograms (Red Dwarf did that for an episode, it actually makes a lot of sense), use them to scout hostile terrain, act as emergency nurses, etc. And would make Starfleet redundant for many of their appointed tasks. Too risky to send a gold-shirt, just send an instance of .securityBot().

Which would be a huge drama-kill. It's best thought of as a simply fantasy outlet for Trek rather than anything with much to it, even if they do explore it in good ways.

IMO, the Holodeck has detracted more then added to Trek since its introduction precisely because of it's under-utilization/misuse.

But it does also explain how some people claim to be able to tell replicated food, the process isn’t *exactly* the same,

I like having hard boil eggs around a ready source of protein to down when needed. Doing them up I always get them done in slightly different states, not to mention that sometimes the eggs are different enough to vastly impact the end product with some ending with very pale looking, overly dry yokes, others wind up with very brilliantly golden yokes almost too sweet to enjoy and some are somewhere inbetween.

Same thing frozen pizzas and the various states you can have with getting it out early or late or "just right".

I'd think with a replicator, you'd quickly realize ordering both that every time you're getting the exact same food over and over in a way that literally cannot happen even reheating food yourself, let alone cooking it.

That brings to mind the subjective elements to food in its various ways of preparation to lead up to that. Thinking about it more I don't think the simple "Tea, Earl Grey, hot" would be said, but rather for a tea snob like Picard it would be something like "Tea, Earl Grey from leaves growing on this mountain side in Sri Lanka on this specific date, steeped for 20 minutes and 58.5 seconds exactly in a clay tea pot of 3cm thickness cooled in a 28C room that has a frequent, but brief, 15C summer breeze coming in through only ONE window and DIDN'T have the lid put on BUT had the tea cosy put over it..... bahh! It never gets it right"

[Kendrakirai]

I don’t think you’re getting the *exact* same food, the computer probably adds some minor variation to the simulation, unless you ask for that precise version again. It would explain why occasionally replicator hiccups lead to, of all things, burned food. ‘Simulate cooking at 400 degrees for 40 minutes’ becoming ‘400 minutes’ thanks to a typo, or a computer flake out.

[Darth Wedgius]

Sorry, but I cannot agree that food is simple to replicate. A typical protein has hundreds of amino acids, each having about 19 atoms, and even a food low in protein will have a wide variety of proteins in them. While something simple could be called food, most foods are not really chemically simple. A steak came from something as complicated as we are, and though some of the proteins will have been denatured by heat, those are still very complicated arrangements.

[Kendrakirai]

Sorry, but I cannot agree that food is simple to replicate. A typical protein has hundreds of amino acids, each having about 19 atoms, and even a food low in protein will have a wide variety of proteins in them. While something simple could be called food, most foods are not really chemically simple. A steak came from something as complicated as we are, and though some of the proteins will have been denatured by heat, those are still very complicated arrangements.

It’s simple compared to nanometer scale three dimensional circuit pathways embedded in a highly structured crystalline object made of thirteen different elements, plus all of the necessary software needed to make the device functional. And that’s just an isolinear processor!

[Darth Wedgius]

Sorry, but I cannot agree that food is simple to replicate. A typical protein has hundreds of amino acids, each having about 19 atoms, and even a food low in protein will have a wide variety of proteins in them. While something simple could be called food, most foods are not really chemically simple. A steak came from something as complicated as we are, and though some of the proteins will have been denatured by heat, those are still very complicated arrangements.

It’s simple compared to nanometer scale three dimensional circuit pathways embedded in a highly structured crystalline object made of thirteen different elements, plus all of the necessary software needed to make the device functional. And that’s just an isolinear processor!

Um... The food is still more complicated. With proteins you have to put every atom in the right place, and there's a reason organic chemistry specializes in really complicated compounds. I don't know what Voyager's isolinear processors are made of, but I think they're probably atoms.

*edited because I wasn't clear when I first wrote it.

[Ranchoth]

Well, personally, I'm easily ready to believe that a DS9/VOY-era crew would, knowingly, use and abuse at least proto-sentient AIs as expendable playthings. Maybe with a fig leaf of moral/technical justification they can convince themselves with.

Also a fun fact: the Voyager Da Vinci? He's a forgery, a caricature...because we MET the actual Leonardo back in TOS, who was actually the 6000 year old human immortal named "Flint."

Ah, continuity...always there to smack you upside the head with a frying pan the second you get careless.

[Nightbeat74]

hay i know this is way off topic, but IDW is coming out with a Mirror 'verse: voyager comic soon, a part of me wonders if they have been watching chucks reviews!

[FaxModem1]

Well, personally, I'm easily ready to believe that a DS9/VOY-era crew would, knowingly, use and abuse at least proto-sentient AIs as expendable playthings. Maybe with a fig leaf of moral/technical justification they can convince themselves with.

Also a fun fact: the Voyager Da Vinci? He's a forgery, a caricature...because we MET the actual Leonardo back in TOS, who was actually the 6000 year old human immortal named "Flint."

Ah, continuity...always there to smack you upside the head with a frying pan the second you get careless.

No, we met a man who said he was Leonardo. Flint was right handed, Leonardo was left. Flint wanted a robogirl, Leonardo was all about cute boys(read up on Salai, Leonardo's apprentice/muse sometime). Janeway even points out in this episode that the evidence that Kirk met Leonardo was never really conclusive. For all we know, Flint just met the man, bought some of his work, and centuries later, actually thought he was all these incredible people he met over the millennia.