Star Trek Replicator vs. Transporter

[Randel]

Similar to the X-Wing vs. Lightsaber thread, if a Ferengi ship landed outside your house and a ferengi comes out and offered to trade you one Transporter or one Replicator for... pretty much all the random junk in your house (Nothing you can't replace or live without... think DVDs, old coins, books or junk that he could make a killing with by selling them as antiques in a few hundred years).


Assume that both of them are ferengi technology and as such have safety features that prevent them from exploding and killing people of doing weird stuff like make radioactive coffee or transporter duplicates. They have reactors that should keep them powered and functional for about a hundred years (as long as you don't tamper with them too much).

The replicator can be used to duplicate any object that can fit in a 3 foot cube (if you try replicate a living creature it produces a perfectly preserved corpse of the creature without harming the original). It can also recycle garbage into its base elements (this is needed to create new objects). It can't replicate itself for the simple fact that you can't put the replicator on top of itself. Its about the size of an office desk with a 3 foot square where the objects materialize.

The Transporter can beam any roughly human sized object to or from anywhere in the world and on the moon when it is directly overhead. It has a little view screen that you can use to locate almost anyone in the world if you have a sample of their DNA or just surf around as if you were using Google Earth. The screen isn't that good for spying on people but it can be used to locate individual objects and beam them to or from the Transporter. The Ferengi didn't give a straight answer about if the transporter actually sends people places or just kills them an makes a duplicate at the destination... he just says he prefers to use his ship. The Transporter also comes with a mini-replicator that can be used to make badges that can be either make the object or person easy to lock on to or to disrupt the signal so you can't target them.

And no, you can't use the transporter to grab any of the ferengis stuff since he has it shielded.


So, what do you choose?

[JaxGaret]

Both will bring great improvement to your life. The real question is whether or not you hoard it to yourself, acquiring a massive fortune, or sell it for the betterment of humanity via reverse enginerring, albeit for a smaller profit.

I would probably try to sell it to someone like the guys at Google, or similarly responsible persons.

I suppose if I sold it, the replicator would probably bring more benefit to the human race, though I would have to think for a while about the real repercussions of unleashing such technology on the public.

Or I might not trust anyone else with the power of the item, and use it myself to wield power and make the world a better place myself, leaving the technology to others after I die.

It's hard to say as a hypothetical.

[Linkavitch]

So, wait, can you make stuff without having the original? I hope so, but either way, it'd have to be replicator.

[kamikasei]

Holy crap, the replicator.

[chiasaur11]

Holy crap, the replicator.

Roughly this.

More practical benefit, less philisophical dilemmas.

[OracleofWuffing]

This isn't rocket science, use the replicator to duplicate all the stuff I need to trade away to get the replicator. Sure, I'm not using the originals anymore, but think of all the money I'd save on instant noodles!

...Now if only it could replicate friends. :smallfrown:

[Randel]

So, wait, can you make stuff without having the original? I hope so, but either way, it'd have to be replicator.

If you have an object, the replicator can scan it and make a blueprint for it. Then you can replicate as many copies as you need as long as you have the base elements for it (ie, you can make cans of soda by breaking down water and pretty much anything with carbon in it... plus aluminum cans. But if you want to duplicate a gold watch you'll need some gold.)

Personally, I think it would be nice to half reverse-engineer the replicator so that you can make deconstructors that recycle any old garbage and turn it into ingots that can then be sent to conventional factories to make new stuff.


Worst thing a replicator can do is make lots of drugs or manufacture counterfeit music CDs or something.

Worst thing a transporter can do... beam a nuke into a heavily populated area, smuggle drugs, troops, or slaves across boarders or kidnap people right out of their homes.

[Weiser_Cain]

Transporters kill everyone they "transport". That out of the way, both are matter to energy tech and provided you can get a pattern into a buffer you can replicate the function of a replicator.

[Ravens_cry]

Transporter rather then replicator, as the technology of the former is the basis of the latter.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I'm hesitant on the economics of a replicator, the stability and utopia of a post-scarcity society is a polite assumption as cruel as that sounds. Should the replicator prove less replicable itself... well thank god we've moved basic monetary value into an inherently electronic system along with an increasingly service based economy so I can't cause the greatest depression ever by simply flood gold into the system, need to do multiple resources like iron and oil. Still could wreck society as we know it though. And I mean easily constructable nukes for example? Oye vey.

I'd take the transporter but I really don't want to face the philosophical issues inherent to such a thing. I don't really want to question whether I am myself because an exact duplicate of me was constructed after my atoms were smashed.

Is the Ferengi offering a warp core, or perhaps some text books on the underlying theory? Much less dangerous a bargain there.

[Athaniar]

Replicator, of course. I rarely go places anyway.
And besides, if I replicate myself a jet pack...

[Thrawn183]

Replicator. Even if you need the material, just scan everything you own and if it breaks, use the material from the broken object (which hasn't changed) to make a new one.

Not to mention turning ground beef into steak.

Statuary out of rocks.

Could have a lot of fun with this.

[thegurullamen]

Replicator. It's a good way to keep tabs on the world economy or can be used to simply take care of yourself. A must-have for zombie apocalypse scenarios. also, if you can manage it, trade the Ferengi a couple of local bridges for the designs to their starship and operating manual. It'll take a long time to build it from the individual parts and it might look like crap, but it's better than you can do.

[Lupy]

Transporter, sell it to the Government on the condition that I and my descendents have full use of it.

[Weiser_Cain]

Replicator. Even if you need the material, just scan everything you own and if it breaks, use the material from the broken object (which hasn't changed) to make a new one.

Not to mention turning ground beef into steak.

Statuary out of rocks.

Could have a lot of fun with this.

ground beef into steak? no you can turn human waste into steak, cooked and steaming. It's no wonder the enterprise only had one bathroom, people were too horrified to eat anything not made off-ship, which is of course why Ten Forward could get away with awful drinks that vaporized when you drank them.

[Dervag]

I'd go for replicator for utility reasons, if the Ferengi threw in operating manuals and blueprints. If not, I'd ask him to provide me with a big stack of science textbooks.

[GoC]

I do not believe anyone has pointed out the main problem with using the replicator: copyright infringement.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I do not believe anyone has pointed out the main problem with using the replicator: copyright infringement.

Such silly outdated laws will have no place in a society where money is no longer relevant.

And if not used to revolutionize society one simply has to replicate enough gold to move to some tropical island country and bribe the government for total security. Which incidentally has the plus of something you can't replicate, a nice climate.

[raitalin]

Such silly outdated laws will have no place in a society where money is no longer relevant.

And if not used to revolutionize society one simply has to replicate enough gold to move to some tropical island country and bribe the government for total security. Which incidentally has the plus of something you can't replicate, a nice climate.

Unfortunately, with gold being an element, you can't replicate it without the same amount of gold in storage, right?

Though you could make diamonds out of ashes.

I'll take the replicator, because of the fewer complex moral issues.

[OracleofWuffing]

Which incidentally has the plus of something you can't replicate, a nice climate.
Humidifier, dehumidifier, space heater, fan or air conditioning unit. Replicate as needed.

[shadzar]

Ferengi?

Neither!


#107: A warranty is valid only if they can find you.

If something went wrong then I would be SCREWED!

[Seraph]

ground beef into steak? no you can turn human waste into steak, cooked and steaming. It's no wonder the enterprise only had one bathroom, people were too horrified to eat anything not made off-ship, which is of course why Ten Forward could get away with awful drinks that vaporized when you drank them.

you know, the process of modern fertilization means that everything you have ever eaten or ever will eat is on some level derived from feces.

[Tirian]

Unfortunately, with gold being an element, you can't replicate it without the same amount of gold in storage, right?

IIRC, there are different grades of replicators. The ones that make bulk quantities of food or clothes start with feedstock on the molecular level, while more specialized ones in Sickbay or engineering are capable of transmuting elements (at a higher energy cost, of course).

If I had a replicator, there wouldn't be enough downtime for me to bother making diamonds when you could be churning out cutting-edge semiconductors, carbon nanotubes, and similar high-end manufacturing that is not currently cost-effecting in mass quantities. I don't know that my efforts would develop enough new tech that we'd be able to build our own replicators before the reactor on mine wore out, but it would be a Golden Age all the same and my descendants and I would have a financial stake in all of the industry that came out of it.

I wouldn't turn up my nose at a transporter either. Getting material out of the Earth's gravity well is crazy expensive, and a transporter would eliminate those costs. You could beam up human-sized parts of your space station and then a bunch of humans to weld them all together. And if you could come up with some way to harness the free differential in potential energy, you've got an unlimited energy source there to boot.

[Weiser_Cain]

you know, the process of modern fertilization means that everything you have ever eaten or ever will eat is on some level derived from feces.
My garden is full of bones and sand.

[The Evil Thing]

Do you guys really think humanity could reverse-engineer a replicator at our current level of technology?

Because of this weakness, it's only right that I keep it to myself. All to myself. Of course, I can still use it to make valuable things that consist of cheap elements (assuming I read the rules right). Diamonds out of pencils? Yes, please.

My only concern is that the thing would consume ungodly amounts of electricity. The things do run on antimatter, after all. Of course, it's got to be a smaller power sink than a bloody transporter.

[Weiser_Cain]

Maybe maybe not but even if it's just ruined in the process we'll learn something in the process, also replicate a bunch of gold in the process. I'd imagine with a transporter you could just rematerialize copies to toy with.

[The Evil Thing]

Would Leonard da Vinci learn something in the process of disassembling a CPU?

Also, elements in = elements out, so you can't just replicate gold, and even if you could the electricity costs would be much higher than the value of gold you could output. After all, you need 90 petajoules of energy to make one kilogram, so going by current energy prices (generously) one kilogram of anything would cost £2.5bn. For the record you would get about £20k if you sold a kilo of gold.

You might have more luck with radium, which has a going rate of several hundred million per kilo (I can't find the exact figure, unfortunately). Sadly, that would soon dry up as the market becomes saturated and the world wonders why you're using about three million times the power consumption of the entire UK.

[Thrawn183]

Are we allowed to replicate parts for more replicators?

[Weiser_Cain]

Would Leonard da Vinci learn something in the process of disassembling a CPU?

Also, elements in = elements out, so you can't just replicate gold, and even if you could the electricity costs would be much higher than the value of gold you could output. After all, you need 90 petajoules of energy to make one kilogram, so going by current energy prices (generously) one kilogram of anything would cost £2.5bn. For the record you would get about £20k if you sold a kilo of gold.

You might have more luck with radium, which has a going rate of several hundred million per kilo (I can't find the exact figure, unfortunately). Sadly, that would soon dry up as the market becomes saturated and the world wonders why you're using about three million times the power consumption of the entire UK.

I'm not da Vinci, but I learned a lot taking stuff apart as a kid. The if the human mind can understand it in the near future it can understand it now.

How about this for an economic model? Cram ore in get 100% pure metal out the other end, titanium would be as cheap as aluminum foil by tomorrow. Complex parts could made as easily as cheap crap.

[Kris Strife]

Replicator, and no, not just to ask it for a 'Philly cheesesteak. Wrapped in bacon. And deep fry it.' although that will be one of the first things I ask for.


you know, the process of modern fertilization means that everything you have ever eaten or ever will eat is on some level derived from feces.

This seems appropriate. :smallbiggrin: http://www.daisyowl.com/comic/2009-04-17

[Texas_Ben]

If you have an object, the replicator can scan it and make a blueprint for it. Then you can replicate as many copies as you need as long as you have the base elements for it (ie, you can make cans of soda by breaking down water and pretty much anything with carbon in it... plus aluminum cans. But if you want to duplicate a gold watch you'll need some gold.)

Umm... Don't replicators work by converting matter into energy and thus you can make whatever you want?



Also, elements in = elements out, so you can't just replicate gold, and even if you could the electricity costs would be much higher than the value of gold you could output. After all, you need 90 petajoules of energy to make one kilogram, so going by current energy prices (generously) one kilogram of anything would cost £2.5bn. For the record you would get about £20k if you sold a kilo of gold.

OP already said it comes with it's own power source.

[Dervag]

Such silly outdated laws will have no place in a society where money is no longer relevant.Try being the first one to tell that to the pharmaceutical industry when you start replicating their impossibly expensive designer drugs.


Umm... Don't replicators work by converting matter into energy and thus you can make whatever you want?If replicators worked that way they wouldn't need fusion reactors. Also, they'd need to use colossal amounts of energy to make some things, and to find places to put colossal amounts of energy making others. The energy content of an atomic nucleus varies wildly with its mass; that's why fission and fusion work in the first place. So large scale transmutation of elements is likely to be more trouble than it's worth for a replicator, even if you can do it easily enough.


Would Leonard da Vinci learn something in the process of disassembling a CPU?No, but Leonardo da Vinci didn't have our analytical toolkit. He had about the same equipment to examine the CPU as Ug the Caveman. We have much better equipment to examine the replicator than Leonardo.

[The Evil Thing]

No, but Leonardo da Vinci didn't have our analytical toolkit. He had about the same equipment to examine the CPU as Ug the Caveman. We have much better equipment to examine the replicator than Leonardo.
At the very least they had magnifying glasses and a rudimentary understanding of physics. To say he was on the technological level of cavemen does disservice to the works of... say Bacon or Grosseteste as well as late mediaeval technology in general.

Now we have scanning electron microscopes which can see objects at up to 6 orders of magnitude and space telescopes which can pick out about ten thousand galaxies in a dark patch about one tenth of the area of the moon. Sounds impressive? Star Trek has devices the size of mobile phones that can scan many square kilometres for several kinds of radiation. What about those "Heisenberg Compensators" that are so integral to the transporter technology? How about their long range superluminal sensors? Before such technology, we're on the level of da Vinci puzzling over a Centrino.

[GoC]

No, but Leonardo da Vinci didn't have our analytical toolkit.
Just a clarification: Are you refering to the Scientific Method and logic in general?

If yes then that's a very good point.

[Texas_Ben]

All I'm saying is I remember them saying at some point in one of the series that the Transporter, replicator, and holodeck all operate on the same principles of converting energy into matter and matter into energy.

Also, having made that post, my vote goes to Holodeck (Or holosuite in this case I guess) even though it wasn't one of the available choices.

[The Evil Thing]

I read somewhere that the Holosuite is just an adaptation of transporter and replicator technology.

[Weiser_Cain]

All I'm saying is I remember them saying at some point in one of the series that the Transporter, replicator, and holodeck all operate on the same principles of converting energy into matter and matter into energy.

Also, having made that post, my vote goes to Holodeck (Or holosuite in this case I guess) even though it wasn't one of the available choices.

You'd do nothing else with your life.

You are reduces to subatomic particles during transport.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Transporter

Holo tech is just holograms and foercefields.

[Randel]

from an engineerng standpoint, I would say it would be safer to avoid the matter-to-enery and energy-to-matter conversion for a replicator. Since the amount of energy in a volume of mass is incredibly high.Turning even a few grams of dirt into PURE ENERGY could result in some nasty explosions or radiaton if something goes wrong.

Plus, I'd mention that its Ferengi technology so they probably stuck with relativly simpler tech than any Starfleet replicators that can do matter conversion.

So lets just say the Ferengi replicator in this example operates by moving atoms around and making stuff with them.

Worst thing a matter transmuting replicator can do is explode violently, emit all sorts of nasty radiation (Like if it accidentally turned a pile of dirt into hydrogen and let all the extra neutrons fly free like a neutron bomb or something... basically killing all orgnaic matter while leaving buildings intact), or accidentally replacing the carbon in your Earl Gey Tea with rainbow kryptonite or something.

A replicator that just moves atoms around without changing their elements might make dynamite or poisons but it hopefully won't royally mess up half your planet if something goes wrong.

I just suppose I don't trust Starfleet technology considering it has all those wacky transporter accidents, exploding consoles, and flue vaccines that regress the entire crew into spider people or whatnot.

[Talya]

Replicators could, indeed, make gold from other elements, as they broke matter down to subatomic particles and rearranged it, able to form base elements from other elements. This is why gold itself was no longer a valuable commodity in the galaxy after the rise of replication, and Latinum (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Latinum) became the currency standard, as it could not be replicated. (Latinum was a liquid metal, and to make it easy to transport, it was alloyed with Gold, so the currency was "gold-pressed Latinum.")

[Weezer]

I'd go for the replicator just so I could say; "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" :smalltongue:

But seriously I think the replicator is far superior, even without being able to transmute crap into gold, money isn't an issue, you could just replicate paper money or things like diamonds. Also think about using it to repair things, if somethings breaks just scan it and throw it into the replicator fuel bin, presto its just like new.

[Weiser_Cain]

What's the difference between making gold and diamonds?
Don't do paper money, they'd all have the same serial number.

[Weezer]

Hmm hadn't thought of that... oh well just stick with diamonds.

The difference between gold and diamonds is that to make gold you need the element gold, to make diamonds you need the element carbon. So you don't gain much by replicating gold, well you could make some fancy jewelry but by turning ash (carbon) into diamond you are going from no value to extreme value just by shuffling around the structure.

[Weiser_Cain]

Looks at pack of water filter replacements running around $30 a pop...
You don't it breaks matter down to the subatomic level. A handful of dirt could become a complete diamond ring. Of course this is suppose to be a working replicator so it should be a long time before you're running around cramming dirt into it trying to recharge it while the ferengi laugh manically from space (Hahaha, worthless gold!).

[Talya]

Hmm hadn't thought of that... oh well just stick with diamonds.

The difference between gold and diamonds is that to make gold you need the element gold, to make diamonds you need the element carbon. So you don't gain much by replicating gold, well you could make some fancy jewelry but by turning ash (carbon) into diamond you are going from no value to extreme value just by shuffling around the structure.



Once again, as I linked above, that's not how replicators in Star Trek work. They can turn any element into almost any other element. This is because atoms all contain protons, neutrons, and electrons, and replicators work at the subatomic level. They can convert one element into another with ease. There are only a very few "elements" that replicators cannot replicate (and they are fictional elements, created by the writers solely for the purpose of being unreplicateable), Latinum being one of them.