Editing FederalSpace:Technology (section)

=== The Transporter ===
I wanted to keep imagery of the transporter, because it's the most distinctive piece of Trek tech—essential to the visual experience. But the Trek-as-written explanation is troubling, for various reasons I'm sure you know. So here's a possible replacement:

The transporter was first used for satellite launch, and second used for orbital bombardment. Later, it was adapted for personnel and cargo transport, and today is a commonplace—if finicky—technology. It also formed the eventual basis for the warpdrive.

It's a spacewarp device. It wraps the subject "on the pad" in a "space-time bubble", then "casts" the bubble in a straight line, somewhat like a particle accelerator. For a fraction of a second, the bubble moves faster-than-light, and can pass through ("ghosts") through limited quantities of normal matter. And then the bubble "bursts", and its contents are deposited, hopefully at the target location. Because this is a space-warp, the subject doesn't experience any movement—in fact, they even arrive "at rest" relative to the largest mass at the landing site. (Thus explaining why you don't smack into the planet as it moves through its orbit—you arrive at rest relative to it!)

Because mass bends space-time, the more mass there is in the path of travel, the less accurate the casting is. The bubble can't burst where there is already significant mass, but "bounces" in an essentially random direction, until it finds an open location. So you can't beam into a solid object, and beaming through more then a couple of walls kills accuracy. On the other hand, it's a standard trick to aim your casting ''below'' ground level, so the bubble bounces and precipitates to the surface—off target, but safer than having the bubble burst prematurely, dropping the subjects at altitude…

You can, of course, simply aim for empty space.

Presumably, there should be a hell of a lot of noise and stray energy when this occurs, because of displaced atmosphere, the neutralizing of inertia when matching reference frames, and similar concerns. But you know what? Since it's ''already'' impossible, I don't care. Assume there's noise, a breeze, and a bunch of static discharges, similar to but not as pronounced as the time travel effects in the ''Terminator'' movies, but somehow the rest is compensated for. There's a shimmer of a lights, a blurring of space, and then the subject is there!

You can perform a transport on the spur of the moment if you don't care much about where your subject ends up, but a safe transfer requires detailed spatial and gravitational observations for the entire zone of operations, from the transporter pad, through the intervening space, and to the target site. The ideal situation is between two well-surveyed locations, e.g. from one permanent installation to another. Field-expedient transports, as under combat conditions, are comparable to aerial insertion via parachute—not terribly accurate, but quick, and hard to detect or intercept. (Note that there's no reason why you couldn't beam out ''with'' a parachute… special ops troops probably train to beam down, paraglide to a good body of water, then swim underwater to the assembly area.)

You can't retrieve a subject, because they're out of range of the transporter unit. On the other hand, you could beam down another transport unit, and use it to send them back. There are single-use units for away parties, that must be assembled at the other end, and linked back to the mothership to use its sensors and computational equipment for a safe exit. For a more permanent base camp or beachhead, you actually ''construct'' a full transport facility, with power supply, sensors, etc.

Sadly, this means the loss (or alteration) of the immortal line, "Beam me up!" 

Because of the need for careful surveying, limitations of retrieval, and so forth, use of aerospace vehicles is actually ''better'' in situations where you need flexibility. Transport in the field is used when you need speed, or don't want to be intercepted; otherwise, transport is exclusively for use in civilized areas.

Developed worlds will have extensive transport networks, well-surveyed and centrally-coordinated. Public transport pads, for cargo or people, will link cities—with light rail and light aircraft to fill in between. Emergency personnel can be deployed very rapidly from orbital transport facilities. Personal delivery is expensive as hell—an entire pad, just to send you a package immediately?—but it happens. Satellites and shuttles are launched to orbit via transporter, reserving laser-launch facilities for the largest of vessels that must be launched in one piece; ships can deploy their drones and probes via transporter, as well. Colonies see more use of conventional vehicles, because they haven't built their teleport network yet—cars and trucks overland, ships and subs in the oceans, aircraft. 

In war, transport can be used to beam troops aboard a spacecraft or habitat that must be taken intact, but it's risky, of course—you probably don't have accurate surveys of the interior, and they'll be shooting back at you the moment you're down. A well-coordinated transport assault can work wonders, however. Transport can also be used to deploy uninterceptable bombs with fair precision, which explains why military bases are still placed far underground. 

It'd be a good idea to work out just how long it takes to arrange a transport. For now, assume it takes hours to set up a good transport, and there can be days of downtime while the equipment is being reset and tested. Public pads will carry heavy loads, multiple times per day (or even per hour), for days or weeks at a time, and then be taken offline for extensive maintenance. 

What can go wrong? Generally, the worst that happens is the subject scatters farther than is convenient, or the bubble fails to establish at all and nothing happens. It ''can'' happen that a subject appears at altitude mistakenly, or trapped in an underground pocket, or some similar disaster; all the more reason to set up the transition carefully. Worst case scenario, there's a catastrophic failure, destroying the transporter, the subject, and possibly all around them. This is incredibly rare and unlikely, though.

It occurs to me that this is a practical reason, among ships of hostile nations, for the tradition of having your senior officers waiting to greet the other ships' senior officers when they are transported over. You had to link systems to perform a careful transport, but one party or the other could easily sabotage the job… so by putting your people in harm's way, you make each party hostage to the other. 

An important question: Is it possible to jam transport, or is the only defense jamming the sensors? (A thought: if the FTL comm is a spin-off of warp tech, then the answer is probably "yes", but you block all transport and comm to that region, too… and it's a planet-scale effect.)

==== Commentary ====

'''David Rhode:''' Transporters - one possible limitation on the system you describe might involve matching the velocity vectors. If you're moving mass from one inertial frame of reference to another, even if you have a 'space warp' effect that lets you cover the distance nigh-instantaneously, you still have to change the vectors of the mass transported, or it will fly off the planet, or ram through the wall of the ship or whatever. The transporter, in additon to the power required to initialize the space warp, will need to use power to cancel the difference in vectors. The greater the difference in magnitude between the vectors, the more costly and difficult the transport effect would be. Moving people up and down from a planet while you're in geostationary orbit would be pretty easy. Snagging the captain off an exploding space station while evading phasers would be difficult, mostly because of the power requirements.

I remember a scene from one of the Lensman novels where Kimball Kinnison, wearing some kind of armored suit IIRC, had to transport directly from one ship to another at top speed, meaning they couldn't slow down to match vectors, so they just tossed him off one ship into the other. They caught him inside a special room covered with shock absorbers, and he had to spend a good while bouncing off the walls until he finally matched vectors with the second vessel.

'''Shadowjack:''' While I'm using the handwave that transporter ''doesn't'' require vector matching… on the other hand, maybe it does, just for the sake of energy control. The warp compensates, but if you don't have enough power, you don't get as close on target. 

Exponentially-greater power for longer range castings seems like a good idea, and a solid limitation.


'''gc3:''' Note, I don't understand why someone would use the transporter technology with a pad rather than an enclosed vehicle. Should the transporter pad fall out of warp at the wrong spot (perhaps, due to a large bird flying by at the wrong time, or interference by an energy blast) you may be in vacuum, or in the sky. So the transporter explanation needs rework, any sane engineer would enclose the pad in a life support system that could fly and survive underwater and other hostile environments.

'''Shadowjack:''' That's why they carefully prepare the transports, just as rocket launches are carefully prepared today. And you ''can'' beam down with a vehicle or protective suit, of course…


'''Shadowjack:''' I do mourn the loss of the classic "Beam us up" line, but, damn it, that means I can beam up enemies, too. Or beam the enemy ship away. Unless I go back to the screens and jamming and tachyon particle interference anomaly defenses. :(

I decided to see where "you can send only, and only in line of sight" takes me.


'''LordDraqo:''' I've got to admit that I have had difficulty wrapping my head around the physical effects of this transporter. What happens to the air that is displaced at the target-location? How about the vacuum created at the origin?

'''Shadowjack:''' *whoosh* and *thwip*, respectively. So there's a breeze. Possibly ''Terminator''-style static discharges, as well; pads are grounded properly, of course.

I'd say you probably can't beam something into high-density atmosphere or liquid. And solid is right out.

I tried to arrange things to ''avoid'' having to think about the transporter too much, actually, because I didn't want to have to. It just moves shit. Draw a line segment on a piece of paper from your transporter pad to your target spot; if your line of fire crosses a significant amount of mass (more than a few klicks of atmosphere or a single bulkhead), or reaches maximum range of (say) one light-second, end the line there, and that's where your payload appears, "at rest" in comparison with whatever it's next to.

'''LordDraqo:''' So we are dealing with magical physics. I just wanted to be certain, as instantaneous arrival of 27 cubic meters of stuff will create quite a breeze. If you've never experienced a fifty mph wind-gust, you haven't lived :D

'''Shadowjack:''' The transporter and the warp drive are most definitely Super-Science! technology. I'm trying to keep them as my ''only'' bits of magic, though.

'''s/LaSH:''' Presumably it can't be instant instant, because that would involve infinite acceleration, albeit over small distances, and even very high acceleration over small distances can translate to "plasma pyroclasm in atmosphere". There might be a good reason for the twinkly lights of a traditional transporter - at least at the receiving end: some sort of 'clear the field' effect, initially a warning, and then some sort of heating pulse to clear out the atmosphere for a warp bubble. It is not going to be a comfortable area to stand in without safety goggles. There will likely be lots of wind, dust, and small rocks flying through the air. It's also easy to mistake the operation for an orbital bombardment, because the principles are identical.

'''Shadowjack:''' Which is why our scouts always seem to come down in isolated areas, and our visiting diplomats come to the specially-cleared and shielded landing pad.

'''LordDraqo:''' This I can get behind, and support, with whole heart. This also got me to thinking about the link to ''plasma windows'' and how that might work to produce a barrier around the transmission stage to prevent everything in the room from being sucked into the evacuated stage when the warp-bubble transmits.

'''s/LaSH:''' I believe this is the logical conclusion, yes. All important facilities are presumably jammed, probably including starships as a routine anti-piracy measure.

Oh, also, another reason for the 'transporter sparkles': a series of small disposable probes, little more than smart-paper beacons, designed to arrive in set patterns at set heights; if they don't show up in the right configuration, you assume that the site's being jammed or is otherwise unsafe. I would assume you could get nasty effects by using sophisticated dirtside ECM to make a starship think there's a building at point A, whereas it's actually a big hole in the ground with magma at the bottom. If you can get sparkles in the right place, it's obviously stable for materialization.



'''mindstalk:''' Take a page from the Culture, which had Displacers -- little wormholes -- for 'transporter' technology. No duplication problems, more ability than your warp bubbles to go through things, like ship walls. (OTOH, more ways to go through enemy ship walls, and no obvious defense.)

'''Shadowjack:''' Micro-wormholes is as good an explanation as warp bubbles, actually. I suppose the player-level physics works out about the same, and that more elegantly combines the FTL comm with the technology. Food for thought.



'''The Green Man''': If the transporters work in one direction, I suggest that they be matter ''receivers'' instead of matter transmitters.  This way, you can keep the traditional "Beam me up, Scotty" (under the right conditions of course) but force landing parties to use shuttlecraft or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropship_(science_fiction) dropships] à la ''Aliens''.

If transporters are matter transmitters, then they also become effective weapons -- just teleport a bomb into enemy territory -- which was rarely if ever used in the franchise if my memory serves.

'''Myth''' Whether wormhole or warp-bubble, it seems the transport must occur slowly (in physics terms, not human ones) to avoid pseudo-explosions.  AM warp bubble decaying, rather than bursting, might release energy slowly, perhaps as vibration and semi-Cherenkov radiation (which would coincidentally mimic the classic noise and lights thing).  A wormhole, expanding rapidly from a point, might do something similar.

As far as range goes, you might simply count it as "gravimetric distance"; other (non-Transporter) gravity sources, or just the general curve of space.  Interestingly, this you give you shorter range near heavy-mass objects, complicated gravimetric situations, and the like, and longer range in interplanetary, interstellar, or even intergalactic space.  Also lets you shield somewhat with, say, neutronium BB's embedded in your steel wall.  Possible some exotic matter channels for guided transporter effects, but I'd leave that as theoretical for the Federal Space guys.

Can an assemble-on-planet transporter pad transport itself as well, or does it stay behind, possibly resulting in some poor native beaming himself to orbit months later, once the ship has left?