Older units, such as lateral vector transporters had been discarded on Vulcan due to the massive amount of power they required. Starfleet had also phased them out, but some older ships, such as the Walker -class USS Shenzhou , still had them installed. Transporters became the most reliable form of short-range transport by the 24th century. Most space-faring civilizations of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants employed transporter technology for short-range transport of personnel and equipment, however the technology was still rather unknown in the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant.
To these species, the many advantages to utilizing transporters and replicators made the technology a point of contention, especially between the Kazon and the crew USS Voyager. VOY : " Caretaker ", " Maneuvers ", et al. Traveling by transporter was essentially instantaneous and an individual's sense of time while transporting was effectively non-existent.
Innovations in transporter technology around this time included safer site-to-site transport , which allowed for transport between two locations without first returning to a transporter room. TNG : " The Game ", et al. By the 29th century , Starfleet had developed temporal transporter technology that allowed travel through time in a very similar manner to standard transporters of earlier centuries. VOY : " Relativity ". Transporter chief Wyatt. In general, a transporter chief was responsible for the operational readiness, maintenance and repair of a ship or station's transporter systems.
A typical transport sequence, generally initiated by the request to "energize", began from the transporter console with transporter pre-sequencing that, once complete, transporter coordinates were established on the object or destination by the targeting scanners , which thereafter a transporter lock was made. Simultaneously, the object was broken down into a stream of subatomic particles, also called the matter stream.
TNG : " Datalore " The transporter signal was then transferred to the pattern buffer, then again transferring to the emitter array. VOY : " Eye of the Needle ", " Twisted " The matter stream was then transmitted to its destination across a subspace domain.
Of this whole process, one did not feel a thing. TNG : " The Dauphin ". Transporter effect of the alternate reality 's USS Enterprise. In of the alternate reality , the transporter operation process included the use of the annular confinement beam, followed by electromagnetic focusing and the use of a gravitational compensator. The transporter operator then applied a temporal differential and engaged a particle lock.
Star Trek. Twenty-third century Klingon transporter systems shared the same basic technology as Federation transporter systems. Even though the transporter systems of an Intrepid -class were much more sophisticated than those of a D7 class , the targeting scanners worked on the same principals.
With exception of the more advanced systems having had the ability to expand transporter buffer capacity, they really were not all that different. VOY : " Prophecy ". As of , Cardassian transporting systems still operated with active feed pattern buffers.
TNG : " The Wounded ". Also during this time frame, Romulan transporters were know to operate on a similar subspace frequency to those used aboard Federation starships, and with only a few minor adjustments, they could be made to simulate the transporter carrier waves used by their Federation counterparts. TNG : " Data's Day ". From its earliest incarnations until the s , transporters generally immobilized the subject being beamed during dematerialization and rematerialization.
Advances in transporter technology after that point allowed a person being transported to move or converse, during the process, in a limited fashion. By the 24th century, emergency transporter armbands , transponders and combadges could be programmed to remotely activate a transporter. Normally, remote transporter activation was limited to emergencies or when the crew of a vessel was not on board. As with other Starfleet technology, the transporter had its own set of safety features, protocols, and procedures.
In an emergency, many of these safety systems could be modified or circumvented. Early versions of the transporter in the 22nd century appeared to have no protection against external incursions into an active transport. ENT : " Strange New World " Energy weapons fire would also affect the subject, unless it was sufficiently far into the transport that the fire passed through it harmlessly.
ENT : " Broken Bow ", " Countdown " By the late 23rd century , however, transporters shielded the subject from these external incursions. Biofilters were uniformly used on all Federation transporters by the 24th century. These filters functioned to decontaminate transported objects and prevent harmful substances, pathogens, and even certain forms of radiation including theta radiation , from contaminating the rest of the ship or station.
This process replaced earlier systems that required the subject to be fully rematerialized on the transport platform before applying an energy-based process to topically decontaminate the transportee. Though the biofilters performed a general contaminant removal with each transport, they were far from perfect; previously unknown infections or viruses occasionally failed to register, requiring the filters to be recalibrated to recognize the new threat.
As such, biofilters were incapable of filtering out certain types of substances and pathogens, most notably psychic energy. Biofilters were also unable to detect and filter certain types of phased reality lifeforms without prior calibration.
Biofilters also functioned to detect and disable weapons and explosives remat detonators , for example. The transporter also saved biological data of the individuals transported. In , The Doctor was able to give a diagnosis on Seven of Nine 's irrational behavior after studying her last recorded transporter data.
VOY : " The Raven ". When knowingly transporting material considered a biohazard, such as a virus, a bio-transport authorization was used to document the material's nature and approve the transport. TNG : " The Child ". Except in cases of extreme emergency, protocols prohibited transporting objects while traveling at warp speed. During the 22nd century, standard Earth transporter systems had a range of ten thousand kilometers ; however, by the 24th century, the maximum range of standard transporter systems was about forty thousand kilometers, though a special type of transport, called subspace transport , could beam over several light years.
VOY : " Future's End ". Although having a maximum range of about forty thousand kilometers, some conditions adversely affected the effective range. In at least one instance — due to missing components of Voyager 's primary computer systems — the starship Voyager had to be within five hundred kilometers of a planet's surface to use transporters on Kathryn Janeway and a hologram of Leonardo da Vinci.
VOY : " Concerning Flight ". The maximum range of a transporter differed by species, depending on what kind of technologies they used to build it. The transporter with the longest known range was that of the Sikarians , with a range of about forty thousand light years; however, this was due to their planet 's large quartz mantle, which amplified their transporter signal.
Because of this, Sikarian transporter technology worked only on their homeworld. VOY : " Prime Factors ". Gary Seven 's mysterious sponsors on the Assigners' planet possessed transporter technology with a range of at least a thousand light years, according to Spock.
Montgomery Scott later noted that Seven's beam was so powerful it fused all recording circuits, and therefore he could not say exactly how far it transported Seven, or even whether it transported him through time. Exactly how they achieved this effect remains unknown, since there has been no subsequent contact with them, and they hide their entire homeworld in some fashion. There were, however, other indications that their technology was considerably advanced beyond that of the 23rd century Federation.
TOS : " Assignment: Earth ". The Vedala , one of the oldest space-faring races, also possessed transporter technology capable of beaming people and equipment to and from other planets presumably in different star systems. TAS : " The Jihad " Dominion transporter technology, enhanced with a homing transponder , was said to have had a range of at least three light years.
DS9 : " Covenant ". A level 4 diagnostic listing several key components. Almost all Starfleet facilities and starships were equipped with at least one transporter device. The number of transporter devices differed; for example, most shuttlecraft had one transporter while Galaxy -class starships had twenty. TNG : " ". On ships where cargo bays were present, cargo transporters could often be found, as well. Production of Mark V transporters was halted in By , Mark VI transporters were considered outdated.
Mark VII transporters were able to transport unstable biomatter , as long as the phase transition inhibitor was adjusted. DS9 : " Family Business ". Standard duotronic transporter console ca. Transporter console in the alternate reality 's The most commonly used type of transporter was the personnel transporter, designed primarily for personnel. Personnel transporter rooms usually consisted of a transporter console , a transporter platform with an overhead molecular imaging scanner , primary energizing coils , and phase transition coils.
A pattern buffer with a biofilter was typically located on the deck below the transporter room. The outer hull of a starship incorporated a number of emitter pads for the transporter beam. Personnel transporters worked on the quantum level to enable secure transport of lifeforms. Biofilters built into the transporter systems prevented dangerous microorganisms from boarding the ship. Transporter platforms had a variable number of pads, arranged in various layouts by model and by manufacturing race.
The transporters installed on Earth's NX-class starships featured one large circular pad that took up the entire platform. It was large enough to transport two to three people, provided they stood close together. By the 23rd century, Federation transporter platforms featured multiple independent pads, typically six in a hexagonal configuration.
One- and two-pad platforms were also available. This became something of a standard layout for Federation transporters well into the next century.
As an example, the platforms used on board Galaxy -class starships had the familiar six individual pads, with an over-sized pad in the center of the platform that could handle small cargo. Some 23rd century Klingon platforms featured six hexagonal pads in a straight line. Others, such as those on Birds-of-Prey , featured a small number of platforms in a tight group.
Cardassian transporter platforms in the 24th century featured three to five triangular pads placed close together, such as those installed on Deep Space 9. The personnel transporter was a reliable but sometimes fragile piece of equipment. The phase coils , in particular, were vulnerable to feedback patterns and could be severely damaged as result of power surges or low-level phaser fire. TNG : " Brothers ". Cargo transporters were larger-scale versions of personnel transporters and were optimized for the transport of inanimate objects.
These transporters were adapted to handle massive quantities of material. In case of an emergency, cargo transporters could be reset to quantum-level mode, making lifeform transport possible.
One reason for such a reconfiguration was to expedite an evacuation of personnel. Cargo transporters were mostly found inside the cargo bay of a starship or space station. On Level C of the Spacedock -type Starbase 74 , there were four cargo transporters. Dedicated cargo transporter platforms used by Starfleet in the 24th century typically featured one large circular or oblong pad.
Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the alternate reality , the USS Franklin was only equipped with cargo transporters. After the discovery of the Franklin 's wreckage, Montgomery Scott was able to modify the transporters to beam lifeforms, though he only beamed Spock and Leonard McCoy on board one at a time so as not to risk splicing them together. With aid from Pavel Chekov , Scott was able to further modify the transporters to beam groups of twenty at a time though the transporters needed to recharge after at least two groups of twenty in a row.
After Scott's modifications, the transporters were also able to beam two lifeforms and a motorcycle in motion to a destination.
Portable transporters were self-contained units capable of direct site-to-site transport. While having the capability to be moved from one place to another, they were known to be rather large and bulky. DS9 : " Visionary ". In of an alternate timeline , Tom Paris owned an advanced, portable, site-to-site transporter device capable of transporting itself along with its payload.
This device was small enough to be carried easily on a person. VOY : " Non Sequitur ". Emergency transporters were a special type that had a low power requirement; in case of a ship-wide power failure, the crew could use these transporters for emergency evacuation. By the late 24th century, emergency transport was further improved through Starfleet's development of a single-person, single-use, one-way emergency transport unit. The device was small enough to be hand-held and could transport to specified coordinates with a single touch.
Because of its extreme limitations, this device was not widely deployed and was still considered a prototype in Star Trek Nemesis. Public transporters were standalone transporter stations available for use by the civilian population of Starbase Yorktown. These automated units featured a selection of pre-programmed destination coordinates available to each user, allowing access to many public locations throughout the starbase.
By , Starfleet Headquarters had public transporters in a gatelike configuration, which visitors could use to be directly beamed to the premises.
PIC : " Maps and Legends ". By , the Federation had developed a micro-transporter — essentially a scaled-down version of a regular transporter — which was capable of transporting small amounts of material within an almost-imperceptible span of time. When attached to a TR rifle , it could be used to transport the bullet to anywhere within the transporter's range, where it would continue at its original velocity until striking a target. DS9 : " Field of Fire ". The spatial trajector , an example of a non-beam transporter.
Certain species experimented with transporters that differed in technology and theory than those used by most species encountered by the Federation.
The Sikarians were known to use a folded-space transporter , relying on dimensional shifting rather than matter-to-energy conversion. Similarly, the Iconians perfected their own form of transport, known as gateways , which were capable of near-instantaneous transport over vast distances.
Gary Seven possessed an advanced form of transportation technology that he used to transport around the planet Earth and back to his home planet more than a thousand light years from Earth.
When in operation, the chamber produced a cloud of a blue fog-like substance that enveloped the chamber. The chamber was controlled by the Beta 5 computer , and was the first known transporter to be in use on Earth, especially given the time period of The transporter beam could be intercepted by another transporter unit.
This would seem to dictate that both transporter technologies work on similar principles. Seven's device appeared to be more powerful than that of the Enterprise , for it was able to re-direct the transporter beam of the Enterprise back to it, and instead of Gary Seven re-materializing in the transporter room of the Enterprise , he re-materialized in his own device.
When not in use, the chamber door, which resembled that of a safe when it was closed, was hidden behind a shelf holding Martini glasses. The shelf and the brown wood finish surrounding it split down the middle and slid into the adjacent walls, allowing the chamber door to open.
This action was achieved by moving the right pen on Gary Seven's desk downward. The Aldeans wore a small device attached to the arm that they used to control their transporter through contact with the Custodian. In general, transporters could not be used while the deflector shield of a ship was active, or a deflector shield was in place over the destination. However, it was possible to take advantage of EM "windows" that were created by the normal rotation of shield frequencies.
During these periods, a hole opened, through which a transporter beam could pass. Which brings us to taking a transporter ride. If consciousness is tied to our physical brain, and our brain is dissolved for transport, then we "die" the instant we are dissolved, in that the part of you that you think is you right now ends when the brain creating it ends.
But here is where it gets complicated. Because if consciousness is some kind of illusion and not separate from the physical, then that illusion that is "you" could be perfectly re-created elsewhere and begin functioning unchanged; for all intents and purposes it is still the exact thing that was just destroyed.
And so the consciousness of a transported individual wasn't destroyed any more than the sound of an explosion in outer space is destroyed by the vacuum that refuses to carry it; changing the conditions in which the phenomena occurs may alter our perception of it but not necessarily the properties of the phenomena itself.
And so the transported consciousness is both simultaneously destroyed and not destroyed. The closest analogy we living humans have would be going into a dreamless sleep and waking up somewhere else. What happened after we nodded off is perhaps unimportant, ultimately, so long as our state can be retrieved later. And as for "remembering" what happened while characters were being transported on the show, who knows? Maybe someone designing transporters realized a while back that people found the experience of "dying" unsettling and added a subroutine that provided some artificial stimulus to the brain state pattern while they are being transported so that re-built travelers believe they never experienced any loss of consciousness.
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. In Star Trek, does the original die in teleportation? Ask Question. Asked 9 years, 8 months ago. Active 3 years, 9 months ago. Viewed 60k times.
Improve this question. Solemnity 6, 1 1 gold badge 35 35 silver badges 62 62 bronze badges. SachinShekhar: it was deleted as a list question, see this link. Philosophy When a copy is completely indistinguishable from the original, what is the difference?
Omegacron I'm pretty sure Philosophy will call it the " Ship of Theseus " problem or paradox. Show 1 more comment. Active Oldest Votes. Data uses a copy of Picard's pattern stored in the pattern buffer, and combines it with Picard's energy signature to create a new living body. Picard only has vague memories of the experience.
TNG 2x07, Unnatural Selection. Doctor Pulaski is reverted to a younger body through manipulation of the transporter. Her mind remains unchanged. TNG 6x07, Rascals. A transporter accident turns 4 of the crew into children, which causes them to both lose a lot of mass, and further shows that the transporter is actually improvising based on their DNA, not doing a molecule-for-molecule transport of their mass.
TNG 6x24, Second Chances. Where we meet Thomas Riker. This episode is a double whammy to a lot of the theory: The copy of Riker shows that new life can be created, and it also shows that the energy from the second transporter beam created new mass.
It wasn't converted from somewhere else. TNG 7x23, Emergence. Further evidence that the transporter system can create life. In this episode, it's shown to be so exceedingly complicated and lengthy a process that no one has figured out how to do it at will. Second: Mentioned in TangoOversway's answer: This still leaves the question open: Is the consciousness or the self-aware entity in the reconstructed body the same as before, or was the original consciousness destroyed and a new one created.
Seen in this episode: Creating life from a template patterns stored in the holosuite. Restoring neural patterns from the rest of the computer systems, essentially copying the mind back into the new body, which seems similar to synaptic pattern displacement. Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Izkata Izkata And yet, as I've pointed out before, at least one of those was addressed in the tech guide Lonely Among Us and you're basing everything else on supposition.
TangoOversway The excerpts from the technical guide I've seen posted so far not only provide no explanation for the other 4 TNG episodes and the DS9 episode referenced here, but if it was taken as gospel then those episodes couldn't have happened. There were different reasons for each of them. For instance, in Unnatural Selection they used a filter, which focused on her DNA, but not on other molecules. In other words they augmented the technology. The writers and I know Ron Moore was careful about this added a line or two of technobabble when necessary to "excuse" any "wibbly-wobbly" stuff they came up with.
Despite that this is an awesome answer I think we only can answer this question if science figures out what defines "mind" in a biological sense and why we are who we are and how we are aware of ourselves. Add a comment. On page 28, under The Transporter - Once and for All And then, from the same section, on page From the Pattern Buffer, the molecular stream and the coded instructions pass through a number of subsystems before reaching the emitter.
The body is taken apart at the original location and reconstructed at a new one. Tango Tango k 81 81 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Surely this asks the audience to suspend our disbelief a step too far. So we accept in a general sense that such a future exists, complete with mind-boggling technologies that enact the potentially impossible. We accept we can interchange energy and matter e. But somehow teleportation makes no use of this, instead opting for a complex process that siphons a sort of buffered human soup between two locations, and oh the subject somehow remains conscious?
Why not just scan-transport-assemble a la photocopier and accept cloning can happen? It keeps the science much more elegant. First, the replicators don't use matter and energy interchange - they work close to the same way.
Second, I am not a writer who worked on Trek or responsible for producing it or creating the tech guides, so I'm not going to take responsibility for deciding if that was too much or not.
It's the rules of the universe that have been given by Word Of God, whether we like them or not. Love debating the feasibility of the virtually impossible : — geotheory.
Show 2 more comments. QED It's true that some episodes seem to infringe this rule e. Angelo Steffenel Angelo Steffenel 3 3 silver badges 4 4 bronze badges.
Please link to your sources. So following your reasoning nothing can ever be destroyed in RL. Thorsal Fairly sure there's no law saying information cannot be lost. That happens all the time. It's basic entropy. Like why they would use the transporter as a leisure travel method, not just for emergencies.
Characters escape situations just in the nick of time using the transporter. To say they really died anyway in the beam, does not seam logical. It is just that more need to 'Suspend their disbelief'.
Or have fear of it like McCoy or Barclay. There was too many episodes with transporter malfunctions. Kevin Freudian Freudian 61 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges.
If you are alive again, how is the death final? You're not actually converted into energy, see Tango's answer. The molecules of your body are disassembled and those same molecules are reassembled elsewhere. James: You are not alive again. Someone who is identical to you in all ways is created at the other end.
So, to the rest of the world, sure, you never died. But to the person who actually steps into the transporter, it's like being murdered and having someone else take your spot. That another person who feels and thinks just like you is materialized means very little to the consciousness that was just snuffed out.
Will Riker and Tom Riker are both equally Riker. Tom changed his name simply because he was the one who was forgotten, but he has equal claim to the "Will Riker" identity as the Will who materialized on the Potemkin. Now, you obviously can't step onto a transporter and then suddenly find yourself occupying 2 different bodies. So either the sense of being the original Will Riker is purely an illusion by having all his memories , or the consciousness of the original only went into one of them.
Since the only difference between the two is that one confinement beam ended up on the Potemkin, and the other was deflected back to the planet surface, there's no reason to believe that the original Riker consciousness would have ended up in one or the other.
The only logical conclusion is that the original felt himself being dematerialized, and then he was no more. A split second later, 2 new consciousnesses were born with all of Riker's memories, neither realizing that they were actually 2 new people who hadn't existed just a moment ago.
In , this happened to Riker : he was completely duplicated and there existed two identical copies of him henceforth. But is it still you on the other side, or is it a copy? If the latter, does that mean the transporter is a suicide box? After all, if we could figure out exactly how a transporter works, we could build one. And those effects have some interesting consequences. Kirk never said those exact words on the show, of course, but you get the idea.
Trek has always depicted characters who are hesitant to use the transporter, from Dr. McCoy to the entire crew of Enterprise. Hoffman points out the first work to express real doubt about the continuity of personhood was the novel Spock Must Die by James Blish, which "played coy" about whether it's really you on the other end of the transporter.
To address the questions this raised, a good place to start is by looking at what the transporter actually does. This sounds an awful lot like death. The machine could use totally different atoms, and the effect would be exactly the same.
Their physical bodies are saved as holographic characters in Dr.
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