• cm0002@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Kind of makes you hope the transporter in any scifi form doesn’t get invented, as they all seem to have their philosophical issues

    Idk why everyone gets caught up on a transporter’s only use being transporting people

    I just want a transporter to transport packages instantly. No polluting trucks or trains or ships or planes, no criminally under paid and overworked army of warehouse workers and “gig economy delivery drivers” in order to meet same-day/next day delivery targets. No worries about if it was packaged enough to survive a courier. No need to be home for signature/missed deliveries

    When you buy something online, someone just grabs it, shoves it on a pad and pushes a button then BOOM it’s in your house.

    Even Starfleet took awhile after its invention before certifying them for “biological use”

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The method of transport isn’t destroying the planet, the method of energy generation is destroying the planet.

      Invent a transporter today, and thousands of coal fired plants would be built tomorrow to power the transporter pads.

      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        A transporters just a replicator with a targeting addon.

        Assuming it can replicate a nuclear reactor but not uranium, we have enough natural uranium to last for 1000s of years.

        Even if we went back to coal, the end of all industrial manufacturing might make up for the new pollution.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          The energy requirements of replicators are unfathomably gigantic compared to regular industrial manufacturing.

          It takes 1.6 Trillion MJ of energy to make an 8kg Bicycle.

          A nuclear reactor generates 1000 MJ/s.

          That means you would need 50 nuclear reactors to make 1 bicycle a year with a replicator.

          It’s why the TNG writers claim the Enterprise generates 12.75 exawatts. They did the math.