Transporter: Would You Be Beamed?

[SAMU]

If a transporter instantly deconstructed you atom by atom, read the state of each atom sent the information to the reciever and reconstructed an exact replica of you, so exact that all your memories would be absolutely perfectly intact, the replica would step out of the reciever exactly like in Star Trek feeling only that it had been transported. It could even be transported better than you are originally. Such as if you have cancer the cancerous data could be deleted from the data, Bad heart, lungs, kidneys, liver? all could be replaced perfectly new, dna mached organs. The data could be transmitted anywhere we could put a reciever. Star travel at the speed of light would be possible. Backups of the data would be possible so no matter what happened to a replica a new one could be created. More than one could be created, they could be in two places at once and then their memories be recombined into one so it would have the memories of both.

But, make no mistake, the original would be totaly gone as totaly as if 20 tons of TNT had gone off in your ear. Sent up a chimny in a puff of smoke. And every time you transported the same thing would happen.
Put bluntly; your body would be dead, dead at your own hand. When you push that transport button you won't know if your soul will transport with you any more than you now know if you have a soul. Will you go to heaven? Will you go to hell? Will you go to oblivion? Or will you wind up at your destination? When you step into that transporter you are stepping into the totally unknown.

Maybe you are one of the first to use it for the first time and everyone tells you you are a fool to use it. Maybe you are one of the last to use it for the first time and everybody tells you you are a fool for not using it. They all say that it's totally painless and that you don't feel a thing and that they are none the worst for wear having used it.

Would you use it?

[darkhunter]

I saw what happened on The Fly and on Star Trek, the Motion Picture.....so um...let me think...uh...no...

[kucharek]

I saw what happened on The Fly and on Star Trek, the Motion Picture.....so um...let me think...uh...no...

Compare with the outlook of a body after a failed transport by car...

[darkhunter]

I saw what happened on The Fly and on Star Trek, the Motion Picture.....so um...let me think...uh...no...

Compare with the outlook of a body after a failed transport by car...

But in a car I have control (or illusion thereof)....

[Amadeus]

Q.What is the difference between a transporter and a cloneing machine?
A. The transporter kills the original.

Plus there's stuff like souls or spirit etc. If you believe in them, would you be confindent that it is carried over as well? If it can't be measured how can you copy it?

[Andromeda321]

I personally would like to know where the thing is hooked up to at the other end. If it's only to the next room I think I'd pass, too much risk for something that small, but if it was a bigger leap (someplace off Earth) I'd seriously consider it.

[Swift]

Of all the science fiction devices on Star Trek, I always found the transporter the most unbelieveable. And yes, I know it primarily a plot device. I never understood how it could possible work without a machine at each end, particularly when beaming down. What puts the "matter stream" and "energy stream" back together?

I think Larry Nivens teleport booths were very well thought out. They didn't deconstruct and reconstruct, but did some sort of quantum mechanical thing and transported the object as a single entity. "Early on" in their use they were only short-range devices because of problems with conservation of momentum over long distances. If you teleported from the pole to the equator, the change in angular momentum would have slammed you against the wall. It was later figured out how to correct for that. He also covered a lot on the social implications of them, such as flash riots.

[captain swoop]

Blakes 7 used a bracelet device that had to be worn before transporting worked nd they use the 'Rings' in SG!.

With the 'pattern Buffer' in Startrek I could never understand why anyone had to die on an away mission. Take tasha for instance, when she was killed all they ahd to do was get her back out of storage, complete apart from the memory of the mission.

[Captain Kidd]

I can’t remember the author, but I read a short story a long time ago that scared me away from transporter-like things for a long time.
The story followed this guy that was an employee of aliens that had brought the technology to Earth. It also used FTL or a wormhole to get the info beam to the other “transporter” but we’ll ignore that for this discussion. Anyways, he was the only human who understood how it worked.
The machine worked like a copier. It would scan you and an identical copy would appear in the other where ever the destination was, but the original was perfectly fine. The aliens handled this by committing suicide, but humans had a quirky sense of self-preservation so it was his job to off the people as soon as confirmation was received that the copy had been made.
The story revolved around one transmission where something happened and they lost communication with the destination. So he had to baby-sit the person for a few days. Got to know her real well, romance and all that, then word came that the copy had been successful and he had to fulfill his job, until then it had been people he hadn’t known but this was different. He still did it; but when she returned to Earth following the visit (just hours after he had just killed the ‘original’), he was creeped out how she had absolutely no recollection of him.

[gethen]

I can’t remember the author, but I read a short story a long time ago that scared me away from transporter-like things for a long time.
The story followed this guy that was an employee of aliens that had brought the technology to Earth. It also used FTL or a wormhole to get the info beam to the other “transporter” but we’ll ignore that for this discussion. Anyways, he was the only human who understood how it worked....
.

I think the new Outer Limits or Twilight Zone did this as a one hour program as well. It starred the guy who played the head alien in Galaxy Quest."
I don't think I'd try it either. You're still gonna die and the person who arrives at the other end is not you, IMO.

[Spacewriter]

Yes I'd do it, but only if they don't use cheap JPG compression...

[Amadeus]

Yes I'd do it, but only if they don't use cheap JPG compression...

Surely it would have to be a GIF? JPG does not have an Alpha channel and would come out as a cube!

Actualy thats a valid point. Given the amount of information in the body would they have to use a compression alorythim (sp) to be able to transmit? It might be faster to walk than send countless ones and zeros.

[ToSeek]

Nope. The way it's used in Star Trek, it's clear that what comes out at the other end is a copy, not the original. We need a bumper sticker that says, "Transporting kills - the Federation is a mass murderer!"

[Mars]

It would be cool to be able to beam replacement organs.

[Amadeus]

It would be cool to be able to beam replacement organs.

Never mind organs you could clone your beer! attached one to a fridge and hey presto!
Oh and you could end world hunger......

FREE BEER!

[Chuck]

I'd use it if others were and displayed no bad effects. If there were many accidental duplications I'd probably only use it when absolutely necessary. I don't need a copy of me claiming that it owns my stuff.

I think we replace 98% of our atoms annually and we don't consider that to be death and replacement by a duplicate. I think it's continuity that matters. I don't know if I'd face death calmly knowing that a backup copy of me that I made yesterday would be activated. It's sort of me, but not exactly. If the backup was made a year ago then it's definitely not me. People change. I don't know where I'd draw the line.

The information in the Star Trek transporter pattern buffers seem to degrade over time. In a Deep Space Nine episode they temporarily stored a shuttle's crew in the station's computer and it used it's entire capacity to store their minds. A starship might not have the computer capacity to store an away team. It would also ruin a lot of plots if away teams were never in any real danger.

Using a transporter might be intensely painful but no one knows it until they use it. First it scans your body and records the information. Then it disassembles it in the most painful experience imaginable. Then it constructs a new copy of you from the scan which was taken before disassembly so you have no memory of the pain. No one ever reports any pain so no one knows about it.

[Amadeus]

The information in the Star Trek transporter pattern buffers seem to degrade over time. In a Deep Space Nine episode they temporarily stored a shuttle's crew in the station's computer and it used it's entire capacity to store their minds. A starship might not have the computer capacity to store an away team. It would also ruin a lot of plots if away teams were never in any real danger.

Didn't scotty get brought back from a old buffer in an Nex Gen episode?
Maybe you should just store the pattern for anyone wearing a red shirt!

[Maksutov]

As with most electronic devices something could go wrong during the read/write session and you could wind up with something like this:

Help, Scotty!

[Chuck]

Scotty rewired a transporter to feed its signal back into itself to keep the pattern from degrading. Even then, his signal was degraded somewhat and the other guy who went in with him could not be recovered. It's not a long term storage system.

[captain swoop]

Scotty rewired a transporter to feed its signal back into itself to keep the pattern from degrading. Even then, his signal was degraded somewhat and the other guy who went in with him could not be recovered. It's not a long term storage system.

only because it hasn't been developed to be one.

remember when the original Star Trek was made things weren't digital
I see no reason why a 'pattern in the buffer' would degrade if it was digital.

They could even RAID 5 you just to be safe.

[TimH]

I assume there would be pretty serious saftey measures but things still go wrong sometimes no matter how hard we try to prevent mistakes. So if I may plagerize.. I mean borrow from an earlier post... after seeing 'The Fly' no thanks!

[mike alexander]

The implications of duplication/transmission were also explored by Algis Budrys in his novel Rogue Moon. Pretty good read.

[TimH]

With the 'pattern Buffer' in Startrek I could never understand why anyone had to die on an away mission. Take tasha for instance, when she was killed all they ahd to do was get her back out of storage, complete apart from the memory of the mission.

Supposedly, the pattern buffer didn't have a 'save' feature and the information would fall out of memory after a relatively short time.

[Mr. X]

If it was I who had built the machine I'd tell you "Most certainly". That is called "senseless self-confidence".

I'm going to pass on the first turn otherwise. Or better yet, I'll say that I'll go, and at the last moment I'll throw someone else in it.

On the other hand is my ego small enough to pass on the chance to be the first person ever teleported? I think not.

So I'm stuck at this point:
1) If someone else is in and it fails miserably, I live and I'm happy because I'm still alive, and didn't injure my ego.
2) If I'm in it and it fails, I end up being goo, and I'm the first person to be killed by a transporter, a moderate honor, in spite of the inconvenient of being dead.
3) If I turned down the chance and I'm not in it and it works, I shoot myself the next day. I'm dead.
4) If I'm in it and it works I'm so happy, and have a claim to fame!

Tough choice. I don't know which one yet.

[Wingnut Ninja]

Anybody who's read Hyperion by Dan Simmons, and who knows the secret behind farcasters, should answer "No."

[JohnOwens]

I can’t remember the author, but I read a short story a long time ago that scared me away from transporter-like things for a long time.
The story followed this guy that was an employee of aliens that had brought the technology to Earth. It also used FTL or a wormhole to get the info beam to the other “transporter” but we’ll ignore that for this discussion. Anyways, he was the only human who understood how it worked.
The machine worked like a copier. It would scan you and an identical copy would appear in the other where ever the destination was, but the original was perfectly fine. The aliens handled this by committing suicide, but humans had a quirky sense of self-preservation so it was his job to off the people as soon as confirmation was received that the copy had been made.

It isn't exactly the same story you're talking about, but Frederick Pohl's Wall Around a Star has a similar technology, where you can be instantaneously duplicated light-years away (I don't remember if it was speed-of-light instantaneous, or FTL instantaneous; I seem to remember something about tachyons, which would suggest FTL), but there the norm seems to be letting the original live on. Perhaps another story also by Pohl, looking more at the transporter technology itself, would be what you're thinking of? It sounds too similar other than the plot and stuff.
Oh, and the book also featured a Dyson sphere, just like that ST:TNG episode with Scotty.

[beck0311]

I am not sure where I heard this (maybe I just made it up) but I remember hearing that the reason there were transporters in the original Star Trek was because the producers thought that it would be too expensive to create the effects of having the Enterprise land on every planet they want to explore. If that were true it is kind of silly since they could have just used the shuttles.

I voted no for some of the reasons that were already presented.

[captain swoop]

If you have Transporter and Replicator technology then you have a self repairing ship. Like the Liberator for instance.

[JohnOwens]

Oh, and I forgot to mention:
"Snotty beamed me just last night. It was wonderful." :wink:

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

only if I had Leonard McCoy holding my hand