• empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 months ago

    Depending on the energy and resource requirements of transporters it may still be more efficient (and less risky) to build housing in space versus trans-orbital commuting via beaming.

    I believe it’s been mentioned before that transporters are hard enough to build and run that most non-critical transport is still done with conventional shuttles to save resources and ensure timely transport for actually critical tasks. And Taking a shuttle commute from Earth to Spacedock would be a bit time consuming. And considering the thousands that would work at Utopia Planitia- yeah thats a decent bit of traffic.

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Well they use replicators for food. I believe holodecks were explained as the same type of matter energy manipulation. So I’m not sure it would take that much.

    • elephantium@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      transporters are hard enough to build and run that most non-critical transport is still done with conventional shuttles to save resources

      When was this mentioned? I basically figured that Trek’s post-scarcity civilization would make the energy expenditures trivial.

      OTOH – Mars is at least a day’s travel from Earth at Warp 1. I’m not sure what a reasonable range for the transporter is, but “multiple light-days” does seem a bit much.

      • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 months ago

        I seem to remember it being discussed in some book somewhere, so idk if its Canon. I think it had less to do with energy and more to do with the actual logistics of having sufficient transporter pads and network bandwidth for volume of people.