Transporter Room: What's the point?

L31mr0d

Seriously, what's the point of having transporter rooms when you can just beam people from anywhere on the ship to anywhere they want to go.

Why do they need to walk to the transporter room. It's like bringing my laptop downstairs to go on the internet when in actuality, as it's wireless I can go on the internet anywhere in my apartment.

The whole having to go to a transporter room, imo, is just so that O'Brien could have some human contact. I mean, how much would that job suck. The transporter rooms have no windows and are no bigger than a garden shed. Does he have to stand in there all day waiting for someone to request a transport? Why does the terminal have to be in the transporter room?

Wouldn't it make more sense to use the space in the transporter rooms for more transporter units and Heisenberg compensator's, and then just have the interfaces routed into engineering.

Victor

Maybe the amount of energy they use? And range?

norrie rugger

Site to site transportation carries extra risk, as far as i remember.

Myrddin

norrie rugger wrote: »

Site to site transportation carries extra risk, as far as i remember.

Yeah I think I heared that too. For a site to site transport to work, there is definitly more energy needed anyway. The target has to be locked, beamed into the transporter buffer, and then redirected to the desired co-ordinates. At least when its a direct transport, there is no re-direction needed, so its at least more efficient than a site-to-site.

star-pants

Plus one would assume having a transporter room would be more security conscious?
Only being able to beam into one section, that would usually have someone around to 'allow' transport in or out.

L31mr0d

EnterNow wrote: »

The target has to be locked, beamed into the transporter buffer, and then redirected to the desired co-ordinates. At least when its a direct transport, there is no re-direction needed, so its at least more efficient than a site-to-site.

But the location of the individual shouldn't matter, should it? They are still being beamed into the buffer first whether they are on the pad or anywhere else on the ship. Standing on the pad is still a physical site. Regardless of where they are it is still a 3 step process. de-materialized, held in buffer, re-materialized.

I can't see what additional energy is being expended by not having the people stand on the pads? I dunno, maybe the pads adds extra integrity to the signal or something and it is a safer way to transport.

Myrddin

L31mr0d wrote: »

But the location of the individual shouldn't matter, should it? They are still being beamed into the buffer first whether they are on the pad or anywhere else on the ship. Standing on the pad is still a physical site. Regardless of where they are it is still a 3 step process. de-materialized, held in buffer, re-materialized.

I can't see what additional energy is being expended by not having the people stand on the pads? I dunno, maybe the pads adds extra integrity to the signal or something and it is a safer way to transport.

Maybe the buffer's targeting scanners use a whole lot less energy because they know where a target is to be materialized?

Im not really sure of any technically valid reason though. But think of an ocean liner today, why dont they have entry doors every 20 feet along the hull? It makes sense to have valid, established entry points to board a vessel. Its more oderly, more secure & more efficient to know exactly where people are boarding.

The transporter room functions the same way. Its more secure & orderly to have a designated place to board the ship. Everybody knows where to go/meet, its used as a launching point for first contact scenarios, its easy and central for security teams to be there if needed.

But its a good question.

Cookie_Monster

EnterNow wrote: »

Im not really sure of any technically valid reason though. But think of an ocean liner today, why dont they have entry doors every 20 feet along the hull? It makes sense to have valid, established entry points to board a vessel. Its more oderly, more secure & more efficient to know exactly where people are boarding.

The transporter room functions the same way. Its more secure & orderly to have a designated place to board the ship. Everybody knows where to go/meet, its used as a launching point for first contact scenarios, its easy and central for security teams to be there if needed.

But its a good question.

Good analogy.

Would a site to site transport not technically be site to transporter room (but not materialise) and room to site. Therefore effectively being two back to back transports and using more energy.

And sure with all these transporters and turbolifts you need a bit of walking back and forth to keep fit

norrie rugger

From the Memory Alpha
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Transporter_pad

The transporter platform (or transporter pad) is a component of the transporter system, where the individual or object that is being transported must be placed in order to be successfully transported. Some transporter systems support site-to-site transport and do not require the use of the transporter pad at all.

Cargo platforms have one large transporter pad, (TNG: "Power Play") while personnel platforms consist of six smaller transporter pads; the number of pads may vary according to the type of ship.

Each pad has four redundant molecular imaging scanners so if one of the scanners fails the other three takes over. When necessary, the entire platform can be enclosed within a force field. (TNG: "Realm of Fear")

The bit in bold is a good point, redundant safety systems and security concerns

I also think that the creation/accepting of an annular confinement beam would be easier at the pads, than randomly designated locations

L31mr0d

norrie rugger wrote: »

The bit in bold is a good point, redundant safety systems and security concerns

Yeah it's the only conclusion I can come to, that there is extra redundancy and safety with the pads.

It's like the way they have to bring those extra pattern enhancers to the off site locations when transporting normally will prove difficult as there may be signal degradation. Obviously the pattern enhancers are built into the transporter pads themselves.

Victor

There may also be the matter that certain parts of the ship are protected from transporter beams, although this doesn't sit well with some incidents of other ship to bridge/engineering transporting.

Slice

If you notice the transporter room appears less and less throughout Star Trek. Like in TNG you saw it almost every episode (especially at the beginning) whereas in Voyager it hardly appeared in it at all and I don't think DS9 even had a transporter room.

norrie rugger

Ds9 had transporter pads in ops

Branoic

I always wondered why, in the 1st motion picture, Kirk grumbles to Scotty about having to take a shuttle ride to Enterprise because the Enterprise's transporters were down. Why couldn't they just be beamed from Starfleet HQ or Earth Spacedock directly to the bridge? What had the Enterprise's transporters being down got to do with anything?

Klingon Hamlet

Branoic wrote: »

I always wondered why, in the 1st motion picture, Kirk grumbles to Scotty about having to take a shuttle ride to Enterprise because the Enterprise's transporters were down. Why couldn't they just be beamed from Starfleet HQ or Earth Spacedock directly to the bridge? What had the Enterprise's transporters being down got to do with anything?

It made for an oportunity to get a (ridiculously long) look at the Enterprise mkII on the big screen.

Note that several of the shots were re-used for TWOK, and there was no mention of problems with the transporters.

And in TUC an operator can be overheard giving shuttle clearance to dock with Enterprise-A.

It's all for the sake of coolness. Trek often played hard and fast with its own rules to be more entertaining (though it often attracts criticism).

Myrddin

Klingon Hamlet wrote: »

It made for an oportunity to get a (ridiculously long) look at the Enterprise mkII on the big screen.

Blasphemy my good man.