Because on the inside I'm really a 12 year-old boy...
So...
In a fandom as full of shiny awesome as Star Trek is, I suspect I'm the only Uber-Nerd who wonders what the Enterprise does with its shit.
My absolute favorite part of the Sci-fi and Fantasy genres is world building. Figuring out the rules of how things work. And because I'm obsessive and totally get off on these sorts of things I spend half of my fandom-writing-time debating whether Star-Ships have janitors and what color shirts they'd wear if they did. (Red. I've decided that they're actually technicians who oversee the dispenser systems and repair the machines that zap dust and wipe down the floors and walls during delta shift. They're a part of the Operations Maintenance subdivision of Engineering. I did say Uber-Nerd, right?)
So the other day I'm sound-boarding ideas off my Dad (also a Sci-fi nerd and full of random knowledge) when we start in on the nature of an expanding universe and what it's expanding into. Which leads to a discussion on how much of the universe we are actually physically capable of seeing. Which leads to Stellar-Cartography and Navigation on the Enterprise, then to tractor beams, to what a transporter actually does, and then to replicators and what exactly they make the food out of.
Which all leads to me starting a list of the interesting things that would result from occupying a vessel in space and possibly how you would have to change how you think about the world to accommodate those differences.
The whole discussion also lead me to the title of my lovely, nerdy list; as well as the subject of my first completed section. Which is this:
The USS Enterprise: Where yesterday's Shit is today's Cheeseburger.
Replicators: Are miniature transporters that run on shit.
No, really. They are.
Okay, follow the pretty logic.
A transporter is basically a machine that maps out your body (or whatever happens to be on the pad), takes your particles, turns them into energy, beams the energy to the desired location, and turns it back into matter, reconstructing your body based on the patterns it mapped. Are we all together on this? Good.
Now consider Replicators.
Little machines that create matter based on a particular molecular pattern, mainly different kinds of food. But where transporters have an obvious source for their construction materials (your former body), replicators appear to make your meal out of thin air. Only you can't get something from nothing, the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy tells us this. So where do the particles that make up what you've just replicated -Mmmmmm Cheeseburger- come from?
The particles have to come from somewhere on the ship because what's outside the ship is mainly empty space. But you can't just pull random particles of Fundamental Elements from the ship's hull, or the air filtration system, or a photon torpedo, or the Captain's chair, or Scotty's pastrami sandwich, am I right? Of course I am, it's called structural integrity people (besides that, you'd make Scotty cry, no one wants to make Scotty cry, right?).
Are there giant vats of calcium, potassium, carbon, nitrogen, sodium and all the rest lined up in a back room somewhere in Engineering? (What's that last one there, Mr Scott? No, in the back. That dinky, hodgepodge one. Ethanolium, is it? The 119th Element. Fascinating.) I really don't think that scenario is likely. One, just how big would those vats have to be to store the amount of any one of those elements needed to meet the culinary requirements of a 600 to 800 person crew for even one week? I do recall the giant barrel things we saw in the movie, but most of those had hazard signs on them and I'm thinking most of the elements that go into our food probably don't warrant that kind of warning. Also, not all of those elements can be easily stored as compressed gases.
Two, where do you get the concentrated elements in the first place and what do you do if you run out? “Hey there, newly discovered civilization! S'up dude? Hey, I know we just met and all but we're a little low on Carbon... you wouldn't mind if we skimmed a little off your atmosphere, would you? ...Is it important? Nah, the stuffs a dime a dozen! A little more or less isn't gonna matter to you...” Somehow, I really don't see the Federation endorsing cross-planetary element juggling.
All in all, the “Vats of Elements” theory is just too complicated (Thanks Dad, for killing my little nerdy theory). I think Federation engineers would work more along the lines of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. Also: let us speak of the killing of two birds with one stone.
A star-ship, for the most part, is a Closed System when it's not at a Space Dock. Nothing comes in and nothing (except photon torpedoes and similar) goes out. Water is filtered and reused. Air is filtered and reused. You don't necessarily know (especially with all the shit the Enterprise gets up to) how long you'll be out in space before your next stop at a station/planet, so you need to be absolutely as efficient with all of your recycling systems as possible. This includes your waste reprocessing system. In case anyone is wondering, yes, we're talking about human waste here. Storing it isn't an option. Firstly, where are you going to put it? How big of a container would you need? What happens if the container fills up before you have a chance to unload? What happens if the container breaks? Seriously, the last thing you need when fighting off random Klingons is for the shit to hit the fan in the not-so-metaphorical sense. (Though, as a surprise tactic, that would be awesome. Klingon 1: Captain, our missals won't fire! There's some organic substance clogging our photon cannons. Klingon Captain: Those Federation bastards! A stealth shit attack! Damn clever of them...)
Also, I'm thinking pushing the shit out an airlock is, likewise, not an option. I'd like to think that by the 23rd century we've moved beyond the mentality of “hey, we're not using this empty land/space, lets dump our garbage here!”. Another point is, if you're blasting waste out of an airlock your formally mostly-closed system is now hemorrhaging resources at an alarming rate which will send your delicately balanced artificial environment into the red ink in no time. At least with the Crap storage theory you could barter your waste as manure to some alien society and gain something in return.
To recap: You can't store the crap, and you can't jettison it.
So, what do you do with it?
You use it as the source material for replicator food! That's not nearly as gross as it sounds, well... maybe it is, but hear me out.
Energy is energy. It doesn't make a difference what matter it came from, once the matter is changed into energy its former life is irrelevant. Photons can't grow bacteria. So you get rid of the shit by changing it into energy, after the water has been extracted, and feed it into a nifty energy relay system. This supplies the replicators with energy (leaving your warp core and impulse engines free from the demands of a constitution class star-ship full of midnight munchers) which can be converted into the matter of your choice.
Therefor:
Shit = Cheeseburger
So, anyone want to add their thoughts? Call me on my bullshit? ^_____~ All opinions are welcome!
In a fandom as full of shiny awesome as Star Trek is, I suspect I'm the only Uber-Nerd who wonders what the Enterprise does with its shit.
My absolute favorite part of the Sci-fi and Fantasy genres is world building. Figuring out the rules of how things work. And because I'm obsessive and totally get off on these sorts of things I spend half of my fandom-writing-time debating whether Star-Ships have janitors and what color shirts they'd wear if they did. (Red. I've decided that they're actually technicians who oversee the dispenser systems and repair the machines that zap dust and wipe down the floors and walls during delta shift. They're a part of the Operations Maintenance subdivision of Engineering. I did say Uber-Nerd, right?)
So the other day I'm sound-boarding ideas off my Dad (also a Sci-fi nerd and full of random knowledge) when we start in on the nature of an expanding universe and what it's expanding into. Which leads to a discussion on how much of the universe we are actually physically capable of seeing. Which leads to Stellar-Cartography and Navigation on the Enterprise, then to tractor beams, to what a transporter actually does, and then to replicators and what exactly they make the food out of.
Which all leads to me starting a list of the interesting things that would result from occupying a vessel in space and possibly how you would have to change how you think about the world to accommodate those differences.
The whole discussion also lead me to the title of my lovely, nerdy list; as well as the subject of my first completed section. Which is this:
The USS Enterprise: Where yesterday's Shit is today's Cheeseburger.
Replicators: Are miniature transporters that run on shit.
No, really. They are.
Okay, follow the pretty logic.
A transporter is basically a machine that maps out your body (or whatever happens to be on the pad), takes your particles, turns them into energy, beams the energy to the desired location, and turns it back into matter, reconstructing your body based on the patterns it mapped. Are we all together on this? Good.
Now consider Replicators.
Little machines that create matter based on a particular molecular pattern, mainly different kinds of food. But where transporters have an obvious source for their construction materials (your former body), replicators appear to make your meal out of thin air. Only you can't get something from nothing, the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy tells us this. So where do the particles that make up what you've just replicated -Mmmmmm Cheeseburger- come from?
The particles have to come from somewhere on the ship because what's outside the ship is mainly empty space. But you can't just pull random particles of Fundamental Elements from the ship's hull, or the air filtration system, or a photon torpedo, or the Captain's chair, or Scotty's pastrami sandwich, am I right? Of course I am, it's called structural integrity people (besides that, you'd make Scotty cry, no one wants to make Scotty cry, right?).
Are there giant vats of calcium, potassium, carbon, nitrogen, sodium and all the rest lined up in a back room somewhere in Engineering? (What's that last one there, Mr Scott? No, in the back. That dinky, hodgepodge one. Ethanolium, is it? The 119th Element. Fascinating.) I really don't think that scenario is likely. One, just how big would those vats have to be to store the amount of any one of those elements needed to meet the culinary requirements of a 600 to 800 person crew for even one week? I do recall the giant barrel things we saw in the movie, but most of those had hazard signs on them and I'm thinking most of the elements that go into our food probably don't warrant that kind of warning. Also, not all of those elements can be easily stored as compressed gases.
Two, where do you get the concentrated elements in the first place and what do you do if you run out? “Hey there, newly discovered civilization! S'up dude? Hey, I know we just met and all but we're a little low on Carbon... you wouldn't mind if we skimmed a little off your atmosphere, would you? ...Is it important? Nah, the stuffs a dime a dozen! A little more or less isn't gonna matter to you...” Somehow, I really don't see the Federation endorsing cross-planetary element juggling.
All in all, the “Vats of Elements” theory is just too complicated (Thanks Dad, for killing my little nerdy theory). I think Federation engineers would work more along the lines of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. Also: let us speak of the killing of two birds with one stone.
A star-ship, for the most part, is a Closed System when it's not at a Space Dock. Nothing comes in and nothing (except photon torpedoes and similar) goes out. Water is filtered and reused. Air is filtered and reused. You don't necessarily know (especially with all the shit the Enterprise gets up to) how long you'll be out in space before your next stop at a station/planet, so you need to be absolutely as efficient with all of your recycling systems as possible. This includes your waste reprocessing system. In case anyone is wondering, yes, we're talking about human waste here. Storing it isn't an option. Firstly, where are you going to put it? How big of a container would you need? What happens if the container fills up before you have a chance to unload? What happens if the container breaks? Seriously, the last thing you need when fighting off random Klingons is for the shit to hit the fan in the not-so-metaphorical sense. (Though, as a surprise tactic, that would be awesome. Klingon 1: Captain, our missals won't fire! There's some organic substance clogging our photon cannons. Klingon Captain: Those Federation bastards! A stealth shit attack! Damn clever of them...)
Also, I'm thinking pushing the shit out an airlock is, likewise, not an option. I'd like to think that by the 23rd century we've moved beyond the mentality of “hey, we're not using this empty land/space, lets dump our garbage here!”. Another point is, if you're blasting waste out of an airlock your formally mostly-closed system is now hemorrhaging resources at an alarming rate which will send your delicately balanced artificial environment into the red ink in no time. At least with the Crap storage theory you could barter your waste as manure to some alien society and gain something in return.
To recap: You can't store the crap, and you can't jettison it.
So, what do you do with it?
You use it as the source material for replicator food! That's not nearly as gross as it sounds, well... maybe it is, but hear me out.
Energy is energy. It doesn't make a difference what matter it came from, once the matter is changed into energy its former life is irrelevant. Photons can't grow bacteria. So you get rid of the shit by changing it into energy, after the water has been extracted, and feed it into a nifty energy relay system. This supplies the replicators with energy (leaving your warp core and impulse engines free from the demands of a constitution class star-ship full of midnight munchers) which can be converted into the matter of your choice.
Therefor:
Shit = Cheeseburger
So, anyone want to add their thoughts? Call me on my bullshit? ^_____~ All opinions are welcome!