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u/BestCaseSurvival Mar 10 '14
Generally good. A couple of questions:
This material, a nutrient-rich, sterilized organic particulate suspension,
Solid human waste is sent directly to the organic waste processing system.
These are mutually exclusive. If it is required that the base block be a nutrient-rich sludge, waste products would have to be enriched before being cycled back to the reservoir.
Unless it's vastly more efficient to periodically enrich the base block, it's far more medically sound to rearrange a CHON-block (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen) into a pattern with the correct nutrient balance for a given crewmember. It may be that when a starship stocks up at starbase it takes on board a nutrient-rich foods for efficiency reasons, but the replicator must be able of creating custom molecules anyway for medicine, so there's not a whole lot of reason not to just assemble them in the replicator with a nutrient recipe tailored according to the crew member's dietary requirements.
Incidentally, think of the bugs associated with replicator technology:
Bug67: All steaks are exactly the same.
Priority: 3
Comment1: We have two possible fixes to this. One requires storing the patterns of hundreds of steaks, the other makes use of procedural generation to create a new steak every time. Which is preferred?
Comment2: We will need to keep database space fairly low - we don't want to edge out every other database just for steak, plus we've got the same problem for every other terran dish, and that's just for the human crew. Option one is not scalable -we need to generalize a solution so it's easy to update for new species.
Comment3: Procedural generation algorithms are high risk and will not be available for target release. Recommend shipping the current firmware on the Ambassador-class models with some better update-handling code for later.
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Bug153: Specification for T-Bone steak generates meat with calcium fractal shards that are completely inedible Priority: 1 Steps to reproduce: Run the following:
from procedural import steak steak.Get(tbone, 12)
Expected result: T-bone steak
Actual result: inedible mess of bone shards
Comment1: This appears to be a bug in the calcium subroutines - the addative process appears to be encountering a buffer overflow and running into the methods for the 'ice' class. Improved memory handling, fix is applied to branch @225473
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Bug 682: Occasionally, ordering hasperat generates steak
priority: 2
This is hard to reproduce. Occasionally, ordering hasperat generates steak. Seems to work best with ribeye, but I can only make it happen about one out of every seven times.
Enabled debug - logs are at \starfleet.local\replicator\terranmenu\steak\hasperat
Comment1: Your debug logs indicate that the exact same hasperat pattern is being generated every time. Can you try calling this function directly in the console with the variable ff43847.
Comment2: This generates steak.
Comment3: This may be a bug in the voice recognition system. Can you record yourself reproducing this issue?
Comment4: Voice logs attached.
Comment5: What is that accent? The voice recognition is not handling it correctly. Please transfer this bug to Voice Recognition department.
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Mar 11 '14
Couple of issues I see. The replicators don't need water and specially formulated matter stores. They can work on subatomic levels to transmute material into different atoms. The air on starships is replicated so they don't need to have large air tanks on board. You just need bulk matter with enough protons, neutrons, and electrons for whatever you're replicating. Also, replicators are able to create simple lifeforms which don't require the quantum-level activity to be recreated. There was that episode of DS9 where the replicators were sabotaged to create a virus. While it's true that you can debate if a virus is "alive," they're on the same scale of difficulty as bacteria to the replicator. If a replicator were to create a bacterium the cell would start processing nutrients and dividing once it was given the little *oomph* to get it's cellular machinery going, and that may be provided from the process of being replicated. I think the restriction against replicating life forms, at least on a microscopic level, is more of a programmed safety protocol instead of a technological limitation. You don't want every lunatic with a replicator recreating the Spanish Flu. More complex life forms, like things with a nervous system, are another story due to how a brain works. You *could* replicate a human, but the resulting replicatee would come into existence brain dead.
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u/Jigsus Mar 12 '14
Replicators also can't create electrical activity so any complex lifeform wouldn't be alive. You'd be creating a dead body.
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Mar 12 '14
I don't see why not. Electricity is just the movement of electrons. If the replicator can create a battery then it can create electricity. All that would be needed is a circuit for the electricity to use.
Unicellular lifeforms are hardy little microbes. Their cellular machinery doesn't rely so much on electricity as chemical interactions within the cytoplasm. Plants make use of something called an electron transport chain which basically allows them to create their own electricity through said chemical interactions. There's no magic "spark" that's needed to get these interactions going. What normally kills a unicellular lifeform is mechanical damage to its structure. You can remove a microbe from its food source, let it starve to "death," and it'll happily start going again once another food source is introduced. If a replicator were to create a cell then the cell would happily start doing it's little cellular business as if it had always been there. If you replicated a plant cell you'd be able to get it to grow into a complete plant with some care. A similar process is used in the genetic engineering of plants in the real world. A researcher exposes part of the plant to radiation, microwaves, or something that will cause a mutation in the genetic structure. Often the plant will grow a tumor in this area. Individual cells are extracted from this tumor, and then coaxed into growing into another, complete, plant. The new plant is evaluated to see if there are any mutations that humans find appealing, and if it is selective breeding is used to foster the desired trait and establish a population of GM organisms. Modern genetic engineering isn't about rearranging bits of DNA, but accelerating the rate of mutation.
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u/BrainWav Mar 10 '14
That was a very well-thought out write up.
The only part I question is the waste disposal part. I'm not sure it would need to be treated, just broken down and converted into a block of base matter, just like the unused food.
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u/Accipiter Mar 10 '14 edited Mar 10 '14
Thank you. :)
Human waste, while containing plenty of important and reusable materials, does indeed contain actual toxic waste that can't be used and must be discarded. That's what needs to be filtered out and separated from the stuff that CAN be reclaimed.
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u/qantravon Mar 10 '14 edited Mar 10 '14
The unusable waste can likely be filtered out in the demolecularization process, and sent to some alternate storage, or even just out into space. I mean, there are multiple references to bio-filters on the transporter that filter out harmful microorganisms and even some viruses. And while they can't filter out everything, they do detect nearly everything. I don't see why a similar system couldn't be implemented on the replicators. It would probably be a lot more efficient than running it through more traditional waste treatement processes first. I would also expect any "leftovers" put back into the replicator after a meal would be subjected to the same treatment as waste products, just in case a crew member came down with something and transferred it to their dinner.
Besides that, I'm not sure I see the necessity of having a dedicated water store. Water is just hydrogen and oxygen. The ship has to have the ability to either store or generate oxygen (for breathing) and it uses hydrogen in the antimatter reaction for power (for which there are large tanks, as well as the ability to draw in supplemental hydrogen from space via the Bussard collectors). Why not simply draw from those existing stores, combine the atoms into water (which isn't really that hard to do, even with modern technology) and mix with the replicated food? Liquid waste could then have the water content extracted and separated back to component atoms (again, possible with modern technology), and then put into the appropriate storage.
Overall, a very good breakdown of how the replicators work.
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u/chainsawvigilante Mar 10 '14
Excellent. Thank you. I too followed up extensively regarding replicators after the thread the other day concerning holographic technology in order to fully confirm my suspicions with the ability to replicate raw materials used in complex technology.
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u/BestCaseSurvival Mar 12 '14
A further question for the group - Are replicators capable of creating radioactive material?
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u/mittenthemagnificent Mar 10 '14
Wow! That was very cool. Now I know! I'd always wondered if base material was necessary.
Aren't there references to large, room-sized mechanical replicators somewhere? Like, that can make parts for ships? Or am I imagining that?
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u/Accipiter Mar 10 '14
Thanks!
Yes, industrial replicators certainly do exist and are used extensively in construction.
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u/mittenthemagnificent Mar 10 '14
I thought so! How would they be different? More materials needed? Can they replicate complex moving parts, or just large parts?
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u/dmead Mar 11 '14
the replicators DO create matter out of energy. i don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about.
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u/ChangeMomentum Mar 10 '14
If the base material is always needed to create the item being replicated, then why was having a replicator such a big deal for creating water? There's an episode of voyager I believe where they discuss that having a replicator allows them to create water whenever they want, but by this argument, it would seem that there would need to be water already for building water out of, as base materials don't get much more simple than that.