ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Thinking Outside the "Plot"!
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~ A Question for the Members: If David Hedison's dream of a world with rapid matter transference had come to pass, what would our civilization have been like?

~ My Theory: Actually, award-winning science fiction author Larry Niven outlined both the good and the bad aspects of this miraculous technology.

Yes, we could send food all around the world and prevent the areas with a surplus of food from discarding it — while other areas which are suffering from famine are desperately in need!

But this two-egged sword would also allow people in overcrowded areas to "beam over" to idyllic paradises like Tahiti and flood them with homeless, hungry people!

The point is that allowing the world's population to leave the bad areas in which they've been forced to live and instantly travel to any place they think would be better . . . would soon turn the entire worlds into a place where NOBODY wants to live!

However, there's a flaw in David Hedison's invention that prevents both the good stuff AND the bad stuff to happen. Here's what I mean.

Hedison's matter transmitter probably only works if the transmitter and receiver are in direct line-of-sight, like TV transmissions. Unfortunately that means they would have a limited range of about three miles — the distance to the horizon on flat land or the ocean.





To transmit anything further than that, a series of relay stations would be needed. This prevents some of the things I described above, such as allowing people and material to be instantaneously transmitted to any point on Earth.

Here's the real kicker which this causes . . .

The accumulated time delay accrued by a person or object going from one relay station to the next would be considerable. For example, it's 2,412 miles from Charlotte to Los Angeles. That distance would require a minimum of 804 relay station, positioned about 3 miles apart.





If a person were traveling from coast to coast, he'd have to be transmitted 804 times! To put it politly, folks . . . that sucks!

If each transmission took thirty seconds to disassemble and reassemble his atoms, the total trip time (if uninterrupted) would be 402 minutes . . . or almost 7 hours!

Hell's bells, it only takes 5 hours to fly that distances in a nice comfortable jet airliner — and you can eat meals on the plane, go the rest room, and watch movies!

Furthermore, nobody is going to want to have their atoms dissembled and reassembled 804 times over a 7 hour period!

For years I've been thinking that David Hedison's matter transmitter would revolutionize transportation and commerce. Ditto for Jeff Goldblum's matter transmitter pods, which probably have the same unfortunate limitations!

Admittedly these amazing devices might have been capable of transmitting matter right through the Earth, so an object in America would arrive in Australia within seconds. If that's the case, then my dire predictions are wrong — thank goodness!

However, even if the matter transmitters are limited to line-of-sight transmission, they might still have a use that would be a tremendous boon to mankind!

What if theses devices could transmit matter over incredibly long distances . . . through space!

If that were true, traveling to and from destinations like space stations, lunar cities, and Martian colonies would be nearly instantaneous! Not only could people travel to and from these places, supplies of all kinds could also be sent to these off-world destinations!











Mining camps on the Moon would send minerals to Earth for processing. The same could be done by deep space habitats in the asteroid belt which send ore they've minded from asteroids.





So, even though the matter transmitters in both versions of The Fly might be less useful on Earth than I'd previously thought, they might prove to be the greatest gift to mankind possible, because they would allow us to travel through space faster than any spacecraft ever conceived!
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And just to conclude this rather lengthy intellectual and ponderous post on a light-hearted note, here's a YouTube video that tickled my fancy until it begged for mercy!

I will never again be able to watch the heart-rending spiderweb scene in this movie without giggle in a totally inappropriate manner!

Remember, you were warned.

________________ "The Fly" Alternate Ending


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

[Morbius]

Didn't Star Trek figure it out?

[Bud Brewster]

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Scot, that is some damn fine thinking! Thanks for sharing those terrific suggestions.

I never would have thought about the idea of just boosting the transporter beam along a line of stations.

Naturally a nation-wide or a global-wide network of such stations would serve as both transmitting sites, receiving sites, and signal-boosting sites. Essentially, you've solved the line-of-site limitation and turned Hedison's dream of world wide near-instantaneous transportation into a reality.

Of course, with the establishment of a satellite network, the transporter system would work on the same bases as the today's cell phones.

Bravo, Sir Scot!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)