Transporter

(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 20:15, 22 April 2024 (PDT))

Transporter Technology

One of the technologies given to the humans once they were accepted into the Confederacy.

Transporters appear in many forms, the majority of which are sized to move small numbers of people around.

Most often seen when used by the extraction teams to provide a link to the colony transport vessel in orbit. These small, portable devices are often destroyed after use implying that they are not difficult to cheaply replicate.

A Transporter Locus (pad or disk) is mobile and disposable. May fit into an attache case in folded/collapsed mode. They will not work without an AI controlled Transporter Nexus (generally aboard a ship) in the link.

A Transporter Nexus is the powered, AI controlled portion of the system. It may consist of one or more individual pads on a colony or ship.

Transport is from Nexus to Nexus, Nexus to Locus, Locus to Nexus or IF a Nexus is in the link, Locus to Locus via Nexus.

Range is variously given as "about" or "just over" 250,000 miles (400,000 km).  This allows a nexus placed on the Moon at the point nearest Earth to support transportation from anywhere on Earth, Moon, or near-Moon space to anywhere on Earth, Moon, or near-Moon space.  It does not, however, support transport to near-Earth space on the far side from the Moon.  This may be why colonists are collected in temporary bases on the Moon and ships go to the Moon to get them.

The Science Behind Them

The following was pulled from an email TH sent the list on 3/1/18, in response to an author's questions about how they work:

A transporter is more about bending spacetime then power.  Yes, it burns some, but It’s basically a controlled wormhole.  Confed tech handles forces in ways we haven’t gotten to yet.  Nobody has ever tinkered with a transporter nexus’ power supply, either, for that matter.
   A nexus the size of a manhole cover might be able to expand to twice the diameter, but the nexus base itself needs to be somewhere in the general area of the object being transported for size.  If you can’t get the object in the field, it isn’t going anywhere.  You can transport a truck, but it is going to require a larger nexus.  But there are going to be limits on nexus size due to the aperture energy requirements.  It’s going to be an inverse square thing, I think.  Much bigger than a truck probably WOULDN’T be possible except in space, in the presence of something huge for power supplies.
   No state changes.  The two sites are connected via wormhole.  You go from one to the other.
   It’s instantaneous.  The wormhole more or less breaks lightspeed.
   (TH also answered "Yeah, that would work" to the question "The effective range of a transporter from nexus to nexus is given as ~250,000 miles.  Could you stack them so that exiting one nexus automatically enters another and get twice that range?" I think that this should be fought, since there are so many stories that mention the limit.  If the limit was so easy to overcome or even just double, it wouldn't be referred to so much. -ZM)

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))