What happened to the replicators?
Running the replicators uses up the dilithium faster.
Actually, I’ve never known them to have “real food” rations. They do have (or rather, pay lip service to) “replicator rations.”
My geekitude does not extend to a very great understanding of Star Trek physics, but replicators don’t create things out of thin air. They can’t–not without violating the laws of conservation of energy.
Replicators must work in one of the following ways. They either draw energy from the ship’s engines, and convert it into matter. Or they start with some base material and rearrange its atoms into some new material. Either way, you’re dealing with a finite amount of starting material, and hence you have a finite limit on how much the replicators can make.
Of course, as I say, they really only paid lip service to this notion. The failure to truly incorporate the idea that they have extremely limited and rapidly diminishing supplies is only one of Voyager’s many failures.
Neelix’s cooking is so bad, you can only absorb a little at a time, so they must ration it off before massive crew death hits.
Well, waste products are supposed to be transformed into inert matter, later to be used again by the replicators. There’s still some energy loss I’m sure. I don’t think any of the Trek incarnations mentions this explicitly, but it is in the tech manuals. I still agree that Voyager had far too easy of a time.
They do apparently have some containers to hold specially mixed “Raw Foodstock”. Although, it wouldn’t have to be very big to hold the right amount for the crew.
Here’s how it would work if Voyager was in the Alpha Quadrant:
The ship has stores of base matter which are rearranged by the replicators to make whatever needs to be replicated. Waste products are rearranged by the replicator system to add to the supply of base matter. Matter can also be taken from a nearby nebula or asteroid field as necessary. The energy necessary to rearrange the matter to make replicated objects comes from the warp core (which powers the nacelles [for propulsion] and almost every other system). To make that energy, the warp core uses a matter/antimatter reaction of anti-hydrogen (I think) and deuterium. When the ship runs low on either, it pops back to a starbase and refills.
In the Delta Quadrant:
There are no starbases. Supplies of deuterium (which the ship goes through faster than it does the antimatter, simply because you only need a little bit of antimatter for a good reaction) are limited to what they had with them and what they can find on planets, etc. Therefore, to conserve deuterium, they use the replicators less by “rationing” their use. Each member of the crew (captain included) has a certain amount they can use the replicator per week. Neelix often saved his rations to replicate those ear-splittingly loud suits of his.
Eeeeew! People eat poop in Star Trek? Swift was right? Blech!
According to Wesley Crusher (pause while audience groans), the matter/antimatter ratio is 1:1.
There was an explanation in one of the early episodes, I believe, where there was some attempt to route ship’s power through the replicator system which proceeded to damage it.
Anyway, it ticked me off at the time, but I’ve made my peace with it.
–Cliffy
It should be refered to as Soylent Brown.
Personally, I’ve never recovered from the Fremen stilsuits from Dune, where body wastes were recovered for moisture. You sipped from a little straw where recycled urine was turned into your water supply. “And feces were converted in the thigh pads,” I believe the next line was. Yee.
Wow I always assumed the replicators were based on a conversion of energy to mater, like a transporter pattern (though I gather this would take immense energy). This explains the economics a little more. It makes sense that people would still trade things, especially things not easily replicated. So uranium is still potentially as rare as it is today, and still a commodity. Its hard to replicate it, unless you have uranium (in which case uranium is pretty much juts beamed to the replicator).
Iiiinteresting