Let’s say I decide I’ve had enough with this whole Federation business and that humanity would be better represented by a Starfleet that follows my particular ideology. Assuming I could get enough people for crew and support, why can’t I start my own Starfleet?
I could replicate ship parts until I have a couple vessels. Go to new worlds and present myself as the official first contact of humanity. I could fly to Vulcan or Bajor and tell them no actually my organization represents humanity.
What’s going to stop me?
Raw material, I would imagine. I don’t remember exactly how replicators work in the Star Trek universe, but they either rely on energy, a raw base material, or both. You can’t create something out of nothing so you would need a significant supply chain to produce your fleet.
If it were that easy, every rogue organization in the galaxy would have already done it before you.
Yep, raw material and a net energy loss.
The Federation might have both in abundance, but I highly doubt that much energy consumption is allowed.
My understanding is that replicators restructure atoms. In which case an asteroid would be plenty of material for a ship, even if some of it is lost in the process.
OK cool, now if only you had a ship to go get the asteroid so you could make a ship. My last point still stands though, if it were really that easy…
Sisko built a ship that could travel between planets and it didn’t even have an engine…
He also launched it from a space station.
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Could I replicate charged batteries, then plug them in? Or would it take more energy to make the battery than you could get out of it? After all a battery is just a chemical reaction.
Nothing. Nick Locarno basically did that, and it ended TREMENDOUSLY WELL. 😉
Granted it was only one ship; the rest were mutinies.
He just changed his name to Tom Paris, and everything was fine.
Most structural starship components would require large industrial replicators.
These seem to always be centrally located and powered.
What someone can do with a small home model would be quite different.
Depends on the writer, but they handwave a lot of those problems by the fact that replicators need a lot of energy to work (voyager explicitly said they didn’t have the spare power and used hydroponics and trade to supplement), and a lot of critical components couldn’t be replicated (dilithium, and antimatter containment parts. Also the isolinear computer chips were non-replicatible). I think you’d also struggle with any weapons systems, which might include shields.
Essentially you could build the hull and most of the mechanical parts, but not the critical systems.
Your replicator is probably too small to replicate larger components, which would be a major inconvenience at best or a showstopper at worst. And industrial replicators are even harder to come by than starships.
Then there’s getting access to the replicator patterns for sensitive or dangerous components. Dilithium chambers, weapons, Mercassium composite for shield generators, etc. are classified by Starfleet.
Then there are substances that can’t be replicated, such as verterium cortenide for the warp coils. I don’t think it’s explicitly stated that VC can’t be replicated, but we know that Voyager had to find some to refit their warp coils, they couldn’t just replicate it. Also dilithium.
And finally, there’s antimatter. Building a starship won’t do you much good if you don’t have gas for the tank. Antimatter does not occur in large quantities in nature, and probably can’t be replicated (or at least not safely.) So you’d need some sort of industrial base to produce it, further complicating your plans.
Aren’t there some elements that can’t be replicated? That’s why I thought we have dilithium mining and gold pressed latinum. There are probably components you’re not going to be able to synthesize/energize/whatever based on similar limitations.
the protostar can replicate a whole shuttlecraft so sky is the limit (not really I guess)
I would assume you might have trouble since most of the planets are part of the federation and they have already communicated with them and so they would be wondering who the heck you are.
What’s stopping me from flying to Spain or India and telling them no actually my organization represents the United States?
Just because it’s post scarcity and money is not pursued is not enough. You still need significant economic activity to put everything together, and big part of that is human labor.
About representing humanity that’s a politics side, does most of humanity recognize you? Piss off the federation president and get sent to found your own colony where you get to represent.
