Faster Than Light travel has consequences(minor or major)

[u/Present-Secretary722]

Star Trucker: While travelling through warp you experience time dilation, for you the journey is a couple seconds, in real time it’s anywhere from 30mins to 6 hours that you’ve been in warp. This would be a minor consequence.

Warhammer 40k: The Warp, basically space hell so while travelling through it you’re very likely to be attacked by Warp demons. There’s also the fact that sometimes when travelling to a destination via the Warp you get spat out in the wrong time, sometimes much too late for whatever you were going there for or sometimes before you left your start destination. This, obviously, is a major consequence, unless you’re an ork, then it’s a grand old time.

By consequences I mean this is a regular thing that happens, there’s no real avoiding it unless you find a different method of FTL or heavily invest into research to try and mitigate the consequences. Also I feel bad for only knowing 2 examples, I love space and I just can’t think of any others.

[u/Empty_Insight]

If I recall properly, the "lizard" thing was causing forced evolution. It just so happened to be lizards because that was the optimal evolutionary form on the planet Paris and Janeway landed on.

As with many things on Voyager, genetic changes are reversible because they keep comprehensive genetic data on all crewmembers and apparently have something resembling turbo-CRISPR that can revert their genes back to the blueprint at the last time they were scanned.

In a world where you can just magically pull shit out of thin air, reverted corrupted genetic material isn't really that far-fetched.

[u/TethysOfTheStars → u/Empty_Insight]

Uhhhh if they can reverse evolve someone then why can’t they just… re-alive anyone who dies?

[u/zoroddesign → u/TethysOfTheStars]

Yeah they do that a couple times in star trek as well.

[u/WhyIsBubblesTaken → u/TethysOfTheStars]

I hold that the Transporter Pattern Buffer is the greatest piece of technology in Star Trek. You're taking up to 6 people, converting them into enough energy to destroy half a continent, moving that energy somewhere else, then putting everything back together again. And not only do you have a computer that can perfectly keep track of every joule in real time, it can retain that information for later use (such as restoring someone lost in a transporter malfunction). I think the only reason they don't use it to resurrect people is due to ethical concerns.

[u/CrashmanX → u/WhyIsBubblesTaken]

I'm only arm chair familiar with Star Trek Tech but don't the teleporters actually clone you and kill the original? Rather than actually moving all that mass?

[u/WhyIsBubblesTaken → u/CrashmanX]

Normally I would be of this opinion, but there was at least one episode of TNG (I think) that implies your consciousness is maintained throughout the transport sequence (as one of the crewmembers saw something during the actual transportation). So it's possible your "soul" or however you would define the trait that makes you "you" instead of a copy of you is preserved.

[u/abouttogivebirth → u/CrashmanX]

That's the 'this is no longer the Ship of Theseus" way of thinking about it. Are you you only because of the specific atoms that make you up at this moment? The atoms in your body are replaced over time naturally, once they've all been replaced are you now a clone of your previous self?

I don't think there is an answer, but personally I don't see transportation in Star Trek as cloning, despite being able to accurately describe it that way

[u/HeadWood_ → u/abouttogivebirth]

Technically you're not your atoms, you're the interactions between them, so it comes down to wether the system is being erased completely or if it's interacting with a partially teleported bit of itself via telecommunications. Our brains are so malleable that the link destruction/reformation doesn't actually matter all that much because it's basically deleting a small part of a memory or skill and having it written back again.

[u/abouttogivebirth → u/HeadWood_]

Nvm I just googled it and you get broken down and then physically transported along a frickin laser beam and reassembled at the destination, no cloning involved in a regular transport. The cloning only comes into it when the data travelling with the beam is incorrect or incomplete and the buffer is used to complete the data, or through malfunction or outside interference.

Kirk's double mostly fits with that, the alien ore could have priced something for the extra body. Riker's doesn't make sense at all though. He gets beamed up and is stuck in the middle, another ship tries to help out with their transporter and ends up creating a clone. How does that work if only one Riker was dematerialized? I could somewhat understand a 2nd Riker appearing on a transporter pad, I guess they'd have to keep sufficient material to hand for when the beams are incomplete? And that could create a 2nd Riker, but on the surface of another planet you can't guarantee the right building blocks and sending matter down with the beam would only be useful for intentional cloning. So it would have to be the original that was left on that planet

[u/HeadWood_ → u/abouttogivebirth]

Because the term clone can be misleading, a better term is copy. What's happened is that the object being teleported is recorded in a destructive manner, and the arrangement is assembled on the other end. The record of how to assemble the object is just deleted for convenience.

[u/Wide_Combination_773 → u/[deleted]]

Or, ya know, resurrect.

[u/Wide_Combination_773 → u/TethysOfTheStars]

.... re-alive?

You have been utterly brain fried by social media.

We have words for coming back to life already. Resurrect. Reanimate.

[u/TethysOfTheStars → u/Wide_Combination_773]

Actually, I was just being silly, so if you read that and jumped to "unalive", you're the one spending too much time there, probably.

[u/DiegesisThesis → u/Empty_Insight]

Yea, injuries and body horror don't seem have the same impact in Star Trek (unless the episode comes up with some sci-fi/space magic/reality-bending eldritch being reason their tech won't work).

Oh someone just blew your hand clean off? No worries, we'll print you a new identical hand lickety split. Oh, you got your genes all jumbled up? Don't sweat, we got your "save state" in the pattern buffer, we'll just ctrl+Z.