42
$\begingroup$

An interstellar spaceship carrying a thousand personnel was attacked by a group of space pirates while crossing the nebula. The nearest habitable planet is several light-hours away.

Help will only arrive in the next 12 hours and the spaceship's main propulsion drive had been sabotaged and unfortunately the antimatter containment unit is failing fast. Seemingly the weapons are useless against the space pirate's energy shields.

The captain has decided to initiate the self-destruction sequence and therefore issued an order for all crews to evacuate to the nearest escape pods.

I was wondering: wouldn't it be better to simply transport the crews off the spaceship instead of having everyone panicking and running around in a chaotic manner? Suppose the transporter is intact during the entire engagement with the space pirates and it is being disabled upon sounding the ship's alarm.

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
19
  • 39
    $\begingroup$ Well the obvious reason is that transporters have limited range. The crew might survive 12h in an escape pod, but not beamed out into space. So I guess there is something I'm missing in your question. Were you thinking about launching the pods and then beam the crew abord them? $\endgroup$
    – Guran
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 5:41
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ It all comes down to the number of escape pod locations vs the number of transporter stations. $\endgroup$
    – Guran
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 6:41
  • 33
    $\begingroup$ You are assuming that "everyone [panics] and [runs] around in [a] chaotic manner" in response to the order to evacuate. What is your basis for that assumption? $\endgroup$
    – user
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 7:37
  • 10
    $\begingroup$ First, transporters as a plot device suck. They only exist because producing shuttle landing visuals would have been too expensive for the original Star Trek. Second, anyone being transported is killed, only a copy of them made elsewhere survives, so using them would just kill the entire crew - would you serve on a ship where the standard escape mechanism is death? An escape pod can contain supplies like food, water, and equipment, it can provide provide shelter, and allows survivors to loiter in a sealed environment to await rescue - even in deep space. $\endgroup$
    – Grimm The Opiner
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 9:08
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ How does the transporter work? Perhaps, pirates can hijack the stream to capture anyone who dares to use the transporter when they are close? $\endgroup$
    – Holger
    Commented Sep 26, 2017 at 9:13

23 Answers 23

Reset to default
183
$\begingroup$

If the antimatter containment is failing then power would be failing also.

Escape pods wouldn't require power. They are also located all over the ship and the vast majority of the crew could reach one and escape in less than a minute.

A transporter system would be located in one part of the ship and at best transfer a handful of crew at a time. If the power supply is flickering, it might even stop halfway through a transfer.

It's the same reason why you use the stairs instead of an elevator during a disaster.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
12
  • 12
    $\begingroup$ That! There might even be a safety mechanism, disabling the transmitter after the alarm automatically, because it might become unstable after the power fades. Also, the range of the transporter might be an issue, if no suitable recevier is closeby. $\endgroup$
    – Lot
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 9:09
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ Such transporter would have safety power capacitors to ensure power will not be cut off during transport! So power stability should not be issue unless it prevents to fill such capacitor. $\endgroup$
    – Piro
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 11:08
  • 11
    $\begingroup$ @Piro those safety capacitors might still only be enough to complete a handful of transports reliably. They are not meant to power the transporter for an hour, merely to prevent failures during a single transport. $\endgroup$
    – Chieron
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 15:45
  • 4
    $\begingroup$ @Lot more than just safety with regards to "Power Fluctuations" (I hear they just installed the PowerWall 2957X... latest in backup power and line cleaning technology) - the safety would revolve around the fact that the shields around the containment area are buckling. You have any idea how much radiation that is? 1.21 jigawatts of radiation!!! (roughly). That tends to interfere with transport pattern buffers. So unless you want to arrive inside out and topside sideways... $\endgroup$
    – WernerCD
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 16:17
  • 9
    $\begingroup$ I'm laughing at the idea: "in case of fire, all teleporters will be recalled to the ground floor. A firefighter with their firefighter's key may override this behavior." $\endgroup$
    – Cort Ammon
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 18:09
48
$\begingroup$

Transporters have a short range. (If they had a long range, you wouldn't need the ship). Enemy ships like to attack when nothing else is nearby, and mechanical failures and natural disasters happen whenever they happen, which is likely to be in the middle of nowhere.

Crew can abandon ship into escape pods and wait for rescue - even if the rescuers are the attackers, that's better than nothing. If you abandon ship with a transporter, you can ONLY go to a habitable planet or friendly ship within range. If there's not one available, you die. Ship designers could not make that assumption for anything more mobile than an orbital station.

Transporters are also uncommon in most sci-fi excluding Star Trek. They only existed there because transporters were easier for the real-world special effects people than showing the ship or a shuttle landing on a planet every episode. Plot-wise, they tend to create problems, and technology-wise, they're hardly inevitable, so no special explanation is needed for why even a very advanced civilization doesn't have them. In other words, they might just not exist, but anybody who can build spaceships can build escape pods.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
7
  • 10
    $\begingroup$ This was my first thought. Can't use the transporter if there's nowhere to transport to. $\endgroup$
    – Someone Else 37
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 7:27
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ +1 just for the existence of the ship proving the limited range of the transporter, works for any setting. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Sep 27, 2017 at 14:42
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Transporters have short range? Really? The Enterprise crew used transporters to travel from Low Earth Orbit to the planet surface - a distance of about 1,200 miles. That is about the same distance as from Chicago to Dallas. $\endgroup$
    – emory
    Commented Sep 27, 2017 at 18:24
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ @emory Compared to the light-hours away that the planet is, yes, 1,200 miles is extremely short. By 5-6 orders of magnitude. Why else would they be on a space ship, if they could just transport anywhere they needed to go? $\endgroup$
    – Casey Kuball
    Commented Sep 27, 2017 at 19:02
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ @emory Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. $\endgroup$
    – user1975
    Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 5:17
25
$\begingroup$

Been in a tall building lately? Did you notice the signs saying things like "in case of fire, use stairs" or "in an emergency, do not use elevator"?

While there are other associated safety issues around heat containment, a big part of the reason to not use elevators to evacuate a burning building is that elevators require power to work and, if power is lost due to the fire, you really don't want to be stuck in an immobile elevator.

Transporters require power to operate, too, and it's a pretty safe bet that getting stuck in mid-transport when power goes out would be substantially worse than being stuck in an elevator during a fire. Simply ceasing to exist when the transporter goes out is the best-case scenario...

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • 8
    $\begingroup$ Whenever I think of these warnings, I tend to think of the First Interstate Bank Fire (LA, 1988). There was only one fatality. A maintenance worker was sent to find out why smoke detectors on one floor kept going off. He took the elevator to the floor, which was now fully engulfed in flames. The doors melted from the heat, trapping him. $\endgroup$
    – Machavity
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 13:10
10
$\begingroup$

Perhaps the transporter requires a lot of fine tuning before it's safe to use. If used recklessly, without several careful minutes of plotting probability vectors, the device could put the person or object several AU away from the intended destination.

Or maybe the transporter is very resource intensive, and is only utilized to send small groups from place to place. Using the transporter to evacuate the entire ship would require more energy than the ship could supply, even if it weren't about to explode. In this situation, maybe it is actually utilized, but only about 20 people manage to get out this way.

A third alternative could be that the transporter device was originally installed on ships specifically as a method of evacuation. However, early designs were faulty and the transporters would kill most who used them outright. Now, modern transporters are far safer, but the social stigma remains. People are being ordered to evacuated via the transporter, but the crew is not going anywhere near it, heading for escape pods and not listening to their superiors. This could result in further complications, as the escape pods become overcrowded and the chain of command breaks down.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ Paragraph 2 can be extended further: even if it isn't too resource intensive the hardware might not be able to deal with intense bursts of use, so evacuating the ship without melting the Heisenberg Compensators would take far too long. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 6:27
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Paragraph 1's computations include adjusting the intrinsic velocity between the sending spot and the receiving spot. If there was no such adjustment, any instant transporting between a planetary surface and an orbiting ship (either up or down) would result in the arriving being moving at roughly 5,000 m/s with respect to WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE! $\endgroup$
    – Codes with Hammer
    Commented Feb 10, 2021 at 18:00
8
$\begingroup$

the antimatter containment unit is failing fast

Assuming that the pods have an adequate shielding against gamma rays, they are going to be the only decent place to stay in the coming minutes. Once the antimatter containment fails, its content will come in touch with the ship.

In a matter of nanoseconds there will be a huge production of energy in the form of gamma ray, which will wipe out the surroundings and probably disturb any EM signal (including were-porters).

I doubt porters can still materialize objects once the porters themselves have been vaporized, and I guess nobody in the crew wants to live as a peregrine EM wave in the nebula.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
9
  • $\begingroup$ Never underestimate the importance of shielding. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 6:24
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Why not simply dump the AM into space and stay on the ship instead of dumping the crew and keep the AM on the ship? $\endgroup$
    – m.fuss
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 11:02
  • 13
    $\begingroup$ @m.fuss Come on, you've seen the show. Has ejecting the warp core ever worked successfully in an emergency? $\endgroup$
    – Mason Wheeler
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 11:14
  • $\begingroup$ Radiation was my first thought as well. +1 $\endgroup$
    – WernerCD
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 16:19
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @MasonWheeler I remember a few times - specifically Insurrection... and found more than a few that I remembers here: memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_core_ejection_system $\endgroup$
    – WernerCD
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 16:21
8
$\begingroup$

No captain will order evacuation of his ship without good reason.
Either a catastrophic event is taking place (either from battle damage or from sabotage/accident) or the ship is in immediate danger of falling to enemy hands (thus with all its access codes, secret orders, communication frequencies etc).

In both scenarios, available time is limited to a few minutes at best.

Having the crew proceed in an orderly fashion to the hangar bay to board the available transport ships takes too much time, especial in larger ships - assuming the hangar bay is still accessible and operational.

On the other hand, escape pods are designed to be all around the ship, in all decks, easily accessible withing seconds (or couple of minutes) from all stations. This causes the evacuation to be completed very fast.

Now in your example, the instant your captain issues the self destruct sequence to start, the ship's computer issues a million commands throughout the ship's systems. Overloading power grids, opening various compartments, rerouting power, or even start a sequence of controlled explosions that lead to a bigger one.
The moment the self destruct mechanism explodes, the ship will be ready to sustain the maximum possible damage in all compartments, to ensure complete destruction (or as much as possible).

In my opinion, the hangar bay will be sealed from operating and allow smaller ships to flee. In the hangar there are a stockpile of ammunition and fuel for the ships, thus making it a perfect target for an explosion that will cause huge damage to the main ship.

Thus, the escape pods will be a preferable solution.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
7
$\begingroup$

Since nothing is said about what "transporter" means, I will assume it is something like in Star Trek, a sort of matter-to-energy conversion of the object/person to be transported, some sort of energy beam, and some sort of magical reconstruction of a living being at the sub-quantum level. Including, uh... the person's soul, or whatever.

The first obvious reason against using such a device in the middle of a battle would be that rapid movement, harsh manueuvers, nearby high-energy explosions and randomly interfering high-energy beams or electromagnetic pulses may not be what makes the process of transporting precisely safe. That doesn't even consider the possibility that a pirate would probably have a transporter scrambler. The Klingons do have them in Star Trek, sure enough.

Assuming a starship is operated by an antimatter reactor, the antimatter containment field would be designed to be the absolutely last thing to fail, for the rather obvious reason that a failed containment field is certain demise.
Which means at the time of the containment field rapidly failing, you will already have less vital systems (such as life support, shields, and... transporters) failed long ago. That's especially true for systems that consume a very non-neglegible amount of energy.

Assuming that shields are still intact, you would however still not be able to use a transporter because the whatever-it-is transporter beam cannot pass shields. How do I know it can't? Well, because if it could pass shields, pirates would rather take your valuable ship intact rather than shooting at it until it is at the point of disintegrating (doesn't make much sense if you want booty, eh?). They'd simply transport a hand grenade onto the bridge, killing the crew and leaving a mostly-intact ship.
That means in order to transport the crew off the ship, you necessarily have to lower whatever shields you have left. This means the ship will be torn to pieces by the next bolt/ray/torpedo hitting it.

Then of course, you are possibly within reach of a habitable planet, but quite possibly you are not. What do you do if there's no good place to transport the crew to?

Assuming there is a location where the crew can breathe and won't freeze to death within minutes, what do they eat during the next... let's be very optimistic, 3-6 weeks until help arrives? How would someone even know where to look for them?

A rescue pod addresses all these issues. It is devil-may-care autonomous, it has breathable air, there is some food and water as well as medical equipment, and is able to send a distress signal.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
4
  • $\begingroup$ A small note on the "must not be able to pass through shields". Given energy shield technology and teleportation technology, assuming there's a system by where YOUR teleportation beam can get through your shield but THEIR'S cannot, isn't a stretch at all. Like letting your own internet traffic through your fireweall, but preventer an intruder. $\endgroup$
    – Luke
    Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 1:29
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @Luke It's more of a stretch than you think. A firewall is software, a transporter works based on the laws of physics. Internet traffic is easily to manipulate, something based on the laws of physics not so much. $\endgroup$
    – somebody
    Commented Sep 29, 2017 at 3:42
  • $\begingroup$ @somebody The internet is based on the laws of physics. A Transponder is currently non-existent. Your knowledge of how they work is almost as miraculous as an internet that breaks the laws of physics. $\endgroup$
    – Luke
    Commented Oct 1, 2017 at 21:50
  • $\begingroup$ @Luke What I mean is that we can control what gets sent over the internet because we have full control over the data. How exactly could an energy shield block signals one direction and leave signals in the opposite direction perfectly untouched? (Well okay it may be possible, but we know physics less well than we know the internet so it's not as easy) $\endgroup$
    – somebody
    Commented Oct 2, 2017 at 0:54
7
$\begingroup$

wouldn't it be better to simply transport the crews off the spaceship

Transport to where? Into the empty void of space? Thats certain death. habitable planets are a rarity, and you have even said that help is 12 light-hours away. That means there simply isn't anything in transporter range.

The only option would be to transport the crew from where they are currently standing into the escape pods.

However, the escape pods are a last resort. The ship is already failing. power could go out any moment due to the damaged core.The batlle with the pirates has damaged a lot of systems. transporters are an intricate piece of technology, the slightest malfunction can be fatal.

Its a little bit like elevators and fires. you don#t use an elevator when the building is on fire because it might already be compromised. You don't use the transporters for the same reason - the are no longer safe to use, and running on foot to the nearest escape pod is the safest solution.

Another problem is throughput. While it might be possible to transport a few people at a time, transporters might simply not be able to mass-transport several hundred people at once from all over the ship.

Furthermore, your assumption of panicking and chaos might be wrong. The crew of a spaceship is likely well trained and has regular safety exercises in order to ensure an orderly and timely evacuation.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
6
$\begingroup$

The Star Trek answer is that some teleporters are simply unable to transmit through shields; the shield can block or interfere with the teleporter's beam.

This is as useful as it is a hindrance, because although it makes it harder to escape, it also makes it harder for the enemy to teleport a bomb into your captain's chair in the middle of a battle.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
5
$\begingroup$

As all the other answers have said, it'll all depend on your transporter technology. To add a possibility which hasn't yet been covered, transportation a la Star Trek takes around 5s. Transporter rooms in Star Trek seem to have 6 platforms. If that's the limit of the transporter's simultanous transport capacity, then it'd take a little under 14 minutes to transport a thousand people. If you've got 14 minutes spare, you've probably got time to try to fix it. If you've not got 14 minutes spare, escape pods (or lifeboats, or personal protection suits, or personal shields, or whatever) are the best way to get all those people to safety.

Of course Star Trek plays very fast and loose with transporters, just as it does with everything else science-related. (The book "The science of Star Trek" should really just have one sentence: "It works like that because the plot needs it to do that.") But if you're trying to be more hard-science about your teleporters, this would be an obvious answer.

The design of the spaceship will be influenced by this too. Various people have pointed out that if transporters in Star Trek had unlimited capacity, the lifts and corridors would be redundant. Each room could be entirely sealed, and crew would only use transporters to get from place to place.

Even with limited transporter capacity actually, this leads to a different model of spaceship. The weakest point in a sealed vessel are any holes to get things in and out, so if you have transporter technology then you can completely eliminate doors. Maybe you'd have to wait a few seconds to get transported, but that's something people would adapt to. The only access points then would be for electrical and life-support cables/hoses, which of course are much smaller, so the design would be much safer than trying to seal a 6x3 doorway. Mostly you can talk to your colleagues with screens and intercoms, and the transporter system will handle the times you need to get from room to room. If there's an emergency, each room can be cut loose to form its own self-contained lifepod, or a room which poses a threat to the ship can be ejected.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ I was also thinking of a modular vessel design that could separate during combat simply so as to become less of a target and to surround and overwhelm the enemy. $\endgroup$
    – can-ned_food
    Commented Sep 27, 2017 at 6:29
4
$\begingroup$

It's all about dramatic impact. Crew escaping the damaged in escape pods can be seen escaping. They rush into the pod. The hatch smashed shut prior to launch. Their lifepod is ejected into space. Sound effects, figures reacting to the acceleration. The crippled ship can be seen exploding at that final dramatic moment. Exciting stuff.

Now if they escape via the transporters (and for convenience it is assumed the transporters can teleport crew the light hours to the nearest habitable planet) everybody just queues up and disappears in a shimmering glow. It will take hours for the light from the exploding ship to reach the planet and by then it will be too small to be seen. Less than exciting stuff. They might as well pack a picnic lunch.

Also, if the teleportation doesn't have the range to reach the habitable planet, naturally they will head to the escape pods. Mostly this is a question of applying commonsense to be able to answer this question.

Of course, the real life explanation is simple. The authors, if it's prose fiction, and script writers, if it's on a visual medium, rarely think through their worldbuilding sufficiently to know what choices they have to allow the crew escape in safety. Film and tv producers know escape pods will always win the dramatic department.

PS:

A well-trained crew won't panic chaotically. They will have rehearsed their escape drill many, many times. To survive they will go to their appointed stations to either board their designated escape pod or teleportation transmitter. That's what's shipboard discipline is for: to ensure disasters in space can be dealt with safely.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
$\begingroup$

The transporter works both ways. When you send people out the pirates could send people in. Then you have boarding troops on your ship while you try to get clear. This would be chaos and desaster. better to disable the transport device and play russian roulette with the pods

And this is the other question: why pods? Wouldn't be life raft/boats be the better option?

A pod might have limited propulsion maybe it turns to the neares habitable planet or station and ignites its drive.

A boat will give the crew the means to maneuver. In case of your situation when the ship is destroyed the price for the pirates is gone. But hey look the void is filled with slaves in shiny capsules. With life boats not all but some of the crew might flee.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
$\begingroup$

Are you talking about teleporters?

I'm not aware of too many examples of this technology outside of Star Trek so I'll use this -

Outside of other people's answers (short range, possible inhibitions like ship's shields, resources etc. ) there's also the following:

In an emergency evacuation, you need the simplest, most efficient solution. Just get to the escape pods and blast them off somewhere away from the ship.

The transporters can only send a few people at a time, and depend on the ship's systems being working, not to mention, a technician/engineer kind of person to operate the transporter. (You also need somewhere to send them and to know it's safe before you begin the evacuation)

You can imagine the disappointment one everyone's face - the ones in the middle of being beamed and the ones in the massive queue leading out through the transporter room door and down the corridor - as they watch the warp-core exploding and the walls of the ship are flying apart into the vacuum of space, fire all around them, when the transporter engineer says, "Sorry folks, that last explosion knocked out the power to the transporter buffers, guess you better get repenting your sins... "

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
$\begingroup$

Because transporters require too many ship's systems online

Transporters need lots of stuff: massive energy, engine taps if needed, antennas, computers for analysis, and very good sensor data so you don't beam a party down 100' above the ground.

Evacuation procedures most certainly presume that the ship is too damaged to be able to reliably run transporters. What's more, they can't presume a survivable destination reachable by transporter. I'm sure there'd be a page on it in the manual, and some training given to it, but it's not the expected/likely case.

No panic, unless it's a civilian liner.

In any para-military/Starfleet type service, every crewman will be well trained on all sorts of emergencies, including damage control, firefighting, etc. Long experience is that damage control expertise saves ships, and incompetence costs them. Doomed ships and evacuation will be part of that training. Crewmen will know what to do, where to go etc. and sailors reading your book will get annoyed if you portray it as otherwise.

You bet they set the auto-destruct

Last thing you want to do is fail to set the auto-destruct, look back at the inevitable, only to say "No boom?" And have the captain say "No boom." While you try to find "reverse" on an escape pod. (Can it even do that?) This means either the condition self-extinguished, good design factors saved the ship in an unexpected way, some crewmen left behind found a way (possibly sacrificing their lives), or James Bond slipped his restraints.

You get to watch as the enemy takes your ship.

No thanks. Even if the ship is doomed, you still set the self-destruct.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
0
2
$\begingroup$

Consider this: you're on a burning/sinking cruise liner or oil rig. You can don a survival suit and jump over the side.

Or you can get in the lifeboat.

Which one gives you a better life expectancy? Which one's got food and water in it? Which one's got a long distance rescue beacon?

The former is analogous to transporting the crew out into space. The survival suits are space suits. They are wearing space suits, right? That'd be a good start.

The latter is analogous to escape pods.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
$\begingroup$

The battle doesn't stop when you say time out.

If there was a planet nearby which would support the crew for a short time. The evacuation requires sending 1000 men with weapons and equipment into a single area with good visibility cover and large enough for 1000 men. If you are teleporting it may have to be level and free of obstacles that someone is teleported into.

The escape pods would be able to survive space and I assume would protect against a hand held weapon in a fire fight, solving the issue of cover.

Being in escape pods must be safe for a period of time, either due to speed or shields and would allow time for the leaders to form a plan.

The escape pods would allow you to land on another side of the planet if the transporter requires a clear line.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ Shelter is the primary purpose of escape pods, followed by range. They can simply through space for larger distances than the teleporters can reach. $\endgroup$
    – jwdonahue
    Commented Aug 19, 2021 at 22:02
1
$\begingroup$

Simple explanation the captain's not going to self-destruct his ship for no reason at all. Once you establish a reason for why he is self-destructing his ship it's easy to come up for a reason why the teleporters aren't working. If he was attacked by an enemy perhaps the enemy is jamming teleporter technology. Or perhaps his teleporters were damaged in the previous conflict.

Alternatively could be more practical scenario maybe his ship only has enough power to teleport a couple people so it's more practical to use space pods

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
$\begingroup$

Because you can't know in advance what kind of threat the ship might be facing, so in order to give people one single action to perform when that klaxon goes off, you have a protocol that specifies that personnel take to the lifeboats. Then there's no delay while the crew waits to hear whether they're going to report to the lifeboats or the transporter, no agonizing over "my section took a hit when they announced the evacuation procedure and blew out the speaker, where do I go?", you simply have one set procedure that everyone knows to follow. Don't make people choose when they're in a panic, have a single (hopefully well-drilled) response.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ Well, unless you expect your crew to be a bunch of morons, and planned accordingly, you would have variant procedures if there were advantages to one over the other in some conditions. Yes, you certainly would prefer to use whatever remained of the chain–of–command to pass down instructions as to which condition was being declared. $\endgroup$
    – can-ned_food
    Commented Sep 27, 2017 at 6:39
1
$\begingroup$

As already stated: transporters (teleportation devices) have limited range, require power and presumably other supporting systems to operate. If the ship has been attacked and primary power disabled, chances are, other systems have failed too. Even if everything needed is in working order, transporters will have limited throughput - only so many people per minute. Escape pods can self-launch independently - no need for ship's power or anything else, no throughput issue. In an emergency, every second counts.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
$\begingroup$

There have been a number good answers as to why escape pods are usually used.

One thing to note is that there are some examples where using transporters are used when evacuating a ship. There are plenty of instances of Transporters being used to rescue people from a ship about to be destroyed such as in StarTrek First Contact the Enterprise E rescues the crew of the Defiant.

In the StarGate GS-1 episode Prometheus Unbound S9E12 the Prometheus uses its Asgard Transport Beams to evacuate its crew onto the planet it was orbiting before the ship was destroyed.

Both of these situations are depended on the proximity of a friendly planet or ship.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
$\begingroup$

Actually, it is more likely that you will see chaotic scenes if transport is being used. There would be one (or few?) Transports available, and some crew/passengers would be stationed quite far away from it, and now they have to navigate spaceship with systems shutting down to the boarding gates. While escape pods locations would be, presumably, chosen to minimize the distance each member of the crew has to cover your get into it.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
$\begingroup$

1,000 people using a teleporter.
Generously say it fits 10 people. That 100 uses of the teleporter.
Generously say it takes 20 seconds to work. That's 2,000 seconds. Or half an hour (Of people standing in line while claxons sound the impending doom).

1,000 people using escape pods.
Have more than enough escape pods for 1,000 people (This part is important).
It takes as long as it takes you and the people near you to enter the nearest escape pod and hit "GO".

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
0
$\begingroup$

Consider an earth bound analogy:

Why wouldn't an aircraft carrier save all the people it could by launching aircraft?

Launching aircraft requires a functioning ship. You need a headwind of at least 20 knots coming over the bow, you need steam for catapults. You need a functioning crew. A launching evolution is a choreographed dance. If the ship is functional enough to launch, it's functional enough to keep floating.

Similarly: Transporter tech involves the dematerializing and rematerializing of substantial mass. You are handling energies on the order of the mass equivalent of what is being transported, and huge information capacity. (Remember that Scotty was stored for months in a pattern buffer once.) A partially working transporter is a scary thought.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .