The Federation Economy

[Jounin]

As a science major, I have to agree with Wazer's clearing up of some of the scientific issues in Trek. I was about to write a similar posting. One additional thing I would like to clarify is that Ketracel White is an isogenic enzyme, not a drug. It is an enzyme which is necessary to the physiological functioning of a Jem Hadar, but which their bodies cannot produce. Therefore they need this enzyme soon after they mature, and are "addicted" to it even if they have never been previously exposed. Saying that it can't contain heavy metals is pure conjecture, since we know nothing about Jem Hadar physiology, or what is toxic to them.

[yudd]

i know for a fact that the matter/antimatter warp engine is only around 22% effecient in the Enterprice in TNG, they say it in that SOloton wave episode where you ride the wave and go to warp without warp drive and its like 98% efficent and riker says thats like 450% more effecient than enterprise. im not sure if these are the exact numbers but something to this effect, and i remeber calculating in my head. That makes the warp engine very in effecient i think cars are more effecient than 22%, and i believe the human body is 38% effecient if i remeber it correctly

[Palantas]

I was referring to the Federation as a whole. It has not yet run out of deuterium' date=' and thus it has not yet run out of resources.[/quote']

 

Here I am going to (partially) disagree. They will run out of deuterium. It is apparent that they go through it like there is no tomorrow' date=' and will as such use up all the deuterium in the Federation eventually. The question is: how long will they be able to keep that up? I figure there is enough deuterium to keep up such practices for several centuries at [i']least[/i] before they run out.

 

Before I go any further, this needs to be addressed. I’m putting this in a separate post, since it doesn’t really have anything to do with the main argument.

 

This isn’t a difference of opinion; this is just silly. Deuterium is hydrogen. Do you know that hydrogen is the most common element in the universe? For sake of argument, let’s do some calculations. (I do not have a science background, so anyone with knowledge in this area…feel free to correct my methods or math. My sources for these figures is the Wikipedia.)

 

The mass of the Sun is 2x10^30kg, 75% of this being hydrogen.

2x10^30kg x .75 = 1.5x10^30kg of hydrogen in the Sun.

 

1kg of antimatter reacting with 1kg of matter produces 1.8x10^17 J.

 

1.5x10^30kg x 1.8x10^17 x .5= 1.35x10^47 J produced by reacting all of the hydrogen in the Sun with an appropriate amount of antimatter, times 50% efficiency.

 

A Galaxy class starship as of Stardate 42568.8 is incapable of generating more than 1 TW (TNG: "The Dauphinâ€ÂÂ), but we’ll just use 1 TW for sake of brevity. (A watt = joules per second.)

 

1.35x10^47 / 1x10^12 = 1.35x10^35 TJ

1.35x10^35 TJ / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365 = 4.28x10^27

4.28x10^27 / 1x10^12 = 4.28x10^15

 

That’s 4,280,000,000,000,000 years that a billion GCS’s could be powered by the amount of hydrogen (plus same amount of antimatter) that can be found in a single Sun-type star. Obviously, this figure is far in excess of the age of the universe, and one billion is far in excess of the number of starships that the Federation possesses.

 

I trust we can lay this issue to rest.

 

[queenhank]

Deuterium IS hydrogen? Please do elaborate.

[Tenebrae]

In the sense that it's an isotope of hydrogen, hence a type of hydrogen.

 

Simple analogy - you can get white and dark chocolate but they're both still chocolate.

 

Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen, is a stable isotope of hydrogen with a natural abundance of one atom in 6500 of hydrogen. The nucleus of deuterium, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one neutron, whereas a normal hydrogen nucleus just has one proton.

[queenhank]

So...deuterium can be manufactured, then? In that case, I would say that it is dilithium, not deuterium, which will limit the UFP's economy.

[Tenebrae]

Why?

 

The evidence suggests that the prevalence of energy generated outside of warp capable ships is done by fusion. Hell, even on warp capable ships it seems like most of the power is from fusion for things outside of shields/propulsion.

[Palantas]

So...deuterium can be manufactured' date=' then? In that case, I would say that it is dilithium, not deuterium, which will limit the UFP's economy.[/quote']

 

Christ, you're fast on these things. I'm still writing my rebuttal to the main post.

 

So yeah, deuterium can be manufactured/collected and will never, ever, run out. I don't know the first thing about chemistry, but it's not that hard to Google this stuff.

 

I guess we'll keep going on this side-note too. There's too issues I see with your statement. According to you, replicators can make anything, basically for free; so they can just keep making dilithium unil the end of time. Second, the Federation's not going to just run out of dilithium and be like, "Oh no, we're screwed." Assuming they operate something like a plausible society with a real economy (what our main argument is about), they'll gradually move to another source of energy as the opportunity cost of mining/synthesizing dilithium becomes to high.

[queenhank]

Dilithium cannot be replicated, and takes a very long time to manufacture. They will run out of it, eventually, unless they figure out a way to better maufacture it.

 

So, my whole point is that the Federation's economy is not sustainable indefinitely.

[Palantas]

Dilithium cannot be replicated, and takes a very long time to manufacture. They will run out of it, eventually, unless they figure out a way to better maufacture it.

 

So, my whole point is that the Federation's economy is not sustainable indefinitely.

 

You addressed the first part of my previous post, which was mostly meant for humor. And the second part? Simply restating your opion about a subject, without introducing any new evidence--or addressing others' counterarguments--is not a rebuttal.

 

Let me try again. Large societies with real economies don't just "run out" of a resource and cease functioning. They evolve, harnessing new resources to take the place of old ones. Today's world isn't going to suddennly run out of oil, and (like I said before), be like, "Oh no! We're out! Where'd it go? What do we do now?" As oil becomes more scarce, it will become more expensive to harvest. As this occurs, alternatives will become more and more economically viable for firms to develop.

 

In the case of the Federation, there are other high-power energy sources besides ones relying on dilithium (TNG: "Timescape"). They are perhaps less well-developed in the Federation or more cost prohibitive. However, these hurdles will be overcome as a matter of necessity once they begin to "run out" of dilithium crystals.

[Tenebrae]

What about Voyage Home? That proves that Dilithium Crystals can be "recharged".

[queenhank]

It was a very specific circumstance. The crystals, as has been said, do not last forever.

[Tenebrae]

True.

 

I hardly think that running fission reactors would be quite that beneficial.

 

Besides, the films are generally considered to be... far from pure canon.

[queenhank]

How so?

[Mav]

How so?

 

Traditionally they have more leeway. In any of the various series, if a piece of canon or lore is stepped on by an inconsistancey or small plot hole, later on it can be addressed if need be. Worst case is there's a small gap of an episode or two where something is slightly wrong until they notice or fix it.

 

In a movie..well it's not so easy. So if they do step out side the traditional canon, they really have no neck room to work with, cause once those two hours are up and people walk out of the theater thats it, there's no real "fixing" it. While the TOS movies kinda blended together, the TNG ones only had minor points of connection (Data's chip, the Enterprise E etc). If someone big were to come up like a really big plot hole either it'd be chaulked up as a writer/canon mistake or they might get to fix it in the next movie, assuming one was planned.

[queenhank]

Or they would "fix" it in an episode, like they usually do.

[shaqm0bile]

episode 5x25 says it all for ds9/tng era economy. nog is talking with jake about how he wont let jake borrow or have his money and that its not his fault that earth gave up currency based economy.

[Wazer]

For those who don't understand about deuterium I will explain.

 

Deuterium is a heavy isotope of hydrogen it contains an extra neutron, thus it has one proton one neutron and one electron.

This makes it useful for fusion reactors as you need those extra neutons to make helium which has two.

In current fusion reactors they fuse deuterium and tritium (hydrogen with 2 neutrons) to make helium and a free {energetic} neutron which they can use to sustain the reaction.

Tritium is unstable so you have to make it fairly close to the time you use it.

 

Since deuterium (on earth at least) makes up 0.015% of all hydrogen there is still plenty available give the amount of hygen available in the universe.

However it's a waste for antimatter reaction as this only require any old matter and antimatter so hydrogen could be the easiest to collect.

 

As for dilithium we know that it is used to control the antimatter reaction but there is no reason that they couldn't find a new way to control the reaction or recycle dilithium or even make it.

But as of now it is one of the main constraints of the Federation but how much they need is the question.

[Mav]

If I recall right, Dilithium much like Latnum are a couple of the handful of elements/things in the known galaxy that are currently not able to be replicated. Of course in the future, who knows. But I don't see dilithum crystals being replicated anytime soon in the current Trek timeline. Maybe a partial synthetic version could be replicated that could some how produce the same effect on a much smaller scale. Kind of like, a spare tire. It'll get you where you are going, at somewhat moderate pace but it won't last long and it's a one time use (insert reason why after using synthetic dilithium the engines or warp core needs to be realigned or calibrated before another batch of synthetic can be used, which of course means a trip to a starbase and several weeks of repairs).

[Jounin]

If, as Nog said, Earth gave up its currency based economy, where does that leave us as far as compensation for goods and services. I may having my own restaurant, but without some sort of reward for my hard work, I wouldn't want to keep one running for free. In addition, if there is no currency, what keeps the best and brightest doing skilled labor. For example, I want to be a doctor, and am smart enough to be one, but if my only compensation for my work was the satisfaction of helping people, it wouldn't take very long for me to pursue some other goal (I've always thought it would be cool to be a firefighter). My point is, if there is no difference in compensation for services rendered, then it is as profitable to be a garbage collector as it is to be a surgeon. Since the amount of work these two professions do is nowhere near equal, and since the training for one takes years, whereas for the other it may only take days, there would be no reward for training for challenging, yet vital, professions.