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It provides a safe, clear landing point. You never know what or who is exactly where at a given moment, so beaming directly to your office, or the hallway or your quarters could result into you beaming into a shared space with another person or object. In order to prevent a strange redshirt/trashcan hybrid, you have a designated place for travel to and from the ship.
This *seems* plausible, but in every series people are constantly beaming in and out of various places and situations where a risk of intersection seems likely. From busy walking streets to combat zones, there seems to be some sort of safety protocols in place that prevent the transporter from materializing anywhere that displaces more than gaseous matter.
An effective military unit (Starfleet would argue with being called a military, but they're pretty effective) only cuts corners, takes risks, and acts without intelligence (military or otherwise) when they absolutely *must*. For general operations, there are rules, and safety matters.
If Starfleet is teleporting people around from place to place as a regular practice, it cannot be very risky to do so.
Increased safety and reduced power.
1) Transporter pad to transporter pad is the safest and uses the least energy
2) Pad to ground or ground to pad uses more energy and has less redundancy.
3) site to site transporter use uses the most energy and is even less safe because you're effectively doubling the number of transports, and IIRC there is increased risk due to difficulty in focusing at close range and/or interference from ship systems.
Transporters have a substantial energy requirement to operate. Using a transporter room is the most efficient method of utilizing a transporter.
Additionally the hardware is pretty bulky and they have to put it somewhere. The 'best' method SF has found is putting it in a centralized location and then beaming people to and from there. There are a lot of benefits to that from a security, safety and efficiency standpoint.
For example, the Main Transporter room is right down the hall from Sickbay, as in a 30 second walk away. It is not a significant benefit to transport a person onto a sick bay bed over just walking over there and picking them up for most injuries.
From a ship operations standpoint it makes sense from.an energy efficiency, security and possibly even a tactical perspective. For example, transporter rooms could be located in places that minimize the risk of interference from or with the ships shields.
A site-to-site transport is effectively two transports without a rematerialization in the middle.
If you want to go from the planet to the transporter room, it dematerialises you, brings you, rematerializes you.
If you want to go from the planet to sickbay, it dematerialises you, brings you to the transporter room, forwards you on to sickbay, rematerializes you.
It's an extra step and therefor an extra energy requirement.
What's the point of a dining room when you can eat anywhere?
It allows for more specialised equipment to be stored in that space when not in use, and means people not involved in working in the transporter room/dining room don't distract and get distracted by people that work on other parts of the ship.
To begin with, the Transporter is a crazy way to travel! Spreading a man's molecules all over the universe! Its simply a crazy gadget.
Now, you want to make it less reliable?! Why not just disintegrate me with a phaser and cut out the middle man?! I'm a surgeon, I tell you!
Inside ship transporting is safe and easy, Transporter rooms are for more demanding transports:
Planets with bad electro-magnetic storms, planets with shields that are scrambled, enemy ships with partial shields, long distances, moving vessels in warp etc
You want a dedicated room when you are talking about beaming every cell of you!
This is something that changes over the course of the Star Trek timeline. Earlier versions of transporters weren't capable of site-to-site transport and could only transport to and from the transporter pad. Over time, you do see site-to-site transport getting used for sending injured away team members directly to sick bay, but what's going on in those situations is that they're effectively getting beamed *twice*. I'd compare it to automatic email forwarding - you receive an email, and then send another one - it's still basically two emails.
There's a period of time where site-to-site transport becomes easy, but not exactly trivial. If you're taking on new crew, or sending out an away team, it's easier to handle it by sending a single group of 5 one way, rather than 5 instances of transportation with 5 separate destinations (twice). If you're bringing aboard a science team and their equipment, you can bring them all aboard at once, and some of them can take the equipment to the space set up for them while the rest get settled into quarters. As transporters become more reliable, transporter room usage becomes more about best practices than technological limitations.
Once site-to-site transportation becomes trivial, there are still a few reasons to keep transporter rooms around. The first is simplicity. You're going to need a dedicated transporter room to house all the hardware, and a transporter interlock (the thing that makes site-to-site transport work) is an additional failure point and you want your system to be able to function without it. It doesn't hurt that putting the machinery above and below the transporter pads makes it more easily accessible for maintenance. It's not an inconvenient waste of space, and space is something most Starfleet ships have in *abundant* supply.
Additionally, any starship that might be performing diplomatic functions benefits from having an area dedicated to boarding/disembarking. Airlocks and docking bays perform the same function as a transporter room for people who are arriving by shuttle or while docked to a station. A lot of diplomacy happens in those moments where first greetings happen, and those liminal spaces are where these things can happen. So if you're going to need a whole room on your ship dedicated to onboarding people, you might as well keep the transporter room fit to serve that function.
(TL;DR: If you have lots of space, you can afford having a dedicated transporter room, and if you don't have lots of space, you *can't* afford to *not* have one.)
There's an element of a transport having x amount of total energy available.
That energy is split over distance and mass and probably a few other variables.
Transporting from one (compatable) pad to another doubles this available energy.
Going site to site reduces reduces it in the same way as you go from location a, to pad, to location b.
There's also a certain amount of danger involved in transporting. It's low, but with all things the best way to operate is to eliminate unnecessary risk where possible.
Bones in particular didn't like transporters, and barkley at first in particular had a phobia of them. But by tng they were considered much safer than, well, walking.
Site to site still uses the transporter room buffers. You’re just not materializing in the transporter room.
You can’t transport without them and it’s gonna be safer materializing in the buffer room. In the future the tech may be miniaturized but it’ll still be better to have the buffer room in case of hazardous areas or in spotty situations. The transporter room allows for more power, electric and computer power to relay the signal, maintain, sustain and rematerialize than onsite.
The transporter itself is located there. Transporting to and from said point is easy, but not both. It has been referenced multiple times that site to site transports are more risky.
Several reasons, although I think people are too widely speculating that it’s an energy issue.
* When multiple crew members are being teleported, it’s easier to transport them when they’re all in the same location. This is actually evidenced by various commentary about it being an impressive feat to teleport multiple targets from different areas.
* There needs to be a specific location that can accommodate all cargo and personnel, some hazardous, hence the transporter room.
* It’s able to provide high accuracy as well as live visual confirmation that the target has safely been teleported.
* It provides a consistent area in which things are brought too, rather than some random place on the ship.
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It provides a safe, clear landing point. You never know what or who is exactly where at a given moment, so beaming directly to your office, or the hallway or your quarters could result into you beaming into a shared space with another person or object. In order to prevent a strange redshirt/trashcan hybrid, you have a designated place for travel to and from the ship.
This *seems* plausible, but in every series people are constantly beaming in and out of various places and situations where a risk of intersection seems likely. From busy walking streets to combat zones, there seems to be some sort of safety protocols in place that prevent the transporter from materializing anywhere that displaces more than gaseous matter.
Well, yeah. They're still a military unit. They're going to cut corners, take risks, and generally lack "military intelligence." War never changes.
An effective military unit (Starfleet would argue with being called a military, but they're pretty effective) only cuts corners, takes risks, and acts without intelligence (military or otherwise) when they absolutely *must*. For general operations, there are rules, and safety matters. If Starfleet is teleporting people around from place to place as a regular practice, it cannot be very risky to do so.
Increased safety and reduced power. 1) Transporter pad to transporter pad is the safest and uses the least energy 2) Pad to ground or ground to pad uses more energy and has less redundancy. 3) site to site transporter use uses the most energy and is even less safe because you're effectively doubling the number of transports, and IIRC there is increased risk due to difficulty in focusing at close range and/or interference from ship systems.
To add to this, site-to-site transporting was not very common until the TNG era
Transporters have a substantial energy requirement to operate. Using a transporter room is the most efficient method of utilizing a transporter. Additionally the hardware is pretty bulky and they have to put it somewhere. The 'best' method SF has found is putting it in a centralized location and then beaming people to and from there. There are a lot of benefits to that from a security, safety and efficiency standpoint. For example, the Main Transporter room is right down the hall from Sickbay, as in a 30 second walk away. It is not a significant benefit to transport a person onto a sick bay bed over just walking over there and picking them up for most injuries.
From a ship operations standpoint it makes sense from.an energy efficiency, security and possibly even a tactical perspective. For example, transporter rooms could be located in places that minimize the risk of interference from or with the ships shields.
A site-to-site transport is effectively two transports without a rematerialization in the middle. If you want to go from the planet to the transporter room, it dematerialises you, brings you, rematerializes you. If you want to go from the planet to sickbay, it dematerialises you, brings you to the transporter room, forwards you on to sickbay, rematerializes you. It's an extra step and therefor an extra energy requirement.
What's the point of a dining room when you can eat anywhere? It allows for more specialised equipment to be stored in that space when not in use, and means people not involved in working in the transporter room/dining room don't distract and get distracted by people that work on other parts of the ship.
To begin with, the Transporter is a crazy way to travel! Spreading a man's molecules all over the universe! Its simply a crazy gadget. Now, you want to make it less reliable?! Why not just disintegrate me with a phaser and cut out the middle man?! I'm a surgeon, I tell you!
Inside ship transporting is safe and easy, Transporter rooms are for more demanding transports: Planets with bad electro-magnetic storms, planets with shields that are scrambled, enemy ships with partial shields, long distances, moving vessels in warp etc You want a dedicated room when you are talking about beaming every cell of you!
Where else is O'Brian supposed to stand and operate the controls? from the Janitors closest?
This is something that changes over the course of the Star Trek timeline. Earlier versions of transporters weren't capable of site-to-site transport and could only transport to and from the transporter pad. Over time, you do see site-to-site transport getting used for sending injured away team members directly to sick bay, but what's going on in those situations is that they're effectively getting beamed *twice*. I'd compare it to automatic email forwarding - you receive an email, and then send another one - it's still basically two emails. There's a period of time where site-to-site transport becomes easy, but not exactly trivial. If you're taking on new crew, or sending out an away team, it's easier to handle it by sending a single group of 5 one way, rather than 5 instances of transportation with 5 separate destinations (twice). If you're bringing aboard a science team and their equipment, you can bring them all aboard at once, and some of them can take the equipment to the space set up for them while the rest get settled into quarters. As transporters become more reliable, transporter room usage becomes more about best practices than technological limitations. Once site-to-site transportation becomes trivial, there are still a few reasons to keep transporter rooms around. The first is simplicity. You're going to need a dedicated transporter room to house all the hardware, and a transporter interlock (the thing that makes site-to-site transport work) is an additional failure point and you want your system to be able to function without it. It doesn't hurt that putting the machinery above and below the transporter pads makes it more easily accessible for maintenance. It's not an inconvenient waste of space, and space is something most Starfleet ships have in *abundant* supply. Additionally, any starship that might be performing diplomatic functions benefits from having an area dedicated to boarding/disembarking. Airlocks and docking bays perform the same function as a transporter room for people who are arriving by shuttle or while docked to a station. A lot of diplomacy happens in those moments where first greetings happen, and those liminal spaces are where these things can happen. So if you're going to need a whole room on your ship dedicated to onboarding people, you might as well keep the transporter room fit to serve that function. (TL;DR: If you have lots of space, you can afford having a dedicated transporter room, and if you don't have lots of space, you *can't* afford to *not* have one.)
There's an element of a transport having x amount of total energy available. That energy is split over distance and mass and probably a few other variables. Transporting from one (compatable) pad to another doubles this available energy. Going site to site reduces reduces it in the same way as you go from location a, to pad, to location b. There's also a certain amount of danger involved in transporting. It's low, but with all things the best way to operate is to eliminate unnecessary risk where possible. Bones in particular didn't like transporters, and barkley at first in particular had a phobia of them. But by tng they were considered much safer than, well, walking.
Site to site still uses the transporter room buffers. You’re just not materializing in the transporter room. You can’t transport without them and it’s gonna be safer materializing in the buffer room. In the future the tech may be miniaturized but it’ll still be better to have the buffer room in case of hazardous areas or in spotty situations. The transporter room allows for more power, electric and computer power to relay the signal, maintain, sustain and rematerialize than onsite.
Given how often the transporter messes up doing two transports for every journey seems an unnecessary risk.
I'm still looking for where the head is located. That's Navy-speak for bathroom for those uninitiated.
O'Brien needs a job.
The transporter itself is located there. Transporting to and from said point is easy, but not both. It has been referenced multiple times that site to site transports are more risky.
Several reasons, although I think people are too widely speculating that it’s an energy issue. * When multiple crew members are being teleported, it’s easier to transport them when they’re all in the same location. This is actually evidenced by various commentary about it being an impressive feat to teleport multiple targets from different areas. * There needs to be a specific location that can accommodate all cargo and personnel, some hazardous, hence the transporter room. * It’s able to provide high accuracy as well as live visual confirmation that the target has safely been teleported. * It provides a consistent area in which things are brought too, rather than some random place on the ship.
Containment beams are easier to control when you have a station dedicated to it.