3mo ago

I'm a reasonably well educated human living on Earth. What's to stop me from replicating starship parts until I can make my own Starfleet?

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?

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ah yes, the SovCit Federation

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.
- I'll just replicate the parts to build an industrial replicator : forehead:
  
  Controlled technology and not easily built from scratch even by Starfleet engineers.
  The Relaunch novelverse expanded the concept and importance of industrial replicators. When Voyager returned to the Delta Quadrant, she led an small ‘Full Circle’ fleet that included a large engineering ship that did have industrial replicators large enough to reconstruct ships when severely damaged.
  Lowere Decks and Prodigy have brought industrial replicators into onscreen canon.
  Prodigy gave the Protostar prototype ship an industrial replicator large enough to construct shuttles. Lower Decks has shown the Cerritos and other ships tasked with delivering and bringing online very large industrial replicators on planets seeking Federation support.

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.
  
  a net energy loss
  Like... some energy just gets destroyed in the process? How does that work?
- 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...
- 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.
  
  Of course you could. The process will take more energy than replicating a drained battery too.
  
  That would violate the laws of thermodynamics, you can’t create more energy in a closed system.

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.

Extreme amounts of energy needed for large items, but it seems like Earth has transporter quotas, so presumably they enforce energy budgets (based on DS9 Sisko using his transporter budget)
Not all materials like latinum can be replicated
Materials like dilithium are seemingly not viable to replicate, probably due to it being an incredibly wasteful process
Many dilithium byproducts are unstable controlled substances, so at some point Starfleet would interfere to prevent the creation of trilithium or other unstable substances.
I don’t know if you need antimatter, but I don’t think you could replicate it. You could replicate the machinery needed to produce it though.
The Federation does have industrial replicators but they seem to be treated as controlled assets they rarely give out or provide access to. So they might meddle if you start building these.

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.
- I suspect they couldn’t replicate dilithium because they’d be consuming dilithium, converting it to energy, then converting that energy back to dilithium.
  The laws of thermodynamics state that this would be inefficient.

Your UBI allotment of energy usage is limited.
What you're even allowed to replicate is limited. Not just by, like, laws limiting what kinds of things you can replicate but also the fact that starships and other things require materials that can't be replicated even if you had lawful permission.
Look at the Maquis. They're basically what you described, within the scope of what they actually can do as simple citizens. Even with the benefit of actual star fleet officers they didn't fare too well.
- from what i know it wouldn't be that you have a strict energy allotment, more that people would see you using tons of energy and come knocking to gently ask what in the blazes you're doing in there

Sisko literally replicated a star ship.
- "Explorers" doesn't contain a single reference to Sisko using a replicator during construction, but he does say, "I want to use the same types of tools the Bajorans had." He asks O'Brien for a saw, and there are several scenes in which he's seen welding pieces together.
  
  Okay I admit it, he may have sourced the self-sealing stem bolts locally
- Pfft, that archaic little sunsail jalopy? Geordi had the same hobby, with the added challenge of bottling his recreations.
  Besides, I'm sure some Bajorans would have notes on the cultural appropriation aspect.
  (big /s if it isn't clear from context)
  
  Pfft, that archaic little sunsail jalopy?
  More starship than you've replicated noob! 😉

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.
- No elements can be replicated. Replicators rearrange existing atoms.
  
  I'm reasonably sure this is not entirely correct. My understanding is that a replicator works similar to a transporter, in that it turns pure energy into matter according to a known pattern.

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.

the protostar can replicate a whole shuttlecraft so sky is the limit (not really I guess)

What's stopping me from flying to Spain or India and telling them no actually my organization represents the United States?

Assuming you had access to the energy and raw materials, I believe you’d also be limited by the size and type of replicators you have access too. Not everything can be replicated, and I believe lower tier replicators have limits on what they can make.
I wonder if you’d be able to replicate a higher tier replicator with a low tier replicator?
- Iirc replicators require exotic matter arrays, so no, they need to be constructed, at least anything more complex than a household replicator.

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.

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.

Dilithium mainly
- That's a good point. It can't be replicated, right? Who controls the dilithium controls the universe, the dilithium must flow.
- DIlithium just regulates the reaction the fuel used is deuterium and anti-deuterium for the warp core and antimatter power reactors

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