binder%dosadi.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (08/14/84)
From: binder%dosadi.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (The Stainless Steel Rat) > From: hplabs!tektronix!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!eder @ Ucb-Vax.arpa > How about pursuing the idea that matter > transmission/duplication is possible, but very energy intensive. An > obvious figure is the energy content of the mass sent/copied, i.e. > E=mc^2. The US electrical generating capacity is something like 6 > grams/second. What cargo/product would justify that? This works > out to roughly $14,000 a gram. A five carat (one gram) diamond just > about is worth that much. Not much else is. Certain rare postage > stamps, a few radioactive isotopes. > Anyone have ideas on the consequences of this? The obvious conclusion that I'd draw from the theory that matter trnsmission/duplication is energy intensive is that the dissolution of the transmitted object at the transmitting end of the link would provide most, but clearly not ALL, of the energy required for transmission. Now this energy would obviously not be available at the receiving end, but a reasonable facsimile thereof would be, from the last object that was sent from there. If we limit the masses transmitted to the same amount, ie ome person plus some amount of ballast to make all the transactions workout roughly the same, then energy becomes a non-problem. Sure, there is a lot of it to cope with, released in very short order, but any society that has a matter transmitter will have solved the problems of handling huge amounts of energy. Perhaps storing it as some form of proto-matter, eg all loose quarks, to be drawn from as needed... Cheers, Dick Binder (The Stainless Steel Rat) UUCP: { decvax, allegra, ucbvax... }!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-dosadi!binder ARPA: binder%dosadi.DEC@decwrl.ARPA Posted Tuesday 14th August 1984, 08:40 EDT by DOSADI::BINDER