Teleportation 101

It occurred to me that in order to explain how I came about this time, I must first give you a brief lesson in the topic of teleportation. I'm not an engineer, but I will try to give you a basic understanding of the concept behind teleportation and its technical limitations. Let us call this Teleportation 101.

In my time, one can travel instantaneously from one part of a planet to another by way of machines that convert physical objects and beings into more easily and more quickly transportable energy (the body is not destroyed, only converted) which is then reconstituted in its original form at the other end. This general concept is surprisingly well grasped by your science fiction, though it will take centuries to become reality. I suppose it usually is that way. Imagination must come before creation and hope before fact.

Anyway, in spite of the incredible practicality and convenience of teleportation, world-wide teleportation requires a massive grid, which is usually orbital, but can be ground or air-based as well. Simply put, teleportation stations (depending on their power ratings) must be placed within a limited range of each other, or else risk the energies in transit losing cohesion before reconstitution, which would be a very bad thing.

Since world-wide teleportation is accomplished via an orbital grid (on Earth and on many other worlds), this makes most ground stations unnecessary and a wider area can be covered by (in this case, orbiting) stations. However, considerable resources are necessary to put such a system in place, and even more are necessary to maintain it. Perhaps more than most technologies, teleportation is under greater scrutiny and in need of constant maintenance due to the nature of the consequences were it to fail, even though they are built with lots of redundancy and have a multitude of security protocols built-in.

The core of the matter is that teleportation always requires at least one transmitting station and one receiving station, both within a limited range of each other. Portable teleporters, for example, must rely on either a larger grid system or on another teleporter station within range. There are "tricks" around this, but they are rather impractical, consume a lot of power and are hobbled by other limitations. Portable teleporters are also more susceptible to interference, atmospheric conditions and terrain.

In the case of orbital grids, the stations are orbiting, obviously. Although there may be no visible transmitting or receiving station on the ground, the orbiting stations are receiving and transmitting via teleporter beams (which contain the energies in transit, along with essential data) sent to the ground. Scanning and conversion are handled by a beam on one end and reconstitution by a beam at the other end.

The range for orbital grids are much better because they can be combined with various orbital stations and the transceiver beams suffer from very little dissipation compared to beams sent via ground stations to other ground stations on the surface. Orbital grids are often linked with ground stations in areas where it is difficult or impossible for the orbital stations to penetrate.

Because of this, world-to-world teleportation in not possible, though it is possible to teleport to bodies in nearby orbit, provided a properly aligned orbital grid is in place. This may include orbiting space stations and other artificial satellites. It is not possible, for example, to teleport from the Earth to the moon. In theory, it is possible, provided a series of stations between the Earth and the moon were in place, but it is wholly impractical and probably not the safest method of transport. Instead, we use space vessels to move around from one world to another.

And thus we end our brief lesson in teleportation. Teleportation is of immense use in my time but, as we have seen, it does have its limitations.

Next week, I will introduce you to some of my colleagues and friends from my time and tell you a little bit more about what I do and where I do it. I promise you this is all leading up to how I got here. I just need to give you a little background first. I suppose it is just my nature (as a writer and teacher) to do so.

News Update #1

As you may have noticed if you visited last week, I've tweaked the blog a bit and changed some things around. I've also got a new post for you. Whether you were here last week or you just stumbled on here, I solicit your comments and feedback. Let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Augury432