Commentary: Can you replicate a spacesuit?

[TheRedFear]

Early references to gold, should, in my opinion, be read as Gold Pressed Latinum.

I think Trek writers did some retconning at some point.

Another way to look at it, is early references to finding Gold valuable were something of a misunderstanding. Like when i ask for a Dollar, rather than a One Dollar Bill. Early on, the ferengi couldn't conceive of anybody finding mere Gold valuable, so they just assumed whenever they saw Gold, that it must have latinum inside it. So rather than ask for Gold Pressed Latinum(A mouthful) they just asked for Gold. After a while they realized they needed to be more specific.

Another possibility(and my preferred one) is errors in the Universal Translator(which incidently also explains why early Ferengi speech always seemed so primitive and caveman-like). The UT was mistakenly translating Gold pressed Latinum requests as Gold. Over time, and more dealings with the Ferengi, the UT finally got the hang of processing their language more coherently

These are jsut my personal thoughts on the matter, and how I reconcile the inconsistancies for the sake of my own enjoyment.

[The Elder Dwoof]

Example: A First Lt's rank insignia in the army is made of gold, to signify how valuable a new officer is considered to be. Once they are promoted to 2nd Lt, the insignias change to silver.

You've got it the wrong way around. A US 2 Lt's rank pips are gold, a First Lt's are silver. And you go from 2 Lt to 1 Lt, not the other way around.

Ah...well I knew that whichever one you became first got the gold one...been some 20 years since I tried to get into the National Guard through ROTC...