Radiation blocking transporters?

[Roondar]

Well, this does happen - but it seems that at least gamma rays and whatever else you get from 'leaking plasma' can't block the transporter completely.

Witness this bit from Voyager and remeber it well the next time some random person claims that any form and level of radiation will provide you with a shield against Federation transporter capability:


Source: Warlord, season three
TUVOK: Captain, sensor readings indicate that radiation inside the alien vessel is rising to toxic levels. The lifesigns of the passengers are growing weaker.
TORRES: Their warp core is heavily damaged. It's leaking drive plasma and gamma radiation. It could breach any time.
CHAKOTAY: Can we beam the passengers out through all that radiation?
KIM: Not from here. We'd have to get within five thousand kilometres.
TUVOK: At that range, we'll be at risk if their engine core explodes.
JANEWAY: Lieutenant, take us into range.
PARIS: Aye Captain. Closing to within five thousand kilometres.
KIM: Diverting warp power to the targeting scanners, trying to get a pattern lock. There's still too much interference.
JANEWAY: A little closer, Tom.
TORRES: Captain, I'm reading an energy buildup in the reaction chamber.
JANEWAY: Mister Kim.
KIM: I've got a lock. Initiating transport.
TORRES: They're losing anti-matter containment.
JANEWAY: Shields up, move us away.
PARIS: Aye Captain.
TUVOK: Major systems are undamaged.
KIM: I've got them, Captain. All three passengers are in sickbay.
JANEWAY: I'm impressed.


Keep in mind that this dose of gamma rays was enough to cause injuries to two people and outright kill at least one other, all at an unknown distance from the source (but, considering who they where they where most likely on the starships bridge and hence 'far away' from the source).

Most interestingly, it seems that the system itself will work anyway and that the scanners are the limiting factor (i.e. you can probably beam someone over even with rediculous levels of interference but you might just get a bit of the person and a bit of the wall he was close too instead of one whole being. Yucky but true ;)).

So, high intensity gamma rays (high enough to cause burns and the like) are not by themselves enough to completely block transports, though they do reduce the operative range to a few thousand kilometers instead of the more usual 40,000 odd KMs.

--

On a side note, a funny thing in this episode was that their visitors ended up escaping Voyager by...


KIM: There's a transport in progress.
CHAKOTAY: Block it!
KIM: I'm locked out. Commander, it's one of the shuttlecraft. Someone is beaming it into space.


Beaming out a shuttle :)

[Mike DiCenso]

In TNG's "The Ensigns of Command", we learn that radiation can disrupt transporter operation, but it is a fictional technobabble one:


WORF: Impossible to get an accurate reading. High levels of radiation are disrupting our sensors.

DATA: Hyperonic radiation also interferes with ship's transporters. They are now inoperable.

WORF: So are the ship's phasers.

So the radiation cannot just be any ordinary kind.

In "The Defector", the radiation and other interference on a planet made transport impossible, except for brief "window" time periods because the sensors could not get accurate readings.
-Mike

[Ted C]

What about the solar radiation in TNG "Symbiosis". It was messing with multiple systems, including the transporters. They were able to perform transports -- with great difficulty -- by bridging the transporter systems on separate ships, but they still lost people in the process. Granted, there was an unusual level of solar radiation, but there were still two inhabitable planets in the system, and there was no indication of the radiation being unusual in anything but its intensity.

[Roondar]

That's easy enough - Voyager just has better transporters (newer tech) than the E-D had.

This fits your example perfectly - in TNG they could only do it with the greatest amount of effort and still managed to lose people, by the time of Voyager they upgraded the transporters (as we can see, they even have new visuals) and now the problems for beaming through radiation are less pronounced (i.e. they just reduce operative range instead of making it downright impossible).

[Ted C]

That's easy enough - Voyager just has better transporters (newer tech) than the E-D had.

This fits your example perfectly - in TNG they could only do it with the greatest amount of effort and still managed to lose people, by the time of Voyager they upgraded the transporters (as we can see, they even have new visuals) and now the problems for beaming through radiation are less pronounced (i.e. they just reduce operative range instead of making it downright impossible).

I'm not sure I see that in the example. Again, they barely managed to pull off a difficult transport and only by taking exceptional measures, such as diverting warp power to the targeting scanner.

I would hardly call this a global refutation of the "radiation interferes with transporter function" argument.

[Mike DiCenso]

What about the solar radiation in TNG "Symbiosis". It was messing with multiple systems, including the transporters. They were able to perform transports -- with great difficulty -- by bridging the transporter systems on separate ships, but they still lost people in the process. Granted, there was an unusual level of solar radiation, but there were still two inhabitable planets in the system, and there was no indication of the radiation being unusual in anything but its intensity.

Actually:

WESLEY: Unusual E-M burst, sir. Readings off scale

That has to be a really freaking impressive burst of EM radiation for it to be "off scale" to them. Again, an extremely highly unsual situation. Also of note in that episode, the reason people were lost is not precisesly because of the transporter malfunctioning, it was because people stayed behind deliberately so that the felicium drug could be transported. The people who stayed behind died because the ship broke up not long after and before a second transporter lock could be reestablished.
-Mike

[Roondar]

That's easy enough - Voyager just has better transporters (newer tech) than the E-D had.

This fits your example perfectly - in TNG they could only do it with the greatest amount of effort and still managed to lose people, by the time of Voyager they upgraded the transporters (as we can see, they even have new visuals) and now the problems for beaming through radiation are less pronounced (i.e. they just reduce operative range instead of making it downright impossible).

I'm not sure I see that in the example. Again, they barely managed to pull off a difficult transport and only by taking exceptional measures, such as diverting warp power to the targeting scanner.

I would hardly call this a global refutation of the "radiation interferes with transporter function" argument.

They beamed three people up through gamma rays strong enough to kill.

According to everybody on the non-ST side of the fence in debates this is not at all possible because even the tiniest bit of radiation will block all transports (in their view). I've proved that wrong rather well.

Besides, I didn't say it was easy, I said it was easier. Going from jumping through all kinds of hoops and almost rebuilding the entire system to merely putting some more power into the system to get it to work is a major improvement.

Nor is this the first time that Voyager beams through radiation even though it supposedly blocks transports - there is also the episode in which they beam those people in stasis tubes up through three KM of rock and heavy radiation.

It seems to me that Voyagers transporters deal a lot better with radiation and the like than the older ones.

Oh and one last thing:

One working example of something said to be impossible damn well refutes the notion of it being impossible.