Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x01 "Kids These Days" & 1x02 "Beta Test"
ryper@lemmy.ca 1 day agoRe: limits of programmable matter:
On Discovery away teams wore programmable matter flashlight bracelets that could turn into a phaser, and I think even a phase rifle, but from these last couple of episodes it seems they can’t make a tricorder that turn into a medical tricorder.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 1 day ago
I really hope they get into this at some point, but my assumption is that the main limitation of programmable matter is that you have to, y’know, program it first, which takes time.
Also, I had no idea that programmable matter is an actual theoretical thing that scientist have been trying to crack for a few decades now!
In the case of the tricorder…I wonder if that’s the Doctor being old-fashioned, since we’ve also seen that tricom badges have tricorders built into them.
ryper@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
The away team braclets are programmed for at least a couple of different modes, and switching is pretty quick. I would think if they could use programmable matter to make a multi-mode tricoder, it would be standard.
At any rate, I assume they can’t program matter into dilithium, because that would have made recovering from the Burn a whole lot easier.