“Crazy way to travel – spreading a man’s molecules all over the universe.” — Dr. McCoy, Star Trek, the original series, “Obsession“
Dr. McCoy was always one of my favorite Star Trek characters. Among his many endearing quirks was a healthy skepticism of transporter technology. Being a doctor, he understood the complexity of the human body and all its constituent systems. Taking someone apart, molecule by molecule, and then reassembling them somewhere else is fraught with peril.
It’s not enough to get the skeleton and muscles right. You need the heart and lungs to be there, too, in the right places. You need the brain, down to every firing neuron and synapse. And it all has to rematerialize just so for the person to walk away from the experience. Otherwise, McCoy knew, you end up with a mass of vaguely humanoid Jell-O on the transporter room floor. Consequently, I’m certain that McCoy would have made a great DevOps manager...