From: ralivingston1952@charter.net   
      
   On Saturday, April 6, 2019 at 2:31:53 AM UTC-5, Sylvia Else wrote:   
   > On 6/04/2019 4:06 am, J.B. Wood wrote:   
   >> Hello, all.  I'd like to consider the following scenario/thought experiment:   
   >>   
   >> 1.  A human-crewed spacecraft of the future comes upon and assumes orbit   
   >> around an earth-sized, "goldilocks zone" planet.   
   >>   
   >> 2.  Neglecting Heisenberg issues for the moment, the spacecraft has an   
   >> onboard Star Trek-like transporter.  An exploration team is beamed down   
   >> to the surface and the amount of energy required by the transporter to   
   >> accomplish this is recorded as "E-Down".   
   >>   
   >> 3.  The team finishes their work, is beamed back up to the spacecraft   
   >> (team only, no alien planet artifacts or other additional mass) and   
   >> again the energy required by the transporter for this action is noted as   
   >> "E-Up".   
   >>   
   >> 4.  I submit that E-up would be greater than E-down since the   
   >> transporter is beaming within the planet's gravitational field.  Your   
   >> time and comment is appreciated.  Sincerely,   
   >>   
   >   
   > This really depends how the transporter works, and which laws of physics   
   > one chooses to ignore.   
   >   
   > One could hypothesise a transporter that works by dismantling the   
   > thing/person to be transported where they currently are, and using atoms   
   > available at the destination to construct a duplicate. With such a   
   > system, there is no net transfer of matter from the ground to   
   > spacecraft, or vice versa, so no reason for the energy requirements to   
   > differ. Indeed, there's no obvious energy requirement - just an entropy   
   > consideration.   
   >   
   > Sylvia.   
      
   Even if the matter is transported from spaceship to ground and back   
   again, there will be an increase in energy going down (due to   
   gravitational potential) and a decrease coming back up.  If the   
   transporter mechanism does not absorb this extra energy somehow the   
   matter assembled on the surface would either be moving with kinetic   
   energy or very hot with thermal energy.  Neither would be good for   
   living organisms!  When transporting on the way back up the transporter   
   will need to add that gravitational energy back.  So the energy down is   
   actually less than the energy up.   
      
   Rich L.   
      
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