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According to this question and its accepted answer: Would Star Trek holodecks physically affect you once you exit the Holodeck? it is possible to remove matter from holodeck and it will remain stable, when using a mobile emitter.

Could Starfleet create ships with a huge battery and a mobile emitter as a core and generate the ship around it?

  • They would be more modular
  • Ships would be cheaper (many ships contain a holodeck)

The crew would die instantly when the ship ran out of energy. But in a normal ship they wouldn't live very long without communication, fresh air and water.

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Motte001
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    I suspect that a holographic warp core won't work. Perhaps you could use a mobile emitter for other parts of the ship though. – Molag Bal May 24 '16 at 22:19
  • @anaranjada what things can not be created in a holodeck? – Motte001 May 24 '16 at 22:20
  • IIRC, the mobile emitter was somehow retrieved from the future and they don't have the technolgy to replicate or create duplicates. – RedCaio May 24 '16 at 22:21
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    As soon as the power went out, all of your crew would die. Instantly. – Valorum May 24 '16 at 22:24
  • @Valorum see my edit – Motte001 May 24 '16 at 22:29
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    Because the holoemitter would inevitably malfunction; and the federation would have to deal with a starship sized image of Moriarty's head hurtling through space cackling and launching torpedos from it's eyes...probably – VapedCrusader May 24 '16 at 23:51
  • I would assume it's the same reason they can't just use a giant replicator to make a space ship. – coteyr May 25 '16 at 09:34
  • i can see a tie-up between Star Trek and Red Dwarf already.... – gbjbaanb May 25 '16 at 10:06
  • I've often wondered about a rather less ambitious version. Leave the Hull and safety systems as normal. All chairs, tables & furnishings and many of the none critical displays and controls could be generated holographically. – Jaydee May 25 '16 at 10:57
  • @Jaydee - Interestingly, one of the original ideas for the Enterprise-D was that each set of quarters would have a large hologram wall that would change regularly. Unfortunately, it was deemed too expensive by the studio. – Valorum May 25 '16 at 19:36
  • @Valorum can you give us a source? – Motte001 May 26 '16 at 07:49
  • @Motte001 - One of the making-of documentaries on the DVD extras if I recall correctly. They were talking about why they flipped Ten Forward upside down (e.g. so they could reuse it as quarters for episodes where family rooms were going to be shown) and it was mentioned in passing. I believe they said something about the wall having different 'scapes on it. – Valorum May 26 '16 at 11:20
  • @Valorum seems like i have to watch the extras some day – Motte001 May 26 '16 at 12:05
  • @Motte001 - I'd recommend the DVD extras. They were quite interesting if you're interested in what goes on behind the cameras in terms of set dressing, wardrobe, etc. If you want to get more info about the technology/plotting, I'd suggest the Encyclopedia and the TNG Technical Manual instead. – Valorum May 26 '16 at 12:07

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Off the top of my head, I can see a number of technical difficulties;

Disruptions to power

Spaceships in the Star Trek universe (even those not engaged in exploration) seem to regularly encounter fields and anomalies that can disrupt power systems. On a normal ship, this is already quite serious but with a holo-ship it would be instantly fatal to the crew.

Holo-warp core

At a minimum the warp core would need to be made of both matter and anti-matter to generate sufficient power to operate a warp system. A hologramatic warp drive would also be a real technological sticking point, as would life-support, transporters, waste-control, replicators and weapons, all of which are (probably) not capable of working correctly if they're not actually real.

Mobile emitters don't exist (yet)

Voyager has access to an external holo-emitter (used by the EMH), but only because they encountered a time traveler with a piece of tech from some 400 years into the future. In order to proceed with your holoship plan, you'd first need to replicate, backwards-engineer and massively upscale this technology.

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Valorum
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    Build a giant holodeck, make a holographic ship inside, and have the holoship push on the walls of the holodeck to travel. Hmm, that seems like a bad idea somehow... – Molag Bal May 24 '16 at 22:46
  • Well that doesn't make a warp drive and making a ship out of force fields and replicated material or arranged photons would make the matter/antimatter containment a nightmare. – IG_42 May 24 '16 at 22:50
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    Wait, upscale the mobile emitter, make it emit more mobile emitters, and build a holocivilization with holopeople. There, now you've joined the ranks of energy-based species and have no need for silly physical objects or bodies. – Molag Bal May 24 '16 at 22:51
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    @anaranjada - It's been tried. It didn't work. Sooner or later you need someone to push the buttons and re-align the doohickeys – Valorum May 24 '16 at 22:53
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    Things are not capable of working if they aren't real? Drat, foiled again. – user253751 May 25 '16 at 05:20
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Gonna be a short answer, cause we really don't get a full in universe answer.

I would assume that it wouldn't work for the same reasons that they can't just use a giant replicator to plop out new ships. We are never really told why, but we are given hints like "the structure is too complicated", "the material is too complicated" etc etc.

There are parts of the ship that can be replicated, but there are many parts that, for some unknown reason can not. That's why dilithium and trilithium are still mined, and I would assume gold and latnum are also not replicatable (else why would they be used as currency).

I'd imagine that these same restrictions apply to holographics as it's explained many times as "just like the transporter or replicator" with a mix of "force fields and photons" mixed it when convenient.

All that said, I think there was a TNG episode where the antagonist's ship was mostly holographic, but I can't seem to find it, so it may be all in my head.

coteyr
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  • Gold is replicable, it's just used to contain latinum (because it does a better job than one of Morn's stomachs). It's the latinum that is not replicable. – T.J.L. May 25 '16 at 12:41
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It's an interesting idea...

In the movie Insurrection, we see:

A Federation Holoship, planted on Baku as part of a conspiracy to remove the residents from the planet without their knowledge. This ship is effectively a flying holodeck, capable of rendering an exact copy of the Village and surrounding area despite being much smaller on the outside, much like the other holodecks we have seen.

We therefore can surmise that it would be possible to create a starship along similar lines, with the crew quarters, bridge, recreation rooms etc all holographic and the actual essential systems not creatable holographically being serviceable by crew leaving the holodeck when necessary. This would, as the OP said, allow ships to have a much smaller physical area and resource cost. Whether this would be practical to use in a battle setting or worth the additional problems it could cause, I'm not so sure on.

sequoiad
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    Note that this isn't a ship made of holo-matter, it's a ship with a large internal holodeck and all of the flight-essential systems (engines, warp core, life support, etc) hidden away from the passengers. – Valorum May 31 '16 at 11:00
  • True. As your answer above said, I dont think it would be possible/feasible to build a ship where the outer hull, systems etc would be holographic. However, I was wondering myself about the feasability of a small, cheap(ish) mass-producable ship with either a much greater carrying capacity than its area would suggest, or one that could even be crewed holographically for long-term exploration missions... that would be kind of cool :) – sequoiad May 31 '16 at 11:11