What type of "Future" weapon or Equipment would you like to see used in real life?

The thing that always got me about star trek is the lack of enlisted people on the ships. I've never seen anyone lower than an ensign on the shows, and don't say Chief O'Brien. You know damn well that Engineering Officer LaForge isn't going to crawl in the Jeffery's tubes to clean anything. He is going to pass it down to maintenance control who will write a MAF that the Jeffery's tube "smells funny." Maintenance control will pass it down to the jeffery's tube shop where Chief Jeffery's Tube Mate will have Jeffry's Tube Mate 3rd class and spaceman Schmucatelli go find out who dropped a dead tribble in there. The Galactic Empire just seems like a more realistic organization to me especially with all of its flaws, incompetence, and corruption.

I agree. The crewman aboard the star ships are the COMPLETELY unsung heroes of the star trek universe. You'll see them now and again, though. I recall an episode of DS9 where Captain Sisko takes over an infantry unit protecting some sciency-mcguffin. There's an officer in charge, but what's left of the unit is mostly security personnel, presumably enlisted. A pretty good episode, if I recall.

It did always seem odd that the engineering personnel working UNDER the chief were often officers.

Its like it would have killed Roddenberry to pick up a bluejackets manual and learn the rank structure of the organization that he's basing his IP on...

Also, I could never watch ds9, it was a space barnacle.

It has its moments. When they focus on the war, it's great. The plots. The intrigue. The battles. I wish they battles were better explained instead of being used as plot devices themselves.

But there are some great episodes. One of the better dramatic episodes that always comes to mind is "In the Pale Moonlight. Season 6 ep. 19.

It would still be worth it...

You have a point, my last trip to Iraq put me on a plane for nearly 20 hours one way. Probably the most miserable part of the deployment. The small loss for the mileage wouldn't be to bad of a sacrifice. With the teleporter you might even be able to go home every night even while deployed.

And avoid places like SFO where you are likely to miss your connecting flight or be delayed. But then no excuse for reporting late either....

I call dibs on blue and red combo.