I Ponder Learning Teleportation

I've recently been thinking about teaching myself teleportation, but I realize there are some pretty bad problems associated with it. Indeed, fatal problems.

For one, the spin of the earth. The earth spins at about 1000 miles an hour at the equator. Let's say I jumped from either pole to the equator.

I'd go from barely moving at all to going 1000 miles an hour! You know what would happen? I not only would be killed, I'd be nothing but a very long red streak that somebody would have to clean up!

Now if I was to jump from the equator to either pole, I'd appear at the pole and instantly be going 1000 miles an hour. I'd just shoot off into the air, and of course the g-force would squash my innards flat.

I could jump from either pole into space, and have no problem as long as my spacesuit went with me. But again, from the equator into space, and I'd materialize doing 1000 mph. The inertia would pancake me.

As best as I remember, the moon is doing about 60 miles a second, so I could jump from the earth to the trailing edge, and have no problem. But if I appeared on the leading edge, I'd hit at 60 miles a second.

Now that I think about it, I was conned by Star Trek. That damn transporter would not work at all, unless the Enterprise was in a geosynchronous orbit. Otherwise, splat.

Vernor Vinge wrote a novel in which he tried to overcome the problems with teleportation. He did a pretty good job but his characters could teleport maybe a mile and had to appear in a big pot of water to overcome landing with the earth spinning under you.

The first novel I read about teleportation was Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. He didn't even try to deal with the problems inherent in it. People were just zipping all over the place.

I don't even want to discuss the idea of being disintegrated and reconstituted by the transporter. That's just too horrible to even imagine.