We still might be able to beam Wesley into empty space

Boing Boing has a story about an Air Force study of teleportation.

(How did the Air Force get designated as the branch of the service that investigates all the weird scifi things? UFOs, this, stargates, etc...)

I say zowie! Since the tech is so similar, it's only a matter of time before we have holodecks! Computer, run program Ken-1, Lusty Space Bimbos of Venus!

(Ken-1 is one of those annoying inside jokes that only, well, insiders understand.)

There are clues in the story, however, that we shouldn't really be rushing out anytime soon to buy stock in Teleport Inc., (A Microsoft Company).

First, there is the obligatory journalism-major itch to add authenticity to the story by stapling a PhD in Astrophysics to it. I've known some PhDs in Astrophysics, having once been on the way to being one myself, and trust me, any of this species willing to be quoted as an authority on teleportation is not someone who should be allowed outside the house without an ankle bracelet.

And indeed my fears were realized only a couple sentences later:

(Not mentioned in the SF Chronicle article is that Davis apparently has also been affiliated with the National Institute for Discovery Science, a private research organization that studies "aerial phenomena, animal mutilations, and other related anomalous phenomena.")

Teleportation sounds like it might be just around the corner, Tomorrow's Technology Today, and all that, but for a few minor problems:

On one hand, he concluded that "Star Trek"-style teleportation faces enormous obstacles, partly because it would require the development of extraordinarily high-speed computers and would consume mind-boggling amounts of energy. Also, it would encounter all kinds of physics headaches generated by the principles of quantum physics...

Ok, well, besides that, it just might work.

Then, there is the promising research conducted by Chinese geeky kids. Oops, make that allegedly conducted. Allegedly, my dog can fly while singing the entire Gilbert and Sullivan oeuvre.

Also, there is the item that the Air Force dropped only $25k on this little study. To the US government, 25 grand is something you light up to get the grill going. This is not serious money. (Let's not ask why the Air Force is even spending that much.)

In the end, though, I'm like Dr. McCoy. You can throw all the traversable wormhole metric tensors and Minkowski spaces at me you like. I just don't trust that I would be reassembled on the other side in exactly the same way.

How could you ever possibly break all those bonds between electrons and molecules in the body, and get them put back together just as they were? Who knows what would get scrambled in the brain, and what that would do to memories.

I'd probably end up thinking a can of sweet peas was my mother.