The fictional technology in Star Trek has borrowed many ideas from the scientific world. Episodes often contain technologies named after or inspired by real-world scientific concepts, such as tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum slipstream drives, and photon torpedoes. Some of the technologies created for the Star Trek universe were done so out of financial necessity. For instance, the transporter was created because the limited budget of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) in the 1960s did not allow expensive shots of spaceships landing on planets.Discovery Channel Magazine stated that cloaking devices, faster-than-light travel, and dematerialized transport were only dreams at the time TOS was made, but physicist Michio Kaku believes all these things are possible. William Shatner, who portrayed James T. Kirk in TOS, believes this as well, and went on to co-write the book I'm Working on That, in which he investigates how Star Trek technology is becoming feasible. Source: Wikipedia (en)