Star Trek

In the episode Breaking The Ice of season 1, at the beginning of the show Trip is showing pictures from his nephews(?)4th grade class that they just recieved. However the pictures appeard to be hand drawn(crayon) and not reproduced(like a computer printed image).

How exaactly did they send those drawings to the ship?

Perhaps they have special torpedos or probes that can travel at warp speeds and are used as mail carriers.

Starfleet also has a warp 3 capable fleet at that time.  Perhaps Enterprise rendevoused with that ship.  22nd century starfleet had no concept of replicators.  All their food had to be stored, grown, or delivered.  Makes sense a supply ship arrived before Enterprise got too far out.

It's hard to tell whether they were the real drawings or computer printouts. They looked pretty real, but maybe by 2151 we've just improved photocopying technology.

Several years ago, copy machines were so good they could duplicate money, you just needed the white denim for the paper. Just better scanners.

^ Yeah what they said. Scanner technology is already a squillion times better now than it used to be. And Enterprise is 200 years later. Trip simply has very good copies.

Fed-ex?

They may have something that is a few steps up from current printing technologies that gets the digital transmissions.  Digital color printers, as already mentioned, could duplicate money.  They actually got so good that now the manufacturers have to install special components and software to recognize money for the photocopy mode to block it.  Given what I know of FedEx...  I wouldn't count on it.

Actually, there is something else I noticed about those pictures.  Tucker said the were from his nephew's class.  Later in the episode, Archer addressed a class from a school in Ireland.  It is unclear i the were the same class.  I don't recall any mention of Trip having a brother, but it would seem he had at least 2 sisters.  When Trip mumbled that maybe she was away when the Xindi attacked, Archer asked "older or younger?" to find out who he meant.  I wonder if one of Trip's sisters lived in Ireland.

I assume that 22nd century photocopying is simply very good. I recently read an article about 3-d printing. If the drawings were really crayon, I suppose it could have been some application of this.