star trek - Why don't they just replicate ships instead of build them?

In Star Trek, it seems like they take forever to build ships. It takes months, if not years to make them. So why not just build gigantic replicators in space, then replicate the ship (excepting non-replicatable objects like the warp core)? This would presumably come with a huge energy cost, but would save massive amounts of time.

Answer

With regards whole ship replication, there are notes in the Next Generation Technical Manual. It states that replication of an entire ship would take too many resources/too much energy. The behind-screen notes say this is for dramatic effect as the viewer would care too little for the fate of the ship if they can just replicate a new one in minutes.

From Construction Chronology (P17):

Given the existence of matter replication devices (like the show's "food replicator" terminals), a very logical question is: "Why can't they just replicate entire starships?" The real reason is that such an ability would allow us to create entire fleets of starships at the touch of a button. This might be great for Federation defense and science programs, but makes for poor drama. For this reason, starship construction facilities (seen at Utopia Planitia in "Booby Trap" and Earth Station McKinley "Family") have been depicted as construction platforms rather than large replicators. We assume that replication is practical for relatively small items, but that energy costs would be prohibitive for routine replication of larger objects. (Jon Singer points out that if you could make a starship at the push of a button, you wouldn't need to....)

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In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

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Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

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