I believe that they did, as Scotty and the crew needed materials, but they did not have any money so they had to barter technology to get what they needed, and transparent aluminum was the most "whiz-bang", jaw-dropping technology that Scotty could quickly whip up to dazzle the materials out of the 20th century factory.
Though, looking at the script, Scotty mentions transparent aluminum before that, and seemingly becomes fixated upon it. Without rewatching the film, does Scotty actually use transparent aluminum on the ship?
When Scotty shows the technology to the 20th century factory owner, he says it will take him years to figure out the "matrix" that Scotty has demonstrated, and the guy says that 20th century polymers could make the aquarium easy-peasy, the only caveat is that the walls would have to be 6" thick, instead of 1".
but they did not have any money
Why didn't they just piss away the future of the Federation by getting in debt to the space-jews aka Ferengi.
I wonder why they couldn't have just cruised over to an asteroid and beamed aboard some gold, or just beamed unmined gold out of the Earth.
Also, I was a bit confused as to why Kirk and crew were treating money as an "alien" idea as they had money in TOS, including a drawn-out haggling scene involving Uhura & Chekov in The Trouble with Tribbles , and Bones had just been using money in Star Trek III.
(STIII being a better film than the yugely overrated Star Trek IV: Save the Whales)
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