Why are Federation Starships such death traps?

[The Laughing Vulcan]

, a current stronger than 30,000 volts will just jump right across the gap.)

Current is measured in amperes
Potential is measured in volts
resistance in Ohms
Capacitance in Farads
Power in Watts...

Thank you, I have a physics degree. I was being imprecise for brevity.

I too have a physics degree...

That wasn't imprecision, that would be getting the error bars wrong. That was just plain wrong. Amps instead of volts, or in this case Potential instead of current (as we know that lightning is high voltage low current) is only a matter of a few extra characters to type. Saving a few milliseconds doesn't make that much difference.

I'm sure you would understand the importance of being accurate in your choice of words, especially when it comes to science.

Although it's not as big a flub as Geordi quoting a temperature below absolute zero in The Royale

 

[Christopher]

^^Ohh, get over it already. You're applying the wrong standards of precision, because all that matters is whether I got the basic point across in words. I wasn't trying to solve an equation. And I knew going in that I was expressing myself imprecisely, and I made a conscious choice to let it slide because I couldn't think of a concise enough way to phrase the technically accurate description and because I knew it wouldn't matter. So I don't need you to explain anything to me.

Being informed enough to lecture incessantly about the rules is a step or two below being informed enough to know when it doesn't matter.

 

[Huntingdon]

^Rather hypocritical since you've been doing the exact same thing in the particle thread in Trek Tech

 

[Christopher]

If you think it's exactly the same, I suggest you review both threads more carefully.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

^^Ohh, get over it already. You're applying the wrong standards of precision, because all that matters is whether I got the basic point across in words. I wasn't trying to solve an equation. And I knew going in that I was expressing myself imprecisely, and I made a conscious choice to let it slide because I couldn't think of a concise enough way to phrase the technically accurate description and because I knew it wouldn't matter. So I don't need you to explain anything to me.

Being informed enough to lecture incessantly about the rules is a step or two below being informed enough to know when it doesn't matter.

That's rich coming from Mr Pedant! Considering the verbal exactitude you expect from any criticism in the Trek Lit forum, pointing out each and every minor niggle...

The difference between Potential and Current isn't a matter of technical accuracy, it basic fundamental principles of electromagnetism. If you can't be precise in something as simple as that, how do you expect to educate the next generation. I come from a family of teachers and even if it is second hand smoke, education is important to me, especially in a culture where science is losing ground in schools. Next thing you'll be mixing up mass and weight.

And if you're proud of that physics degree, then you should know that it always matters. Especially on a Sci-fi forum!

 

[cardinal biggles]

Jesus H. titty-fucking Christ, guys, give it a rest!

I guess it reflects poorly on my education in America's public schools, but I wouldn't know the difference between ohms and farads, nor do I particularly care in this case. This isn't the Sci-Tech (or even the Trek Tech) forum, so as long as Christopher got his point across, his mission was accomplished. If we want to turn this into Mr. Wizard's World, let me know and I'll boot the thread to the appropriate forum.

Now about those big plastic rocks in the bulkheads...

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

It doesn't interest you that a sci-fi author, someone who gets paid to be a wordsmith, for whom correct word choice keeps the fridge topped up, makes a basic error about science...


Well, each to their own. Yeah, plastic rocks and shit. Whatever.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

The Laughing Vulcan, will you please calm down about this? This isn't the forum to worry about it.

 

[cardinal biggles]

It doesn't interest you that a sci-fi author, someone who gets paid to be a wordsmith, for whom correct word choice keeps the fridge topped up, makes a basic error about science...

If this was one of Christopher's novels — for which he'd been paid money by Pocket Books, with the expectation it would be competently written — and he'd gotten such details wrong, yes, it would concern me. In the Trek Movies forum, discussing "plastic rocks and shit," it doesn't bother me that much.

To each their own, indeed.

 

[shatastrophic]

I liked that The Laughing Vulcan used the term "wordsmith"!

 

[Timo]

Speaking of nitpicking:

- The E-D back stations do have seats - they roll out from under the consoles. It's just the Tactical/Security railing that doesn't have provisions for giving your feet a rest. Remember that when Data is using the aft science consoles, he's more often seated than not.

- It's a bit misleading to think of seat belts as a backup system for the inertial dampers. If the dampers fail, the seat belts would be of zero help - you'd die with or without them. (Although having the belts would probably make the death even more certain as you couldn't exploit even the .00000001% chance that the dampers come back online while you are free-flying through the air. That is, with the belts on, you'd be crushed to pulp against them milliseconds faster than you'd be crushed to pulp against the opposite wall.) The seat belts would be something you use only in conjunction with the dampers. Both would have to work perfectly to protect you, but while the dampers could theoretically be backup to the belts in the ideal case, the opposite would not be true.

-I'd side with Christopher on the "current measured in volts" issue. After all, it would be semantically valid to speak generically of "electric current" that has a number of physical properties: voltage (V), current (A), resistance (Ohm), inductance (H) and so forth, describing the entire phenomenon of the passage of electric charge through a conducting medium. It is actually conceptually futile to think of the phenomenon of current as not having an associated voltage: amperes are an abstraction that has little physical meaning unless in the context of the phenomenon that then ties those other qualities to the current.

It is standard physical parlance in many contexts to describe a phenomenon by units that a high school teacher (or classroom smartass) might balk at. Typically, the underlying fact is that some properties are assumed constant or irrelevant, making one or more of their component properties the actual issue of interest; say, discussing weight in terms of kilograms is usually valid because of the known nature of the physical setup where the thing exerting the force is good old Earth with its known mass and freefall-acceleration-at-sea-level and so forth.

In this case, we have a current moving across a circuit breaker, and the only variable of interest is the potential difference driving the current. It's a current with the important property of being driven by 30 kilovolts, and never mind the amperes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kryton]

As a famous Vulcan once said, "Federation Vessels: Unsafe at Any Warp".

 

[Timo]

...As regards the ergonomy of the consoles, didn't Franz Joseph go to quite a bit of an effort to portray the TOS ones as ideally configured? That is, he drew a profile view with all the surfaces supposedly "ideally angled" for reach by the limbs of a "standard person" and all.

Perhaps future physicians have simply decided that wrist support is bad for the hands, and that the positioning favored by the Trek consoles is the ergonomically ideal one? Certainly it would be futile to insist that today's physicians have it down pat, as the recommendations change basically every year.

(One of the fancier developments today is the way they have decided to seat the USAF drone pilots, for missions that may take several days at an end. For an eight-hour shift at the sticks, flying a drone that may be halfway across the globe, the pilot is actually standing upright, with a small saddle for him or her to briefly rest the poor legs. So perhaps there's something to Worf's workstation ergonomics, too?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timewalker]

Maybe having proper wrist support would make the officer so comfortable he/she might fall asleep on duty. Can't let that happen.

Personally, I would bring my own portable seatbelt to clip onto my chair -- and if anybody complained, I would swear that it was a religious requirement of my culture.

(seatbelts are legally mandatory where I live, when one is in any vehicle other than a bus or train, so I wouldn't consider for a moment not wearing one)

 

[Solariabsg25]

Maybe having proper wrist support would make the officer so comfortable he/she might fall asleep on duty. Can't let that happen.

Personally, I would bring my own portable seatbelt to clip onto my chair -- and if anybody complained, I would swear that it was a religious requirement of my culture.

(seatbelts are legally mandatory where I live, when one is in any vehicle other than a bus or train, so I wouldn't consider for a moment not wearing one)

I keep on thinking of those two guys on the Death Star in Family Guy's Blue Harvest.

"All I want is a railing, right here!"

The problem is, it's a visual thing, like how despite phasers and photon torpedoes having ranges of hundreds of thousands of kilometres, they only seem to ever fire at targets within a few hundred metres.

Nothing says "We're being hit!!" like exploding consoles and stuntmen and pieces of bridge-walling flying through the air.

 

[Plecostomus]

A thought.

Surge suppressors work by converting overcurrent into another form of energy: Heat. Get a big enough surge and you melt the suppressor.

What we're seeing is NOT the console overloading and exploding from a "normal" "design basis" power-surge but from the safety systems failing in a catastrophic way from a power-surge they weren't designed to handle. Engineers look at the situations the ship might encounter and say "Ok we are not going to run into anything over 250 megawatts on a regular basis so that's the size suppressor we will use." After awhile and enough complaints they might up that in the next design.

Remember, the entire ship is surrounded by vacuum there is no where for all this energy to disperse to, it either has to be converted into heat or dumped to subspace and either conversion takes a few units of time. Enough time for things to fail and people to get hurt.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

...As regards the ergonomy of the consoles, didn't Franz Joseph go to quite a bit of an effort to portray the TOS ones as ideally configured? That is, he drew a profile view with all the surfaces supposedly "ideally angled" for reach by the limbs of a "standard person" and all.

According to The Art of Star Trek by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, it was all Jefferies' approach to ergonomics that resulted in the angled consoles of the original Enterprise bridge stations.

From pg.7

Jefferies' practical engineer's approach to design also helped define another key element of STAR TREK [sic] design-- the bridge. Pato Guzman had given it its circular shape, central viewscreen, and two-level construction. Jefferies came up with the design of the workstations and control layouts by the simple means of sitting on a chair by a blank wall, holding out his arms in comfortable positions, and having his brother mark the resulting angles on the wall.

All the control-surface and display-screen angles on the bridge were established in this matter-of-fact manner, based on Jefferies' less-than-favorable view of most military vehicle design.

"If you've spent any time around ships or aircraft, then you know that every time a new piece of equipment comes out, you're going to bump your head on it," Jefferies says. "You've got to duck here and duck there, and if a piece of equipment goes out, then whoever's working on it has got to get out of the way and shut the thing down while they either fix it or replace it. I felt this was kind of stupid, and asked, why don't we change it from the back? Unhook it, pull the thing out, shove a replacement in, and never make the guy have to get up out of his chair."

 

[The Old Mixer]

It's funny when they say the Enterprise is the most powerful ship in the fleet, but in the first movie it can't go to warp without screwing up, and can't even beam up two people.

That's because it had just been through a major upgrade and they hadn't the time to work the bugs out.

 

[Luke Lightsaber]

But Kirk had to take a shuttle over. Why did they risk beaming up the SCIENCE OFFICER when they knew the Transporter's weren't working? Did Kirk really want Spock back at his post?

 

[The Old Mixer]

They thought they had them back up, but then there was another malfunction. It's all there in the dialogue.

But yeah, after that scene, I don't think you had to be McCoy with his famous fear of transporters not to want to take a ride on that thing! "We've got it working this time...really!"