Why are Federation Starships such death traps?
- Thread starter JoeZhang
- Start date
I'm usually humored when the "circuit breaker" argument comes up as it's being suggested from a standpoint of 20th century electronics.
It's been firmly established and suggested many, many times throughout Trek that thier power systems operate on something vastly different and orders of magnitude more powerful than all of the power ever created by mankind to date.
We're talking about ginmorous levels of power inside these ships. HUGE. We're talking about ships that can generate barriers of energy that can withstand a force of 21 megatons of energy samcking it in the face, power systems that generate that much energy each second, computers running off very, very extremely high levels of energy on processors that operate at FTL speeds. Obviously there's not some metal box somewhere in Engineering Gerodi has to open occasionaly and flip a switch back to where it's supposed to go.
It's entirely possible there's just no "cicuit-breaker" that can stop these levels of surges. The power is just so emmense there's nothing they can do to stop it from crossing any gap. So it's just a case of, "These things are very high powered and if something disasterous happens that causes an overload in the system the best thing you can do is just brace yourself and hope for the best."
Look at it this way.
The shields are up and the ship is sitting there and gets hit with a phaser. The ship takes in that megatons of energy and has to do something with it. So there's probably some "capacitance" system that stores that energy and expends it "safely" in some manner. (Probably to power systems.) But if the shields are weakened the whole system is likely weakend. It's less "the shields are only protecting us 50%" it's more "our shield capicitors are 50% full and they can't contain that much more energy." So NOW when the ship gets hit with huge ammounts of energy it can't all get shunted to these capictors. So the energy from the weapons fire gets absorbed by the ship's powersystem, overloads some systems and causes them to erupt. (Like a TV plugged into a regular wall outlet.)
Unfortuantly these power levels are so great there's just no way to make a "breaker" to prevent these eruptions. It's just a "fact of life" people have to deal with it and try and brace themselves and hope for the best.
Which all explains why there's no seatbelts, gives people a better chance to duck out of the way. As for why there's no seatbelts...
You only need a seatbelt when you stop. There's reasons why when you're on a plane you don't have to wear your belt unless you're landing/taking off or there's turbulence. Cruisiing in calm airs brings no chance of the plane's motion changing abruptly enough to make the seatbelt needed.
Most of the time starship crews are crusing through space when there's no need for seatbelts or even the IDF and the rest of the time when they're accelerating or decelerating the IDF system suffices. The only time people get thrown about is when the ship gets moved suddenly in a direction or manner the IDF system cannot compensate for and even then we can probably reason it in conjunction with the gravity system is working together to minimize how harshly people are shifting or getting thrown around. It may look like they're being thrown to the ground a 1G but the IDG/Gravity system could be helping their landing and impact be actualy a little softer. But even then still shit happens. People with seatbelts and airbags die all of the time.
It's been firmly established and suggested many, many times throughout Trek that thier power systems operate on something vastly different and orders of magnitude more powerful than all of the power ever created by mankind to date.
We're talking about ginmorous levels of power inside these ships. HUGE. We're talking about ships that can generate barriers of energy that can withstand a force of 21 megatons of energy samcking it in the face, power systems that generate that much energy each second, computers running off very, very extremely high levels of energy on processors that operate at FTL speeds. Obviously there's not some metal box somewhere in Engineering Gerodi has to open occasionaly and flip a switch back to where it's supposed to go.
It's entirely possible there's just no "cicuit-breaker" that can stop these levels of surges. The power is just so emmense there's nothing they can do to stop it from crossing any gap. So it's just a case of, "These things are very high powered and if something disasterous happens that causes an overload in the system the best thing you can do is just brace yourself and hope for the best."
Look at it this way.
The shields are up and the ship is sitting there and gets hit with a phaser. The ship takes in that megatons of energy and has to do something with it. So there's probably some "capacitance" system that stores that energy and expends it "safely" in some manner. (Probably to power systems.) But if the shields are weakened the whole system is likely weakend. It's less "the shields are only protecting us 50%" it's more "our shield capicitors are 50% full and they can't contain that much more energy." So NOW when the ship gets hit with huge ammounts of energy it can't all get shunted to these capictors. So the energy from the weapons fire gets absorbed by the ship's powersystem, overloads some systems and causes them to erupt. (Like a TV plugged into a regular wall outlet.)
Unfortuantly these power levels are so great there's just no way to make a "breaker" to prevent these eruptions. It's just a "fact of life" people have to deal with it and try and brace themselves and hope for the best.
Which all explains why there's no seatbelts, gives people a better chance to duck out of the way. As for why there's no seatbelts...
You only need a seatbelt when you stop. There's reasons why when you're on a plane you don't have to wear your belt unless you're landing/taking off or there's turbulence. Cruisiing in calm airs brings no chance of the plane's motion changing abruptly enough to make the seatbelt needed.
Most of the time starship crews are crusing through space when there's no need for seatbelts or even the IDF and the rest of the time when they're accelerating or decelerating the IDF system suffices. The only time people get thrown about is when the ship gets moved suddenly in a direction or manner the IDF system cannot compensate for and even then we can probably reason it in conjunction with the gravity system is working together to minimize how harshly people are shifting or getting thrown around. It may look like they're being thrown to the ground a 1G but the IDG/Gravity system could be helping their landing and impact be actualy a little softer. But even then still shit happens. People with seatbelts and airbags die all of the time.
^Yes an no. The crew up on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier does not use any harnesses or seatbelts. A seatbelt or safety harness up there would very likely get someone killed. Harnesses are probably used on platforms (elevated more than 3ft - 4ft) inside ships though.
Don't know if it's still SOP, but in WWII the crews of surface warships wore combat helmets during battle. That would look pretty strange in Trek....
Insurance fraud, perhaps. Or some sort of a pay system that favors the early service years, so Accounting Dept has to devise a means of killing the young while saving the old. Exploding consoles for the workstations of the Ensigns and junior Lieutenants would work fine.
The idea that futuristic power systems cannot be effectively protected by circuit breakers is fine and well. But the question then becomes, why would anybody ever connect a bridge console to this power system?
I mean, surely there's no need for that. Surely the consoles only require minimal power, something that is safely served by a system that does feature proper circuit breakers and doesn't have anything inside that could explode in any circumstances. Say, an old-fashioned flashlight battery or two. Consoles really should be no more explosion-prone than the chairs, or the railings, or the occasional potted plants.
Timo Saloniemi
The idea that futuristic power systems cannot be effectively protected by circuit breakers is fine and well. But the question then becomes, why would anybody ever connect a bridge console to this power system?
I mean, surely there's no need for that. Surely the consoles only require minimal power, something that is safely served by a system that does feature proper circuit breakers and doesn't have anything inside that could explode in any circumstances. Say, an old-fashioned flashlight battery or two. Consoles really should be no more explosion-prone than the chairs, or the railings, or the occasional potted plants.
Timo Saloniemi
I always figued the overload was caused by the sheer force of energy the ship's defenses are trying to redistribute.
Presumably the ship's shields at 100% deflect or absorb all energy from weapons impacts, but as they degrade more and more gets through, and is distributed throughout the ships hull, so the thermal effects and blast energy are distributed evenly.
When this energy is conducted into the low energy power grid by a weapons impact close to the bridge, or a key distribution point this can overload bridge circuitry and the consoles.
This also explains how the serious torpedo hit on the secondary ventral in TUC causes explosions on the bridge 20 decks away - it hit the control systems and the energy conducted into the grid overloaded the bridge systems.
Yes, quite possibly - but then the chairs and the potted plants should be in equal danger of exploding, because there would be no more or less reason to create paths for the excess energy into the consoles than there is to create such paths to the potted plants. Whatever paths there are of power flow or data flow to and from the consoles, they should be so fragile to begin with that they would act as their own circuit breakers.
Timo Saloniemi
I am not implying these overload paths are CREATED in any way shape or form whatsoever. Merely that a control grid exists (a 24th century ethernet if you will) and that some of the energy from weapons hits is conducted into this network.
Any kind of surge protection or circuit breakers would be useless here as the vast amount of energy would simply jump the gaps, so in extreme cases this energy can overload consoles.
This same rationale does not apply to chairs or potted plants.
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