Windows in the floor?

[Kor]

I think having windows in the floor looking down into space would be rather disorienting, as our species is accustomed to looking upwards at the stars in the night sky in our natural habitat.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

I think having windows in the floor looking down into space would be rather disorienting, as our species is accustomed to looking upwards at the stars in the night sky in our natural habitat.

For people born on planets, maybe, but there could be plenty of people who were born and raised on ships or space stations.

 

[Matthew Raymond]

Would it? I'm sure we've seen ships use tractor beams while their shields were up. We've certainly seen that one ship's shields can't block another ship's tractor beam, otherwise no ship could ever be held in a tractor beam involuntarily.

I can't remember off-hand any situation where a ship with shields up was held by a tractor beam. As for using a tractor beam through shields, I'm not sure. I might have seen that happen once or twice, so I can concede that point.

I think my idea about it being an umbilical port makes more sense, though.

 

[Unicron]

I'd imagine many Borg encounters would apply, though my brain's too tired to remember specifics at the moment. There might be some others scattered in certain episodes.

 

[Timo]

In "Q Who?", the Borg had a special green-bolt weapon that drained the shields of the heroes blow by blow, after which the Borg applied their tractor and cutting beams. In subsequent episodes, being gripped by a Borg tractor beam caused the hero ship shields to be steadily drained.

Whether all tractor beams drain shields is not stated. Whether shields prevent tractor lock... Not against Borg tractors. And not against the Defiant when she grabs the obviously well-shielded Klingons in "Way of the Warrior" to deflect their shots. Evidence beyond that is weak.

However, shields have basically never hindered anything applied from the inside out.

- shuttles can depart through raised shields
- phasers can fire out through raised shields (*)
- transporters can beam out through raised shields (**)
- sensors can see out through raised shields
- communications work through raised shields

Firing tractors out through raised shields is likely to work just fine, then.

(*) In "A Taste of Armageddon", full shields apparently prevent full phasers - but perhaps this is a power allocation issue? It never happens again.
(**) In the very same episode, Fox and his aide beam down even though Scotty has sworn he won't drop shields, and even though the Eminian guns would reduce the hero ship to scrap if she did drop shields even for a moment. Contrary evidence never arises.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[David cgc]

- Is it a room for stargazing? It's exceptionally ugly, with said bracings and so forth, so highly unlikely to be a recreational space. Might be a vitally important observation post, though.

In the TMP novelization, Roddenberry described spaces exactly like this that were ostensibly unusable gaps between structural elements, but were intentionally left accessible to give the crew places they could sneak into for some private time (for, um, varying degrees of privacy, let's say). Archer implied something similar in the episode of "Enterprise" where the crew answered letters from an elementary school and one of the kids asked if people were allowed to date on the ship.

My guess has been that the space was a gangway for connecting directly to the Jefferies Tube network while docked, but it could be that whatever kind of hatch or connector it is doesn't necessarily have to be easily accessible for its function, and it was connected to the tubes at least in part because someone thought it'd make a good secret hang-out. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea was something starship designers took into account, since it's not unheard of for people to sneak around looking for their own little spots in the bowels of ships (the "Sweet Spot" on the NX-01 was specifically said to be an open secret of ship design, plus the "acoustically perfect" tube junction on the -D). They'd probably rather put some in intentionally, where they could ensure they were relatively safe, than have people find their own and end up being cooked alive when the ship went to full impulse or being crushed when the chompers started up or something because their perfect little hideaway ended up being not-so-perfect.

 

[Mytran]

The biggest problem with that room in ST:FC is that huge control panel. If it had been a small wall mounted panel we could easily imagine that the room was some sort of auxiliary port, rarely used. As it stands, that room clearly had a multitude of functions.

 

[Nakita Akita]

All Starfleet ships have had windows that would either be the ceiling or floor. The NX-01 had windows that were literally horizontal on various decks mostly around D and E.

The Enterprise D has so many that would mean the window took up about 60% of the floor of the quarters it means walking on it, or the room goes considerably further back into the hull and there are some weird layouts of places we never saw.

So, instead of a view of the stars over your bed like we see say, Riker or the Doctor having, the view would be under your bed.
So if you wanted to look outside you'd have to hand your head over the edge of your bed.

I'm sure they would have some clear floor over the window.
It would be difficult to say, enjoy a cup of hot chocolate and gaze out the window.

 

[Timo]

How so? You could gaze down on your cup of cocoa and your starscape simultaneously!

...I think we should disabuse ourselves of the idea that Jeffries tubes had something to do with that ST:FC room with a view. Picard and Sloane weren't in a Jeffries tube in order to access that room. They were in a Jeffries tube to run from the Borg. No doubt there were other ways into that room, say, three doorways and a turbolift station plus a cargo transporter and an escalator. And perhaps a waterslide.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Maybe the decks on the lower half of the saucer have their gravity field inverted relative to the upper half? So the "lower" hull is still the ceiling from their perspective.

 

[Nakita Akita]

Maybe the decks on the lower half of the saucer have their gravity field inverted relative to the upper half? So the "lower" hull is still the ceiling from their perspective.

Did they ever imply that in the show?

 

[Christopher]

Did they ever imply that in the show?

I'm just having a bit of fun with the idea. It's all make-believe anyway, so we can imagine stuff beyond what's already there.

Really, though, if there were such a thing as an artificial gravity source, it would pull inward in all directions. The Trek conceit that every deck has its own gravity plating that somehow only pulls down and exerts no attractive force on anything below it (or more than one deck above it) doesn't really make any sense. Most sci-fi starships are designed on the assumption that they'd work like Earthly vehicles or buildings, with a single uniform gravity vector perpendicular to the direction of motion and parallel decks. A more logical design would be a spherical ship with the artificial gravity source at the center pulling inward in all directions, or a cylindrical ship with the gravity source at its axis. (I once came up with a cylindrical starship design where the artificial gravity was just a natural, unavoidable leakage of gravitons from the FTL core at its axis.) If an AG source could be a flat plate, it would still probably pull on things both above and below it, so it would be a reasonable design to put it at the center of the ship and have oppositely oriented decks on either side. It'd be a lot more efficient than having separate gravity plates on every deck.

 

[Timo]

This assumes that AG has the same range as the real thing. Why assume such a thing?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nakita Akita]

I'm just having a bit of fun with the idea. It's all make-believe anyway, so we can imagine stuff beyond what's already there.

Really, though, if there were such a thing as an artificial gravity source, it would pull inward in all directions. The Trek conceit that every deck has its own gravity plating that somehow only pulls down and exerts no attractive force on anything below it (or more than one deck above it) doesn't really make any sense. Most sci-fi starships are designed on the assumption that they'd work like Earthly vehicles or buildings, with a single uniform gravity vector perpendicular to the direction of motion and parallel decks. A more logical design would be a spherical ship with the artificial gravity source at the center pulling inward in all directions, or a cylindrical ship with the gravity source at its axis. (I once came up with a cylindrical starship design where the artificial gravity was just a natural, unavoidable leakage of gravitons from the FTL core at its axis.) If an AG source could be a flat plate, it would still probably pull on things both above and below it, so it would be a reasonable design to put it at the center of the ship and have oppositely oriented decks on either side. It'd be a lot more efficient than having separate gravity plates on every deck.

But what would happen in the turbo-lift?????

 

[Christopher]

But what would happen in the turbo-lift?????

That's why I like the spherical/cylindrical idea better. You'd just go around the core instead of through it.