The U.S. Navy is full of career submariners, why not ask them? They can go for months crammed into a space the size of a Walgreens without ever seeing anything other than the bulkheads in front of them.
Windows on space-ships
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Have you tried taking a picture and displaying in on your monitor or TV? Even if it's exactly what you would see if there would be a window there, it doesn't feel real, since you know it's simply a reproduction. Yes, you can argue that it's a still image, that nothing moves. Hook up a reasonable quality camera and you'll get the same thing; it doesn't feel as real.
There are ways of lighting rooms to have a reasonable reproduction of real sunlight; if I follow your logic you won't need any windows in your home at all, either.
They're only inside that bucket for a few months; certainly not 5 years at the very least.
Evidently it works well enough to entertain crews in the 24th century, why should a more primitive version not suffice in the 23rd?
My house isn't a starship. If it was, I would probably be better off with a sunlamp and an indoor greenhouse.
And Enterprise is hundreds of times larger than a submarine with alot more creature comforts. Windows will be the least important of these, especially since most of the view is of empty space and swirling tachyons. Since most of the time there's nothing to see out of those windows anyway, including them is a potentially useful but otherwise completely superfluous design concession.
Strictly speaking, they only need to be in public places--mess halls, recreation areas, the ship's library, etc. That's just decoration, though; beyond that very minor concession to aesthetics they serve no purpose of any kind.
How do you figure that? I haven't seen ships without windows in the 24th century as well; except for perhaps the Defiant. But then, that ship isn't supposed to be out in space for 5 years at a time.
No, but you still have the need to connect with "what's out there"; every human has this.
Empty space isn't as empty as you would believe. It's not only darkness; you'll always see the stars as well. People always have had a need to look at the stars; or many a philosopher would still remain unknown to this very day.
There's a big difference between the ISS, which is largely protected by the Earth's magnetosphere, and a starship in deep space with warp and impulse drive, and a whole lot of high-yield weapons likely to be trained against it.
As to having no view at all, there are always SCREENS that can be made to look like windows, if a view is necessary. In point of fact, the view would probably be somewhat better.
As to having no view at all, there are always SCREENS that can be made to look like windows, if a view is necessary. In point of fact, the view would probably be somewhat better.
When the crew of the Enterprise gets bored, they don't go and stare out a window, most of the time they go to the holodeck. Actually, the only time we see them staring out of windows seems to be when they're depressed.
There's nothing "out there" when you're in a space ship, and contacting it would result in a pretty grisly death.
That for the crew of a space station that has enough spare time to stare at stars and philosophize. How long can you look out the window at the same empty void of stars--for years at a time--before you get sick of it and have to find something better to do?
Simply put: windows are good for decoration of public spaces (ten forward et al) but not much else. The crew's sanity will depend on some far more active forms of entertainment and diversion than sitting around literally staring out into space.
All right, I'll concede the point; it would get boring after a while, that's true. I can live with just a few windows in public places.
Only a small proportion of naval officers and men can be submariners, I believe there is actually screening and there are psychological evaluations.
Plus most would agree it is not exactly pleasant, and would not mind a window if the technology existed to make a pressure hull with nice big windows.
Begging the exact same question: what would a submarine need with a set of windows? There's nothing to see except water, fish, water, more fish...
Imagine two officers three months into the cruise.
Bud: I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter "W."
Bob: Um... water?
Bud: Correct! I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter "M."
Bob: Um... wait don't tell me... MORE water?
Bud: Yay! I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter "E."
Bob: You don't mean... you couldn't mean...
Both: EVEN MORE WATER.
Imagine two officers three months into the cruise.
Bud: I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter "W."
Bob: Um... water?
Bud: Correct! I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter "M."
Bob: Um... wait don't tell me... MORE water?
Bud: Yay! I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter "E."
Bob: You don't mean... you couldn't mean...
Both: EVEN MORE WATER.
Water, fish, whales, squid, dolphins, underwater volcanos, other submarines, sunken underwater cities....
Might make a nice change from bulkhead and more bulkhead?
And that 50-foot limit is assuming the best-possible lighting conditions, too... direct overhead sun. Light penetration falls off rapidly rapidly... by the time you're just a couple of hundred feet below surface, you're basically in twilight already. Think of it as "just after dusk on a very foggy night" and you've got the general idea.
There's a REASON that subs use sonar, rather than radar or plain ol' vision for that matter, for navigation and targeting. Nothing else WORKS.
In deep space, it's even worse than that. Given the difference in inside-lighting and outside ambient-light... you won't be able to see ANYTHING... including stars... unless you turn off the internal lights first.
In other words, the only windows anyone could see out of during TOS would have been the ones that showed up "black."
That is... until the moment that the ship shows up near something interesting to look at. For the 1701, they certainly spent a significant part of their time (maybe as much as 1/4?) orbiting new worlds. In those circumstances, and pretty much only in those circumstances, windows are nice to have. Not to look at SPACE, but to look at the planet you're orbiting.
There are exceedingly few circumstances where the ship is ever close enough to anything to be visible even WITH a window, assuming it's in water shallow enough that such things are even visible.
Hell, the windows on research submarines exist only because those boats mainly operate near the ocean floor where, perhaps the one place in the entire ocean where there sometimes IS something to see (plus the need to navigate at close quarters with the terrain).
But again, you don't need actual windows. Screens would work fine. Better, even.
Trek has transparent metals, and I'm sure they've perfected non-reflective coatings to a degree in which one doesn't have to worry about every window effectively serving as a mirror. Given that, adding windows would be a 'why not?' design decision.
Well, this is one of those "how far will technology go" questions...
I suspect, pretty strongly, that even with high-resolution holographic screens, you'll never have the same sense of "reality" you get from actually seeing something directly. You can, eventually, APPROACH that, but it'll never actually reach that point.
But for the most part, I'd say this is entirely reasonable. For instance, we know that there were "windows" in some of the cabins on the ship, yet the arrangement of the ship doesn't seem to conform to those windows. Why? Because it's entirely reasonable to have "holographic windows" in every cabin, to provide that sense of "an outside world."
Heck, even going forward to TMP, remember the big display screen on one end of Kirk's cabin? Well, the ship was just launching so it was still on "factory default" mode, but if that were MY cabin, I'd have that showing a "woodland view" in holographic mode all the time. Maybe with mountains in the distance.
I wouldn't be so certain. You're addressing the logical, rational function of windows, but you're missing a big part of it. Windows aren't there just so that you can see out to relieve tedium. As someone who is clinically diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome comorbid with a few anxiety disorders, I can tell you firsthand that a window, even if you can't get out of it, or even see out of it, for that matter, can be a great comfort because you feel that there's somewhere else out there, that you're close to an escape even if it's nothing more than a mental one. A view can look as real as anything else, but if you know that it's not real, then it may as well not exist.
For those who would point out that because of that I'd be an automatic Class 4-F (Not suitable for military service for health reasons), I would point you at textbook social anxiety disorder sufferer Reginald Barclay, or even Spock, who every Asperger's individual I've met either has personally identified with, been likened to by others, or both. Almost one in five Americans suffers from some sort of anxiety disorder alone, and the proportion of people diagnosed with some form of mental illness, be it neurological or psychological, increases whenever people are afforded greater access to proper care and counseling.
Furthermore, we are largely only able to treat the symptoms of mental illness and help those who have it cope because for the majority of forms of mental illness, there is no cure. Starfleet couldn't afford to restrict entrance to those in perfect mental health, because that would leave a whole lot of the most intelligent and creative people that Starfleet needs to be a successful organization unqualified.
I wonder what the very real and ever-present possibility of being irradiated by high-intensity gamma rays or seared to a crisp by enemy laser fire would do for one's anxiety, to say nothing about those like McCoy who suffer from aviaphobia/acrophobia having to look a hundred miles down onto the surface of an alien planet every time they went to the mess hall for chow?
I know that - but in shallow water, or near the sea bed, or in dozens of other circumstances, it might be nice to see the sea.
After all, divers have goggles don't they?
Seems a pretty daft concept to argue against. If I was saying that submarines NEED windows then cool they don't. I just said that it might be nice to have them.
I imagine looking at the stars warping by is quite picturesque as well, hence windows on Starships.
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