It’s not that simple, jab. If they’re using generators in every deck, then the gradient must be pretty steep–otherwise they’d crush people on the upper decks with the cumulative effects. So you’d get a discernibly different gravitic acceleration at different heights above each deck. People with, shall we say, low centers of gravity (like myself, hobbit that I am) would walk on the floor, because our centers of mass would be below the null plane in the middle of the corridor (assuming Starfleet-standard corridor height). We might feel a trifle light-headed, of course.
If we jumped properly, though, and got our entire frames into the opposite gravity well, we could turn that about and walk on the ceiling. The odds are against anyone actually floating as such are low, unless they deliberately aligned themselves horizontally along the null plane and swam along. All of this would make a very cool movie scene as well as allowing more traffic in a given corridor.
Unfortunately, it seems simpler to have one set of grav generators down in the bottom deck affecting all of the decks, as well as stuff outside the ship.
Well, if I were a Starfleet officer, I’d get annoyed that systems on the bridge fail whenever the ship gets hit on Deck 12. Or why the Warp Core seems to go critical even when there isn’t any damage taken anywhere in the vicinity of Engineering.
So how come Picard, Worf and sacrificial lamb Lt. Hawk* needed magnetic boots to walk on the exterior of the ship in the movie First Contact?
It’s been a while since I read a Technical manual, but I’m sure I recall reading that Star Fleet uses small generators in each deck with multiple backups, which is why you never see the artificial gravity fail.
*I knew the guy was gonna be killed the minute they introduced him!
[Andy Rooney voice]Why is it that they have only one warp core on a starship? Wouldn’t it make sense to have two small warp cores instead of one big one? That way if you had to eject one, you could still make it home at warp speed. Okay, so maybe you could only go warp 5 with one core, but wouldn’t that be better than not being able to use warp speed at all? [/Andy Rooney voice]
Plus, you have the added benefit of being able to use a warp core as a kick-ass weapon of last resort. Bad guys start killing more than red-shirts, you set one of the warp cores to overload, eject it towards their ship, and use your other warp core to take you out of range before the thing goes up!
Well, for the same reason there’s only one reactor on a submarine. The things are huge and require a large crew to maintain. By having a single warp core, the number of crew members needed to maintain it is reduced, and you don’t need two seperate engineering sections.
And, they do have a second warp nacelle for the very reason you describe.
Artificial gravity: Each deck has it’s own artificial gravity generators. The decks themselves are designed to be opaque to the field generated, so it only effects the one deck.
Obviously, it’s because Starfleet is too cheap to hire good engineers, or even clever folks like us, to design their ships.
They do supposedly have grav generators in each deck–that gravitic insulation must be cheap to make. With that in mind, why don’t they insulate the whole ship with it and eliminate that nasty decaying orbit problem? I mean, if you can make your ship effectively immune to gravity, wouldn’t it simplify things? What about all the trouble they have staying out of the sun when they use the slingshot effect?
I seem to recall that the gravity is adjustable in the crew quarters–at least, I see no reason not to have a gravity control right there by the thermostat. I’m not sure it was ever brought up in any of the series, but I remember one of the better-written short stories mentioning a “gravity shelf”–a transition between 1G and Vulcan gravity–at the door of Spock’s quarters, and people stumbling when they crossed it the first time.
When does StarFleet’s equivelant of OCEA come in and shut down those dangerous holograph decks? 90% of the plots from TNG on involve accidents there.
Shuttles aren’t much better. Crashing more often than actually arrving at their destination. If an epsiode starts with characters in a shuttle, you can kiss that shuttle good-bye in a few.
Exploding consoles. I think Farscape made fun of this at one point when Chriton outright yells “Haven’t you people ever heard of circuit breakers?”
So when does star fleet start making hologram ships or soliders? (Ha Ha! We can shoot you but you can’t hit us!)Nothing but a big generator with holographicly supported weapon arrays and an artificial crew that can work in conditions lethal to most real beings.
And Remember B5 Did have full harnesses for the crew. Especially for those ships that didn’t spin to make gravity.
With the exception of The Doctors remote holo-emitter, the holograms can only be generated inside a room especially designed for that purpose. The only way that holographic ships would work is if you built a really, really, really, big holodeck around an entire star system, and even then you’d have to trick the hostile aliens inside.
Also, it is well established in both TOS and TNG that computers are not permitted to make tactical decisions. Otherwise, a human crew wouldn’t be needed on the ships at all.
Yeah, but if the reactor on a nuke sub goes out, the longest they’re going to have to wait for help to arrive is what, a month? A starship could eject it’s warp core someplace out in deep space and have to wait years for help to arrive, if ever! I’d like a little redundancy in my critical systems, please.
Ah, not quite. There have been instances where area-effect hologenerators have been created, creating a space where holograms can be kept active a certain distance away from the generator.
Just because they’re not permitted, that doesn’t mean they’re not capable. The Doctor altered his programming in one episode of Voyager to make himself a backup bridge officer. And, supposedly, he was pretty damn good.
If the reactor on a nuke sub goes out, most likely nobody’s going to be alive to wait for help. Which brings up another point. Two warp cores would mean twice the chance of a critical failure. But I don’t think you can have two active warp cores at the same time in the same ship, because the warp core creates a warp field and two warp fields wouldn’t be compatable with each other. I think that the size issue is the key. The entire drive section is built primarily to house and operate the warp core and (I think) impulse engines. There isn’t room for another one.
What you’re arguing for is a backup that can be used in case of failure, and those are kept at starbases, and can be transported to ships that need them in case of emergency. Ejecting the warp core is a very rare event.
You have a point there. But you still have to set up an area within which the holograms can exist. Unless the hostile aliens were to enter the area where the holograms are being generated, the holographic ships would be useless.
Of course the computers are capable of running the ship without human intervention. But it is one of the fundamental tenants of Starfleet policy that a sentient being must always make the decisions. If they wanted to build crew free ships, they certainly have the technology to do so even without using holograms. They would probably be much more stable and deadly, too, because there would be no need for artificial gravity, inertial dampers, life support, etc. However, since the primary purpose of Starfleet is exploration and contact, you have to have people on the ships.
In the episode to which you refer, Captain Janeway initially refuses to allow him to train for bridge officer status for the very reason I posted. She does later relent and allow him to train, but that is clearly an exception to the general rule, made partly because the Doctor is sentient.
On TNG, there is an episode in which (I’m kinda fuzzy on the details) the crew is tempted to turn control of the ship over to the computer, and despite the chance that they might be destroyed, Picard does not permit it.
And before you bring up Data, I am well aware that he was a bridge officer and on many occasions made tactical decisions. He, as second officer, was in charge during night shifts and during crisis situations. He is also the only sentient android in Starfleet, so he is not an exception to the rule.
Star Trek geek: One who posts to message boards at 3:00 a.m.
True. I think the original idea was to build a central reactor (for power generation) and slap a hologenerator onto it, then have the rest of the ship around it composed entirely of holographic material.
I wasn’t going to bring up Data. Keep in mind that the original question wasn’t about whether or not they can, but whether or not they would.
Yup. Although I think the weapons arrays would need to be ‘real’ items as well. ALbeit supported by Holographic structures.
I based this on a rerun of Voyager I just watched where there were rebellious holograms running around hunting another species. They had only a generator to keep them up[ and running.
I don’t think the rather clumsy writers of Voyager realized what a can of worms they opened up with this little plot twist.
In one of his ST novels (Dark Victory), William Shatner had a ship with an all-holographic crew. But there are some things to remember:
The novels are not canon. (For example, in filmed Trek, Captain Kirk is as dead as George Washington. In Shatner’s novels, he was revived.)
In spite of assistance from Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, the novels are TERRIBLE. You’d be better off to take my word for it that there is a ship with an all-holographic crew in that novel.
