We need a serious discussion about power inequality on the Enterprise.
"0.1% of our ship's systems are using more than half of all newly-generated power. The greed of Stellar Cartography knows no bounds."
I always laugh at how life support represents a huge fraction of power. They can boost shields 20% from life support. Shields that protect them from gigantic weapons.
Meanwhile Apollo 13 astronauts survived for 3 days with no power and a tiny oxygen tank.
Well you have to account for Riker's "dating" programs running on the Holodeck at all times due to his excessive privilege as an unelected official of the Enterprise. He gets away with it because he deemed it a critical life support system. That alone counts for half of the energy usage of life support.
It’s called life support and not survive support though. Big difference between conserving as much energy as possible vs being able to freely do what you want without thought of concern.
I think the bigger issue is that shields can be at 99% after a hit and somehow there's still sparks shooting out all over the bridge.
When they were first testing star fleet ships researched realized that everyone was ignoring the icon and text dialog that popped up when a ship was damaged. Exploding consoles assures that the current ship status is addressed in a timely manner.
I did some math. Volume of TNG bridge: 480,000 liters. 1 person breathes 8 liters per minute of air. That's not using up all the oxygen but it's how much you would use without any oxygen reduction at all.
480,000 / 8 = 60,000 minutes of air before noticing the air is stale.
60,000 minutes / 11 crew on the bridge (including Wesley) = over 3 days of no air before they'd even notice that oxygen was lower.
What about temperature regulation? Lights? Water? Food? It’s not just air that’s “life” support.
I think entertainment is also included, so TVs, music, etc. that’s all put on the side burner when life support goes down, it’s a large portion of power if you include everything and not just “oxygen”.
TNG enterprise reactor creates 12.75 billion gigawatts and has a crew of around 1000. For comparison, One World Trade Center uses 110 mega watts for 8,000 people.
Edit:
A better comparison is the ISS which uses an absolute maximum of 17kw per astronaut for lights/computers/air/water/heat.
That's 17 Megawatts for the Enterprise ~1000 crew?
So that's 17 *10^9 / 12.7 *10^18 =
Life support uses about 1 billionth of the Enterprise's power.
Data: Shields are at 10%
Captain: Transfer life support to shields
Data: Shields are now at 10.0000001%
temperature regulation
Vakuum has no temperature. Maybe a problem close to a star. And that bit against infrared loss...
You know we have a space station up there?
What…? Space is incredibly cold unless you have the warmth of a sun to warm you up, so you would always need heat, or AC at any given time. You can shut turn these lower to save power and find and optimal orbit for heat or something, but yeah, temperature regulation in space is crucial.
Space has no air to transmit temperature. Well, maybe a few atoms of hydrogen and dust every m³ (and they do have about -200°C if i remember right), depending on where you are, but that does nothing. Only way to transmit heath in space is via radiation. You lose a bit of warmth via infrared radiation but i doubt that a crewed spaceship has no insulation. And the 400k liter of air in Enterprise should be an adequate buffer.
That bit about inszantly freezing in space is Hollywood, same with firey explosions.
I'm guessing the replicators recycling the air and water are part of life support. Apollo 13 used pee bottles, a box of foam and some duct tape.
Tbh I never really liked that the captain has to tell the crew to do these things. You would think that a experienced crew would know what to do in certain situations.
But this is how naval ships, including submarines (which the Enterprise is modeled after), work. Captains give orders, crew follows them.
Not really. In the US navy (for instance), crew takes the correct action pretty much automatically unless specifically ordered not to do so.
If ships really worked the way they do in Star Trek we would have very few ships still floating. And it's not just ships - all forms of human organizing utterly depends on the people at the bottom doing the actual work making the real decisions on the fly. It's the only way anything about it becomes efficient at all - despite what the capitalists and their cronies in the media wants everyone to believe.
I dont know, most functions on navy ships dont require constant and explicit input from the captain today either. To stick with trek: The captain sets a destination and speed, the crew makes it happen. He doesnt have to specify they should put dilithium crystals in the warp core, they know to do that stuff because it is part of the procedure.
Similarly the common tactical maneuvers like evasive action, reinforcing shields where damage is coming in, or disabling enemy weapons should be automated or subject to the judgment of the tactical officer. Once the captain has ordered to engage, these things should be done "under the hood" like 95% of stuff that happens aboard.
I never thought about it before, but it is kinda funny that Picard or Riker are always the ones issuing tactical commands and Worf is apparently just there to press buttons for them.
That was specifically what I had in mind while writing that comment lol
Like, why is he even there if he has no actual function beyond suggesting strategy (that the captain politely dismisses virtually every time). Might as well be an advisor like that fold faced stratagema player then
"Captain, I recommend that we..."
"No."
"You all are so invalidating to me!"
"Well, now you know how your son feels, Mr. Worf."
He's there to get beaten up by aliens to quickly establish that they are tough and serious enough to beat up Worf.
Unless it's a Klingon-centric episode, in which case Worf holds his own, despite not having grown up in their warrior culture.
Well Worf was thrown into the position without proper mentorship and later never bothered to tell Leadership that he didn't the training wheels anymore
In the second movie they literally had the Vulcan lady recite the existence of protocol regarding shield usage in certain situations, and one can assume it was specifically written so that the people operating the shields do not have to wait for one guy to resolve his "feels" about a situation before taking action to preserve the safety of the ship and crew.
This is your brain on centralized power, I guess - but it's nothing I didn't witness myself in the corporate world.
The needs of the many systems for power out weight the needs of the few systems for power
