Timeline for Why are Starfleet bridges positioned so vulnerably?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
45 events
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| Dec 31, 2022 at 19:15 | answer | added | Valorum | timeline score: 0 | |
| May 14, 2020 at 3:03 | answer | added | Cadence | timeline score: 1 | |
| May 14, 2020 at 2:14 | answer | added | LazyReader | timeline score: -1 | |
| May 5, 2020 at 17:14 | comment | added | Sovereign Inquiry | @Luaan How do you know whether Star Wars ships fire more powerful energy bursts than Star Trek? When they show atmospheric bombardments in Star Wars, the torpedoes/plasma bursts just create a small, burnt hole while just one Star Trek ship, whether Federation or alien can completely devastate an entire planet. That suggests that Star Trek ships arre much more powerful. | |
| Apr 22, 2020 at 5:31 | answer | added | Barry Lewis | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 7, 2020 at 0:41 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/ with https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/
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| Jan 5, 2018 at 16:02 | comment | added | Machavity | Related: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/173473/… | |
| Jan 5, 2018 at 15:11 | answer | added | Beluga Whale | timeline score: 1 | |
| Oct 8, 2017 at 4:47 | history | edited | Obsidia | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 3 characters in body
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| Nov 8, 2016 at 19:32 | answer | added | Warren | timeline score: -1 | |
| Aug 1, 2016 at 22:26 | answer | added | Frank Lazar | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jan 26, 2016 at 16:16 | comment | added | Daniel | Fair enough. I'll take that. | |
| Jan 26, 2016 at 9:01 | comment | added | Luaan | @Daniel This is tricky. The (old) canon literature describes the globes as sensor equipment, which makes a lot more sense - remember, the globes were destroyed only after the bridge shields collapsed (due to heavy bombardment by the Rebel fleet, including ion cannon fire). One non-canon source (the X-Wing video game IIRC) introduced the idea that they are shield globes (for gameplay reasons), and others copied it. There's a nice analysis at theforce.net/swtc/towers.html#globes by Curtis Saxton. As for command staff being killed... well, they have more to fear from Vader, eh? :D | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 5:38 | answer | added | MichaelS | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 23:53 | answer | added | Justin Time - Reinstate Monica | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 17:03 | comment | added | Daniel | And while they may not have depended on the bridge, it's certainly inconvenient to have your command staff blown off the ship. | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 17:02 | comment | added | Daniel | starwars.wikia.com/wiki/ISD-72x_deflector_shield_generator_dome @Luaan, this is a shield generator. | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 16:32 | comment | added | Luaan | @Daniel Those globes aren't shields :) And Star Destroyers don't actually depend on their bridges - the ship systems are autonomous, so destroying the bridge only means a few moments of confusion. Of course, it's still the thing that killed the Executor - the crew didn't have enough time to reclaim controls when the bridge was destroyed. I guess noöne imagined that seconds might make a difference with such a huge starship designed for slugging that lasts for hours (just think about it - it was extremely unlucky for the ship to accelerate towards DS as a result of bridge destruction). | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 3:05 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | I thought this question was "Why are Starfleet badges positioned so vulnerably?" and I thought, "Yeah! Good question!" Aliens are always capturing the crew and ripping their com-badges off! | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 0:47 | answer | added | dwoz | timeline score: 17 | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 23:09 | comment | added | Daniel | Can't be as bad as a Star Destroyer from Star Wars. Big old box hundreds of meters on top of the Star Destroyers... So poorly designed, they had to have 2 DEDICATED SHIELDS JUST FOR THE BRIDGE | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 23:09 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Luann - Though come to think of it, there must be some momentum transfer because we see the cast rock sideways on the bridge whenever there's a weapons impact, even with shields functioning. Maybe it's not large enough to be visible on exterior shots, only interior ones (probably the effects people just didn't really think about the issue when creating shield hit graphics). I think it's been established that Trek ships have "inertial dampeners" which prevent the ship from squashing like an accordion in sudden accelerations, but they have a slight lag so people on board still get shaken. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 19:13 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | as explained here and here. And there is a theoretical solution in GR, the Alcubierre drive, which works a bit like Trek warp, and according to this paper it would be a "reactionless drive". | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 19:09 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Luaan - But we're talking about Trek physics rather than real physics--we don't see ships visibly move when their shields absorb an impact, so it's possible momentum conservation doesn't work that way in Trek. After all, how is momentum conserved when a ship jumps from sublight to warp? Maybe in both cases the equal and opposite momentum is radiation in subspace, or maybe both shields and warp involve warping of spacetime, and in the real theory of GR (general relativity) where that happens, conservation of energy and momentum are only valid in a "local" sense, not a "global" one, | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 18:18 | answer | added | AfroRick | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 18:15 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackSciFi/status/686974746999795712 | ||
| Jan 12, 2016 at 14:37 | comment | added | Luaan | @Hypnosifl Well, momentum is conserved. That means that deflecting a rock means applying momentum to your ship. So either you have to move the shield (which would negate usefulness of such a shield), or you have to apply the momentum to the shield generator. If the shield generator is well integrated with the ship structure, this simply accelerates the ship - if it isn't, you cause damage to the structure or the shield generator. Also, note that the "console effects" only became "mainstream" in TNG - before that, it was first seen in the Kobayashi Maru, where it was a way to simulate damage. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 14:01 | comment | added | Eborbob | 1 noted instance doesn't sound like it's particularly vulnerable. Especially when you compare it to the real vulnerability: highly sensitive explosive packs hidden in consoles - those things must go off in over 90% of the episodes, often inuring or killing crew! | |
| S Jan 12, 2016 at 13:40 | history | suggested | mskfisher | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added link to Memory-Alpha still of the destroyed NX-01 bridge
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| Jan 12, 2016 at 13:16 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jan 12, 2016 at 13:40 | |||||
| Jan 12, 2016 at 11:57 | comment | added | Joseph Rogers | consider if you will the bridge placement on the Klingon D-7 class battle cruiser. You don't even have to hit it, a good swipe with continuous wave phaser fire and you have a litteral decapitation attack, with the added bonus that you take out the primary weapons systems as well. I think we can conclude that Trek universe ships in general rely heavily on functioning shields to survive enemy fire. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 10:53 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Luaan - Your last sentence doesn't really make sense to me--how could the superstructure be damaged by something (say, a rock) that doesn't even get through the shield to hit the superstructure in the first place? Are you talking about your earlier comment about damage leaking through the shield? I'm not sure that's true exactly--a starship under fire seems to experience power surges which cause consoles to blow up, but that could be something more like shield generators experiencing overloads as they rush to shift energy around to where the shields are being hit. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 9:37 | comment | added | Luaan | @Hypnosifl It's not really about Trek weapons being high-energy, as much as it is about Trek ships being "elegant" - they rely almost entirely on their shields for protection (and even then, the damage "leaks" through the shields a lot). Star Wars ships sling far higher-energy weapons at each other, and they are still armoured heavily. From a physical standpoint, this makes perfect sense - your shield is only as strong as your superstructure; if someone throws a rock at you and your structure can't take it, it will rip your shield generator out of the ship :P | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 8:58 | comment | added | jscs | Interestingly, this is also the case for Romulan and Klingon ships, which each have their bridge in the forward "head" of the ship. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 1:26 | vote | accept | NeutronStar | ||
| Jan 11, 2016 at 22:29 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | Given the types of high-energy weapons used on Trek, aren't they pretty much relying entirely on shields to protect all parts of the ship, not physical insulation? I would imagine that even if the bridge was buried in the center of the ship, without the shields a phaser or photon torpedo would tear through the outer layers like butter and blow it up all the same. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 22:22 | history | edited | NeutronStar | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited title
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| Jan 11, 2016 at 21:46 | answer | added | Charles H | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 21:29 | answer | added | Dan C | timeline score: 8 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 21:10 | comment | added | DaaaahWhoosh | There is a related question on Worldbuilding SE | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 20:54 | comment | added | flq | Great question! | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 20:48 | answer | added | ench | timeline score: 84 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 19:22 | answer | added | chanjoo brown | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 19:18 | answer | added | Thaddeus Howze | timeline score: 72 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 18:51 | history | asked | NeutronStar | CC BY-SA 3.0 |