Timeline for Why do shields in Star Trek "wear out"?
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40 events
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| Jan 25, 2015 at 17:12 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | Finally, in The Tholian Web, there is evidence that phasers and shields share the same power system: "SPOCK: Engineering, hold power steady and cut off all unnecessary expenditures. Mister Sulu, divert all but emergency maintenance power to the shields. SULU: But sir, that'll reduce our phaser power by fifty percent." | |
| Jan 25, 2015 at 16:50 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | Also, aside from the tech manual, there is some onscreen evidence of warp/impulse drives and shields sharing a common power system, I did a google search of "power to the shields" and site:chakoteya.net and found examples like one from the Voyager episode Resistance where Chakotey said "Redirect all warp power to the shields", likewise in the Original Series episode "Elaan of Troyius" Sulu asked "Warp power to the shields, Captain?" And in Deja Q Riker asked "Geordi, can you direct any more power to the shields?" and Geordi said "We need all the power we have to get out of the atmosphere". | |
| Jan 25, 2015 at 16:34 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Praxis - They don't specifically say there that the problem is that they are losing power for the shields, just that they are being "drained" by some means (perhaps some advanced Borg technology that directly affects the field around the ship, rather than affecting the shield emitters), and that they attempt to compensate for this by channeling more power to the shields. And do you have a comment on p. 57 of the Technical Manual? They say the M/ARA supplies "the raw power requirements of other major ship systems and that it's the "principle power-generating system", no exceptions mentioned. | |
| Jan 25, 2015 at 4:11 | comment | added | Praxis | ...from other systems in order to restore the shields. I think this debunks your picture of how the Enterprise power grid works. | |
| Jan 25, 2015 at 4:10 | comment | added | Praxis | @Hypnosifl : Sorry for the late response. I really do think you are wrong, though. An excerpt from "Q Who": PICARD: Report, Lieutenant. WORF: The beam is draining our shields. RIKER: If they pull down our shields, we're helpless. PICARD: Warp eight, any heading. Engage. WESLEY: Captain, the beam is holding us here. RIKER: Increase power! WORF: Shields weakening. DATA: Shields will be down in eighteen seconds. This demonstrates that it is possible for the shields to lose power without other systems losing power. Later in the same episode, they try to divert enough power... | |
| Jan 24, 2015 at 17:08 | comment | added | supercat | ...to have equipment that could directly convert low-voltage power to high-voltage power fully "on demand". Since most ships spend a lot of time between battles, having a shield energy reserve which was generally sized to hold the amount of energy needed between lulls might be cheaper than having a shield generator which could produce a useful amount of shield energy during a battle. | |
| Jan 24, 2015 at 16:41 | comment | added | supercat | @Hypnosifl: Shields may require a different form of energy from the rest of the ship's functions; equipment may exist to convert the latter to the former, but have limits to its power (how much energy can be converted per second). As a real-world analogy, many camera-flash units need high voltage electricity (300+ volts) to operate the flash but have low-voltage batteries; it's a lot cheaper to have equipment that converts low-voltage energy to high-voltage energy "slowly", along with equipment to store enough high-voltage energy for a flash, than it would be... | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 22:26 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | (cont.) or Q Who? (do a control-F for "shields are down"). Granted, there are other cases where under a heavy barrage, they report losing shields and other systems at about the same time, like in the Voyager ep Homestead or the movie First Contact so it could just be an inconsistency in the writing, or chalk it up to the fact that in Survivors and Q Who? they were hit with weird types of energy beams that may have had unusual effects on ship systems. | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 22:18 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Praxis - I don't think you're understanding my argument for why it seems obviously incorrect to me. I'm not saying there's "no energy usage", it's that the shields are powered by the same source that powers the rest of the ship, so if the shields went down because they ran out of energy, that would mean there'd be no energy left for other things like warp drive, weapons, etc. But there are occasions when their shields have been knocked out but they have had other systems, like the TNG episode Survivors (do a control-F for the phrase "shields down") | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 22:04 | comment | added | Praxis | ...fail. If it were, there would be more references to it (on screen, an not just in the Bird-of-Prey manual). That's why it was reason number 2 in my answer. Anyway, we can agree to disagree, can we not? If you provide compelling reasons why energy reserves are not an issue in shield operation and will not contribute to shield failure in any instance, then I will happily edit the answer to reflect that. Until then, let's both focus our energies (pardon the pun) on other exciting Trek questions! :-) | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 22:02 | comment | added | Praxis | @Hypnosifl : "I think your alternate explanation involving running out of energy is obviously incorrect" --- I don't think anything is obvious here. Just because we don't have exact figures on energy usage does not mean there is no energy usage. As you pointed out yourself, in Equinox, the shield emitters (aka generators) needed to be recharged. Does this not count to you as the shields "wearing out" and needing to be restored? Or do you interpret "wearing out" as a permanent, irreparable state? (I do not.) Anyway, I refuse to believe that overheating is the only reason why shields | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 18:27 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | Another bit of evidence in favor of the overheating explanation: in the book Klingon Bird-of-Prey: Owner's Workshop Manual which was co-written by TNG technical consultant Rick Sternbach, p. 51 says "Shield and structural integrity field generators can be overloaded, where the energy being dissipated is less than that being poured into the system from incoming weapons fire, explosions, or physical debris swarms." Usually when people talk of a machine needing to "dissipate" energy they're speaking of thermal energy. | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 18:26 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Praxis - It's not that I feel there's a better explanation--as I said I think the explanation involving heat is very plausible. But I gave reasons for why I think your alternate explanation involving running out of energy is obviously incorrect (do you have any response to the points I raised about that?), and I also thought it was worth noting that both your answers are fairly speculative and that some evidence may conflict with both, since you presented your answers in a fairly authoritative tone which might mislead some readers as to the level of canon support they have. | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 18:18 | comment | added | Praxis | @Hypnosifl: I don't think you will find a canonical reference that tells you exactly why shields fail. From the technical manual descriptions, I gave two reasons why such a physical system would invariably fail under continued stress. Your skepticism is welcome, but why pursue this in this manner in the comments? If you feel there is a better explanation, simply post it as an independent response and let the community vote -- as always. :-) | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 18:02 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | (continued) where the power for all the ship's systems comes from according to p. 57 of the technical manual (they say that the matter/antimatter reaction assembly, or M/ARA, is also called the 'warp engine core', and that 'Energy produced within the core is shared between its primary application, the propulsion of the starship, and the raw power requirements of other major ship systems. The M/ARA is the principle power-generating system'). So I think the technical manual doesn't give us a basis for anything more than speculation, and the Voyager line could be a basis as well. | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 17:59 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Praxis - But neither of the quotes from the manual really specifically address why shields fail--the idea of overheating was a speculation based on the manual's statement that the emitters generate a great deal of heat, and the idea that adjustments to field strength are "an enormous drain on energy supplies" was also a speculation since the manual doesn't mention how much energy is used in these adjustments. The first speculation seems like a plausible speculation to me, the second doesn't since we never hear them say that shield usage has depleted their matter/antimatter store, which is | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 17:38 | comment | added | Praxis | @geewhiz : The graphic on Reliant's console when the shields go up might be purely symbolic. Anyway, there are too many "takes" on what shields can or cannot do, depending on which episodes or films you consult. That's why I just went straight to the manual. | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 17:36 | comment | added | Praxis | @Hypnosifl : there are obviously many continuity errors (ones that can't simply be explained away by the natural evolution on technologies betwen films and series). | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 17:07 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | (cont.) suggest that some kind of charge needs to build up on the shield emitters, perhaps related to the line about the "graviton polarity source generators" in the tech manual, since polarity can refer to positively and negatively charged parts of a device like a battery or capacitor. (Maybe the emitters use some kind of 'graviton capacitor'?) Voyager has a reputation for more meaningless technobabble than other Trek shows though, so chances are the writers just thought this sounded good and didn't really have any detailed explanation in mind of what it means to "recharge" shield emitters. | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 17:04 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | One additional twist: at the beginning of the Voyager episode "Equinox, Part 1", whose transcript you can read here, the captain of the Federation ship Equinox, whose shields are down to 29%, says "Take the shields offline and recharge the emitters. That'll bring them up to full power." The recharging procedure does take 45 seconds which leaves them vulnerable, but it seems this would work. So it's not clear what it means to "recharge" them, I suppose it could be a confusing way of saying "allow them time to dissipate their heat", but it could also | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 14:10 | comment | added | geewhiz | @Praxis: That's fair but I took it to mean that it was slightly less exact but more or less the same shape as the generating vessel. For example, in Wrath of Khan, when the shields of the Reliant go up, the display on screen has the shields following the shape of the Reliant almost exactly. | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 4:48 | comment | added | Praxis | @geewhiz : "Closely" is a matter of interpretation. "Closely" might simply mean that, if R is the longest radius of the elliptical bubble, then 2R is within some tolerable epsilon of the front-to-aft length of the ship! | |
| Jan 21, 2015 at 0:22 | comment | added | geewhiz | Possibly nitpicky but "...resulting in a field that closely follows the form of the vehicle itself" doesn't make much sense, considering every time I've seen a shield impact, at least on a TNG era show, the shield appears to be an elliptical bubble. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 5:40 | comment | added | Akash | Got it.. At the end all the energy absorbed needs to be dissipated, so its basically limited by energy dissipation capacity... | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 5:39 | vote | accept | Akash | ||
| Jan 19, 2015 at 1:59 | comment | added | user31563 | That is an interesting point about heat. Since there is no atmosphere in space, there is no way to convect heat away from a spacecraft. This is why real world astronauts need cooling systems in their suits, despite the freezing temperatures of space. Without atmospheric gases, they are more likely to overheat than to freeze. The same would be true of a science-fiction spacecraft: the heat cannot dissipate into space, and you would not want the hull to absorb the heat and melt, deform, etc. So specialized cooling systems would be required to avoid structural damage. | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 22:28 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | I also took a look at my copy of the Enterprise-D blueprints but although they show the shield grid on the exterior, they don't seem to show the location of the multiple shield generators mentioned in the technical manual. All I could find was on the "Internal arrangement" schematic for Deck 35, "Engineering Support" (on the level with the main deflector dish), there was a single small room labeled "Defensive shield systems". | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 22:18 | comment | added | Zan Lynx | I would add that the shields can handle some kinds of energy indefinitely. It is the attacks that require the shields to "overdrive" that cause heat and damage to the shield hardware. Witness the episodes where they fly close to a star. At the right range they can do that forever. There is also an episode where they are attacked by more primitive ships using lasers. They take no shield damage and could sit there and take it forever. | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 22:11 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @trikly - Yes, but the more backup generators you have, the longer you should be able to keep your shields up before all your generators become overheated and unusable. Given that space battles are not all that uncommon it seems odd they'd only put 4 backup generators on a ship. I suppose it could be a size/mass issue, what's odd is that the diagram on that page of the Technical Manual only shows the "grid" for distributing shield energy, not the generators themselves, so you don't know anything about their size. Does anyone know of another page or source that shows them? | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 22:01 | comment | added | trlkly | @hypnosifl While they can use backup shield generators, they'd only work if made sure they could stay online long enough for the main generators to cool back down to full. So that would mean they could only cover up to a certain level of energy before both backup shields and main shields would be down at once. You can go further with backup backup shields and such, but eventually you'd have to reach a limit to just how much energy you are willing to defend against. There are space, mass, and power considerations for the number of shield generators. | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 21:16 | comment | added | Praxis | @Hypnosifl: Also, in my second quotation block from the Technical Manual, there is a passage regarding back-up shield generators --- see above. A heavy barrage might do away with them as quickly as the primary generators. | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 21:12 | comment | added | Praxis | @Hypnosifl: I think the part of the OP's question regarding absorption is ambiguous and open to interpretation, at least as it is currently worded. That being said, I believe that I have given a canonical and sound answer to the primary question: "Why do shields in Star Trek 'wear out'?" | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 21:06 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | ...although actually, if overheating is the issue, why don't they just design the ships with backup shield generators that are kept offline until the primary shield generators nearest them overheat, and then they can boot up and return the shield to full strength as long as there's enough power from the matter/antimatter reactor? (which supplies power to all the ship's systems according to p. 57 of the TNG Technical Manual, not just the warp engine) It actually seems kind of difficult to a come up with an in-universe explanation for this plot contrivance. | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 20:55 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | Good answer, but on the second-to-last paragraph about absorbing energy, I think you may have misunderstood what the person was asking. The question doesn't say anything about absorbing energy from attacks, I think "attacks the shield can absorb" just means attacks that wouldn't break through a shield at full strength, and "While the ship has energy" refers to the power systems that supply energy to warp/phasers/life support etc., asking why these systems can't continually recharge the shield (the shield generators overheating and needing repair seems like the most plausible answer). | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 19:52 | history | edited | Praxis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2015 at 17:07 | history | edited | Valorum | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2015 at 17:03 | history | edited | Praxis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2015 at 16:48 | history | edited | Praxis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2015 at 16:31 | history | edited | Praxis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2015 at 16:21 | history | answered | Praxis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |