As a matter of fact I just tried such an endless pool at the hotel where I spent the Easter holidays. The jet turbine at one end creates a current against which you swim as long as you can. Now, I have no doubt that we have something like this on the TOS Enterprise, ideally located between the sports section of the ship and sickbay. In a certain manner of speaking it's not too dissimilar from the way the TNG holodecks work. Which reminds me that the "Acapulco diving" holodeck program (mentioned in "Conundrum") would require a rather tall holodeck. Bob
Yes, thank you for that link to the russian sub. The control board panels in the engine room remind me alot of the TOS engine room
It's interesting that the interiors of Russian submarines resemble the interiors of their spacecraft. It suggests to me that their spacecraft designers are borrowing influences as much or more from naval architecture as from aeronautics. American spacecraft, by contrast, tend to resemble aircraft more than submarines. I would guess this has to do with how the two space programs evolved. The American space program was heavily influenced by feedback from test pilots and Air Force aviators who helped design the Apollo capsules as well as the space shuttle. The Soyuz, OTOH, was designed and built like a flying submersible, and the Salyut space modules weren't a whole lot different. Compare one of the corridors on that Typhoon to the inside of the the Zvezda module on the ISS and you'll see what I mean.
I think maybe in the ENT era we had regualr low-tech water showers. And in TMP, I dunno...they didn't have replicators, but maybe sonic showers saved the energy and equipment space required to clean and recycle water for 300+ crew memeber's showering needs. And then by TNG, when the replicator was invented, water showers were probably available...but maybe sonic had become adopted as well, from decades of use...?
I still don't believe the sonic mode serves any particular "spaceship" function - it's just a better type of shower overall, one that everybody in the future likes to use, save for a few oddballs. Much like water closet has totally taken over from the other sort all across the western world (and Star Trek never deals with any other sort of world), but we still add the dubya to the abbreviation. Timo Saloniemi
Indeed I see like the shower vs. bath.. Some people no matter what will only take a bath. While other people will only do showers.. I'm sure it's the same Sonic vs. Water showers.
Depends on how much you want to take into your personal view on the Trekverse. For instance, going back to the old novels, some had Kirk use a water shower while others a sonic shower. This suggests two settings or perhaps an upgrade. Some fans have suggested that Both are used simultaneously. Treknically sonic showers first appeared in blueprints (either the Klingon Battle Cruiser or Romulan Bird of Prey, by Michael McMaster) in the 1970s. This only makes sense since sonic showers are rather direct, simplistic, solid-state, and quite fitting for Klingons (who originally had sonic-everything in TOS: sonic disruptors, sonic force fields, sonic grenades etc.). The first literary reference was in a short story I came across in Enterprise Incidents, but I could be mistaken...
That sonic showers originated in fanfiction is fascinating. I believe the same is true of Vulcan's Forge and a few other tidbits.
I'm not sure about Vulcan's Forge... I think I first came across that in Alan Dean Foster's novelization of "Yesteryear" or it may have been one of those throwaway lines edited out of the script, but resurfaced in the old Concordance...
If that green thing at the end is an acoustic amplifying/focusing crystal... Looks more like a sonic screwdriver than a sonic shower... The ones we're talking about are flush-mounted inside shower cubicals...
^ I was being silly. :P Just imagine people lining up to get sonic'ed by the Doctor because the sonic showers broke.