How many transporter rooms on TOS Enterprise?

[Just a Bill]

Robert Comsol wrote:

---

If I recall correctly the turbo lifts in ST II were "inoperative below C Deck" (reminder: for the movies they apparently changed the numbers for letters) as a result of the battle with Khan and in TOS "Let That Be" Lokai and Bele equally just could get down to Deck 3 ("C Deck ") and had to continue their pursuit down to the lower decks by means of (unseen) ladders and/or stairways.

Seems to me as if there are only turbo lifts connecting Decks 1, 2 and 3 which in case of an emergency have a separate backup power system.

All I'm saying is, the more complicated and power-hungry you make the turbolift system, the more likely it is to fail in a wider variety of crisis situations. It will always need power to run; but how much power, of what type, and on what other systems it depends are issues that seem worth considering.

Robert Comsol wrote:

---

What's wrong with good old magnetism? Back in the 60's the monorail was a big thing and I think a TV series of that era would have depicted futuristic elevators making use of that technology.

Maglev technology only has to worry about gravity in one direction, and propelling one or two local trains forward on an essentially linear track that constrains the vehicle's path. The magnets are concerned only with propulsion and/or friction elimination, not steering or routing.

The turbolift system, on the other hand, has perhaps 20 to 200 tiny little one-car trains that are buzzing about each other, moving sideways and slantways and longways and backways and frontways and squareways and any other ways that you can think of, changing sequence, direction, and possibly orientation, in a context of shifting gravity and inertial damper effects.

Maybe it works; I need to see if I can visualize it.

Robert Comsol wrote:

---

But instead of wheels I'd favor monorail magnetic tracks.

If you've got a way to position and microcontrol those magnets to handle all the acceleration/deceleration, lane changes, direction changes, cab reorientation for termini in different facings, etc., I'm not opposed to it. I suppose maybe the tubes are full of rails and the magnets are all over the outside of the cabs? Thus the cabs crawl along the tubes by pulling and/or pushing against the rails as a surrogate for wheel friction?

I guess that could explain why we don't see any obvious traction apparatus on top of the cab in Disaster. The electromagnets are super-low-profile (perhaps sitting just behind thin, frictionless panels) and not obviously visible. Visually, all you really need are rails in the tubes and matching flat areas on all facings of the cabs. Which seems like a decent fit for this screencap, actually.



Okay, I'm starting to warm up to that. Fewer moving parts is good, too. I guess I just need to visualize how we jump tracks and make route changes.

-Bill

[Albertese]

Also, the lift cab needs to be able to rotate.

--Alex

[blssdwlf]

Just a Bill wrote:

---

The thing about force fields and antigravity is that they are slow. Dog slow. Think about all the times we've seen an antigrav sled or M-4 or Nomad slogging around at a top speed of 0.7 miles per hour. We can blame TV production again here; but also, when people's lives are at stake and collision avoidance is paramount, you can't really afford high speed or acceleration when there's no friction-based means of slowing things back down.

I'm not sure how you can claim all antigravs, M-4 or Nomad to be slow.

In "The Changeling", Kirk and Spock latch onto Nomad with the antigravs and run all the way from engineering to the transporter room and they did make some left-right zigs. If they were in better shape or powered by Trek thrusters or maglev devices I'd wager they'd be mighty quick.

M-4 was a predecessor to the M-5 computer system. I don't know about M-4, but M-5 was attached to the Enterprise and I'd say the Enterprise was also mighty quick.

Nomad's method of flight is unknown and probably not Federation tech. How is this applicable?

What's interesting is in "Disaster", almost everything fails, including the turbolift's emergency clamps. But the gravity system works great. Which brings up an observation: the lift cabs are subjected to gravity (there is a down direction for them.)

So the lifts not only must deal with gravity (antigrav?), also acceleration (inertial dampers?) and also up/down/left/right/forward/back/yaw movement. That's a pretty sophisticated car

[Albertese]

blssdwlf wrote:

---

...

M-4 was a predecessor to the M-5 computer system.
...

Wasn't M-4 also Flint's flying robot in "Requiem for Methuselah?"

--Alex

[blssdwlf]

Why you're right. I've forgotten about that M4. But I'd have to lump in it in with Nomad. I have no idea what allows it to fly in-universe. Thrusters? Antigrav? Magnets?

[Timo]

Extremely random odds and ends:

Multi-lift "parking/shuffling" stations at key lift stops make plenty of sense, but there is also the ST:TMP fact of closely spaced parallel vertical lift shafts (see the Bridge and the Recreation Deck, possibly even situated one atop another) that we might well assume to be a feature of all other starships as well. No doubt there would be "double lanes" for horizontal movement as well. But not particularly closely spaced, as the shafts already consume ridiculous amounts of onboard space in a "single-lane" layout. Rather, there would be concentric circular shafts just like there are concentric corridors in the saucer, and a shaft serving one corridor would be paired with another serving the next corridor outward - or even the next-to-next one in the typical case, explaining why our heroes often see the need to walk at least the distance of one "city block" even when taking the turbolift to help moving from A to B.

"Terminus" stations like the Bridge would have a standby/shuffle system to ensure smooth service. Stations along the corridors would instead rely on a constant flow of cabins around and around the saucer, quite possibly including cabs that run empty on a "scheduled route", just for availability. Consumption of energy certainly shouldn't be an issue, and even wearing down of equipment might be acceptable if the cabs feature little in the way of mechanically moving parts and at most suffer from a gradual "degaussing of coils".

Regarding using gravitics for acceleration, it would appear that deceleration is already taken care of. You don't need to drop a steel anchor or a drag chute: any acceleration or speed provided by gravitics in Trek physics is "cheating", and when you shut down the engine, Nature takes it all back and stops you on your tracks. As we see happen to the little tugboats in ST4:TVH at power loss, for example...

Timo Saloniemi

[blssdwlf]

Isn't there a turbolift map on the wall of one in TMP? Would that be a useful starting point?

[Just a Bill]

Yup...

[Albertese]

The more I've studied that graphic, the more I'm convinced that that's just way too much floor space devote to turbolifts. Especially in the neck! Why??? Answer: it looks suitably tech-y for the one shot it's in.

Actually it seems like I read once somewhere that Rick Sternbach had something to do with this particular graphic and that it was kind of a rough, none-to-well thought out display. Although, I could have that totally wrong.... You out there Rick?

--Alex

[Timo]

I don't think the display is too bad. Let's remember that the top view is likely to show the sum total of shafts on all the decks, and the side view likewise will show a shaft for every deck even if there is just one shaft on that deck.

I wonder whether the top and side views can be made to match in three dimensions...

Timo Saloniemi

[Robert Comsol]

Albertese wrote:

---

The more I've studied that graphic, the more i'm convinced that that's just way too much floor space devote to turbolifts. Especially in the neck! Why??? Answer: it looks suitably tech-y for the one shot it's in.

I concur. I really did consider using it for the TOS Enterprise deck plan project, but already putting the engineering hull airlock elevators into their corresponding positions proved to be extremely difficult (I think they'd be running through Kirk's and McCoy's provisional Season One window cabins on E-Deck 12).

And than there's the turboshaft where the intermix chamber "coil" should be feeding the impulse deflection crystal with energy to "boil" up the impulse fuel for larger thrust, add to this it's horizontal-vertical-horizontal-vertical to travel to the bridge while in "By Any Other Name" the cab movement was definitely horizontal and then vertical until they arrived on the bridge (suggesting a diagonal turbo shaft connecting the engineering hull with the saucer hull).

Bob

[Mytran]

Other things that stand out - the triple deck high shaft (in the cargo bay) that Kirk enters in from is not present, and there is a horizontal shaft that would stick right out into the recreation deck.

[Timo]

the triple deck high shaft (in the cargo bay) that Kirk enters in from is not present

Hmm... There is a triple deck shaft in the secondary hull all right, somewhat aft of the bright dot that indicates Kirk's current position. Whether that's too far aft or not can be debated.

But yes, the big issue is that Kirk doesn't ride up or down that shaft, but horizontally. I mean, he has to find a horizontal ride eventually, in order to reach the primary hull. But there are limited possibilities for this on the upper "balcony" deck where he was standing, as we can clearly see the vertical shaft doesn't branch off horizontally there.

Then again, the deck where the horizontal shaft is displayed to exist is also the only one where it can plausibly exist, this being the widest deck in the secondary hull and the only one with lateral spaces for such a thing. It would perhaps be more satisfactory for Kirk to first take a ride up or down and then go forward along a shaft atop the cargo hold (but there's Engineering to block that ride, and indeed the horizontal line up there in the diagram appears interrupted), or below the floor of the hold (where there indeed exists another possible route in the diagram).

I guess Kirk would first have performed a complex maneuver where the lift goes down three decks, turns to port away from the centerline, goes back up two decks, and reaches this lateral horizontal shaft... But that's not as elegant as simply going down three decks and using an underfloor shaft, plus the top diagram only shows centerline lengthwise shafts, not lateral ones.

there is a horizontal shaft that would stick right out into the recreation deck.

That'd depend a bit on where the deck is supposed to be. The twin vertical shafts would rather naturally place it right under the bridge, where there's plenty of room for it and where a three-deck recreation facility already existed back in "Let That Be". The pair of horizontal shafts would then go aft beneath the rec facility for a while, and jump up one deck after clearing the aft wall (the one with the display screens that imitate portholes and occasionally show a view of the ship's stern).

Timo Saloniemi

[Robert Comsol]

There's one thing else I forgot to mention (having problems with the retailer from which I ordered a Polar Lights TOS Enterprise for my friend and myself, so I wasn't apparently working on all thrusters): Near the airlock Kirk enters a vertical turbo shaft, however the dot in the screencap suggests there to be only a horizontal one!

[Timo]

...Unless the lift already moved from the vertical one a bit towards the bow along the horizontal one. These things move fast on occasion - perhaps very fast when the ship is undergoing repairs and nobody else is using the turbolift network. Given inertia control and all, it might not be at all unusual for the cab to complete a trip from shuttlebay to bridge in, say, four seconds (see STXI)...

Timo Saloniemi