After Star Lord's helmet, the fixit beam Rocket uses is the most advanced (or scifi-ish) device in the two movies.
Flying a FTL ship optically seems like a mistake. I mean, if you want to try and push a destroyed ship the last couple feet to a dock, maybe, but at that point, you're better off getting a tow anyway. If the sensors aren't working, you're not going to warp, or any fraction of light speed (impulse), and thrusters are pointless if you aren't already where you're going. If the sensors work you can get a screen to tell you what's going on, or let the computer do it itself. no one is taking measurements and flying with their eyes at speeds your eye (and light itself) can't handle reliably
No one would take measurements as they are moving if they only have minutes or seconds left. They would have to stop, take measurements, then proccede, but through deep space they could afford to make periodic measurements on the move, as long as stars are not altered beyond recognition, which is possible. So, even in that case they might have to make periodic drops to sublight for navigation measurements.
Even at sublight, you're still moving at about 1/4th lightspeed (isn't that the accepted Impulse speed?). Visual navigation is not going to give you anything useful, actually probably harmful info because from that POV, you're perceiving things much slower inside the ship than outside. It's that the magic sensors are also working at FTL speeds that makes all of this work. Besides, things aren't stationary in space. if you're moving at 1/4th lightspeed in one direction, and all sorts of planets, stars, and cosmic objects are doing their own little dances at subluminal speeds, eyeballing it isn't going to help much. Nor will you ever see coming the thing that smashes through your ship... Warp speed (as you were implying, with periodic stops to check things out and reorient) would be suicidal at best. You'd be better off flying 100% blind and hoping your computer charts still work, and just guess. it would be like trying to drive a submarine, but taking away their charts first and then sending lots of random boats around them. It's not IF you're going to crash into something, just WHEN.
I'd advocate using FTL for traveling at sublight relativistic speeds to eliminate issues with time dilation. There's no rule saying you MUST use brute-force engine power to travel 0.25c.
Which is why it wasn't done all this time. The shift toward literal viewscreens in Kelvinverse/Discovery is about looks trumping plausibility/practicality.
No argument. I'm arguing with someone that thinks looking out the viewport would be useful in any situation other than the last minute of a docking operation or something. Without the sensors, you're not going anywhere, or at best you're going to be a smear on a planet when you get to your literal final destination. The speeds are just too fast, and faster than the eye/brain can even deal with. Throwing out warp speed completely, even at impulse (if it's .25c), you're doing 224 million miles per hour. That's kinda a lot. And then add in the speed of planets/comets/asteroids/etc through space, and forget it. Not happening without the computer. And a viewscreen. Looking out the window would be harmful at best, it's giving you bad/old information. If the Sun exploded right this second, we wouldn't see that for another 8 minutes. Try to fly at 224 million miles per hour with that level of information update and see what happens. And warp speeds are exponential levels of light speed, so you'd crash long before you even knew there was an object to crash into that way.
I'm currently working on a ship where the bridge has a large front window, but during a battle, the window is covered with a blast shield and the entire bridge is pulled back through a shaft into the interior of the ship for greater protection, with a series of blast doors sealing off the shaft. The window area would then just become part of the wrap-around screen.
That seems pretty Rube-Goldbergian. What's the upside to having the bridge look out on the big window in the first place? Benefit has to be worth the wasted space that the shaft now takes up, which for a bridge module, is a fairly large commitment, potentially wasting about a quarter of a deck, a little more if you want the bridge to have higher ceilings (so basically that much space but 2 decks high). And more mechanics to break or get damaged, all of the cabling/connections now have to move that distance too, or you've got some sort of blind mate connection on the module and had to fully wire to both locations. Tons to go wrong there. Plus, the ship doesn't work without some level of sensors. Just leave the ship in the protected space, and have wrap around floor to ceiling viewscreens projecting any view from the ship you need. Astrometrics was just some random lab, it didn't have star views. Same for Picard's version. What's the upside of the window, other than being a point of drama so the bridge can take damage during an unexpected attack or other source of damage?
Ability to navigate at sublight if your sensors are damaged/jammed/blocked. Also, radiation may interfere with the displays. Cabling isn't a big deal; if we can figure out how to do street cars a nearly hundred years ago, we can do it several hundred years in the future. Even today, it's no more complicated than a subway car or high-speed train. You would probably do a combination of wi-fi and wireless power, which you'd want to do anyways to prevent systems from going down simply because the enemy got in a good shot and took out a cable. Space is an issue, but you could just have it going down a central shaft used to convey people about the ship (e.g. turbolifts, light rail), so you really only loose the volume of the bridge at it's final resting place. You could also have the bridge double as the captain's yacht, flying out of the front of the ship. Perhaps there's even a internal hanger with several bridges that can replace the main bridge if it's damaged/destroyed.
How are visually navigating at 224 million miles per hour? Also, everything else in space is moving around really fast, too. The earth, for example, is doing 67000 miles per hour around the sun. Add in things that are moving at warp speed, and you have basically no chance at visually navigating. things are moving faster than you can react, and in some cases, perceive. Sensors and computers are the only way that works. Even if you order all stop, for example, the Earth just blew by kinda fast. You just can't fly a ship at those speeds, and not when everything ELSE is moving at speeds your brain can't process either. Like I said, unless you're 5 feet from a docking port and trying to guide it in, can't see the benefit. And even then, the docking port wouldn't be lined up to the viewscreen anyway, so it does you no good. And if radiation is an issue, I'm not sure I want to stand next to the window, I want to be as inside the ship as possible! Maybe it's magic transparent aluminum X feet thick and impervious to radiation, direct attack, micro-meteorites, etc. but it's still less safe than the hull (plus shielding). Cabling IS kinda an issue. Street cars are just getting power, they're not trying to control an entire Starship (plus power the bridge module). There'd be a million interfaces all over the ship, and you need them to be in two different locations. that's either a ton of cable to manage (and damage) or completely redundant cabling to both locations and blind mate connectors that the bridge module could attach to (also a failure point). Slightest chance at damage or misalignment, the entire bridge is out of commission. Wireless power is kinda an EMI bitch, not so good with delicate computing and sensors, but you never know with future magic I guess. the more wifi-type systems you have, the more likely you lose the connection to them, though, and you'd want the bridge to be as hardened as possible. If radiation is screwing with the sensors, I don't really want it having a chance to completely interfere with how the bridge talks to the ship. Think the space issue is bigger than you think. It's the entire volume of the bridge, for the entire length of the shaft. Unless the entire ship is a Transformer, you can't really reclaim the wasted volume for much else, because you need to be able to have the bridge slide back into that slot at a moment's notice. How many things do you store in an elevator shaft? Kinda just the elevator. yes, you could have the bridge be an escape pod/yacht, just takes a lot of redundancy and you have to put a power source and engines in it. The most plausible of the list of things proposed, but adds a ton more danger to the everyday bridge. One more thing to explode, and it's right under your most important people. The 'several bridges in a hanger' idea makes zero sense. If you just put it in a more protected spot, you wouldn't need replacements. Additionally, you can't store them in the shaft the active one is in, or it can't move, so you need an entire second connected shaft for them to sit idle, so wasting even MORE space for the complicated plan. If you wanted to be smarter about it, and redundant control IS good, you'd just have a secondary bridge (or battle bridge, if you prefer) in that safe central location. You could even have a dedicated turbolift that ONLY goes between the two bridges, so the crew could quickly move to the backup location. Then you could hardwire everything you need to both locations, no wasted space, no stress points to fail, etc. Which is probably why we've actually seen them basically do this for TOS (Aux Control) and TNG (Battle Bridge). Similar to how on Navy vessels (I'll speak to the Destroyers, at least), you've got the Bridge, and then the CIC control center safely internal to the ship. Still not seeing any upside to the complicated plan, other than a 'kewl' factor when you show the CGI once on tv. Makes no logical sense, though, and has a TON of downside.
By this reasoning, it really doesn't matter if there's a window or not, because the computer is the entire bridge crew. Might as well not have a bridge. But let's say the issue is reacting to things when visible light won't reach you fast enough. In that case, you can just do a holographic overlay, which is basically what you're doing anyway when the bridge is retracted. Well, radiation isn't the best argument, of course. The main point was that something could disable the displays and/or sensors, like a computer virus for example, or perhaps an EMP grenade goes off when the ship is boarded and all the displays on the bridge stop working. Point is that a window gives you another option. The bridge is probably communicating with other parts of the ship using superluminal comm technology, but it doesn't matter because you're talking about several hundred years to figure out how to spool 50 meters of cable, tops. With regards to power, just put in some batteries. They only have to last a few seconds while the bridge retracts. And if the whole bridge is a captain's yacht, it already has a reactor. My ship is rather long, and somewhat radially symmetrical (although a bit squashed from top to bottom, so it makes sense to have a large physical transport path from stem to stern. Make it a lifeboat, then. Or make it to where you don't fuel up or start the reactor unless you're preparing to leave the ship. If the bridge is a detachable yacht, you need a replacement when it goes out on its own. You're overthinking it. Just have a magazine of them at the end of the shaft. Moving the entire bridge crew by having everyone file into a turbolift won't be any easier than moving the bridge itself, and the entire time they're in the turbolift, the bridge is uncrewed. Just have them stay at their stations as the bridge moves to a safer location. It's not especially complicated. You exaggerate the engineering concerns, which are basically overcome with batteries and a cable reel/laser antenna/quantum communications relay, and it's way more practical the a permanent JJ-style bridge on the top of a saucer with a bridge window of its own. Granted, just making the battle bridge the primary bridge would be more practical, but there is some value to the "kewl" factor.
Not really exaggerating the engineering concerns, I'm an engineer. And specifically deal with designing submarines, which is somewhat related. What you're handwaving past, though, is the upside to your very complicated plan (and it is)...
If you want the bridge in a safer location, just put it in a safer location. More moving parts = more chances to fail. One size fits all is often one size fits NONE, so trying to make this bridge module something that moves in the ship, and also a kewl shuttle, and also one of a magazine of several of them.... It just isn't going to excel at anything. If you want a viewport, put one in the front and put some limited helm control station near there, not the entire (exposed) bridge. In an ultimate backup, someone could go there and steer manually. Or if you insist on the bridge having that window, the dedicated turbolift would be fine. It has the benefit of taking seconds to get from A to B, and only takes up a 5 foot cylinder worth of space vs. the massive cylinder that an entire bridge module would take up. Spooling cable can break, fray, catch on something, etc. If the ship takes any damage, it's easy to envision that big hollow tube in the ship being impacted, as even the slightest misalignment is a huge issue, and now the bridge (and crew) is trapped between stops. Having an entire magazine of them is a colossal waste. What percentage of your ship's volume are you dedicating to backup bridges that you may never use? Half of your ship is going to be a stack of backup storage bridges. Why is the bridge module more effective than just having a yacht or other shuttle for more specific use? Because it now has to be (roughly) aerodynamic too, which is limiting your layout choices. Plus it assumes you want the entire bridge crew to leave the ship, otherwise you have to move people around first, which saves no time over just going to the shuttle. And the ship has no bridge during that launch, or you need an entire second bridge crew brought online first. And you can't use the big stem to stern transport corridor, because it needs to be kept clear for the bridge module to move. Plus the big stack of extras you loaded in, so you need TWO of these big corridors, and one is full of wasted bonus bridges. None of this makes logical sense, and is a massive waste of resources while not being as efficient as designing things that are actually good at what you want them to be. Dedicated designs that excel at what you want them to do is almost always better than making one kewl thing with a million moving parts that is supposed to try and do everything. A swiss army knife is convenient, but not if it takes much more space than the equivalent parts. Plus, if you are trying to use a knife for anything serious, you'd rather have a bowie knife than a swiss army knife blade. Same thing with a screw driver, wine opener, etc. Sure, you could just take 10 massive swiss army knives with you, but the smaller collection of actual tools will serve you better. Basic engineering principle: KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. The more you try to get cute, the more likely it is to fail or be completely useless when shit hits the fan.
Your argument from authority would hold more water if we weren't talking about starships in the distant future. I've already admitted as much. Logically, bridges should be deep inside the hull, which is terrible from a dramatic standpoint. Keep in mind that I'm balancing realism with dramatic concerns. Yeah, just having the entire bridge be its own turbolift makes more sense. After all, aside from the interlinks to the consoles and viewer, it's no more complicated than the large emergency turbolift to the battle bridge that you mentioned earlier. One thing I could do is have the captain's yacht be a harness that accepts the bridge "capsule", thus no longer requiring that the weapons, reactor and propulsion be built into the bridge. Only the very front of the bridge would be a window. It would be roughly the size of the Enterprise-D viewscreen. The rest is all holographic projection. I'm imagining a maximum bridge crew of probably 10 to 12, so a five-foot cylinder is inadequate. You'd need a dedicated emergency lift, and that would require a larger shaft anyways. It makes more sense to have a larger shaft where multiple turbolifts can pass each other or travel next to each other when the bridge is not in transit. I never meant to suggest that a spool would be the ideal solution, only that it's A solution, that solutions exist, and that much better solutions will exist in the future. If the first volley of your enemy's attack penetrates your shields and armor and bends a shaft in the very center of your ship to the point that it's no longer usable, then you're already dead. Moving the ship into the interior should be something that happens when you go to either yellow or red alert, not when you're in the middle of combat. By the way, your argument also applies to emergency turbolifts, so this is an argument against all exposed bridges, not retractable bridges specifically. Only if your ship is Archer Class. You're talking about dedicated space for the equivalent of five modules that are about 5 meters wide on a ship that's 20 decks high, 280 meters wide and 340 meters long sans the nacelles. First of all, shuttles and yachts require just as much space as a bridge module, so the space savings argument is a lot less convincing here. The bridge does need to be somewhat aerodynamic (thought not as much as our current spacecraft), but I don't see that as being a significant hurdle. (A wrap-around viewscreen is going to lend itself to a rounded shape anyways.) It's not like I was planning to have a bridge shaped like a brick, after all. As for saving time, using the bridge as a yacht would likely not be happening in the middle of combat, unless you're about to ram another ship and want to get away, in which case you wouldn't want everyone leaving the bridge. Uh, no. First of all, the bridge would travel the corridor in only a few seconds, and only traffic going out to the front of the ship would be blocked, because the rest can simply follow behind the bridge. There would only be a maximum of three bridges in a magazine: One primary and two for backup and training. When the primary bridge module is retracted, it would enter the bridge magazine, which would consist of a three module carousel, where it can be rotated into place and lowered into a yacht expansion module. If a bridge needs maintenance, it can be brought back into the magazine and a new one loaded in its place. I'm not saying there isn't some merit to your argument, but there are two things you're not considering. One is that I'm deliberately taking some dramatic license, so I'm merely concerned with the idea being just plausible enough for the audience to suspend disbelief. If we were realistic, most combat-capable vessels would look like tanks with no windows. Secondly, none of your arguments really stretch that plausibility. My design is no less plausible from an engineering perspective than most bridges in Star Trek. You seem to be holding me to a standard most TV starships don't meet.
Which is why I wasn't designing a warp reactor for you and claiming to be an expert. Surely working on a design (and pros/cons) for a warship that moves through a medium (water/space) has some practical applicability, no? Yes, it's not a spaceship, but I definitely have to deal with some of the problems you're introducing. Plus, the control center for a submarine is in the center of the sub, and has no windows, relying on various sensors. Suppose there's the periscope when you're just maneuvering and not worried about stealth, but you're pretty much relying on the sensors for real operators, plus charts and whatnot. Big plus is that nothing is moving at speeds that your mind can't comprehend, and no relativistic concerns to deal with, so eyesight can have some value. Which is why I suggested that if you needed a window for some ultimate backup solution, you could just have a small helm console in the front somewhere (like 10-forward); but you don't have to move the entire bridge there for those moments, or use it most of the time. It's just there if everything is FUBAR. The dramatic license just seems to be introducing a rube-Goldberg system that can break down for you and cause drama; I was just trying to suggest more realistic improvements that would be more plausible. And trying to remove that fanfic 'uber kewl transformer ship' vibe. You can do with that what you like. Yes, the Prometheus looked kewl when it did it's thing, but dumb/impractical at best in 'real' life. Way complicated, too many things that can go wrong, obvious flaws, and because they have to operate independently for short periods, you now basically need 3 of everything. Huge wasted volume, things you want on the outside of a ship are now tucked into the middle when the 3 merge, etc. That was bad fanfic that made it to the screen somehow. While not warships, these ships are designed to have a long lifespan and stand up to a lot of abuse. The more complicated gadgets you add to it, the more that can fail. And the jack of all trades is master of none, so you're often better with the simple designs that are specific to the task rather than trying to make one thing reconfigure itself to all possible tasks and suck at all of them. Flashy is fun, but 100% polar opposite of how military hardware is designed and fielded (other than pork projects, of course). An Osprey is a neat looking plane/helicopter hybrid, but I'd get into a helicopter OR plane long before I jumped into one of those death traps.
Hmm. Haven't given up the retractable bridge idea yet, but an alternative might be interesting: An analog bridge, at the front, that allows you to pilot the ship at sublight speeds without the use of computers or sensors. The idea being that if the computer systems fail, you'd be able to move the ship around in an emergency. The main bridge would be at the center, with full 360 degree holographic displays, but the analog bridge would be up front with a big window and lots of analog controls, allowing for slow maneuvers to avoid collisions and general navigation. Kinda silly, but an interesting thought...
That is definitely a step in the right direction. The less complexity in the design, the better. You can have neat features, but it should be somewhat grounded in something that makes sense. In universe, some engineer had to submit these plans to his boss and not be court-martialed, so keep that in mind. You're designing a ship that has to be able to stand up to the rigors of space; anomalies, battle, etc. KISS. Sublight is STILL very very fast, though, not sure how much you can do without the sensors and the ship's computer analyzing all that for you. So the disaster you're brewing probably shouldn't take out everything. Nothing in space is stationary, so with everything moving hundreds or millions of miles per hour, you can't just eyeball it. Like I said, from a dead stop near Mars, aim for Earth visually. It's moving 69 thousand miles per hour, so good luck with that. Yes, you can go fast too, but when eyeballing the trajectories and velocities without the computer, you're either missing by a ton or smashing into it at best. The limited analog helm makes a tiny bit of sense, but only in spacedock or other docking/mating connection situations. Or if you want to stretch reality but manufacture drama, have them damaged in an asteroid field and have to use that to get to a safe spot. No sense in an entire analog bridge, though. What are the other stations doing/looking at? In that situation, engineer should go down to engineering. science has no sensors to look at. weapons are down unless someone wants to push a torpedo out of the tube manually. Don't think the strip phasers work without the computer to help decide where the strip turns into a projected beam (much less tactical sensors for real aim, it's not a turret you can point manually)
Wasn't one of the early concepts for the Constitution-class (before the scripts put in the transporters) that the upper part of the saucer (decks one and two I think) would be detachable and would be used like a mobile planetary survey ship/landing craft? So that in theory, they production could use the bridge set for both on the ship and on the planet locations in episodes since it would go down to the surface to deliver the landing party and have a lab or something or quick radio access to the ship's computer for lab analysis of samples and whatever else the tricorders picked up..