Clean Slate: Design the Bridge

[Mike Okuda]

Interesting question and responses!

Remember that most mission control rooms, and other control centers are largely designed to facilitate interaction between controllers and their equipment in off-nominal situations where system malfunctions must be diagnosed and repaired. Controllers need to be able to interact with each other in unpredictable ways to deal with unpredictable emergent situations, including partial control systems failure.

Control layouts are often designed to facilitate workarounds when primary systems are not working properly. For example, the number of controls used by astronauts to fly the space shuttle under "normal" conditions is surprisingly small. The overwhelming majority of switches and displays on the shuttle flight deck are low-level controls intended to provide diagnostic and workaround capabilities.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I quite like the notion of separating flying and fighting. Some of my favorite anime bridge designs are two bridges in one: in some Gundam series, there is a "battle" bridge with dedicated tactical monitors and stations that everyone goes to in combat, sometimes physically descending their chairs from the normal bridge upstairs with all the windows. Others have a secondary gunnery control deck just below and behind the main bridge, where the gunners and their control officer shoot the weapons while the captain moves the ship around.

http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/seed/lineart/archangel-bridge.jpg

Mark

 

[FalTorPan]

What I am saying is that from a human design approach, regarding a moving vehicle, we naturally want to orientate ourselves in the direction of travel- especially for the people who are inputting the movements.

I'm not saying it's needed in a moving object were everything is displaying what you need to see, I'm saying that it's a natural design element.

Can you provide one reason (and I am not being adversarial) why you would NOT have to orientate yourself in the direction of travel? Is there a design that requires a person, say in the helm, to be facing sideways or backwards in relation to the forward motion of the ship? Let's assume that space or equipment location restrictions are not a concern.

I know you aren't being adversarial. I enjoy this type of discussion!

I agree that from a human factors approach, having a vehicle's control center face forward probably does provide a psychological benefit. On the other hand, in a room like the bridge of the Enterprise -- or more appropriately, in auxiliary control, located deeply within the hull -- I'm not certain that it matters much, even from a human factors perspective. Maybe it does.

When I imagine Ensign John Smith in his cabin, located at some arbitrary point along some arbitrary concentric corridor, I have a hard time imagining him feeling any better or worse knowing or not knowing that the ship's direction-of-flight axis runs parallel to a line between the dresser and the trash can in the corner.

Then again, a ship's control center isn't a cabin.

 

[Patrickivan]

What I am saying is that from a human design approach, regarding a moving vehicle, we naturally want to orientate ourselves in the direction of travel- especially for the people who are inputting the movements.

I'm not saying it's needed in a moving object were everything is displaying what you need to see, I'm saying that it's a natural design element.

Can you provide one reason (and I am not being adversarial) why you would NOT have to orientate yourself in the direction of travel? Is there a design that requires a person, say in the helm, to be facing sideways or backwards in relation to the forward motion of the ship? Let's assume that space or equipment location restrictions are not a concern.

I know you aren't being adversarial. I enjoy this type of discussion!

I agree that from a human factors approach, having a vehicle's control center face forward probably does provide a psychological benefit. On the other hand, in a room like the bridge of the Enterprise -- or more appropriately, in auxiliary control, located deeply within the hull -- I'm not certain that it matters much, even from a human factors perspective. Maybe it does.

When I imagine Ensign John Smith in his cabin, located at some arbitrary point along some arbitrary concentric corridor, I have a hard time imagining him feeling any better or worse knowing or not knowing that the ship's direction-of-flight axis runs parallel to a line between the dresser and the trash can in the corner.

Then again, a ship's control center isn't a cabin.

I agree- there are going to have to major concessions made with orientation. I'm simply suggesting it for the critical helm position- and his/ her orientation would suggest the main viewer be facing him (if critical for his position) and therefore that would determine where the Captain is seated. That, then determines where everone else is located...

When ever I decide to draw a bridge layout, (since I was 14. 20 years ago- ugh!), my natural instinct was to place the helm facing forward (like above). This was after determining what I needed on my bridge. There was never a reason not to do so. The people down in engineering would have their systems place where the core systems required them to be placed.

People who have windows, would need some kind of natural orientation.

But I am not a professional mind understanding person (what do they call those people?) so I'm just basing it on my lame observations.

Sometimes tone is misinterpreted through email, and i just wanted to make sure that everyone knew I wasn't being confrontational. But you didn't take it as such, so it was no big deal

 

[Christopher]

Remember that most mission control rooms, and other control centers are largely designed to facilitate interaction between controllers and their equipment in off-nominal situations where system malfunctions must be diagnosed and repaired. Controllers need to be able to interact with each other in unpredictable ways to deal with unpredictable emergent situations, including partial control systems failure.

Control layouts are often designed to facilitate workarounds when primary systems are not working properly. For example, the number of controls used by astronauts to fly the space shuttle under "normal" conditions is surprisingly small. The overwhelming majority of switches and displays on the shuttle flight deck are low-level controls intended to provide diagnostic and workaround capabilities.

That's valuable to know, thanks. In a spec novel I've written, hopefully the first of a series, the heroine has her own sapient scout ship, and given the ship's intelligence as well as the kind of advanced interface tech they'd have a century from now, I've been wondering if there was even any point in having a cockpit or control room, or if so, what its design would be. But it sounds like there's good reason to have a cockpit with fairly basic controls, just as backups in case of emergency.

And you know, that kind of justifies why the TOS Enterprise had all those pushbutton controls and switches and things (although the new movie may render that somewhat moot). It's not because they don't have anything more advanced, but because they need the more basic equipment as a fallback.

 

[Mysterion]

That's valuable to know, thanks. In a spec novel I've written, hopefully the first of a series, the heroine has her own sapient scout ship, and given the ship's intelligence as well as the kind of advanced interface tech they'd have a century from now, I've been wondering if there was even any point in having a cockpit or control room, or if so, what its design would be. But it sounds like there's good reason to have a cockpit with fairly basic controls, just as backups in case of emergency.

And you know, that kind of justifies why the TOS Enterprise had all those pushbutton controls and switches and things (although the new movie may render that somewhat moot). It's not because they don't have anything more advanced, but because they need the more basic equipment as a fallback.

I don't know if this would help you at all, but there was a book about twenty years ago (or so) called the Space Shuttle Operator's Manual. The book had fold-out diagrams of the major control panels of the shuttle, plus check-lists for operations during launch, landing, etc. The same authors did a similar book about a Mars exploration spacecraft called the Mars One Crew Manual which has some interesting stuff in it as well. IIRC, the last name of the author for both books was Joels.

Hope this is usefull.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

The only exception I take is to your comment that the bridge orientation facing forward arguement is nonsensical. It is a very psychologically valid arguement. People like to orientate themselves in a way that is natural. You face forward when you go forward.

When you are in some interior room within a building, do you have any intuitive feel for which direction you're facing -- toward the front or back of the building? Even if you do, does it matter?

If a Trek ship's inertial damping system does what it's supposed to do, then 99.9999% of the time, you won't feel yourself affected by the ship's movement, so being on the bridge is like being in an interior room of a building.

If there were a technical design reason why the Captain and helm couldn't face forward, then that would be the case- However there is no valid reason to NOT have them face forward.

I see no reason to have the bridge oriented in any particular direction at all.

Well- when I get into a building, I KNOW that it's not going to be moving.

What I am saying is that from a human design approach, regarding a moving vehicle, we naturally want to orientate ourselves in the direction of travel- especially for the people who are inputting the movements.

I'm not saying it's needed in a moving object were everything is displaying what you need to see, I'm saying that it's a natural design element.

Can you provide one reason (and I am not being adversarial) why you would NOT have to orientate yourself in the direction of travel? Is there a design that requires a person, say in the helm, to be facing sideways or backwards in relation to the forward motion of the ship? Let's assume that space or equipment location restrictions are not a concern.

I can give you an example where this isn't done.

I've had the opportunity to visit a few submarines, and the bridges on those are typically long and narrow.

The "helm" stations on a submarine's bridge are generally found along the outer wall, facing 90 degrees away from "forward."

I know that other ship types... say, cargo freighters, for instance... tend to have the helm be the foremost station on the bridge, facing forward. But then again, this is largely because when in port, they steer by sight, not by instruments of any kind. (This is, of course, ignoring the fact that most larger vessels don't even manuever under their own power when in port, rather relying on tugs to do the driving for them.)

When at sea, this is a total non-issue. There's nothing to be gained by "facing front" because there's no need to compare visual input to a "physical sense" of the ship's movement.

In Trekkian terms, well... as a rule, they shouldn't be feeling the rolling and turning of the ship anyway (granting that they often did this anyway in TOS for dramatic effect). And if there's no need to corrolate "physical sense of movement" to "direct visual input," I'm not sure what the point of this would be.

Just for the record, by the way, I've always believed that what we were seeing in TOS when we saw the "forward viewscreen" image wasn't the view looking forward from the bridge, but rather the view from the vincinity of the dish, anyway. I seem to recall that there were a few times that we saw stuff on-screen that reflected that, though I can't remember where off the top of my head.

 

[FalTorPan]

Good points, Cary L. Brown!

 

[Christopher]

Well, if we assume the "nub" on the back of the TOS Enterprise bridge module is the turbolift, then the captain, helm and navigator aren't facing directly forward anyway, but 36 degrees to port.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Well, if we assume the "nub" on the back of the TOS Enterprise bridge module is the turbolift, then the captain, helm and navigator aren't facing directly forward anyway, but 36 degrees to port.

Agreed... and that's clearly what the original intent was, though there's also some second-hand info out there that the bridge was originally laid out with the lift right in line with the rest of the stuff, but that they rearranged the "pie-pieces" to make it better for shooting purposes.

There are few topics which can be raised on this BBS which are more likely to raise cries of JIHAD!!!!! than this one, though. So instead of saying which way the original bridge was laid out, I was just talking about why, "if I were starting from a clean slate," I'd have no reason to care how it was oriented within the ship.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Well, if we assume the "nub" on the back of the TOS Enterprise bridge module is the turbolift, then the captain, helm and navigator aren't facing directly forward anyway, but 36 degrees to port.

That would explain why Sulu's always turning left without using the blinkers.

 

[Mike Okuda]

That's valuable to know, thanks. In a spec novel I've written, hopefully the first of a series, the heroine has her own sapient scout ship, and given the ship's intelligence as well as the kind of advanced interface tech they'd have a century from now, I've been wondering if there was even any point in having a cockpit or control room, or if so, what its design would be. But it sounds like there's good reason to have a cockpit with fairly basic controls, just as backups in case of emergency.

And you know, that kind of justifies why the TOS Enterprise had all those pushbutton controls and switches and things (although the new movie may render that somewhat moot). It's not because they don't have anything more advanced, but because they need the more basic equipment as a fallback.

An astronaut once told me, only partly kidding, that there's only one switch that a space shuttle commander HAS to flip when landing the shuttle (not counting such things as push-to-talk). Everything else is automated, so you could theoretically let the computers run everything, assuming that nothing goes wrong, and that you trust the computers. Yet the crew wants and needs all those switches and gauges to give them low-level controls when things don't go exactly to plan.

A designer for the space shuttle mission control room told me that the room layout was intended to make it easier for the flight director to talk directly to the controllers, and for the controllers to talk directly to each other, even though they can also talk by intercom. That direct human interaction is regarded as important, especially in crisis situations.

 

[ancient]

Well, if we assume the "nub" on the back of the TOS Enterprise bridge module is the turbolift, then the captain, helm and navigator aren't facing directly forward anyway, but 36 degrees to port.

Agreed... and that's clearly what the original intent was, though there's also some second-hand info out there that the bridge was originally laid out with the lift right in line with the rest of the stuff, but that they rearranged the "pie-pieces" to make it better for shooting purposes.

Well, there was WNMHGB, where the turbolift WAS in the back in several scenes.

The original intent was lost in this case when they actually made the show. originally the bridge faced forward and the turbo was in the back. When they bastardized the set, that became impossible, so now fans have to choose which of the original intents they like more. Ignore that the bridge is facing forward and turn it, or ignore that the little thing in the back is supposed to be the turbolift. Of course, fandom being what it is, half choose FJ's idea, half choose the other. Then the inevitable nerd fight ensues over whose revision is more in line with MJ's original forward-facing, turbo in rear design. Of course, if they'd just kept MJ's design to begin with none of this would have happened.

It's like that room in TMP that doesn't fit in the ship. Or that hallway in TMP that doesn't fit in the ship. So much grief...

 

[Tigger]

Well, if we assume the "nub" on the back of the TOS Enterprise bridge module is the turbolift, then the captain, helm and navigator aren't facing directly forward anyway, but 36 degrees to port.

That would explain why Sulu's always turning left without using the blinkers.

No, that is just HWO - Helming while Asian.

 

[Christopher]

Well, there was WNMHGB, where the turbolift WAS in the back in several scenes.

Are you sure? Sometimes, when filming a close-up, they'd just reposition the command chair and helm consoles to get a better shot or take advantage of an existing lighting setup. For instance, in "By Any Other Name," there's a shot of Chekov at the navigation console where the console has been rotated to the left, presumably so that the main viewer wouldn't be in the shot and an FX shot wouldn't be required (in addition to the FX shot of Chekov being turned into a Styrofoam block).

So you can't always take the relative positioning of things in the bridge too literally. It's not a documentary.

 

[ancient]

Well, if you watch WNMHGB you can judge for yourself. It's a shot over Mitchell towards the back with Kirk's seat, the railing break, and the Turbo directly behind the captain. It was mentioned and shown somewhere in the STXI forum, I forget exactly which thread.

So they either changed the location of the railing break, Kirk's seat, and the nav consol, or the position of the turbolift.

But it's one of those issues that really doesn't matter. Some folks are obsessed with there being a consensus on the issue, which is really unnecessary and leads to those threads where everyone is arguing over who is disrespecting MJ more. FJ or canon.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Add me to the list of people that doubt very much that there will be many (if ANY) "holo" "virtual" or "programmable" control surfaces on a real ship's bridge. If you blow the "picture tube" on the display, POOF go your controls.

Physical buttons switches and knobs are the right way to do a control interface. Even if the system develops a fault/damage, it is unlikely to affect EVERY knob, button, etc, making a complete control failure LESS likely, and allowing for easy repair.

 

[Christopher]

So they either changed the location of the railing break, Kirk's seat, and the nav consol, or the position of the turbolift.

But it's one of those issues that really doesn't matter. Some folks are obsessed with there being a consensus on the issue, which is really unnecessary and leads to those threads where everyone is arguing over who is disrespecting MJ more. FJ or canon.

It makes no sense to treat every detail of every shot as part of some actual consistent reality; it was a TV show and they were adapting as they went along. If the apparent position of the turbolift changed within the course of a single story, that's clearly a physical impossibility and it must be disregarded as a production glitch.

The idea that disregarding Matt Jefferies' "original intent" is somehow an insult to the man is ridiculous. He wasn't a religious founder. He was a professional designer working in television, and he therefore knew that his job was to adapt his designs to the practical needs of the production. A typical TV art director or production designer goes through dozens of preliminary designs of anything, and even after it's built as a set, he still tweaks it. So invoking "original intent" in this instance is thoroughly absurd.

Add me to the list of people that doubt very much that there will be many (if ANY) "holo" "virtual" or "programmable" control surfaces on a real ship's bridge. If you blow the "picture tube" on the display, POOF go your controls.

Physical buttons switches and knobs are the right way to do a control interface. Even if the system develops a fault/damage, it is unlikely to affect EVERY knob, button, etc, making a complete control failure LESS likely, and allowing for easy repair.

On the other hand, most modern airplanes have "glass cockpits" where every display is a video screen. I've wondered myself about the reliability of that, the apparent lack of backup if something goes wrong, but they seem to be considered reliable enough to have become standard, at least in many Boeing and Airbus aircraft. The shuttle Atlantis has a glass cockpit too. True, it's only the displays that are electronic, with the controls still being buttons and dials and switches. But losing the instruments would be a pretty big handicap too. I guess losing controls would be worse, though.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, there was WNMHGB, where the turbolift WAS in the back in several scenes.

Are you sure? Sometimes, when filming a close-up, they'd just reposition the command chair and helm consoles to get a better shot or take advantage of an existing lighting setup.

No, it's completely clear in this image:

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x03/wherenomanhasgone051.jpg

For the second pilot, the platform supporting the captain's chair and helm was turned 18 degrees counter-clockwise (looking down) so that its centerline is exactly between Communications and the turbolift.

For reference, here's a similar - not identical - shot of the production bridge with the lower platform completely on line with the Communications station:

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x02/charliex273.jpg

If you're familiar with the geometry of the set - 20 eighteen-degree angles forming a circle - it's unmistakable.

 

[ancient]

The idea that disregarding Matt Jefferies' "original intent" is somehow an insult to the man is ridiculous.

Yeah, but don't say that in a bridge rotation debate! It could be deadly.

He was a professional designer working in television, and he therefore knew that his job was to adapt his designs to the practical needs of the production. A typical TV art director or production designer goes through dozens of preliminary designs of anything, and even after it's built as a set, he still tweaks it. So invoking "original intent" in this instance is thoroughly absurd.

I agree! And yet for some reason, A lot of people try to use original intent as some sort of justification for a lot of, shall we say, 'creative interpretation' of what we saw on-screen. Or rather, to make their creative interpretation somehow superior to someone else's.

It can be very annoying.