Don't Starfleet train in zero-g?

[ItIsGreen]

Just watching "Melora" now, the episode where the title character comes from an extremely low-gravity environment.

There's a scene in her quarters with Dr. Bashir where she turns down the gravity and floats around with him, and he acts completely amazed, like he's never experienced it before. He even comments to her in a later scene, "You let me fly for the first time".

Doesn't this seem a tad unlikely? Surely Starfleet, of whom a large portion of the organisation serve in space, would train all their officers to function in a low/zero-g environment? Especially medical staff, who may have to treat patients in a battle situation where their ship/station's artificial gravity has been disabled?

I know it was done for story purposes, to advance their budding romance, but it just strikes me as odd.

 

[Kilana2]

Yeah, that's odd. I remember Worf complaining in First Contact about his low-gravity Academy training and how it affected him negatively.

 

[ItIsGreen]

Yes, I believe it made him sick to his stomach

This is a second season episode, so chronologically before First Contact, but still I would have thought the writers would have considered that.

It's one thing him being amazed seeing her in zero-g, especially as she spends most of the episode literally crushed by the station's 'standard' gravity, in a wheelchair or hobbling around in a special brace, and possibly even having a childlike joy at being in zero-g with her, but he specifically says he hasn't experienced it before.

He even asks her what to do in her quarters, as he's not sure how to get 'airborne'.

 

[Kilana2]

As a doctor, Bashir should have experienced zero g environment. At least for emergency situations.....

 

[Mysterion]

Yup, that always struck me the same way. Maybe prospective doctors go through a modified training program compared with "line" Starfleet officers. Even still, I would think this would be a very important piece of training for anyone who is going to be serving in space.

 

[Richard Baker]

Agreed. If a spacecraft is damaged to the point of losing gravity you would assume people on board would be needing medical attention.

I bet if McCoy had beamed over before Kronos One had it's gravity restored he would have been able to render aid (though probably grumbling loudly while doing it)...

 

[RogueVasad]

I thought McCoy's main problem in TUC was not knowing Klingon biology well enough to deal with a Klingon in critical condition?

 

[Timo]

where their ship/station's artificial gravity has been disabled

AFAIK, this has never happened to a Starfleet ship in battle, or due to a malfunction. It's a user-selectable feature that cannot fail.

The user can naturally also be malicious, as in TAS "The Practical Joker". But how often is that likely to happen? FWIW, Kirk's crew did no better than Bashir there...

A somewhat separate issue is spacewalks. Are our heroes trained for those? They perform spacewalks every now and then, but are they doing well, or demonstrating fatal incompetence? In ST:FC, the heroes walk around on magnetic shoes. Why don't they fly around on rockets or grav-thrusters - a major tactical advantage over the Borg Drones who, typically for the species, are almost immobile? We can probably come up with an excuse or two, and ST:ID shows that Starfleet in at least one timeline does have the equipment and training for aggressive spacewalking.

If a spacecraft is damaged to the point of losing gravity you would assume people on board would be needing medical attention.

It just appears that in practice, a spacecraft will lose everything else including antimatter containment before it loses gravity. There won't be any survivors in zero gee. And we should hardly fault gravity for being that reliable!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kkt]

This is another situation where making a documentary of space operations yields to the dramatic needs of TV and film. Filming weightlessness would be very hard. They did it making the film of Apollo 13, but I don't think chartering NASA's specially fitted out KC135 is in TV's budget. And I don't think it would even add that much to the stories they tell. It would show damage to a ship, but that can be shown by leaking conduits or explosions or actors falling out of their chairs.

 

[Timo]

That's one thing that is likely to change, as greenscreening wire-suspended actors and then adding a background is becoming more routine and cheaper.

Yet the real jump is digital: instead of a simple starscape (for spacewalks in zero gee), it's now quite possible to add a complex starship interior as the background (for indoors zero gee), especially if you also shake the camera, blow smoke, and do deliberate lens flare to hide the shortcomings...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I'd like to think that SF boots are mildly magnetized.

 

[BillJ]

Just watching "Melora" now, the episode where the title character comes from an extremely low-gravity environment.

There's a scene in her quarters with Dr. Bashir where she turns down the gravity and floats around with him, and he acts completely amazed, like he's never experienced it before. He even comments to her in a later scene, "You let me fly for the first time".

Doesn't this seem a tad unlikely? Surely Starfleet, of whom a large portion of the organisation serve in space, would train all their officers to function in a low/zero-g environment? Especially medical staff, who may have to treat patients in a battle situation where their ship/station's artificial gravity has been disabled?

I know it was done for story purposes, to advance their budding romance, but it just strikes me as odd.

He was just trying to get into her zero-g panties.

Picard even mentions zero-g training in Star Trek: First Contact.

 

[uniderth]

It just appears that in practice, a spacecraft will lose everything else including antimatter containment before it loses gravity. There won't be any survivors in zero gee. And we should hardly fault gravity for being that reliable!

Timo Saloniemi

Well you have to consider that artificial gravity was based on billion year old Slaver tech. Maybe it just is really that reliable.

 

[Mysterion]

I'd like to think that SF boots are mildly magnetized.

Too bad they've put all that carpet down in their ships, then.

 

[T'Girl]

One really odd freefall moment was when Trip goes no artificial gravity in the pilot, the impression I got was that he was involve in the ship's construction and you would think he would regard transisioning to freefall as routine.

 

[Timo]

It seems to be news to Trip that ships have these weird gravity nodes. I could understand if they were features to be avoided and Boomer ships had those because of their shoddy, cost-saving construction - but the Enterprise does have at least one, and Trip really should know about it, regardless of whether he feels comfortable playing with it or not. Surely it has structural implications and whatnot that the ship's Chief Engineer might need to pay attention to at some point?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I'd like to think that SF boots are mildly magnetized.

Too bad they've put all that carpet down in their ships, then.

IT might still be enough to help hold them in place during problematic situations. It might be enough to observe what is probably the first rule of zero-g surgery: tether yourself to the table.