Forcefield technology

[F. King Daniel]

I'm curious if there's any mention of forcefields on the Enterprise in TOS, except for what we see in the brig and the ship's external shields.

For example, I'm pretty sure the hanger deck doesn't have an atmospheric forcefield like we see in Next Gen or the latest Discovery trailer, and forcefields are never erected at random locations to trap anyone.

Am I correct or did I miss something?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I think you're right. And the Hangar Deck is an issue because it's so big.

TNG is when they started having shuttles pass thru an airtight force field. TOS never thought of it, and the animation needed to clue in the audience would have been one more thing TOS didn't have time or money for anyway. [Classic Battlestar Galactica had a similar situation, but with no exterior doors on the hangar, either, so that was crazy. But I love BSG.]

In real life, the Space Shuttle never actually pressurized its huge cargo bay. The air from before launch was thrown away and never had to be replaced.

TOS doesn't make it clear whether the Enterprise is throwing away all that Hangar air, or saving it by sucking it into tanks before opening the doors. The first way wastes life support resources, and the second wastes the ship's capacity to haul around the extra machinery. It's costly to pressurize that huge bay.

I like the TMP/TWOK solution, with the little docking port that conserves everything. If the people use those, and the shuttlecraft can be remote-piloted in and out of the Hangar Deck, then the Hangar never has to be pressurized at all. But it was pressurized in ST5, and it's not clear that shuttlecraft can dock.

 

[Shawnster]

TOS doesn't make it clear whether the Enterprise is throwing away all that Hangar air, or saving it by sucking it into tanks before opening the doors. The first way wastes life support resources, and the second wastes the ship's capacity to haul around the extra machinery. It's costly to pressurize that huge bay.

Actually, it makes it quite clear in "Journey to Babel"

[Hangar deck]

(As the NCC1701/7 arrives, the honour guard smarted themselves up outside.)
VOICE [OC]: Clear hangar deck. Clear hangar deck. Depressurising. Recovering shuttlecraft. Hangar deck pressurising.
(The guard line up, holding phasers with arms crossed.)
MCCOY: How does that Vulcan salute go?
(Spock demonstrates - right hand with the fingers separated into a V-sign.)
MCCOY: That hurts worse than the uniform.
(A couple are escorted from the shuttlecraft.)
KIRK: Captain James Kirk.
SAREK: Captain.
KIRK: My First Officer, Commander Spock.
SPOCK: Vulcan honours us with your presence. We come to serve.
SAREK: Your service honours us, Captain.
KIRK: Thank you. Chief Medical Officer Doctor McCoy.
MCCOY: Ambassador.
SAREK: Doctor. My aides and she who is my wife.
(He holds out his right hand with two fingers extended, and a human woman steps forward to touch them.)
AMANDA: Captain Kirk.
KIRK: Our pleasure, madam. As soon as you're settled I'll arrange a tour of the ship. Mister Spock will conduct you.
SAREK: I'd prefer another guide, Captain.
KIRK: As you wish, Ambassador. Mister Spock, we'll leave orbit in two hours. Would you care to beam down and visit your parents?
SPOCK: Captain, Ambassador Sarek and his wife are my parents.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Thank you @Shawnster, I thought there was an episode mentioning hangar bay pressure but wasn't sure and my attempts to google just came up with references to the chamber from "Space Seed"

Memory Alpha says the TMP Enterprise had an atmospheric shield, and I guess the scene where Kirk exits the inspection pod and the shuttlebay/cargo area is open to space is evidence enough. But if such technology existed on the TOS version of the ship, the de/re-pressurising scene wouldn't exist.

 

[Tenacity]

a

In real life, the Space Shuttle never actually pressurized its huge cargo bay. The air from before launch was thrown away and never had to be replaced.

The insides of the two big doors had heat radiators mounted to them, and the door were opened as soon as practical.

Even if the doors remained shut in orbit, I don't believe the cargo bay would hold pressure.

Memory Alpha says the TMP Enterprise had an atmospheric shield

In the trailer for Discovery, there a brief scene of a shuttle leaving a bay with the typical TNG effect of the shuttle passing through a pressure force field, but I don't know if the shuttle was leaving a Starfleet vessel.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I just remembered that The Animated Series has forcefield life support belts, but I don't recall it depicting any other kind of forcefield tech on board the Enterprise.

In the trailer for Discovery, there a brief scene of a shuttle leaving a bay with the typical TNG effect of the shuttle passing through a pressure force field, but I don't know if the shuttle was leaving a Starfleet vessel.

Not wanting to derail this thread, but I'm pretty sure that's the USS Shenzhou being evacuated. That, and the Nemesis-style forcefields (Burnham mimics Data's jump) shown in the trailer are why I think DSC has changed far more than just the visuals in it's version of the Trek universe. Hence my insisting it's a reboot.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Actually, it makes it quite clear in "Journey to Babel"

[Hangar deck]

(As the NCC1701/7 arrives, the honour guard smarted themselves up outside.)
VOICE [OC]: Clear hangar deck. Clear hangar deck. Depressurising. Recovering shuttlecraft. Hangar deck pressurising.

Hi, Shawnster. I don't think you entirely caught my point:

TOS doesn't make it clear whether the Enterprise is throwing away all that Hangar air, or saving it by sucking it into tanks before opening the doors.

When they say the Hangar is depressurizing, that could mean either thing. That's all I was saying.

 

[johnnybear]

Obviously The Enterprise hangar deck must have either had a force field or depressurisation controls!!! If not the shuttles wouldn't have just taken off when the doors opened, they'd have been sucked out!
JB

 

[Timo]

A couple of pertinent points:

1) We don't know what "hangar deck" means.

That is, supposedly Kirk's ship has this bay into which shuttles fly, and then this bay where shuttles disgorge their passengers. Are these the same facility? Visuals and errata would suggest not.

- The interior doesn't look the same - there are no identifiable features of the arrival bay in the disembarking bay.
- The shuttle is always positioned differently for disembarking than for the preceding landing shot.
- A hangar is not a place into which anybody should fly. It's for storage.

One model simplifying air logistics would be of the upper, landing and takeoff, bay remaining in vacuum and the lower, embarkation and disembarkation, bay being pumped as per dialogue and the indicator doodad next to the door. The turntable-elevator would reposition the shuttle up and down as needed (also accounting for the different orientation). And the lower facility could be of much smaller volume, rationalizing the air logistics (many shuttles could still be precision-stacked there, whereas shuttle maneuvers at takeoff and recovery appear erratic and space-consuming unless one uses that nifty RAST-like thing as in the original TOS footage).

This would also keep the terminology straight, with "shuttlebay" always reserved for the fly-in, fly-out facility (as already used by Tucker in the 2150s, even if not in reference to their own, unnamed facility).

2) We can't tell whether there's a forcefield in place.

TOS forcefields were invisible until challenged. TAS ones sometimes glowed, but there were plenty of instances where the artists forgot to draw in the glow - so those, too, might be taken to be invisible until challenged (and the belt ones would face near-constant challenges).

Also, having a forcefield between you and vacuum called for no special measures whenever it did happen. And there was no obvious connection between forcefields staying up and full and uninterrupted main power being available.

3) The "contemporary" Abramsverse ships may or may not have shuttlebay forcefields, but they do have extremely open architecture at said bay! Mastery of air-containing fields is demonsrated elsewhere in Abramsverse.

4) All this said, Trek dialogue in general ignores 'em air curtains as unworthy of hero attention, sometimes even in dire emergencies. It also ignores air logistics except with those tinfoil spacesuits. We really don't know if air is worth preserving in TOS, or if the heroes merely sigh in relief when yet another well-used bayful is dumped into space and replaced with something fresher.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

It makes sense to have both. Maintaining force fields is energy intensive. Running regular re-pressurisation drills would be standard practice albeit you would not expect them to do so for visiting dignitaries. Maybe the Vulcans requested it. seems logical to want to check out your new home's emergency features when you visit.

I think the field effect suits are a great idea as an emergency device to protect you from a torn suit or being sucked into space but I would question them how long they could last without any obvious long-term power source or a way to scrub your carbon di-oxide. Didn't they use belt power sources in TAS - possibly fore-runners to the PERscan buckles? I think mundane space suits are too low tech on their own but field-effect suits are too magical. Having both feels right.

That said, TOS went with temperature sensitive uniforms (a technology that now exists), while TMP and TWoK went for low tech landing party jackets.

 

[Kelso]

The hangar deck atmospheric forcefield happened to be offline for repair the day Sarek arrived. Probably sabotaged by an Orion.

 

[Search4]

Well the "space suit" helmets in the Tholian episode were demonstrably open to air but workable in vacuum. Sounds like a force field to me.

 

[Mytran]

Well the "space suit" helmets in the Tholian episode were demonstrably open to air but workable in vacuum. Sounds like a force field to me.

How were they open to air? The head areas were covered by a semi-transparent screen, everything else by shiny material.

Maybe you refer to the injection that McCoy gave Kirk at the end of the episode - any reason he couldn't have used a needle for the occasion?

 

[Search4]

Well in the real world the face mask was a mesh fabric. Looked metallic on screen. Either way not air tight.

 

[Pauln6]

23Rd century molecular micro-mesh tm is flexible but air tight. You can whip it on and off in airlock as you please.

 

[Mytran]

Well in the real world the face mask was a mesh fabric. Looked metallic on screen. Either way not air tight.

The spacesuit helmets might well have the appearance of mesh (since the prop was actually made from it) but in-universe the helmet is an airtight unit, as clearly demonstrated on screen.

However, if you're going to treat the materials used to make the props literally, then why stop with the mesh? Mylar is hardly airtight either and since all they had to breath on was a couple of coloured tubes glued to the suit, how did Kirk and the landing party survive at all on board the Defiant?
For that matter, why would Starfleet build the Bridge out of wood?
And how did the crew fit into a spaceship that was only 135 inches long?

 

[Search4]

Well back to the helmet. How do you make an air tight mesh that doesn't seem to affect or muffle speech?

If the mesh were air tight why not use more of it especially to provide better sight lines?

Actually on the Defiant bridge - how did they talk to each other without using a communicator in vacuum?

Perhaps the suit has an embedded transporter that automatically brings back the air lost to space.

So you can if then else this to death. I accept the helmet front as a mesh. It doesn't appear or act air tight. My net take is that the mesh had some tech to make it work in vacuum. Call it a force field or Starfleet Magic Mesh. I think a force field fits.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The spacesuit helmets might well have the appearance of mesh (since the prop was actually made from it) but in-universe the helmet is an airtight unit, as clearly demonstrated on screen.

However, if you're going to treat the materials used to make the props literally, then why stop with the mesh? Mylar is hardly airtight either and since all they had to breath on was a couple of coloured tubes glued to the suit, how did Kirk and the landing party survive at all on board the Defiant?
For that matter, why would Starfleet build the Bridge out of wood?
And how did the crew fit into a spaceship that was only 135 inches long?

This, to the infinity power.

 

[Timo]

Well back to the helmet. How do you make an air tight mesh that doesn't seem to affect or muffle speech?

Why should it have that feature? Loudspeakers (and microphones) on the outside would appear an obvious feature instead, in addition to assorted cameras and whatnot. And naturally these same systems would key in to "air-independent" communications methods (radio, subspace, whatever) as needed.

If the mesh were air tight why not use more of it especially to provide better sight lines?

Why is the airtightness business a factor in this at all? The extent of the vision part has been chosen by 'em Starfleet engineers - why should a forcefield and a physical but transparent material provide different constraints there? After all, we know from TAS that there are zero constraints on forcefield shape in cases like this, and transparent semirigid clothing would appear to have the same, zero limitations.

It's a pretty extensive vision port, really - the odd thing is that it extends up (so far that it in fact goes down again!), where the human neck can't easily turn, and not to the sides, where it could.

I'm all for those forcefield belts being standard gear for brief or emergency spacewalks (one stowed beneath every shuttlecraft seat, say), which comprise about 100% of the TAS appearances, while something more substantive is called for in longer-duration work. A mixture could certainly work, of course, but if (and when) the forcefields aren't preferred for "real work", then they must present a weakness, and eliminating them from the mixture would be likely.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

Why does it have to be mesh alone? Couldn't the mesh (if that's what it is, in-universe) just be something to reinforced the transparent material which forms the airtight seal of the helmet transparent sections?