Life support belts

[Timo]

One might assume that a key function of the forcefield is to exert pressure on the skin, including the face, for that comfortable feel in stark vacuum. The alternative is that there's a layer of comfortably pressurized air inside the forcefield armor - but in both cases, one might assume that for reasons of thermal management and breathing, the forcefield actively pumps the air around in nice peristaltic waves.

There could then be a tank of extremely compressed air in the belt, with pressure regulation handled by a nicely packaged valve and the field itself together. Sort of like those ridiculously small bottles James Bond uses for his underwater tuxedo forays, only better thanks to future materials. A "supply" is preferable to a recycling system anyway, because even the bulky physical spacesuits risk running out of air or oxygen in a matter of mere hours rather than the months or decades one would expect, all the way to the late 24th century.

As for the suit heaters, forty degrees Farenheit as found on Sigma Draconis VI is comfortable enough without gloves or headgear, and Chekov does feel the need to warm his hands. A body-embracing invisible forcefield would still make the heroes happier than a warm uniform, I'd think.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

The size of personal air tanks in TOS:

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x17/The_Squire_of_Gothos_070.JPG

Comparable to the doodads on the TAS life support belts, I'd say

 

[Christopher]

The size of personal air tanks in TOS:

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x17/The_Squire_of_Gothos_070.JPG

Comparable to the doodads on the TAS life support belts, I'd say

Good point. I always thought of those more as air filters, but the dialogue did say they thought they were beaming into an "extremely hot, toxic atmosphere" that required full life support to survive in. (Which makes me wonder why they thought it was safe to expose the skin of their faces and hands...) So I suppose we can assume the air tanks in TOS were very compact. And looking at the EV suits from later productions, it does seem their air tanks aren't as much bigger as I thought.

 

[Timo]

(Which makes me wonder why they thought it was safe to expose the skin of their faces and hands...)

Why, because they were wearing life support belts, of course. That's what Kirk's command about "life support gear" entailed.

The forcefield just didn't glow much. But in TOS, they don't, not until challenged (say, the brig doors).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Galileo7]

...
But then, live-action force fields are usually invisible anyway. Most likely what they would've done was the same thing Filmation did years later in the live-action Jason of Star Command (and maybe its predecessor Space Academy too -- I forget). They had little boxes on their waists that supposedly cloaked them in invisible force fields to operate in space. You couldn't see the fields, but you knew they were active because the characters were shown turning them on and there was dialogue to that effect. Maybe there would've been a bit of animation to show the force field coming on and then turning invisible, like they usually did with force fields in TNG and after, but it wouldn't have been continuously visible.
....

Filmation and Roddenberry made TAS with the Life Support Belts. It probably inspired their live-action Filmation series Space Academy(1977-78) to have both Life Support System Badges and Life Support System Bracelets. Also, as Christopher stated, live-action Filmation series Jason Of Star Command(1978-1980) to have Life Support System box mounted on a belt.

 

[Mytran]

Good point. I always thought of those more as air filters, but the dialogue did say they thought they were beaming into an "extremely hot, toxic atmosphere" that required full life support to survive in. (Which makes me wonder why they thought it was safe to expose the skin of their faces and hands...) So I suppose we can assume the air tanks in TOS were very compact. And looking at the EV suits from later productions, it does seem their air tanks aren't as much bigger as I thought.

Given the size of the medical air tank that Dr McCoy's respirator has:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x04hd/thenakedtimehd0376.jpg

Why, because they were wearing life support belts, of course. That's what Kirk's command about "life support gear" entailed.

The forcefield just didn't glow much. But in TOS, they don't, not until challenged (say, the brig doors).

Timo Saloniemi

...it's entirely possible that these are indeed the full life belt package!

 

[Timo]

It sort of goes with the territory, now doesn't it? The shuttlecraft manage to package all the fluids they need for single-stage-to-orbit-and-back-and-up-again-and-around-Saturn-thirty-times in what looks like three AL cylinder tanks. The big starships carry enough to sail around the Federation. No matter how they try to hush it up with terminology like "slush hydrogen", they have the technology to put a lot of stuff in a very small package.

There would appear to be a jump ahead in personal protection tech between TOS and TAS, with the need for visible mouth-covering respirators being eliminated. Or is a face mask what you need in poisonous atmospheres, like "Squire" and "Cloud Minders", against possible seepage through the field (space air!), while the forcefield itself suffices in benign situations like TAS vacuum?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Idran]

It sort of goes with the territory, now doesn't it? The shuttlecraft manage to package all the fluids they need for single-stage-to-orbit-and-back-and-up-again-and-around-Saturn-thirty-times in what looks like three AL cylinder tanks. The big starships carry enough to sail around the Federation. No matter how they try to hush it up with terminology like "slush hydrogen", they have the technology to put a lot of stuff in a very small package.

Isn't that ignoring the existence of antigravity technology? Antigravity is a bloodless coup against the tyranny of the rocket equation.

 

[Timo]

Beautifully put! They could have it both ways: storing a bottleful of reaction mass so that it weighs next to nothing in the bottle but more than an average rock planet when spraying out of the rocket nozzle, for moving a starship that weighs less than an ounce overall. And then packing that mass awfully tight in said bottle.

They probably don't use the fluid in those tanks in a Newtonian manner, though: the shuttle in "The Galileo Seven" takes off without said fluid, and not by steadily accelerating, but first hovering for almost a minute and trying to shake the local fauna off their backs.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CAPTRousseau]

There's a neat, overlooked bit of clothing futurism in, of all places, "Spock's Brain," where the landing party beams down to a frigid world and Kirk tells them to set "suit temperatures to 72," which they do by manipulating some unseen controls on their belts. Implicitly, their uniforms had built-in heating mechanisms. Of course it was just a way to save money on costumes, but it was a nifty idea

Good catch! This also explains, The Enemy Within. Sulu's landing party, wearing standard uniforms were just starting to get cold at -20.

Also, Squire of Gothos. On initial beam down, the rescue party is wearing an oxygen type mask over their nose and mouth, with a hose leading to the equipment belt. Something we see again in Wrath of Khan when the engineering section is breached.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I thought it was something we only saw in animation, because it was simpler to draw.

Not exactly true. From the Memory Alpha article cited in the OP:

Although used exclusively in TAS, the life support belt was invented during the run of Star Trek: The Original Series. Judy Burns, co-writer of "The Tholian Web", thought of using battery-powered "force field belts" in that episode, but the series' producers decided to feature EV suits instead. "They felt strongly that if they started something like a force field belt," explained Burns, "it might have ramifications down the line on other stories. I was a novice in those days, but today I probably would have countered that it was a prototype model that had been given to us this one time. In 25 years, we would get it back again." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, 3rd ed., p. 72)​

 

[Maurice]

I liked them, and they'd have been easy enough to do on live tv, as well. Just draw the glow the same way phaser beams were drawn in. I think Triangle is the only novel that used them, although they added functions and changed the name to bio-belts. Apparently sensors detected movement and made you itch in that direction.

1 minute of 35mm film at 24 frames second is 90 FEET of film. In one TOS memo Bob Justman quotes the cost of animation for things like phaser beams at $100 per foot. No way was Trek ever going to pay $9,000 per minute of film for such forcefield belt animation. <20 minutes of that would eat up an entire episode's budget.

 

[Nebusj]

1 minute of 35mm film at 24 frames second is 90 FEET of film. In one TOS memo Bob Justman quotes the cost of animation for things like phaser beams at $100 per foot. No way was Trek ever going to pay $9,000 per minute of film for such forcefield belt animation. <20 minutes of that would eat up an entire episode's budget.

Yeah, never in a million years would they do a force field belt like that. I doubt they'd even do it on a modern show. If they were to do a Life Support Belt on the Original Series I'd imagine it would be a nice prominent wrestling-trophy-style big belt buckle with one or two prominent lights and a sound effect whine when it's turned on. Maybe, maybe, if the rest of the episode is incredibly cheap, a quick transporter-style twinkle as it's turned on, but only if there's money to burn.

(And I'm not positive the lights would be practical, given the trouble getting them bright enough to stand out against stage lighting without being too hot to wear.)

 

[Ithekro]

I would think it be a similar effect to the animated series, just only for when it is turned on and off. For the rest of the time it is not viable, save for the belt being on the actors. No largely viable light or position knob so the continuity people don't have a spasm each time the need to do a retake. They could even have the on and off sequence as a freeze from like the transporter or phase hits. 24 - 48 frames tops per use. As long as the writer doesn't start abusing the belts so they have to blink on and off due to some local issue or power problems. Those episodes get expensive.

The alternative is to show a close up of the top of the belt, or even the back, if the switch is on the inside part as the actor turns it on. Maybe that would have a little light that you can't see from distance shots, over even close ups for the most part. Sort of like the close up of Kirk punching button on his chair in Court Marshal.

 

[Christopher]

As I mentioned before, Filmation's Jason of Star Command reused the force-field belt idea, just with a life-support box worn on the belt, and they didn't even bother to animate any suggestion of a force field -- just a light on the box that turned on and off and a bit of dialogue to establish its function the first time it was used. Sometimes the best special effect is the audience's imagination.

 

[diankra]

What bugs me about force-field belts, aside from the lack of a safe failure mode, is: Where the hell are the air tanks? A skintight force field wouldn't give you a lot to breathe. I guess there could be a limited supply of compressed air inside the "power pack" bulge in the rear, but not a lot. (For that matter, the "Tholian Web" spacesuits have the same inexplicable lack of any apparent air supply.)



That would've been prohibitively expensive to do continuously for however many minutes the characters would be in the fields. Also, it would've had to be hand-rotoscoped to match the characters' movements, which would've been kind of scrawly and jerky-looking. This wasn't a problem in TAS since the characters hardly moved, but live action would be another matter.

But then, live-action force fields are usually invisible anyway. Most likely what they would've done was the same thing Filmation did years later in the live-action Jason of Star Command (and maybe its predecessor Space Academy too -- I forget). They had little boxes on their waists that supposedly cloaked them in invisible force fields to operate in space. You couldn't see the fields, but you knew they were active because the characters were shown turning them on and there was dialogue to that effect. Maybe there would've been a bit of animation to show the force field coming on and then turning invisible, like they usually did with force fields in TNG and after, but it wouldn't have been continuously visible.




There's a neat, overlooked bit of clothing futurism in, of all places, "Spock's Brain," where the landing party beams down to a frigid world and Kirk tells them to set "suit temperatures to 72," which they do by manipulating some unseen controls on their belts. Implicitly, their uniforms had built-in heating mechanisms. Of course it was just a way to save money on costumes, but it was a nifty idea. Unfortunately, then TWOK went and introduced heavy parkas for landing parties, and Trek went back to the assumption that the uniforms were just inert cloth.

The lack of air supply is a very good point, though it is an SF trope with regard to fuel: even a ship as well-designed as the Eagle (for out of atmosphere work, don't get me started on the stupidity of them making atmospheric re-entries - though The Last Sunset vaguely addresses it) is visibly lacking in fuel storage.

 

[Christopher]

The lack of air supply is a very good point, though it is an SF trope with regard to fuel: even a ship as well-designed as the Eagle (for out of atmosphere work, don't get me started on the stupidity of them making atmospheric re-entries - though The Last Sunset vaguely addresses it) is visibly lacking in fuel storage.

Not to mention airlocks. Not to mention that the extendable docking tunnel on the miniature can't possibly exist in the interior set.

 

[Galileo7]

The lack of air supply is a very good point, though it is an SF trope with regard to fuel: even a ship as well-designed as the Eagle (for out of atmosphere work, don't get me started on the stupidity of them making atmospheric re-entries - though The Last Sunset vaguely addresses it) is visibly lacking in fuel storage.

Not to mention airlocks. Not to mention that the extendable docking tunnel on the miniature can't possibly exist in the interior set.

This type Eagle passenger module had airlocks both port and starboard side, although a set was never used to show these airlocks:

The Eagles had atomic engines powered by nuclear fuel cells. http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/cguide/umeagle.html

Agree, that the extendable docking tunnel on the miniature can't possibly exist in the interior set.

http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/epguide/t11tls.html

 

[publiusr]

I love those Eagles. But not for one g worlds--unless they had early anti-gravs to enhance engines

 

[Galileo7]

I love those Eagles. But not for one g worlds--unless they had early anti-gravs to enhance engines

The Eagles do have anti-gravity shield & screen technology as stated in episodes and listed under propulsion in this link:
http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/cguide/umeagle.html