IF the ship is accelerating, which under normal circumstances wouldn't be the case.
It's hard to imagine a situation where the ship would
not be accelerating. It's always going places, and coasting at impulse makes zero sense, while movement at warp would be subject to all sorts of surprises.
Perhaps one could say one's prayers and bravely enter the holodeck when the ship is engaged in precision measurements of a gaseous anomaly, projected to last for a week and a half. But it's the user's own damn fault if the ship then executes a minor dodging of an incoming space rock at a sedate fifty gees and the user turns to pulp.
Inertia control just plain isn't plausible unless it's turned on all the time.
Holodecks should probably be shut down during Yellow Alert for precisely this reason.
And broom closets. And quarters. And bridges.
OTOH, starships have these big and complex inertial dampers that protect the ENTIRE SHIP from acceleration. So this wouldn't be a function of the holodecks at all, and they would depend on the ship's primary IDF field just like everything else does.
But as said, turbolifts further fine-tune their own inertia to turn tight corners and quickly reach distant locations while the occupants observe no movement. Or, conversely, the inertia control can throw LaForge horizontally out of a turbolift and onto Main Bridge even though the lift reaches that location through exclusively vertical movement.
Nope. That's what IDFs are for. The most a holodeck can do is raise or reduce the gravity level to be consistent with whatever environment it's simulating.
Surely you jest. Why arbitrarily impose such a nonsensical limitation on the very piece of hardware that least requires it and most needs the basic functionality?
The simplest safeguard for the holodeck is a physical switch that would open the circuit between the holodeck and whatever high voltage bus is feeding it.
But as said, this would kill the occupants. Nothing, but nothing, smoothly shuts down if main power is cut. Hardware collapses, and whatever it is doing collapses as well. Say, ever try and restart a big buzzsaw after hitting the dead man's switch in mid-process? It's lots and lots of amusement with trying to dislodge the jammed bits. And that's more or less the definition of robust.
OTOH, the holodeck basically replaces the entire environment of the user with an artificial one. "Removing the environment", no matter how cleanly, is bound to be fatal.
If holodecks were THAT dangerous, they would have failsafes installed to prevent that from happening during a sudden power loss.
Which then kills the kill switch. You are trying to reintroduce the complex plumbing, you get what you deserve...
Really (and realistically), our heroes often end up fighting failsafes. The most prominently in ST:B, but basically every piece of hardware they ever try to manipulate is built to be manipulation-resistant. And every failsafe functionality can be turned into a defense by a malevolent takeover, but most form a defense even without malice.
Even roller coaster rides are designed such that the entire thing will come to a complete stop almost immediately if it looses power in a way that makes it no longer safe to use.
But aircraft aren't. And here we're talking about something that's infinitely more complex again.
Timo Saloniemi
