Operational Crew of 1701

[Pauln6]

McCoy, too.

Really, I'd expect our heroes to take good care of their skin, as they have so many important PR roles to play. It's only from the perspective of the 1960s that it's odd that Kirk would be so well stocked.

Timo Saloniemi

You try spending 5 years of your life stuck in the recycled atmosphere of a starship with minimal natural sunlight and see how good your skin ends up being. Carrying around your own favourable lighting and a ton of make-up is the only way to score in the 24th century.

That and Romulan Ale Goggles.

 

[Timo]

Which might take us back to the thread topic, sort of. How important is it, really, for crew health to have "fake nature" aboard the ship - arboretums, solariums, moody little pools and rock gardens? Wouldn't 23rd century technology have made most of those redundant or replicable, TAS holodeck style?

Would cabins really be dull little cubicles with a bed and a desk? Could they not be easily redecorated into enthralling, complex and variable habitats and entertainment spaces? Or is austerity a Starfleet regulation?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

A holodeck or two is the most sensible use of space, although not energy. The TMP plans show the large recreation deck, arboretum, and swimming pool. Presumably a holodeck could create sports arenas, natural settings, unnatural settings and so forth. Although a holodeck featured in TAS I don't recall one featuring in the plans for the TMP Enterprise.

I've always been more interested in how much food storage space they would need and how alien crew who do not breath Oxygen/Nitrogen atmospheres are accommodated. Presumably some cabins have to be fitted with airlocks?

 

[Timo]

The TMP plans show the large recreation deck

And TOS "LTBYLB" dialogue mentions a Rec Room 3 that spans three decks - the same facility before the refit?

Crew quarters might be quite spartan if all the effort on "psychological support" was put into communal spaces like that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Patrickivan]

A holodeck or two is the most sensible use of space, although not energy. The TMP plans show the large recreation deck, arboretum, and swimming pool. Presumably a holodeck could create sports arenas, natural settings, unnatural settings and so forth. Although a holodeck featured in TAS I don't recall one featuring in the plans for the TMP Enterprise.

I've always been more interested in how much food storage space they would need and how alien crew who do not breath Oxygen/Nitrogen atmospheres are accommodated. Presumably some cabins have to be fitted with airlocks?

I don't know about food storage- not much for fresh stuff. Even TOS hinted more at food replication (By Any Other Name is one example)... I'd say fresh was more of a special event deal.

 

[Pauln6]

Yes they used protein synthesisers for some foodstuffs but in the days before replicators it isn't clear what process these use. Do they need a vat of generic protein chemicals? We also have to remember that 23rd century ships did not have unlimited energy supplies and their dilithium crystals were a vital resource. I doubt they would want to burn up their crystals by using large amounts of energy. I did think it was weird that they seemed to lack spare crystals on board.

 

[Patrickivan]

Fair enough.

Maybe dilithium crystals were more resiliant in general. And it was really just the Enterprise that was getting FUBARed all the time...

There are just some things in Trek that will never make sense and we'll just have to take it with a grain of salt. Maybe with a side of Spock's Brain.

 

[Pauln6]

Fair enough.

Maybe dilithium crystals were more resiliant in general. And it was really just the Enterprise that was getting FUBARed all the time...

There are just some things in Trek that will never make sense and we'll just have to take it with a grain of salt. Maybe with a side of Spock's Brain.

Mmmmmm brains.....

 

[scotpens]

I've always been more interested in how much food storage space they would need and how alien crew who do not breath Oxygen/Nitrogen atmospheres are accommodated. Presumably some cabins have to be fitted with airlocks?

Since the living and working spaces on a starship are filled with oxygen-nitrogen air at Earth-normal specs, it would be highly impractical to try to accommodate aliens whose environmental requirements are vastly different from those of humanoids. At most, individual cabin temperatures can be adjusted to some degree, as indicated by Spock when affected by the aging disease in “The Deadly Years”:

Doctor, the ship's temperature is increasingly uncomfortable for me. I've adjusted the environment in my quarters to one hundred twenty five degrees, which is at least tolerable.

Presumably he meant Fahrenheit, not Celsius.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

A holodeck or two is the most sensible use of space, although not energy. The TMP plans show the large recreation deck, arboretum, and swimming pool. Presumably a holodeck could create sports arenas, natural settings, unnatural settings and so forth. Although a holodeck featured in TAS I don't recall one featuring in the plans for the TMP Enterprise.

I've always been more interested in how much food storage space they would need and how alien crew who do not breath Oxygen/Nitrogen atmospheres are accommodated. Presumably some cabins have to be fitted with airlocks?

While it may seem "politically correct" to have species with dramatically-different life support requirements on a given ship, it is utterly impractical and fairly irrational, really.

For TNG, Roddenberry originally wanted to have dolphins on the crew of the Enteprise-D. That that idea was abandoned pretty much entirely, because, honestly, it made very, very little sense.

"Titan" books talk about a ship allowing for all varieties of races, but the sheer complexity of this seems... impractical.

You might allow crews to consist of multiple species, but those species need to be able to function, long-term, in the same environment. Lighting which may be ideal for human eyes might be excruciatingly painful, long-term, for some other race. Atmospheric makeup, foods (required versus toxic) length of days, etc, etc... the variables are just huge.

It makes much more sense, from a purely practical standpoint, to have some ships have majority-human crews, which other ships may have majority Vulcan crews, and others may have majority Saurian crews, and so forth.

Even if it may not sound "politically correct."

 

[Pauln6]

Well we had Melora in DS9 whose cabin was set to low gravity. Babylon 5 has different sections with different atmospheres. I was just thinking more about the Zaranites from TMP. They can't wear their gas masks all the time - how would they eat? Their quarters must surely have their natural atmosphere with airlocks?

 

[tighr]

Benzites on TNG had an apparatus that allowed them to breathe the Oxygen/Nitrogen environment, but it wasn't made clear if they absolutely needed it. It seemed as if they could operate without it for brief periods.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Benzites on TNG had an apparatus that allowed them to breathe the Oxygen/Nitrogen environment, but it wasn't made clear if they absolutely needed it. It seemed as if they could operate without it for brief periods.

I recall them talking about this on an episode of TNG... the little "nose device" gave them small amounts of something they needed "in addition" to a normal atmosphere, and which was not harmful to anyone else on board. You can kind of think of it like the little "extra oxygen" devices some folks with respiratory issues sometimes wear. And clearly, they were (like most TNG-era aliens) JUST LIKE US except for some rubber stuck to their faces.

Real alien life is almost guaranteed to be from a world with different temperatures, different atmospheric conditions and atmospheric mixes, different planetary rotational cycles, different suns (and thus different lighting conditions) and on and on.

Interestingly, the only Trek series which ever seem to have dealt with this (even if only on a very basic level) was Voyager. The aliens who tried to steal Voyager one time needed darker lighting, lower humidity, and higher temperatures. But otherwise, pretty much every race they ever came across was "just like us" in every significant way.

So... we need to make a choice... do we accept this as a realistic condition, or do we treat this as just that the only times we ever SAW these interactions was when they were "just like us?"

 

[tighr]

Interestingly, the only Trek series which ever seem to have dealt with this (even if only on a very basic level) was Voyager.

Voyager also took place on the opposite side of our galaxy. They encountered numerous things there that were "alien" to our Federation friends, simply because of the lack of contact with the other sectors of the galaxy. Many of the Alpha quadrant species have coexisted with each other ever since they were warp capable. Compared to the Federation, most of the Delta Quadrant species beyond the Nekrit Expanse were vastly technologically inferior (No transporters, no replicators, etc)

There's also that TNG episode about a master race seeding planets with their genetic template, which answers why most sentient life in the quadrant was bipedal and breathes oxygen. Doesn't explain why the rest of the galaxy was also bipedal, though.

(Species 8472 was tri-pedal, and Voyager and TNG made numerous mention of species they've interacted with off screen that were quadripeds or other strange body types which would be difficult and expensive to show on screen).

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Interestingly, the only Trek series which ever seem to have dealt with this (even if only on a very basic level) was Voyager.

Many of the Alpha quadrant species have coexisted with each other ever since they were warp capable.

But that would have little, if any, bearing on how life, even sharing some common roots, would vary based upon thousands upon thousands of years of evolutionary modification due to different atmospheric conditions, different suns, different gravities, different planetary rotational rates, etc, etc. The biology doesn't drive the environment, the environment drives the biology.

There's also that TNG episode about a master race seeding planets with their genetic template, which answers why most sentient life in the quadrant was bipedal and breathes oxygen. Doesn't explain why the rest of the galaxy was also bipedal, though.

Yeah, well.. we know the REAL reason that everyone was "just like us," of course... because the series were made for us, and the creature were, by and large played by us.

Still doesn't make it make practical sense, of course.

(Species 8472 was tri-pedal, and Voyager and TNG made numerous mention of species they've interacted with off screen that were quadripeds or other strange body types which would be difficult and expensive to show on screen).

Yeah, and those species would not serve on a starship with human's either.

Which takes us back to the original point... you wouldn't go for "airlocked quarters" for crew with dramatically different life-support requirements, for the simple reason that it would be impractical.

I mean, if given a choice of serving on a ship where you could move around safely and comfortably, or where you couldn't leave your own cabin without the equivalent of a spacesuit (or at least SCUBA gear) on... which would you choose? And where would you be most effective?

And if you were asked to go live on a ship where the lighting was all in dim red with much of the signage in infrared, and this was the case everywhere except for your cabin, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year... oh, except that the day was only eleven and 3/4 hours long, and the local calendar was broken up into sixteen-day "weeks" and a year was four and a third of our years... and atmospheric temperature was 115 with 100% humidity at all times... and there was a perpetual "background noise" which helped the rest of the crew feel comfortable, but which sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to YOU... would you be happy?

 

[Judy Waxhorn]

And if you were asked to go live on a ship where the lighting was all in dim red with much of the signage in infrared, and this was the case everywhere except for your cabin, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year... oh, except that the day was only eleven and 3/4 hours long, and the local calendar was broken up into sixteen-day "weeks" and a year was four and a third of our years... and atmospheric temperature was 115 with 100% humidity at all times... and there was a perpetual "background noise" which helped the rest of the crew feel comfortable, but which sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to YOU... would you be happy?

Oh so you've done call-center tech-support too, eh?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Oh so you've done call-center tech-support too, eh?

]Not personally, but I know people who have... and I HAVE lived in "cubeland" through most of my career.

At one job, my "cube" was just under the main A/C vent, and the ductwork was seriously messed up... meaning that I had to wear freakin' GLOVES at my desk, even during the summer, or else my fingers would go numb. My complaints fell on deaf ears... that's part of why I left that job, in fact. It was just insane.

And, of course, we've all seen "Office Space," haven't we? The bit with the woman repeating the same sing-song over and over and freakin' over... yep, been there, done that.

But nothing any of us have ever experienced would be remotely as bad as being on a starship designed for a race who have dramatically different environmental needs from our own.

That said... I'll bet that call-centers run pretty close!

 

[Pauln6]

Which takes us back to the original point... you wouldn't go for "airlocked quarters" for crew with dramatically different life-support requirements, for the simple reason that it would be impractical.

I mean, if given a choice of serving on a ship where you could move around safely and comfortably, or where you couldn't leave your own cabin without the equivalent of a spacesuit (or at least SCUBA gear) on... which would you choose? And where would you be most effective?

And if you were asked to go live on a ship where the lighting was all in dim red with much of the signage in infrared, and this was the case everywhere except for your cabin, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year... oh, except that the day was only eleven and 3/4 hours long, and the local calendar was broken up into sixteen-day "weeks" and a year was four and a third of our years... and atmospheric temperature was 115 with 100% humidity at all times... and there was a perpetual "background noise" which helped the rest of the crew feel comfortable, but which sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to YOU... would you be happy?

Zaranites, which we KNOW serve on Federation ships alongside humans as they are seen among the crew in TMP, are fluorine (which reacts violently with oxygen and hydrogen) breathers. They also wear masks which filter the light as the standard setting for humans is too bright for them.

So my earlier question remains. If you don't have any facility for airlocked cabins, how do they eat? Your point is valid but the evidence suggests that it cannot be universal.

 

[Albertese]

I suppose limited "extreme environment" cabins could be installed at a starbase layover. We're talking about an airlock installation, a self-contained atmosphere unit (like something from a shuttlecraft) and a food storage locker/mini kitchen unit. I suppose all that stuff would only take up maybe 1/6 or less of the cabin space. Or maybe there are , say, perhaps five or six cabins on the ship already permanently built to be convertible to an extreme environment. This would be handy in case we come across a broken down Zaranite shuttle and need to rescue the crew. Surely that sort of thing happened from time to time...

--Alex

 

[sojourner]

Yes, I would guess it has. And stop calling me Shirely.