Somebody owes somebody a smiley...
Rick Sternbach, Rick Sternbach, Rick Sternbach...
- Thread starter Forbin
- Start date
I almost didn't notice it was you who posted that, I was breezing thru the silliness so fast.
Thanks you, sir.
Now, WHAT are they flushing in an emergency?
Yeah, I'm also wondering what you'd want "flush vents" for on a spaceship. Generally you want a ship to be a closed system where everything is recycled. The only thing you'd want to eject from the ship would be reaction mass for thrust. Though I guess you could justify venting parts of the ship to vacuum in an emergency.
That sounds right; the TNG tech manual talks about how sections of the ship can have its atmosphere vented in emergency situations. Either that or it is part of some sort of system to vent dangerous materials away from the bridge level. In "Brothers", they talk about something like 7 indepentent interlocks for the environmental system on the bridge. Maybe those vents are part of the system to vent pathogens or radiation from overloading fusion reactors or batteries away from the bridge. Or they could be some sort of emergency purge system for the main shuttlebay. If the the shuttlebay forcefield fails, atmosphere from the shuttlebay would push the ship rapidly forward (as in "Cause & Effect"), maybe, in semi-controled situations, atmosphere is vented out that way to maintain some sort of relative station-keeping...
At this point I'd like to invoke Andrew Probert.
Except "Cause and Effect" got the physics wrong. The amount of thrust you'd get from venting the atmosphere of the main shuttlebay would be trivial compared to the inertia of a humongous Galaxy-Class starship. I once had a scene in an original piece of fiction involving a loss of atmosphere from a space habitat (a much larger quantity of atmosphere than the E-D's main hangar could contain, even in proportion to the mass of the habitat), and I intended it to impart a considerable amount of thrust, but when I actually did the math, I found that the thrust would be inconsequential. So I had to replace the whole scene.
Yep.
I am not even going to attempt to argue against math.
Well, if atmospheric thrust is minor compared to the intertia of the E-D, it either has to be for environmental venting, radioactive waste in an emergency, or maybe some sort of emergency heating/cooling system for the main computer core depending on external conditions. Or maybe some sort of venting system for the saucer module torpedo launcher in independent flight mode. Or maybe all the phaser coolant gas for the upper phaser array can be purged in an emergency. It is fun to speculate...
Toast. Definitely toast.
Toast. Definitely toast
Or a toaster for somebody like Gomtuu. Bottom slot for toast, other slots for butter or jam depending on your preference.
"Mr. Worf, set system for jam"
"Jam ready, sir"
"Make it so..."
Or a toaster for somebody like Gomtuu. Bottom slot for toast, other slots for butter or jam depending on your preference.
"Mr. Worf, set system for jam"
"Jam ready, sir"
"Make it so..."
I think I gently objected to this business about the air when we were doing the episode. Even if the entire shuttle bay (or all three) were vented explosively, you're only talking about 14 psi or so, so maybe (if one works out the total square footage of the bay openings) a million or so pounds of very short push vs. 4.5 million metric tonnes of ship. I wouldn't use the word "rapidly" to characterize the ship's movement. But, of course, they were going for the drama of it all.
Rick
Yeah, that's my thought as well. Most anything gaseous or liquid that needs to get tossed can go through the vents. Kinda like skin pores, lymph system, etc. Lots of different systems and subsystems tied to pipes heading outside.
Rick
Exactly correct.
The mass of the air in that bay is significant, really... but is many orders of magnitude less than the mass of the whole ship. The thrust force provided by that release would be trivial... the ship would just "drift ahead" very slowly as a result... I'm talking about, if the ship was totally stationary, maybe putting on a couple of dozen centimeters per second.
Now, if they were able to somehow artificially accelerate that mass of air as it left the ship (say, by "reversing" the atmospheric force-field in the bay?), you might get some small, but meaningful, amount of thrust out of the deal. But you'd have to accelerate it quite a bit for that much gas mass to be meaningful... basically, adding enough energy to it to turn it into a real "rocket."
I think I gently objected to this business about the air when we were doing the episode. Even if the entire shuttle bay (or all three) were vented explosively, you're only talking about 14 psi or so, so maybe (if one works out the total square footage of the bay openings) a million or so pounds of very short push vs. 4.5 million metric tonnes of ship. I wouldn't use the word "rapidly" to characterize the ship's movement. But, of course, they were going for the drama of it all.
On the plus side, given the generally atrocious state of science in SFTV, they deserve some credit for even remembering the existence of Newton's Third Law, even if they got the proportions wrong.
Still, near the middle of the heavily populated saucer and just below/behind the bridge doesn't seem like the ideal place to put such vents. I'd think you'd want them more out toward the edge and further to the rear.
Unless the gasses, when combined, created some kind of futuristic hallucigen/megadrug.
That would explain how the bridge crew thought venting the main shuttlebay was pushing them out of the way, when in fact the Bozeman was lodged in the front of the Big E's saucer. Every episode and movie taking place since then is part of a bad flush vent trip as the Enterprise floats hopelessly through space.
That would explain how the bridge crew thought venting the main shuttlebay was pushing them out of the way, when in fact the Bozeman was lodged in the front of the Big E's saucer. Every episode and movie taking place since then is part of a bad flush vent trip as the Enterprise floats hopelessly through space.
