Seat Belts

[Purdy Bear]

I have often wonder with Voyager and some of the other shows why they never had seatbelts, or atleast something to keep them in their chairs.

I know the script writers would have hated it, they loved sending Janeway and Chakotay across the floor.

In an actual space craft (as Im sure I can remember them in the original series) they would have had seat belts.

 

[The_Baroness]

If you've seen the deleted scenes from Nemesis, Picard is overjoyed when the Enterprise finally gets seatbelts!

 

[F. King Daniel]

^Enterprise doesn't get seatbelts - just Picard's chair. Everyone else will be sent flying when the ship's hit. I loved it when the same chair shows up in Enterprise, and Trip points to the seatbelt control and tells Archer "Whatever you do - don't push that button!"

I remember years ago rumours mentioning that the STXI Enterprise was gonna have seatbelts - but it turned out only the shuttles did. Considering Voyager's shuttle track record, they really should have had seatbelts too!

 

[froot]

I think the issue of seat belts came up every week when my family watched Trek

 

[The_Baroness]

double post - oops!

 

[The_Baroness]

And all those kids on the Enterprise D, do they all have correctly fitted Isofix Car Seats?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Whatever strange rules apply inside a warp bubble, when they're fyling through real space being acted upon by Netwton's laws: impelling towadrs full impusle which some novel once told me is 25 percent of ightspeed, which is 168 million miles an hour (I looked it up.) which is fast ehough if acted upon the human body without the protection of the ships interal dampners would luquidify a person while retaining enough force that that human sportsdrink would be punching through walls and floors swiss cheesing the bollocks out of the ship.

Seatbelts.

by the time they needed seat bellts to save them, because the inertial damner was lagging a billionth of a percent off it seeming like they're standing still on a planet all the while velocifying at 168 million miles an hour, they'd be unqualifiably fubar.

It's like starting up smoking after you're diagnosed with cancer or seeing how long you can hold your breath for while you're drowning.

 

[The_Baroness]

Ah! But what if they're using thrusters?!

 

[JanewayRulz!]

I liked the seat belts in "Wrath Of Khan".

When those arm rests folded down over Savvik's lap I remember saying, FINALLY!

 

[Guy Gardener]

They're always using thrusters. Or more accurately they always could be using thrusters, sure they can only push the ship a couple hundred kph at most but they're more there to move the ship as slowly as possible really, 5 to 2 kph for docking and landing and shit.

Think of the inertial dampners as billions and billions and billions of invisible rubber bands that keep you standing in place when you should be like Dark Helmet thrown across his bridge as his ship (Spaceball One?)cracked ludicrous speed.... So these billion billion billion invisible rubber bands are slowing you down to a lesuirely pace where you can survive being thrown against a wall. A seatbelt however just takes 99 percent of the breaking stretch you need to slow down. Condisder if these crew are flung out of their chairs at a thousand miles an hour but after a bout four feet the billion billion billion rubber bands have decellerated their speed toward the forward scream to 3kph, which is slow enough that they might not even be able to make it all the way to the sudden jarring stop which might even bruise their shoulder a little.

Seat belts could (will) bisect people because there's not enough space/time for the billion billion rubber band to act upon say a lieutenant sitting in for Tom's duty shift as he's flung from his chair at a thousand miles an hour through (around?) his seatbelt.

 

[The_Baroness]

Well, that's the theory, but I'm pretty sure there'll be some wibbly techno-magic explanation for how they'd work in-universe!

 

[JarodRussell]

Seatbelts are way too damn self referencial. That a starship gets rocked so hard that the inertial dampeners fail and the crew flies around is the exception, and not the rule.
It's like giving extra armor vests to red shirts because the crew recognizes they die way too often, or like Janeway looking at the camera rolling her eyes while a crewmember talks technobabble. That breaks the 4th wall.

 

[froot]

Seatbelts are way too damn self referencial. That a starship gets rocked so hard that the inertial dampeners fail and the crew flies around is the exception, and not the rule.
It's like giving extra armor vests to red shirts because the crew recognizes they die way too often, or like Janeway looking at the camera rolling her eyes while a crewmember talks technobabble. That breaks the 4th wall.

I guess, but they do it sometimes: I was just watching the "fan mail" scene in Virtuoso the other night and they bashed through the fourth wall harder than the Kool-Aid Man. I actually felt awkward.

And they did that sort of self-referential business all the time in the reboot, but I suppose that's a bit different.

 

[JarodRussell]

And they did that sort of self-referential business all the time in the reboot, but I suppose that's a bit different.

That's one of my problems with the reboot. The entire story suffered from that.

 

[Udat]

Seatbelts are just an expensive option that cheapy Janeway never ordered. She ticked the deluxe coffee maker instead.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I used to be OH & S rep and after I became one I started seeing things in Trek that wouldn't be allowed in a current work place.

It isn't just seat belts, it is also things like glass tables that are too easy to break and consoles that burst into flame.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Almost 400 years of evolution.

I don't ...WEll maybe...

All the babies who would knock their heads knocked their heads, until no new babies would again beborn with a prediclition for self harm via infantality... Then there was the fallout from the Eugenics wars and babies got much much smarter because fallen supermen in hiding trying to mingle in with the mudanes and cows...

The human beings of the 24th would find it almost impossible to access the limitations of an officer worker from the late 20th century, they're just not hardwired that way llike we've become smart enough to lift with our knees and not our backs... Mostly.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I used to be OH & S rep and after I became one I started seeing things in Trek that wouldn't be allowed in a current work place.

It isn't just seat belts, it is also things like glass tables that are too easy to break and consoles that burst into flame.

There's also no wheelchair access whatsoever.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Melora.

Worst episode ever.