Shuttle restraint systems (or lack thereof)

[Joeman]

Pretty new here, and not much of a thread starting type of guy (which you should be glad of). So this will be one of few...

There were two little things about Trek that I always noticed that I wanted to make a point to mention to a Trek fan if I ever met one. One was how ugly boots seem to be quite prevalent in the future. I've gotten to squeeze that in already without starting a thread about it, thank goodness. Not much of a conversation there, more of a minor observation.

The other was the apparent lack of any type of restraint system in shuttle crafts. You guys obviously know your shit, so please indulge me on this one. Why is it that every time a shuttle crashes or crash lands, everyone inside is thrown all over the place? Did they forget about seat belts somewhere down the line? Some type of restraint field would be nice. Enlighten me.

 

[Robert DeSoto]

cuz it looks cool when everyone gets thrown all over the place. same reason why starships don't have restraints

ok the "official" reason, shuttles, starships, runabouts etc., they all have this thing called an intertial damper field that offsets the inertia you feel when a ship accelerates from 0 to 186,000 miles per second in 1 second. It does the same when you stop from that speed. Obviously, seatbelts won't keep you alive with that kind of rapid braking or acceleration.

The reason why the crew gets thrown around like ragdolls when the ship crashes or gets fired upon, the computer doesn't expect those things, so the dampers don't fully cover it.

 

[Joeman]

Yeah I know about inertial dampers, but it just seems that shuttles being what they are, that there would be something to restrain the passengers in case of a hard landing (which happens all the damn time). I never really thought about it at all on starships. I wouldn't really expect people to sit around restrained on those. The shuttles are generally quite small and restrictive of much movement anyway, and it just seems like a logical precaution.

Oh well, such is the stupid shit I sit around and think about.

Thanks for the response Robert. Believe me, I can sense the dozens of eye rolls as people read this. Thank you all for your internal restraint systems.

 

[JoeFromEarth]

In the fifth-season TNG episode "Power Play" the shuttlecraft has seatbelts.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Power_Play_%28episode%29#Continuity

 

[Timo]

there would be something to restrain the passengers in case of a hard landing

As already said, I think seatbelts would be useless in case of a "hard landing" - we're talking about a spacecraft crashing, after all. Not even a seatbelt made of solid diamond would help much when the body of the victim isn't made of solid diamond.

However, seatbelts would be great in keeping the pilot on his seat when the shuttlecraft shakes due to enemy fire or spatiotemporal anomalies. Such minor jostling tends to force our heroes to grab the edges of their control console, at a time when it would probably be useful to have one's fingers steadily on the controls. Since obviously the inertial dampers are useless in preventing such jostling, a classic seatbelt would sound like a desirable solution - although something more technobabblish might also be used.

Too bad it's so dramatically attractive to have our heroes grabbing the edges of their consoles...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sector 7]

This topic was discussed in the DVD extras of ST09. JJ Abrams kept the jostling of bridge crew in his film as a Star Trek tradition, yet added a restraint system to the shuttles. This tends to follow the same logic used here.

 

[Joeman]

I don't recall that in Power Play. I'll make a note to look out for that next time. I'll also need to watch those ST09 DVD extras, as I do have the DVD.

I didn't necessarily mean seatbelts exactly. Just some type of restraint system. Probably something similar to the 5-point restraint systems that race car drivers have (I'm assuming any type of forcefield system would be impractical, since banging into forcfields generally seems unpleasant). Perhaps something they wouldn't wear all the time, but would activate either manually or automatically in case of an emergency.

there would be something to restrain the passengers in case of a hard landing

As already said, I think seatbelts would be useless in case of a "hard landing" - we're talking about a spacecraft crashing, after all. Not even a seatbelt made of solid diamond would help much when the body of the victim isn't made of solid diamond.

You'd think. But it happens often that a shuttle crash lands, and the occupants are not squished like bugs on a windshield like you would think. They are simply thrown all over the place and injured.

Anyway, thanks for the responses.

 

[maneth]

Yeah, the inertial dampener explanation doesn't cut it for me either. Sure, the inertial dampener is needed to protect from rapid acceleration and deceleration. Seatbelts would be handy to stop people tumbling about the ship every time it gets shot at.

One thing that always annoys me is the way the computer consoles always throw sparks when there's an overload in the system or a shuttle crashes. CRT screens can blow up for sure, but not flatscreens. And there's no sensible reason for computers to require high enough voltages to set off showers of sparks when they short out.