Sick Bay - the best protected part of the Ship!

[ZERO_of_ZERO]

Im just watching Elaan of Troyius and Kirk asks her to go to the Sick bay as its the most protected part of the ship!

Strange I think.
Presumably because of where it is rather than a need to protect it?

Surely the bridge (and possibly engineering) should be the most protected part of the ship?

I see no need for the Bridge to be where it is (apart from an asthetic point of view, and where people would expect it to be - right near the front - which is probably the reason it is where it is)

 

[Zycho32]

Well, there seem to be three options;

1. Sick Bay is possibly located in the center deck of the Saucer deep in the interior and is therefore the most protected just by having the most 'bulk'- other decks and rooms- to buffer any damage.

2. In the event of enemy boarders, it would probably be easy to pinpoint the locations of the Bridge and Engineering, just through casual observation of the ship and some knowledge of how Starfleet typically designs it's vessels. Sick Bay is only a vital function to the crew as opposed to the ship, and therefore is not tied down entirely by location necessity. The result would be Boarders not immediately knowing where Sickbay was unless they got lucky on the first shot, making it a fair hiding place.

3. Kirk was simply lying through his teeth to get Elaan to leave the Bridge. Not that it worked, but he probably wasn't very effective due to those tears of hers.

 

[FalTorPan]

It seems silly to put sick bay in the most protected area of a ship. In a crisis situation, if you had to choose which personnel to protect the most, wouldn't you want to protect the able-bodied people who are presumably working at least in part to keep the crew from suffering additional casualties which would require them to visit sick bay?

I see no need for the Bridge to be where it is (apart from an asthetic point of view, and where people would expect it to be - right near the front - which is probably the reason it is where it is)

This seems silly to me, too. I've heard that the producers placed the bridge atop the primary hull in order to give the ship a sense of scale. That doesn't make much sense, since aside from the nifty fly-in from "The Cage" and "The Menagerie," there was never any visual evidence in the show to indicate that the bridge was inside the bump on top of the saucer.

So... maybe the bridge should be in the heart of the saucer, and sick bay should be next to the antimatter storage bottles.

 

[Maurice]

^^^You guys are nastily Spartan...

 

[Timo]

...Of course, there might be all sorts of silly treknological reasons for putting the sickbay where it happens to be very well protected. Say, it's located right next to the transporters for practical reasons, and the transporter pads have to be at the very heart of the ship for technical reason X. Or it's located next to the computer core, close connections to which help with medical procedure Y (say, computation-intensive transporter surgery, or a therapy that utilizes the FTL accelerator fields of the computer block).

Or then it's simply that, unlike bridge or main engineering or the computer core, sickbay is not a primary target for Klingons, and therefore rather automatically becomes safer than any of those.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Triskelion]

Putting the bridge in a prominent and vulnerable spot might be a way of putting the crew before the command; if you were serving on a vessel in which the bridge is tucked away nicely, and working departments were in more exposed areas, what message would that be sending to the crew, whose loyalty is required? By placing the bridge in an exposed spot, it shows the captain asking no more risk from the crew than he or she is willing to take themselves.

Also, look at navy vessels, you usually see the bridge high and front.

 

[Timo]

Actually, you don't. In a combat situation, the commander of the vessel would be cowering deep within the bowels of the ship, in a well-protected room the USN likes to call the Combat Information Center. The people up on the glass-walled balcony would be lowly junior officers or enlisteds who would steer the ship according to the commands of the brass phoned up from the CIC. That's true of vessels large and small; even tiny missile boats tend to have this arrangement today.

It was a bit different back when a Captain or an Admiral needed a pair of binoculars to manage the battle - which is to say, well into WWII and beyond. Some of that old influence might be showing in Trek, of course.

As for putting the crew before command, this might also explain the lack of seatbelts: as the folks on the lower decks will in general not be sitting down when performing their duties, the bridge crew will not use seatbelts, either, so as not to appear cowardly.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Triskelion]

Yeah Timo? What about Captain Stubing?

 

[Trekwatcher]

The location of the bridge, on top of the saucer section and below a big dome (and nothing else) always seemed silly to me. It works better for dramatic purposes, but is hard to imagine in a real starship.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

All parts of the ship are equally protected - by the SHIELDS. That's what they're there for.

Any attack strong enough to punch through shields, would do the same to the ship itself - and nowhere would be safe. Thus there is no such thing as a "best protected" part of the ship.

And also there is no reason why the bridge shouldn't be up on top, for the same reasons. Putting it deep inside the ship won't help, because if the enemy slices through shields, the attack will get to the bridge even if it's smack dab in the middle of a mile of bulkheads on each side.

 

[ZERO_of_ZERO]

All parts of the ship are equally protected - by the SHIELDS. That's what they're there for.

Any attack strong enough to punch through shields, would do the same to the ship itself - and nowhere would be safe. Thus there is no such thing as a "best protected" part of the ship.

And also there is no reason why the bridge shouldn't be up on top, for the same reasons. Putting it deep inside the ship won't help, because if the enemy slices through shields, the attack will get to the bridge even if it's smack dab in the middle of a mile of bulkheads on each side.

I disagree, If there was a weapon that could penetrate shields, why would it not be stopped or decreased in strength as it tore through the hull etc?
Perhaps just penetrating shields would be enough power drain to almost stop it progressing further?

(Now my memory is dodgy but ...) In the Wrath of Khan, the Enteprise or at least the Excelsior (or both) gets hit wth phasers with shields down and a lot of damage is done, but nothing like cutting through the whole ship to the other side?

Being 10 or 20 or more bulk walls from the outside of the ship seems to be more protected to me than being right at the outside.

 

[Sector 7]

Being 10 or 20 or more bulk walls from the outside of the ship seems to be more protected to me than being right at the outside.

This is why the redshirts quarters are always nearest the hull. In-su-la-tion...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If there was a weapon that could penetrate shields, why would it not be stopped or decreased in strength as it tore through the hull etc?

A ship's hull, compared to shields, is like a sheet of paper vs. an inch thick layer of concrete. Hull is a lot easier to 'punch' through, than a shield.

In the Wrath of Khan, the Enteprise or at least the Excelsior (or both) gets hit wth phasers with shields down and a lot of damage is done, but nothing like cutting through the whole ship to the other side?

Khan was toying with the Enterprise crew. He wanted to make them suffer. He could have immediately destroyed the ship, but chose not to.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

(Now my memory is dodgy but ...) In the Wrath of Khan, the Enteprise or at least the Excelsior (or both) gets hit wth phasers with shields down and a lot of damage is done, but nothing like cutting through the whole ship to the other side?

I'm with Babaganoosh on this one, in The Undiscovered Country, right after the Enterprise's shields drop a torpedo blast goes right through the saucer section.

Also, to the naval comparison above, even on WWII battleships, there was a pill box of sorts for Captains to retreat inside on the bridge.

 

[garakfan]

If life support goes, they all die. It doesn't matter how protected that area of the ship is.