Eh?
Any attack powerful enough to punch through a ship's shields will hit the bridge no matter WHERE it is.
*Spoilers* U.S.S. Franklin Design?
- Thread starter Devon
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Eh?
Any attack powerful enough to punch through a ship's shields will hit the bridge no matter WHERE it is.
Base on the size of the bridge main transparent viewing window. I would make the ship of being the length of a football field. Probably 90-92 meters in length and has a crew of 27 that run the ship in 3 working shift. That's 9 crew member runner the starship in each shift.
Eh?
Well you are traveling through space, not going down to the corner shop. There's light years distance between most destinations so what could you possibly want to see through the windows that isn't far away and possibly out of sight?
Until you're orbiting a planet or around other stellar phenomenon.
True but sill I find the idea of huge picture windows odd. Wouldn't the windows be the weakest part of the hull?
Will it be in the 23rd century? The windows are probably some kind of transparent titanium or something.
At least when it was just the bridge module as the most visible target, you'd have to hit it at least half a dozen times and knock down the shields before you could do some real damage.
Now, even if a direct hit right into the window doesn't wipe out everyone inside, your visibility's shot to hell. Driving with a cracked windshield's no fun under normal circumstances, let alone when Klingons are breathing down your neck.
Now, even if a direct hit right into the window doesn't wipe out everyone inside, your visibility's shot to hell. Driving with a cracked windshield's no fun under normal circumstances, let alone when Klingons are breathing down your neck.
It's fine aesthetically. Very few 21st century humans have ANY idea what it is like to look out a window while in space, but when you do the whole "in- universe logic" thing the nuTrek picture window design falls apart.
Nothing's saying the "window" can't in such a case be opacified, and either function as a viewscreen fed by visual inputs from other sources or as an "instrument flight only" display using the heads-up overlay elements we've already seen are a functional part of the Kelvin and Enterprise viewscreens.
Or am I imagining that I also see those elements in the Franklin viewscreen?
I'd agree that there's no a priori reason to think that windows would be weak spots. Why, on many a field-improved Humvee out there, they are by far the strongest part of the vehicle!
But a single forward-facing window doesn't sound like it would be of any practical use. it's so far away from the helmsman anyway that for him it's about as big as the computer screen I'm looking at now. And if there's something that desperately requires seeing, odds are it's not in front of ya!
Not that this should stop engineers from installing that window. In the worst case, it stops working, just like any other piece of starshippiness. In which case you switch to a backup.
Timo Saloniemi
But a single forward-facing window doesn't sound like it would be of any practical use. it's so far away from the helmsman anyway that for him it's about as big as the computer screen I'm looking at now. And if there's something that desperately requires seeing, odds are it's not in front of ya!
Not that this should stop engineers from installing that window. In the worst case, it stops working, just like any other piece of starshippiness. In which case you switch to a backup.
Timo Saloniemi
The "?" ship in the lower-left of
this image from ST'09, wouldn't happen to be the Franklin, would it?
this image from ST'09, wouldn't happen to be the Franklin, would it?
Windows would be totally useless 99.9% of the time, there is no horizon, no way of easily telling distance or heading or size of objects thru a window visually, the huge relative speeds & distances would render human visual perception completely useless. A window would only really come in practical use when all objects are familiar in shape & size, directly in front of you, very close by, and moving very slowly.
I can see the benefit of having a viewscreen, as humans don't like being cooped up in a metal tube for years on end, but the window is really all about the cool factor. Which is fine.
Windows have a practical use for the film makers, which is to provide a sense of scale & familiarity & help inform the audience where the heroes are, and make the sets more interesting. I'm not against the idea of having the windows, it makes sense for the visuals of a movie.
But I do have to put my foot down on the notion that the windows would be practical in-universe. That's complete nonsense, windows on a starship bridge would show a black void 99% of the time, and the rest of the time you would be looking at tiny unfamiliar objects that might be 500 meters or 5,000,000 meters away with no visual cues to figure out which.
But... but... you can magnify!
When you think about it, a commercial airliner doesn't really need windows for the passengers. Why do they need to look out? Indeed, the borders between the windows and the fuselage actually create engineering weak points, so from a practical engineering standpoint, the plane is better off without them. But just imagine what it would be like to fly from New York to Los Angeles in a plane with no view outside. And even then, at 40,000 feet, there's very little to see. It's just knowing there's an "out" out there. They serve little practical purpose beyond that.
The original Mercury capsule had two small portholes and a periscope instead of windows. The astronauts insisted that it have a window, and they won out.
But yeah, windows on a starship are for purely artistic purposes. In space, they would have no practical worth at all.
The original Mercury capsule had two small portholes and a periscope instead of windows. The astronauts insisted that it have a window, and they won out.
But yeah, windows on a starship are for purely artistic purposes. In space, they would have no practical worth at all.
"In - universe" though, the window could easily be replicated by the use of a view screen.
This would make the most sense. That way, anyone, anywhere on the ship would be able to see whatever there was to see "out there." Of course in deep space, more often than not, there is no "there" there. Being able to see "out" is as much a psychological need as it is a practical one, even if one is seeing a black void most of the time.
I always thought it would be neat if crew quarters on a starship had a view screen on a wall that was like a window, and any scene at all could be replicated as if it were a live 24-hour view, even with weather changes. For example, if you wanted to imagine your quarters were on the penthouse level of a skyscraper in Manhattan overlooking Central Park, that would be your view, day, night, sunshine, clouds, rain, and snow (or whatever you may want). Relatively speaking, the technology for such simulations would have to be fairly easy to do in the 23rd century.
Or, like, twenty years ago. But for some reason, TOS era ships never had any sort of windows, real or fake, at crew quarters. Or public crew spaces, for that matter. Until Pike retroactively got one for "The Cage", and ST:TMP introduced the impossible windows of the big Rec Deck.
In contrast, TNG officer heroes like to sleep with their heads beneath demi-skylights showing space. Sure, they can be shuttered, but it's a weird place to put one's head in for sleeping, what with the changing scenery, the light shows and such.
At least on the Franklin, you can't help having a window. Where else does that ship have standing height room except the bridge and the extensively portholed saucer rim?
Timo Saloniemi
In contrast, TNG officer heroes like to sleep with their heads beneath demi-skylights showing space. Sure, they can be shuttered, but it's a weird place to put one's head in for sleeping, what with the changing scenery, the light shows and such.
At least on the Franklin, you can't help having a window. Where else does that ship have standing height room except the bridge and the extensively portholed saucer rim?
Timo Saloniemi
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