Starship Bridge's

[137th Gebirg]

Man that outer hull around the bridge looks paper thin. You'd think there would be some extra armor plating or at least a double hull for some protection on such a critical part of the ship.

 

[ATimson]

Wasn't there also a bridge blowout in Nemesis?

I thought the bridge was fine; it was the forwardmost sections of the saucer that were breached.

 

[Timo]

The bridge did lose a crucial part of its outer wall:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/nemesishd/nemesishd2082.jpg

I can't really see how a few (dozen) meters of mere physical matter would make a difference when a hostile starship's disruptors get a good shot. Phasers drill through kilometers of solid rock in a matter of seconds in several TNG episodes...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

Here I thought this was going to be a thread about why the most important part of the ship is exposed like a hood ornament.

How often has a bridge actually taken direct damage (not exploding consoles - something that breached the hull)?

"Year of Hell" and the Abrams movie are the only examples that I can think of off the top of my head. 99% of the time, the shields and hull (and plot armor) do a good enough job of protecting the bridge from damage. Burying it deeper in the hull would be pointless from a design perspective, and detrimental from a dramatic one.

(And if you're a believer in replaceable bridge modules, burying it would complicate or prevent those.)

The bridge of the USS Constellation was damaged and unihabitable in TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine".

Excerpt of "The Doomsday Machine" below
Link --> http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/35.htm

[Bridge]

KIRK: Lieutenant Palmer.
PALMER: I can't raise the Constellation, sir. I'm still getting the distress beacon, but there's heavy subspace interference. It's almost blocking the signal.
KIRK: Keep trying. Mister Spock, full evaluation of the damage to the Constellation.
SPOCK: All power plants dead, reserve energy banks operative at a very low power level.
KIRK: Life support systems?
SPOCK: Also operative at a low power level. The entire Bridge is damaged and uninhabitable. The rest of the ship seems able to sustain life.

Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

[Dale Sams]

The Battle Bridge solves the problem...unless you separate the ship (I *think* the battle bridge is on top of the secondary hull)

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Yep, it's on the top and center of the cobra head. At least on the Galaxy, anyway. Can't remember where it was on the Sovereign.

 

[Timo]

Or whether the Sovereign was ever intended to fight in separated mode. After all, while a separation line of sorts was designed in, there apparently was no thought given to providing the "Battle Section" with things like impulse drive... Just as with Kirk's old ship which supposedly was incapable of doing anything much once separated.

Kirk's ship had a "Battle Bridge" or three despite not having any operational separation ability. We never quite learned where these were located, though, and we got no real reason to think they would be better protected than the Main Bridge.

Not until a bit of thought was put to the layout of the refitted ship in ST:TMP, that is; both Andy Probert and Shane Johnson tried to put Auxiliary Control in the very middle of the saucer, even though the sets didn't exactly make that easy. We never saw such a facility in the actual movies, so we didn't get any wiser in the canon sense...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Wright]

I was thinking about the diagram of the K't'inga bridge Timo posted, are the red windows about the same size as the forward window of the Enterprise?
Something is outta wack somewhere, Ijust don't know where.

James