The shipwill clean itself

[Trekker4747]

So, I watched "Ensigns of Command" last night and as Picard is letting the Shelliak sitting on hold he walks over to the dedication plaque, wipes dust off of it with his finger and shuffles it to the floor. I guess the ship doesn't do a great job "cleaning itself.".

 

[CaptainMatt]

In all my years of being a TNG fan (all the way back to the start in 1987) I never heard of the Enterprise being able to "clean" itself. You learn something new every day!

 

[Bisz]

For your future bigoted comments, the term is Poles.

Can't beat a bit of tiresome, false offence can you?

My biggest beef with your comment is that it wasn't funny.

If you are going to be offensive, at least do it in a funny way.

 

[Sandoval]

My biggest beef with your comment is that it wasn't funny.

If you are going to be offensive, at least do it in a funny way.

And if you're going to be offended, at least pick something a little more important than an offhand comment on a messageboard.

 

[Borjis]

So, I watched "Ensigns of Command" last night and as Picard is letting the Shelliak sitting on hold he walks over to the dedication plaque, wipes dust off of it with his finger and shuffles it to the floor. I guess the ship doesn't do a great. Job "cleaning itself.".

Always loved that scene. Have to see it at least 3 times when I watch that ep.

 

[Trekker4747]

So, I watched "Ensigns of Command" last night and as Picard is letting the Shelliak sitting on hold he walks over to the dedication plaque, wipes dust off of it with his finger and shuffles it to the floor. I guess the ship doesn't do a great. Job "cleaning itself.".

Always loved that scene. Have to see it at least 3 times when I watch that ep.

For me it's the camel-toe shot of Troi in the same episode.

No, I get what you mean it's a great moment in an also great episode. There's just something about the smugness and pompousness in Picard as he lets the Shelliak sit on hold as he wipes dust off the plaque, it's a great scene. Would've been awesome had he gotten a tea from the replicator near there and sat down and started drinking it before answering.

Also love how the hailing frequency chime keeps going off like a phone ringing off the hook.

 

[Mojochi]

They live in space. It would have to be a rather antiseptic environment, generating minimal dirtiness to begin with. Scrubbers filtering the air of dust, particulates, pathogens, etc... Note the bridge plaque had no actual dust on it. It's a symbolic gesture. Molecular decompiling handles all waste removal. So the ship does manage the majority of environmental control itself, & litter is an unlikely issue, as the majority of inhabitants are crew, who are responsible for tidying up after themselves

We do see however, that the ship has maintenance crews, who are likely responsible for not only technical tasks & repairs with computers & engines & such, but also with the ship itself, as in carpets & floors that need treatment or replacement from wear & tracking in of exterior materials, & they likely have a great deal of tech which makes it more maintenance than housekeeping, perhaps even some robotics that sweep/polish/shampoo/vacuum etc...

 

[Timo]

Also of possible interest is that the walls aren't really made of plywood.

That is, they appear to be far more durable than they look: on several occasions, they shrug off phaser hits without as much as a scorch mark. If this sort of a "hidden functionality" is built into them, then we can rather safely assume they have other interesting but invisible features as well.

Although to be sure, the remark about the ship cleaning itself was made in rather special circumstances. It specifically concerned the ship's ability to get rid of a pile of cattle manure on the floor of a cargo hold. It wouldn't really require fantastic supertech to home in on the loose feces and remove it by any means necessary, without stopping to run complex AI routines on "is this dirt, or is it a desirable feature?".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[spot_loves_data]

Could be something along the lines of a sonic shower...

That's what I was thinking - a space age roomba with a sonic shower device attached to it.

 

[Corran Horn]

I've actually thought about this more than I should've. My thought has always been - sure, you could have nanobots or whatever to clean every bit of dust/dirt from the carpets constantly...but why would you need that? And who maintains that system?

Isn't it just simpler to have a guy with a vacuum (or a roomba) do it every so often and have that be the end of it? At what point is it just wheels within wheels?

 

[sojourner]

By the time of TNG it may be easier to use nanotechnology than to add another crew member just to handle cleaning.

At what point did the washing machine become easier than a tub of water and a wash board?

 

[Trekker4747]

When washing machines became popular and affordable for household work and the American Housewife was given more and more expectations on what she was "supposed to do" for her family during the day.

 

[sojourner]

^the key point there being "affordable".

When a device becomes cheap enough to purchase in order to offset the manual labor it's replacing. At some point automation becomes cheaper than manual labor.

 

[RAMA]

Robot/AI is highly understated and unaddressed in STNG. More than likely a lot of cleaning is automated. I also suspect they would have explained some details away with "force field" type technobabble, but I have a feeling micro or even nano-robots would be involved in the cleaning process. Foglets in particular could be adapted for different needs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog

RAMA

Ah, so some guy just envisioned the GEDE McGuffin and he gets credit for brilliant thinking?

Oh it's a lot more than that these days, we're a ways off from foglets yet (maybe a few decades) but nanotech is a $2 billlion a year industry already. The implications are nothing less than staggering.

RAMA

 

[Timo]

And it is a concept worth introducing that one could and should strive for a tool that does everything, instead of initially trying to create more specific tools out of nanomachines. The scifi writers are somewhat evenly divided between these two approaches to early nanotech.

The Trek version seems to be "they can do everything but opt to do nothing much". Unless replicators are based on nanites (and we have every visual and dramatic reason to think they are based on transporters instead), Trek nanotech doesn't do impressive physical things on a macroscopic scale. It's just the classic path of thinking: "they are small, so they can be used to recreate Fantastic Voyage". And then they can get out of control. Very fifties, that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Holdfast]

It wouldn't really require fantastic supertech to home in on the loose feces and remove it by any means necessary, without stopping to run complex AI routines on "is this dirt, or is it a desirable feature?".

Even complex non-artificial intelligence routines can sometimes fail....

 

[Timo]

...Not that the world would be significantly poorer for the outcome! Quite a few pieces of art out there that would benefit from judiciously applied hydrogen peroxide and steel brush. Or thrash compactors.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tina Lawton]

I wish my house cleaned itself.

 

[scotpens]

It's just the classic path of thinking: "they are small, so they can be used to recreate Fantastic Voyage".

Does that mean they can clone Raquel Welch?

 

[Reeborg]

How? Any ideas? Stains on the carpet? Litter in the corridors? How is all that removed by the ship "cleaning itself"?

I don't know. Maybe the same way as my appartment. Although I never clean it is always clean.