I was just watching Voyager's "Future's End" where the Doctor's program was thought to have been lost. Isn't there some LCARS equivalent to Norton Ghost? The E-D apparently had a system restore partition in "Contagion."
Trek Computers and Backup Software
- Thread starter IGotItFromAgnes
- Start date
I'm still wondering how the Enterprise maintained anti-matter containment during a total shutdown in "Contagion"?
It shouldn't be difficult to engineer systems that "operate" completely without computer oversight, when the "operating" consists solely of maintaining status quo. We've seen that gravity fields don't cease operating when all power is lost; they supposedly just sort of dwindle, and very slowly at that. Antimatter containment would probably be done with gravitic fields, too, considering that they always speak of anti-atomic matter, not of anti-ions or antiplasma or anything else that could be contained by electromagnetics. And gravitic=magnetic is a likely interpretation of future terminology anyway, in things like magnetic boots or magnetic storms or whatnot.
On the other hand, thinking that the computer systems of a starship would be a single simplistic whole akin to a PC may not be the best possible thinking. More probably, the computer systems consist of various layers, numerous special-purpose "subsystems" that may not even be in talking terms with the rest of the ship, and no doubt also of futuristic systems of data storage and processing that do not utilize the antiquated concepts of "program" or "code" or "file" and cannot perform operations such as "copying" or "deleting" or "shutdown". (At least some parts of the system have been known to utilize these concepts, though. But if the flux of terminology in the past half a century is anything to go by, the 24th century definition of "backup" is probably completely different from the early 21st century one.)
Timo Saloniemi
On the other hand, thinking that the computer systems of a starship would be a single simplistic whole akin to a PC may not be the best possible thinking. More probably, the computer systems consist of various layers, numerous special-purpose "subsystems" that may not even be in talking terms with the rest of the ship, and no doubt also of futuristic systems of data storage and processing that do not utilize the antiquated concepts of "program" or "code" or "file" and cannot perform operations such as "copying" or "deleting" or "shutdown". (At least some parts of the system have been known to utilize these concepts, though. But if the flux of terminology in the past half a century is anything to go by, the 24th century definition of "backup" is probably completely different from the early 21st century one.)
Timo Saloniemi
NebulaClassGuy
Lieutenant Commander
Considering that Starfleet ships are literally constantly in contact in one form or another with some form of Federation computer, be it a Federation clock, or subspace comm traffic and automatic software updates, I'd imagine that the computers on a given ship evolve in realtime, meaning that the constant subspace link to UFP or Starfleet computers works both ways, ensuring that not only does the ship have the most current updates available, but at the same time, any and all data contained in the ship's computer core (such as log entries or sensor scans) is being transferred/copied to a UFP or Starfleet computer mainframe for storage. In a way, this is akin to online data backup... the ship has the original master copies of all the data, but copies of literally everything are sent to the mainframe as a backup.
Just my two cents.
Just my two cents.
In the case of the "antimatter pods" should the power simply be cut, the force field generators (that provide containment) would begin to spin down. But how long would that take? How long until the actual antimatter, regardless of it's form, touched the inside of the physical container? In the episode Booby Trap the Promellian battle cruiser had been sitting for a thousand years without blowing up. That assume it employed antimatter in it's star drive.
i think what happen in Contagion wasn't that the antimatter containment was deprived of power, but that the containment fields were deliberately turned off by the computer.
But you also need to figure out what constitutes a 'containment field' as well.
In Trek... it was used to describe both forcefield type technology and bulkheads (latter being the case very rare admittedly).
On the Enterprise-D though, whole power wasn't completely cut off though.
'Some' power still remained as LCARS still operated (and some other areas), but the power in question was available in a very limited fashion.
As for gravity systems still being operational in 'Contaigon'... well, obviously that system was still operational.
Usually, it would appear that gravity and life-support are not so easy to bring offline in a ship-wide power loss... but they have been shown to be able to loose power and go offline instantly when specifically targeted - or, some Trek technology could simply be operating independently from main/auxiliary power by utilizing methods previously unknown to us.
In Trek... it was used to describe both forcefield type technology and bulkheads (latter being the case very rare admittedly).
On the Enterprise-D though, whole power wasn't completely cut off though.
'Some' power still remained as LCARS still operated (and some other areas), but the power in question was available in a very limited fashion.
As for gravity systems still being operational in 'Contaigon'... well, obviously that system was still operational.
Usually, it would appear that gravity and life-support are not so easy to bring offline in a ship-wide power loss... but they have been shown to be able to loose power and go offline instantly when specifically targeted - or, some Trek technology could simply be operating independently from main/auxiliary power by utilizing methods previously unknown to us.
It's probably very much akin to an air supply. If power is lost, two things can happen: there's enough air left for a few days, or a valve pops open and there's enough air left for a few seconds. Loss of computer control may result in either scenario, but the latter scenario assumes that the loss involves some sort of final death throes where the computer sends fatally flawed commands, while the former assumes that everything is set up to be fine as default (or mechanically revert to being fine) when there's no computer control in good or evil.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
