Who cleans up everyone's quarters after each space battle?

[Gary7]

Given the technology of the time, I'm sure they had cleaning devices running about the ship all the time. We can assume that when you materialize on the transporter pad, all of the dirt on the bottom of your shoes gets sucked off (not only for dirt confinement but also bacterial cleaning). The hangar bay has a dust magnet technology built into the floor, so that when you unload cargo from the shuttles, no errant dust or debris gets tracked into the rest of the ship; then periodically the hangar deck floor gets a good scrubbing.

We can make tons of assumptions about this, because it's such a triviality that was never touched on in the shows. I wish they had at least one episode where we see a carpet cleaning 'bot roaming the corridors, or deployed in moments after a nasty spill. They wouldn't have had to do it much, just a couple of times, and then it would put this whole thing to rest. And also a line about using the bathroom like "Where's the Captain?" "He's in the head at the moment--he should be out momentarily," and then we see him step out of the Lavatory compartment located on the bridge.

 

[Melakon]

And also a line about using the bathroom like "Where's the Captain?" "He's in the head at the moment--he should be out momentarily," and then we see him step out of the Lavatory compartment located on the bridge.

TNG euphemized this with "I'll be in my ready room."

 

[T'Girl]

Or have the door closed to the small chamber where his replicator is located, it opens and Picard walks out. The implication being that he was in the loo.

A thought, do they basically have to strip their jumpsuits down to their ankles to do their business, or does their "clothing technology" provide a magic flap on the uniform's bottom?

 

[Melakon]

Maybe transporter technology is employed so that there's no fuss, no muss.

 

[Captain Rob]

I guess that would be the built-in pooper-porter.
In TWOK, we did see the guy in the white uniform cleaning the floor at Star Fleet Command at the beginning of the movie. Kirk and Spock walk right by him.

 

[Captain Nebula]

With the amount of damage sustained in the space battles that take place in each series, I've always wondered who gets assigned the daunting task of fixing up everyone's quarters so that they look like they were untouched?

I'd think there would be automated miniaturized Roombas (maybe the size of a quarter) all over the ship picking up after the crew. 200/300/400 years after the invention of the Roomba would probably make it pretty advanced - walk on walls and the ceiling, filter dust out of the air, use transporter/replicator tech, clean your clothes while you are sleeping, make your bed after you get up, look for tiny structural imperfections in the ship, degaussing certain areas, etc... And they would have camouflaging or holoemitter tech so the crew doesn't have to look at them.

 

[marksound]

What were those Lego robots Wesley had that decided they were alive? Yeah, that was their job.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Given the technology of the time, I'm sure they had cleaning devices running about the ship all the time. We can assume that when you materialize on the transporter pad, all of the dirt on the bottom of your shoes gets sucked off (not only for dirt confinement but also bacterial cleaning).

Then why do people materialize covered in dirt if they've been through some bad time?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Starfleet Housekeeping Corps.

 

[Gary7]

Then why do people materialize covered in dirt if they've been through some bad time?

Sometimes it's nothing but Clorox that'll take out the tough stains.

 

[Timo]

One thing to ponder: when the week's godlike alien kicks the Enterprise in the groin, and the bridge shakes enough to throw Lt. Leslie across the room and back twice, does the rest of the ship necessarily shake, too?

I mean, yeah, McCoy has his desks full of unsecured, fragile bottles and delicate instruments. But the ship also supposedly has an inertia-damping system. Just because we see the system fail to cope with shaking inside one room doesn't necessarily mean that every location shakes badly enough to create a mess. Perhaps the yeomen only have to clean up every third cabin or so?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

See I always wonder that.. but if you were going to have special rooms like sickbay in some kind of bubble of non shaking (like they are always upright even if the ship does a 360) wouldn't the bridge be one of those special rooms?

 

[Captain Nebula]

One thing to ponder: when the week's godlike alien kicks the Enterprise in the groin, and the bridge shakes enough to throw Lt. Leslie across the room and back twice, does the rest of the ship necessarily shake, too?

It's a design flaw in most Federation ships that the inertial dampening field doesn't extend very well to the bridge and the shipyards passed it off as an undocumented feature by explaining that it's a feedback mechanism so the bridge crew can tell when the ship is taking a beating better than a panel/display would tell them.



Actually, that might work!

 

[Timo]

See I always wonder that.. but if you were going to have special rooms like sickbay in some kind of bubble of non shaking (like they are always upright even if the ship does a 360) wouldn't the bridge be one of those special rooms?

I was thinking more in terms of random overload. That is, every room is a "bubble of non shaking", but any room has equal odds of having the IDF system fail. Except that enemies so often like to target the bridge, giving it greater odds...

Also, depending on the deeper mysteries of IDF theory and practice, being on the outer hull might make a room more prone to shaking, and the deepest core of the saucer is the location least likely to shake.

The other possibility is that tabletops have their own built-in safety measures: extra gravitic pull, cheap localized damping fields, whatnot. Something that can hold on to a vase, a book or a beaker full of death, but won't cope with 160-pound Lieutenants.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

That's a good theory about the tables.

But all this shaking also gives some reason as to why people's quarters are so sparse. I have more stuff in my bedroom than you'd find in a whole deck of crew quarters I think. I'm always amazed at how little personal effects people have.

 

[Lighthammer]

I had thought about this a great deal in the past.

I've always worked under and expanded under the idea that many items have built in miniature gravity stabilizers or surfaces that help keep things on it.

There's two points that I've considered give us some helpful information that makes this possible. We know from "A Matter of Time" that devices on the future can be charged wirelessly and we know from DS9 that "gravity netting" is pretty readily available.

I've generally assumed that most items in the TNG era are capable of affixing on through the manipulation of gravity technology and can then intelligently and intuitively be moved.

Things that aren't too practical to have the technology built in, such as antiques or cups would be affixed by a sort of gravity netting build directly into the surface it sits on, such as tables.

I think applying this sort of explanation accounts for almost all such situations with still allowing for someone like Chakote to occasionally have a messy room (dishes and clothing sprawled around).

 

[Timo]

...Also, our heroes may have grown overtly reliant on gadgetry that holds things in place - explaining how things that should definitely be physically bolted down by today's common sense, such as the captain's chair, may in fact be almost knocked over when enough force is applied (and supposedly when enough power is simultaneously lost from the holding system).

There are probably plenty of scenes where people get thrown about yet objects such as PADDs sit in place, despite being easy to swipe down from a table in various other scenes. Difficult to explain otherwise, fairly consistent with the tabletop extra pull theory.

...Perhaps the tabletop field can be reversed, or turned peristaltic, for easy and quick dusting?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[WillsBabe]

In Up the Long Ladder Riker tells Brenna that the ship will clean itself. (Well, good for the bloody ship!) On the other hand, I think it's Data's girlfriend's quarters we see in In Theory that look like the ship doesn't clean itself. I reckon the crew cleans their own quarters after a kerfuffle, to be honest.

 

[Kelthaz]

15 years after the crash

Obviously those systems can survive planetary crashes at full impulse

Wait a minute, why is the screen still on in that photo? Hasn't the Federation ever heard of a sleep mode?

 

[Timo]

Well, technically speaking, a sleep mode only makes sense if keeping the display on consumes power or "ages" the display element. Neither of these would need to be a feature for the classic Okudagram display. Quite possibly, only the altering of the image consumes power, so going to sleep would be a needless drain.

Timo Saloniemi