Why are bridge consoles always exploding?

[Go-Captain]

The explanation I read somewhere is the the consoles are actually failing safely, relatively, despite still being dangerous in proximity. Note the open air breaker in the video below. It opens, an arc forms, the arc rises a warm air will do, and eventually the arc becomes long enough to break and cut the circuit.

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Imagine that in the confined space of a ship. When there is a short at a device there is an arc, and as we have seen above, breakers for huge currents are slow. Even a breaker in vacuum might be to slow because arcing can happen with enormous voltages in space. The solution is to use an ablative layer which explodes and breaks the current arc, which would look quite a bit like the console explosions we see.

Additionally, this system obviously works because the consoles do not cease to work after an explosion, fresh people frequently take the place of downed officers without delay.

 

[Spot261]

But why would such huge currents be passing across a console? It's a computer which controls a very powerful machine elsewhere in the ship, not the very powerful machine itself

 

[Deks]

But every console seems to have the capability of accessing virtually any system on the ship.
They are likely using hardlines to achieve this (which seems rather odd given that its more likely they would use wifi power transmissions, or other kinds of technologies where direct energy wouldn't be causing those kinds of surges realistically).

At best, I think that what we see on screen at times could be taken with a pinch of salt... they have planet busting capabilities within a single torpedo and phasers that can drill through kilometers of solid rock in seconds (gigatons level output), controlled anti-matter reactions, certain degree of space-time control, and you are asking me to think they are incapable of preventing simple things like consoles exploding?

It might be possible most Trek ships use a similar design for ship interconnectivity between the bridge and other systems.
The EPS grid on starships chugs seems to run on plasma.
And depending on how shields are connected to other systems, as opposed to creating major breaches they are relatively limited and could cause safety hazzards in battle - that is, if you want to rationalize Hollywood's insistence on displaying battles like that - which seems ridiculous to be honest, because given the tehcnical prowess of the Federation and its society, one might imagine such things happening in the 22nd century with less of an occurrence in the 23rd... but by the 24th? The whole freaking Federation should have been by leaps and bounds more advanced compared to the 23rd century, and incidents like that would be a bad memory at best.

The writers obviously weren't too creative.

 

[Mytran]

The trouble is; it wasn't 80 years later for the writers.
However, a battle with all the safety features and realistic advances you mentioned would probably make for bland TV (see also the aesthetic for TMP and Season 1 TNG)

 

[Deks]

The trouble is; it wasn't 80 years later for the writers.
However, a battle with all the safety features and realistic advances you mentioned would probably make for bland TV (see also the aesthetic for TMP and Season 1 TNG)

No, it really wouldn't.
It would simply prompt the writers to think that much harder about creating semi-realistic battles.
Phasers can be fired at 150 000 to 200 000 km ranges... while torpedoes have 300 000 to millions of km ranges.
Sublight speed range from 74 000 km/s to 250 000 km/s (or very close to LS without relativistic effects).

You could still see phasers being fired... but they'd be instantaneous beams that cross such large distances... torpedoes, even faster (all you'd see would be a flash from the torpedo tube, but no torpedo itself).

Its' the future after all... battles would change and weapons would change.
TNG for example showcased massive Starfleet/Federation only technical advancements that were never really followed upon... reason being (writers being limited because they thought it would make things too 'easy').
If things 'get easy', change the playing field. Just because you developed radically more advanced technology, doesn't mean everything else would stay exactly the same (like the transporter range never changing for example over 80 years - whereas by TNG it should have been transwarp beaming, and Transwarp drives - easily).

 

[Go-Captain]

But why would such huge currents be passing across a console? It's a computer which controls a very powerful machine elsewhere in the ship, not the very powerful machine itself

I think that if it takes time for a breaker to work, then there would be time for the extreme current to make its way to a console. Either the console has a small explosion, saving the hardware, or the entire thing blows up and becomes inoperable. It's something like that, but I can't be sure.

 

[Tribble puncher]

I always figured that when consoles blow up, it's not because they have a bizillion volt line running through them...I assumed that when an enemy vessel fires, it hits the sheilds, which absorb some but not all of the energy from the blast or torp or whatever...and the "bleedthrough" is what causes stuff to blow up in the ship...it's just the energy from the weapon coursing through the bulkheads or something....maybe they have ground circuits all over the ship...and the energy hitting these circuits is what causes the explosions....I dunno. not an airtight explanation

 

[kazemiya]

Well actually i believe that the "original" idea about blowing console (in the bridge) is more for the show, rather than actual technical. Though there are still a lot of possibilities that caused the console to blow, but considering the advance technology of the ship themself, they should blown something else, like the safety before reach to the console. I guess they aware about this ,thus the latest movie of startrek ,if i remember correctly ,there are no more blowing console except on the engineering room's. However, i found this become less climatic, as if the ship is still fine while we see that the ship is already crippled on the outside. So i prefer if they could return that blowing console event for the next movie.