Why is there artificial gravity in Jeffries Tubes?

[Ghrakh]

Seems to have two disadvantages:

1) Use ship's energy unnecessarily: It seems that since they're unoccupied most of the time, it's wasteful to keep them with gravity 24/7...unless I'm mistaken, it seems the characters never "turn the gravity on".

2) Make it difficult to go through: This is a bigger problem to me. It never looks comfortable either crawling through on the horizontal, or climbing a ladder on the vertical. We've seen plenty of times crew-members going through, slowly and uncomfortably and often with equipment, to either make repairs or for emergency access through the ship.

I can't think of any advantages that are enough to negate the above. Yeah, I know about dramatic license but was wondering about for in-universe. Thoughts?

 

[Sandoval]

Why is there artificial gravity in Jeffries Tubes?

Because they're inside the ship. And there is gravity inside the ship.

 

[Starlock]

You'd probably have issues with air and heat flow inside a gravity free area. RE: Apollo 13

 

[sojourner]

^Fans.

The obvious answer? It was cheaper to film than simulating 0g.

 

[Sandoval]

You'd probably have issues with air and heat flow inside a gravity free area.

You'd have issues in 1G as well. Look in most road tunnels and you'll see fans on the ceilings to create airflow.

 

[Mysterion]

Maybe the control of artifical gravity isn't precise enough to make specific areas as small as a jeffires tube zero-g.

 

[Albertese]

Maybe the control of artifical gravity isn't precise enough to make specific areas as small as a jeffires tube zero-g.

This is my theory. I figure the gravity is generated in large-ish volumes and it'd be more trouble than it's worth to try to make it reduced for an area as small as a Jefferies Tube. I expect that even if they do turn up the gravity (like the Enterprise episode "In a Mirror Darkly" when they turned the gravity up to 20 G to crush the Gorn, that there is a noticeable gradient from the 1G area to the 20 G area. I bet evil Captain Archer felt 3 or 4 G where he was standing and that the gravity pulling the Gorn down was 20 G in the middle of that volume, but by the edge, where they are standing, he was probably being pulled down by around 10 G, which would still be good enough to hold down (and likely kill) even someone really strong. 20 G would have flattened him almost instantly. And I do mean FLAT.

Such is my idea. Maybe I'll illustrate what I mean if what I typed is unclear.

--Alex

 

[scotpens]

I recall reading a Trek novel or story in which a newbie crewmember tripped and stumbled over a “gravity shelf” — a sharp boundary between two different levels of artificial gravity. Don’t know the title or author, though.

 

[T'Girl]

I recall reading a Trek novel or story in which a newbie crewmember tripped and stumbled over a “gravity shelf” — a sharp boundary between two different levels of artificial gravity.

One of the early novels, when Captain Kirk walked into Spock's quarters for the first time.

 

[Timo]

Yet gravity seems precise enough that a tiny shuttlepod can be equipped with it, without causing debris and detritus to cling onto it either at the shuttlebay, or immediately outside it, or inside a comet, etc. Apparently, then, the gravity cuts off very sharply at the walls of the pod. And gravity can be adjusted cabin by cabin even in canon Trek, as we see e.g. in DS9 "Melora".

We might argue that artificial gravity and inertia control are the same thing; the same machinery is used for creating both. You can't just turn off gravity at a location that has people in it, because they will then be fatally wounded if the ship makes a maneuver. But you should still be able to provide any such volume with artificial gravity set at zero gee, if you see the distinction - so even this cannot serve as an excuse for having 1G at the tubes.

Really, tubes with zero or conveniently turned gravity would be an excellent way to move around a starship, better than "walkable" corridors in most cases. One-gee corridors may carry physical and mental health benefits in regularly inhabited spaces, though. But again, Jeffries tubes should be immune to this argument, as they are only irregularly visited.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[sojourner]

^Mixing 0g hallways with regular gravity spaces would probably lead to a lot of injuries and accidents.

 

[Timo]

Very true. But once again, Jeffries tubes would be an exception, as they are so easily distinguishable from full-gee corridors. You enter them by diving into a narrow hole set rather high up in the wall, ensuring proper caution of entry and proper orientation. You will probably quickly learn to exit them feet first, too, again ensuring a good "landing" orientation.

Perhaps people familiar with working in zero gee have simply learned to hate that screws and nuts and self-sealing stembolts are always floating away from them? Gravity works better than Velcro in keeping things of all sizes and shapes where they need to be. And Jeffries tubes see a lot of situations where both small and large objects are torn loose from their usual mountings.

...In that respect, the damning fault of a Jeffries tube is that it is such a cramped workspace. Why not build it to full standing height instead? If you put three crawling-height tubes atop each other, you could probably leave out two crawling-height tubes elsewhere within the machinery and thus not lose any machinery volume - the improved working conditions would count for that much. Since the floor or ceiling of a tube usually doesn't feature any access hatches, the triple-height "tube" would also have the same access panel area as the three separate tubes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[sojourner]

Oh I agree about the Jefferies tubes. It was the 0g hallways that sounded like a bad idea.

 

[Ghrakh]

You'd probably have issues with air and heat flow inside a gravity free area. RE: Apollo 13

Well, the ISS doesn't seem to have this problem. Neither did Apollo 11 or 12 for that matter, so that's already not an issue.

The obvious answer? It was cheaper to film than simulating 0g.

Saucer separation wasn't a cheap effect to film either. And it doesn't have to look like a NASA 0G video feed, but simply implied. I think this was a missed opportunity, to really drive the point that they're in space...they wouldn't have to have jefferies-tube sequences often but whenever they did it would be more interesting than just crawling around and climbing ladders....to me it made more sense from a realistic perspective to take advantage of the zero gravity, and also would have been more visually interesting as well.

Timo: good stuff, agreed!

 

[sojourner]

^Saucer separation only had to be filmed once and then recycled again and again (even then it was very rarely used). Try doing that with live people in "0g".

 

[Ghrakh]

^Saucer separation only had to be filmed once and then recycled again and again (even then it was very rarely used). Try doing that with live people in "0g".

they wouldn't have to have jefferies-tube sequences often

 

[Cary L. Brown]

My take? "It depends on the location."

We never see Scotty go very deeply into a tube. So all we REALLY know is that the first few meters worth of the tubes we've seen are in gravity.

I've always assumed that there are several main runs of such tubes... some of which go up the nacelle pylons, and some of which go up the dorsal. In fact, here are the four tubes (not showing "junctions," mind you, which are where Scotty enters the tube runs) in the dorsal on my version of the ship:


Which transition through the dorsal separation line as seen here:

(You can also see the lift interface and a pair of triangular ladders there.)

I assume that there are probably several of these tubes in the nacelle pylons as well. In my build, the nacelle pylons are huge metal box beams, with four cavities in them, which you can see best in this animated GIF file:


My idea was that the second to the front has a small personnel lift (sort of like a ski run chair lift)... that's why that run has windows in a few spots... and the other three have various functional elements (the front line is data and control systems, the last is second to last is physical interconnections, and the rearmost has the direct energy tap from the warp nacelles going to the main energizer in the secondary hull).

Each of those has a maintenance crawlway to permit access to those elements, and while the crawlways are in the main hull volume, they continue to have gravity, but in the case of the pylon tubes, they lose the stair-stepping and become smooth, and go to zero-gravity, once outside of the limits of the secondary hull.

That's how I, personally see these. Your mileage may vary...

But the tubes themselves have no gravity... the gravity field is for the inhabitable ship interior, and where the tubes are within that volume, the ship's gravity naturally provides gravity to the tubes as well.

But there would be no "dedicated gravity generation" in the tubes, so get beyond the ship's gravity field, and you're in zero-G,

I also hold that, most of the time, the nacelles will be in zero-G, because most of the time they are uninhabited and uninhabitable. But, during maintenance, the nacelles do have a gravity system for certain areas... like the inspection catwalks and the main controller subsystems (near the pylon attachment), as seen here:


That's how >I< see it. And if I were declared Emperor, that's how you'd all have to see it too!

 

[sojourner]

^Saucer separation only had to be filmed once and then recycled again and again (even then it was very rarely used). Try doing that with live people in "0g".

they wouldn't have to have jefferies-tube sequences often

Except for the fact that in over 20 seasons of the show they did have a relatively high number of scenes in Jefferies tubes. So no, from a filming standpoint; not financially practical.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The only problem I see with the pylons of the 1701 existing in zero-G is that it would seem that they would then exist outside the field of inertial dampening, at least as I would tend to interpret things. I always assumed that the gravity and inertial dampening were part of the same field. So, if gravity ever switches off, then so does inertial dampening, which could be really bad news.

To go a step further, I also always assumed that structural integrity and inertial dampening were also interrelated. This isn't really necessarily a TOS concept, but the presence of structural integrity fields wouldn't contradict anything in TOS either, that I'm aware of. If structural integrity fields exist in TOS, then they should apply to the pylons, and in my opinion so would inertial dampeners necessarily, and consequently artificial gravity.

There is, in this view, therefore no reason why artificial gravity couldn't extend throughout the entire ship, pylons and nacelles included, at all times, simply as a by-product of the inertial dampeners (and possibly also structural integrity).

---

Now I think that in the 1701, turbo elevators should be able to go from the engineering hull up the pylons and into the nacelles, at least as far as just after the top of each pylon.

That is, assuming there's room in the pylons for a turbo elevator shaft. Is there?

If so, then this also has a bearing on the issue of gravity in TOS Jefferies tubes. For in my opinion, structural integrity and inertial dampening would apply to the whole turbo shaft, and therefore gravity too. With a Jefferies tube running right beside, at least when an elevator is active a pylon, gravity (at least of some kind) would be present in the tube just as a byproduct of accommodating the elevator, the structural integrity of the pylon itself notwithstanding.

 

[Timo]

Well, the ISS doesn't seem to have this problem.

It does; it gets away with it because it's so small and well stocked in ventilation systems. With the Mir, which was a less carefully integrated whole with a bit more nooks and crannies, airflow management was a key problem that e.g. necessitated large-diameter flexible tubes being run from module to module - precluding the emergency closing of hatches in case of leak or fire!

A crisscrossing network of Jeffries tubes might be difficult to ventilate. Then again, properly done, the ventilation could be used as a propulsive force, turning the tube network into a series of "conveyors". Although you could do that with gentle directional application of artificial gravity, too.

So, if gravity ever switches off, then so does inertial dampening, which could be really bad news.

...However, we know that artificial gravity can be adjusted. Just adjust it to zero, while retaining the inertial damping property, which clearly isn't adversely affected by the sometimes witnessed major ramping-up or minor ramping-down. The damping property doesn't seem to be an issue when AG is locally set to zero in "Melora", either - the zero gee scenes take place aboard a space station that has the tendency to spin this way or that without warning (just watch the stars behind Sisko at his office!).

That is, assuming there's room in the pylons for a turbo elevator shaft. Is there?

There's always room there for a reasonably sized turbocab to run, even if it needs to be a special narrow type. Especially if locally applied (that is, cab-specific) gravity totally eliminates the need for the cab to maintain a specific orientation vis-á-vis, say, the bridge floor or the sickbay walls or other such arbitrary references. Essentially, you can treat the turbolift as a small spacecraft flying inside a larger one, fighting the larger one's gravity (or lack thereof) or riding on it as needed and without limitations.

I'd think the ship needs universally applied, gradient-free inertia damping for simple structural reasons, including those areas where no personnel could ever go. Gravity can vary from place to place, according to need, but the need to keep inertia at "Earth normal" and decoupled from the movements of the ship is invariable. There needs to be a damping field in place in the pylons and Jeffries tubes, and at the tip of the spike that protrudes from the big deflector/sensor dish.

Timo Saloniemi