Why no stairs?

[Crewman47]

Just reading an article on Ex Astris Scentia which goes into the problem of what might happen if Turbolifts fail and that the only way of getting through a ship should this happen is by going through the miles of Jeffries tubes to get from place to another.

Now I've seen on several Blueprints of the original Enterpise, E-A and the E-D that stairs are present but as they've never been seen or mentioned on screen then they can be considered non-canon. So that just leaves the question, do you think there are stairs on a Starship or if not why do you suppose there aren't any as they would obviously be useful in situations where Turbolifts were inaccesible?

Any thoughts?

 

[sbk1234]

Stairs - or ladders - would make complete sense. Ladders have been shown in the original series, as well as TWOK. I would think that since they've shown ladders before, they do exist in the 24th century. They even have one in engineering, as well as the cargo bay, as shown in the episode where Geordi and Crusher have to depressurize the bay to put out the plasma fire.

As to why they don't use them in an emergency situation? It makes for a very important plot complication.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

The amount of stairs required to give access to all decks throughout the ship would take up an enormous amount of room, especially when there's Jeffries tubes as well, plus its silly having stairs when the only time they'd be used is if turbo lifts fail which is a very rare occurrence. It makes much more sense to simply have turbo lifts and ladders in Jeffries tubes.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

In the concept art for the Enterprise-D there was a large stairwell running up the spine of the ship on the neck, which if you squint really hard you can kind of see something that resembles it on the MSD:



Here's a bigger version where it's easier to see:

 

[Son_of_Soong]

*climbs up a ladder as the ship is rocked by something, falls... dies* :-S

 

[WillsBabe]

sbk1234 said:
Stairs - or ladders - would make complete sense. Ladders have been shown in the original series, as well as TWOK. I would think that since they've shown ladders before, they do exist in the 24th century.

They do. We've seen them in the TNG episode Eye of the Beholder. I think that they might have been seen in another episode, too, possibly Brothers, but I can't remember properly.

 

[cardinal biggles]

The practical reason for no stairs is simply that they'd have to build a multi-storey set. It's one thing to do that for a vertical Jefferies tube, but a staircase has a slanted profile and would therefore take up more valuable soundstage space.

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Star Trek doesnt have many multistory rooms. Theres engineering, shuttle and cargo bays, etc, but most of the locations we see are single story sets.

They could always use Stargates trick of putting stairs everywhere but have them not actually go anywhere. The viewer sees the stairs and thinks theres another deck above them but in reality theres only the one deck.

 

[EnsignRicky]

Would you want to paint all those spindles?

 

[FalTorPan]

If a starship's artificial gravity were to fail, then a ladder would make more sense than flights of stairs, because it would be easier to use ladders.

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Good point.

 

[EnsignRicky]

Very good point. Stairs would be kinda rough if the gravity konked out. Plus you wouldn't have to worry about all those damned spindles.

 

[Kolrad]

Ladders are more space-efficient than stairs.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Then again, there's no real reason the bulkheads/decks can't be set at odd angles relative to each other, since all Starfleet ships have artificial gravity plating.

 

[Crewman47]

Like instead of stairs, having each deck slope into the other at certain areas. That sounds better and they could have had them along with ladders as well.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

It makes more sense that rather than having a flight of stairs or even Jeffries tubes for that matter you have instead a vertical tube from the bottom of the ship to the top and have this tube completely devoid of artificial gravity (so no gravity can be accidently activated so you plummet to the ground), that way you just enter the tube and jump and you then simply float all the way to the top, at each deck theres a handle to grab a hold of and a platform to stand on to open the door to that level. Also there would be handles all the way up which you can grab and push on in order to gain more speed.

 

[starburst]

In the real world there probably would be, they are at least on all the official blueprints of the original and refit Enterprise. On a small ship like Defiant or the NX-01 stairs arent neccessary as the tube system would be more than enough, possibly same on the TOS ship too.

Saying that SeaQuest (I know it was a sub but it had a fair few decks) had stairs

 

[Bill Morris]

Why do they have the artificial gravity set at 1 G in the vertical tubes (with ladders), anyway? Wouldn't it be better in there to have it set low?

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Because that would cost more money when filming the episodes. Having actors constantly floating all the time when in the vertical tubes ;_p

 

[Phantassm]

Who needs stairs when there's gravity boots and jet boots?