Wrap-around viewscreen

[Takeru]

I would like a wraparound view screen, it would make for an interesting bridge. It would probably replace a lot of consoles, an officer could touch a part of the screen and a menu/display would pop up. You'd probably still need a few dedicated stations but things like looking up information or smaller tasks where you don't need a seat could be done anywhere.

Or imagine Data scanning something and giving a report, he could transfer ops to the wall with part of the screen displaying what he's doing for everyone to see. Of course this could also be done with a regular viewscreen but a wraparound screen gives more options, make a giant version for the entire bridge crew or transfer it to the wall next to the XO so that the two of them can work together witthout the XO having to peak over Data's shoulder to see the data.

 

[Relayer1]

And instead of flying the ship at a console, you could run around in a holodeck-style room and direct the ship with your movements. So you turn 180 degrees and begin to walk up the wall, then your ship rotates and flies upward.

They tried that somewhere - I think it was one of the Babylon 5 spinoffs. Weapons control looked kind of like a superhero firing energy blasts from their hands...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

One of the most naive attitudes one can have is to think that the bridge module needs a literal "window".

Yeah, it's not like real space ships are ever equipped with windows, right?

How naive are these guys, amirite?

 

[Timo]

It should be appreciated that the windows on those spacecraft exist for the specific purposes of docking, EVA support and stargazing. None ought to be relevant to what goes on in the bridge of a starship.

As suggested upthread, stargazing can in certain circumstances amount to navigating. But a nuTrek-style bridge window won't be of any help there, with its tunnel vision and reflections and whatnot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

For emergency navigation, a window could be useful.

Not even a little. The viewscreen serves no purpose for that since all of the helmsman's controls and interfaces are built right into his console. You could wall up the viewscreen with bricks and he could still fly the ship just as well.

Really, the main purpose of that screen is for when you need to see what's going on outside or when you want to actually LOOK at the thing your sensors have detected. Enterprise has lots of telescopes, cameras and recording devices, but there are times when it's more convenient to just walk up to a window and LOOK (it's kind of like how even in the most tech savvy offices, you will still find at least one person who keeps a stack of post-it notes).

For ship-to-ship combat, a window is pretty useless in most cases...

Again, that's what tactical consoles are for. You wouldn't even use a viewscreen for that; it's really only for displaying tactical information to the COMMANDER, who needs a "big picture" display. A window with a HUD serves that purpose nicely.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It should be appreciated that the windows on those spacecraft exist for the specific purposes of docking, EVA support and stargazing. None ought to be relevant to what goes on in the bridge of a starship.

Starships dock, conduct EVAs, and stargaze. The bridge is as good a place as any to conduct all of those things.

As suggested upthread, stargazing can in certain circumstances amount to navigating. But a nuTrek-style bridge window won't be of any help there, with its tunnel vision and reflections and whatnot.

I'm thinking the best reason for a window on the bridge is if the ship is flying into a new star system or a new star cluster at high speeds and the navigator is trying to reconcile sensor readings with what he can see in front of him. In a cluttered environment, traveling at or close to the speed of light, it might simply be easier to spot stars and planets by parallax motion instead of by trying to pick their signatures out of the clutter. You see one star or other object moving independently of its neighbors, you know that object is way closer than the background stars and now you have a rough estimate of exactly where it is in the sky and you can track it more easily, even intercept it.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

So the viewscreen is really a plot device for exposition? Without it, we wouldn't have all those dramatic reaction shots. Somehow, everybody crowding around Spock's science viewer taking turns peering thru it and gasping or jaw-dropping wouldn't be the same.

 

[Timo]

Starships dock, conduct EVAs, and stargaze. The bridge is as good a place as any to conduct all of those things.

Except not - it is phenomenally badly positioned for all. In docking, one has to mind the extremities, which is simple to do via windows with a Soyuz or a Dragon but impossible with a Constitution, either timeline. Plus the relevant docking interfaces are never within sight of the bridge in Trek anyway (even when a rear window might be of some help in TMP).

Placing your eyes near an extremity is a must for stargazing, too, for a different reason. The bridge suffers from 50% occultation of the sky in the best of cases. (A dome at the extreme bow would be slightly better, just like CIWS turrets at bow and stern are better for today's long and narrow warships than turrets to port and starboard.)

As for spacewalks, Trek generally does the reasonable thing and provides the walkers with a separate base of operations, a smaller spacecraft capable of reaching the spots of interest and peeking past the obstructions. That is, on those rare occasions where Trek does spacewalks, which basically means dockyards.

It would be interesting to see spacewalks used for postcombat repairs in deep space, the way a battleship might deploy divers. But while the odds of damage being at the bow rather than stern or flanks are good (see below), I doubt the bridge would be a viable base of operations there.

I'm thinking the best reason for a window on the bridge is if the ship is flying into a new star system or a new star cluster at high speeds and the navigator is trying to reconcile sensor readings with what he can see in front of him.

Another relevant situation might be a rendezvous: even the enemy always approaches from the front and politely rolls to the same orientation (or expects you to do the same lest there be galactic war).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Except not - it is phenomenally badly positioned for all. In docking, one has to mind the extremities

Unless you're docking bow-first, in which case you just have to follow the guide lights.

That's how it's normally done when trying to maneuver a huge aircraft to a very specific point in space with very little tolerance for error. The bridge would be in the optimal position for that kind of system too, since most starships will have their docking ports and moorings in almost the exact same position relative TO the bridge on the saucer section. As long as you get the saucer positioned correctly, the extremities don't matter.

As for spacewalks, Trek generally does the reasonable thing and provides the walkers with a separate base of operations, a smaller spacecraft capable of reaching the spots of interest and peeking past the obstructions. That is, on those rare occasions where Trek does spacewalks, which basically means dockyards.

Or when scraping a bunch of Borg hitchhikers off the main deflector dish, or when you're walking out on a crystal bridge to talk down a depressed space probe with daddy issues. Either case of which, a window might not go amiss, considering it would be rather difficult to find JUST the right viewing angle to focus on the space walkers.

Another relevant situation might be a rendezvous: even the enemy always approaches from the front and politely rolls to the same orientation (or expects you to do the same lest there be galactic war).

That would certainly explain the utility of color-coded navigation lights, yes? The fact that those blinking lights even EXIST means that starships are expected to spend a certain amount of time flying around within close visual range of each other.

I'm also thinking sensors are generally more limited than the technological crystal ball we sometimes assume they are. Most of the time (at least in TOS), the sensors can give you pretty limited information about what you're actually seeing and then you have to visually identify the contact anyway. I cannot, on the other hand, think of a many times that a ship was identified by sensors ONLY before it was actually visible on the screen. The only examples that come to mind are ships that identified themselves through signals (distress calls or beacons) but otherwise all identification seems to be strictly visual, based on ship recognition guides and silhouettes.

 

[Matthew Raymond]

I seem to remember an anime where the bridge was basically a floating unit with several consoles and chairs, but no walls. It would usually float in some central atrium (for lack of a better term), but during a battle would float up into a room that was basically a holographic display that wrapped around in every direction. (Heroic Age? Can't remember...)

 

[Richard Baker]

Not even a little. The viewscreen serves no purpose for that since all of the helmsman's controls and interfaces are built right into his console. You could wall up the viewscreen with bricks and he could still fly the ship just as well.

Really, the main purpose of that screen is for when you need to see what's going on outside or when you want to actually LOOK at the thing your sensors have detected. Enterprise has lots of telescopes, cameras and recording devices, but there are times when it's more convenient to just walk up to a window and LOOK (it's kind of like how even in the most tech savvy offices, you will still find at least one person who keeps a stack of post-it notes).


Again, that's what tactical consoles are for. You wouldn't even use a viewscreen for that; it's really only for displaying tactical information to the COMMANDER, who needs a "big picture" display. A window with a HUD serves that purpose nicely.

A window would have really helped in the battle with the Reliant.

 

[Matthew Raymond]

A window would have really helped in the battle with the Reliant.

Nah! Khan could just turn off the bridge lights.

 

[Tenacity]

Kirk wold have known where the Reliant was from the direction of the excessively loud music.

 

[Space Coast]

Kirk wold have known where the Reliant was from the direction of the excessively loud music.

He wouldn't even need to hear the music. People with egos the size of Kirk can sense the egos of others, and if Khan's ego were any bigger it'd visibly warp spacetime around itself.

 

[publiusr]

There was a wra[ around viewscreen for an early production design for the Excelsior bridge in STIII. There was also one rendered for a possible bridge for Voyager.

I remember the sketch--I can't find it on the web.

This early ENT-D conceptwould have been the largest
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4060/4477367297_c2490f5104_b.jpg

Galactica was tohave a similar one
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d8/67/36/d867363a1a77406a4032637d558590d7.jpg

More
http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/designing-the-motion-picture-bridge/

Misc
http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/designing-earth-spacedock/
http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/squeezing-the-enterprise-d-into-spacedock/

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I seem to remember an anime where the bridge was basically a floating unit with several consoles and chairs, but no walls. It would usually float in some central atrium (for lack of a better term), but during a battle would float up into a room that was basically a holographic display that wrapped around in every direction. (Heroic Age? Can't remember...)

Macross was kind of like that. The entire bridge and command center was basically an ordinary naval ship's superstructure wrapped in a huge transparent bubble. Outlaw star was kind of like this too, except the "bubble" was just a 360 degree monitor and not actual glass, but it still had the effect of a cockpit inside a cockpit and gave the impression that the crew would function just the same if you peeled off the outer hull and made them all wear space suits.

On the far opposite extreme: most of the starships in "Tenchi Muyo" are significantly bigger on the inside (the interior of Tsunami is said to enclose an entire solar system), but the fact that many of them are sentient means the "bridge" is wherever/whatever the hell it wants to be.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

This early ENT-D conceptwould have been the largest
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4060/4477367297_c2490f5104_b.jpg

Is that a BAR I see on the bridge???

 

[Go-Captain]

I seem to remember an anime where the bridge was basically a floating unit with several consoles and chairs, but no walls. It would usually float in some central atrium (for lack of a better term), but during a battle would float up into a room that was basically a holographic display that wrapped around in every direction. (Heroic Age? Can't remember...)

That is Heroic Age. I like to think it is a way to make the bridge a pleasant environment, but still completely practical in an emergency. The whole thing is kind of Utopian and a statement of the society's wealth.

Legend of Galactic Heroes has cavernous cubic bridges with three walls completely covered in huge screens, or projection domes so the bridge looks like it is under an open sky depending on the faction. There is at least one scene were a bridge gets struck and it is made clear the screens are not windows. I think the bridges are also stated to be as far from the hull as possible.

 

[Maurice]

More
http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/designing-the-motion-picture-bridge/
/

The top images on that page weren't for Star Trek, but the Starship series proposal. The floorplan is a match for the front end of the ringship for that.

As to Richard Taylor's opinion of the unfinished sets for the series, yeah, well,they were unfinished sets on a TV budget. Sets almost always look awful until the last 5%.

 

[publiusr]

That would be nice for a cruise ship, I'd think. One of the early NX-01 designs--with the slender shape and naceles that moved outboard? That'd be a good Star Trek: Nemesis-era pleasure craft.