Of course the real-world reason is that it’s cheaper to shake the camera and set off a firecracker than to build a scale model just to paint a burn scar on the side.
But my thoughts were always that the in-universe reason had to do with the modular nature of federation starships.
In almost every episode, someone on a starship either suggests rerouting something, shunting power from one thing through another, bypassing something, compensating for one power source with another etc.
It seems that in space, being able to re-configure everything at a moment’s notice is important, and to be able to do that, you need easy, fast and direct, access to everything, therefore it needs to be immediately accessible, ergo high voltage power directly behind the controls.
The lack of seatbelts goes right along with it. If a console blows up in someone’s face, the next guy over needs to be able to quickly move down and take over. Don’t need to have to be fighting with seatbelts when nobody is steering the ship.
I don’t know why they don’t have safety glasses however…
At the same time, the gravity systems are designed by the best engineers in the Federation because they never, ever, give out, even when the rest of the ship is disintegrating.
Aritificial Gravity is probably part of the system that prevents everyone from going splat against the window Maneo style when they leave warp. Without inertial dampening you couldn’t move ships basically at all, so these systems are probably passive.
The inertial dampeners have issues all the time tho, but instead of everyone getting turned into red mist against a surface instantly it just causes them to sway a little and the camera to shake.
Survivor(star)ship bias: There are only episodes about minor issues with the inertial dampeners because major issues with the system would be very short and messy, and not make for good archival training footage for cadets or whatever the Watsonian reason for our Doyalist TV show may be.
There is this scene in the Expanse, when a ship suddenly slows down.
A very messy scene.
I really have to watch this show, I keep hearing great things
It’s not Star Trek, but in my opinion, the best SF series since DS9.
I don’t say “better”, because they are set in different subgenres, so at some point comparison fails.
Let’s put it like this: I am as much a fan of one as I am of the other.
I watched most of the first episode but had to leave the couch for real world reasons (tragedy). So far it’s fantastic! Verymuch not Star Trek which is a nice change and unusual for me. Thanks for the recommendation!
Inertial Dampeners failing means the ship can no longer remain at warp. (Ship would be fine, the meat bags of mostly water would not) Trek is usually pretty consistent about that part.
And they even work even when a dampening field has shut down all power systems on the ship.
I used to put that one in the same category as the man-in-suit gorn from TOS: budget/tech restrictions. But even in the latest SNW episode, we see Chapel waking up on a piece of wreckage with gravity still perfectly fine, while also getting several zero gravity scenes in the same episode.
I can’t remember which series this is from but I swear I remember them saying that the grav plating still holds a charge even in the event of total power failure. So even when the ship is disabled, gravity will maintain it’s hold for a period of time and then will slowly dissipate
If it was mentioned, it was probably in ENT. They talked a lot more about grav plating in that show than any of the others, probably more than all of them combined.
The explanation I’ve always had- I think this was from some official source but I could have just made it up.
Starfleet ships use EPS (Electro-Plasma System) to route power around the ship in the form of electro-plasma (a highly energized form of plasma). The warp core generates a lot of this plasma, which is piped through conduits to various devices around the ship. The EPS system and its related systems generate a lot of treknobabble about ‘scrubbing plasma conduits’ (apparently done from the outside using a field generator tool, but still boring), ‘replacing plasma relays’ (the valves that route plasma around, apparently they go bad frequently); problems like ruptured plasma conduits are dangerous and require immediate repair, etc.
Because this all works in a grid system, whenever the ship takes damage (especially energetic damage like weapons fire) the EPS conduits can carry energy spikes all over the ship. That’s why as the ship takes damage you see random small explosions and sparks all over the place- something hits or spikes the EPS grid and the shockwave ends up, well, wherever in the grid it ends up.
Of course many EPS conduits go to bridge terminals, especially as those terminals may have direct connections to the ship systems in question.
Of course in reality this would be seen as a horrible safety risk, and a bridge terminal that could probably run on a car battery shouldn’t have explosive plasma running through it especially when it can explode and harm the operator. In fact one could argue a safe starship should keep all EPS stuff as far away from any essential human-inhabited areas of the ship as possible (especially the bridge).
One counter to that might be that perhaps the consoles actually play some role in EPS switching, but that seems a bad tradeoff to me.
Now explain the rocks
safety foam that absorbs the energy of the plasma, turning the super heated plasma into more harmless solid matter
Easy. Electroplasma is very hot and very energetic. When it ruptures out of the conduit, The hot energetic plasma not only mechanically fractures the materials around it, but the plasma itself is a form of matter that will, when it’s energy is released and it cools, return to whatever state it would normally be at room temperature.
Surface ships use deuterium and anti-deuterium as fuel, deuterium is liquid at room temperature. Assuming the combined plasma is also deuterium, that would mean it is eventually condensing to liquid. So I imagine the interaction between the plasma and some other material would turn the other material into a sort of spongy texture, which is probably dark due to being scorched. Thus, I don’t think that’s rock at all. It is scorched material from around the plasma conduit, that has been melted and integrated with the plasma which then returned to a lower energy state, namely deuterium steam or liquid.
deuterium is liquid at room temperature
I think you are confusing Deuterium with heavy-water. Deuterium is a heavy isotope of Hydrogen, and so is gas at room temperature. Heavy water is water where the Hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are of the Deuterium isotope, and is liquid at room temperature.
You’re absolutely right. But that actually makes even more sense. Squirt superheated plasma into a solid mass, it basically all melts together into a slurry, then the deuterium cools into gas and is released, the resulting material which is solid at room temperature ends up looking like scorched foam
In the 32nd century, ‘rocks’ would just be the result of programmable matter ‘bricking’.
Earlier though…
OP was pretty on the nose. Cool.
In an episode of DS9 I heard some of the characters mention that they not only have deflector shields, but also “structural reinforcement shields.” So whatever science-fictiony force field is used to protect them from phasers and micrometeorites is also coursing through the skeletal structure of the ship.
When I heard this it immediately clicked in my mind: whenever the ship is hit with phaser fire the explosions happening inside are recoil from these internal shields. Perhaps the catastrophic damage prevented by structural reinforcement shields outweighs the localized damage of potentially fatal recoil.
That is my favorite explanation, anyway.
(This assumes all ships have structural reinforcement shields, and not just the Defiant.)
Voyager definitely has. I don’t remember it being mentioned in TNG or TOS though and Voyager is a newer ship than the Defiant…
Been around since at least TNG:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Structural_integrity_field
When a console overloads, it’s way better to be thrown from the seat than to be burned and electrocuted. The lack of seat belts is a safety feature.
Turns out, it’s not the blast that throws then around, they are all sitting on ejection seats
Over at Daystrom, this comes up from time to time. I’ve formed a head-canon for it as well. To quote one of my comments on a thread there regarding the explosions (and the “rocks”):
My understanding is that the “rocks” are a product of the electroplasma system being exposed to air. Whether that is some sort of coolant that is meant to seal the EPS leak in that console or some sort of EPS byproduct reacting in air, I don’t remember or have a head-canon for it.
All of that said, if I form this reply into one worthy of Daystrom, then I say it is an intended safety mechanism to protect the crew against catastrophic failure of the EPS conduits.
So, the consoles are exploding from the failure of the EPS conduits and the expansion of the coolant.
Consoles are rigged with explosives to keep the lower decks in line.
Some engineer friends think it’s failure by design to avoid greater risks - much like a fuse burning out.
But why not do it more safely?
What about the rocks, though? It always seems like a starship is built around a massive quarry.
Space rocks
Fellow Junkball fan?
Idk what Junkball is, but I’m a Calvinball fan! And a Junk Rat main back in the day, one of his skins shot cricket balls instead of grenades. So yeah, I guess I am!
Well darn, Junkball always does SPACE ROCKS! in their starship restrictive videos.
ROCK AND STONE FOREVER!
The rocks eat the eps plasma and turn it into console lights and computer food.
They also seem to mostly navigate on the same 2D plane of space, given the ships usually encounter each other the “right way up”.
“Haven’t you people ever heard of fuses?!?” -John Crichton
