@High Lord Baron That doesn't always help in The Expanse though. The ships are very much glass cannons in that universe (which is perfectly fair given the tech level of humanity in it, and the fact they're hurling nuclear warheads at each other.)
I served on the USCGC BEAR (WMEC-901) during it’s Balkan’s War deployment. The bridge design of the 9 ship Historical class was actually based on the layout of the USS ENTERPRISE (NCC-1701) bridge. The layout transferred nicely to a seagoing ship. This basic design has been applied to many US Naval ship designs since. I’ve also served under a pompas ass of a captain such as the Captain of the USS EXCELSIOR. Those were nightmare years.
I would love to see a breakdown of the Romulan bridges. We don't see them often, but we do get a look at the BoP bridge in Balance of Terror, the D'deridex bridge in Face of the Enemy, & the Scimitar bridge in Nemesis.
Windows: Transparent aluminum? Star Trek: The Voyage Home. Bridge layout: Acoustical projection via dome shape Acoustical resonance designed to direct voices to and from the central location of the Captains' Chair. As for the multilevel designs. A VERY bad idea in practice. A twisted ankle in turbulence is just going to and has in real life, happened. One thing that I've never heard commented on is the incredible distance of handholds. Two meters is the maximum distance currently allowed in any mobile operations center due to potential turbulence. This is true on the ocean and should hold true of any bridge in Trek. Can't have the Captain falling ass over teakettle and bonking his head... Well, until the script demands it.
@@SamSitar The obviously different warp scale during TNG suggests that they did continue to work on transwarp, they just decided to continue calling it warp. Nothing actually says it was the same transwarp as the green glowing Borg transwarp or the Transwarp corridors.
Lore Reloaded, Submarine veteran here. Served 1999-2003 on two nuclear powered submarines, USS Florida SSBN-728 and USS Asheville SSN-758, was a sonar tech STS3(SS). The SS means I am Qualified in Submarines (very difficult to achieve even if you have a STEM degree, takes months of study and a 2 hour board interview by an officer and two enlisted members, but required for all of us to get.) The 3 means "3rd class petty officer", enlisted (I worked for a living!) paygrade E-4. You will never see windows on a submarine because, below about 200 feet (60.96 m), there is nothing to see. Light doesn't penetrate that far. Those civilian scientific submarines that go all the way to the bottom have lights, but they can only see a few yards (a few m) around the boat. :) When we're submerged, we use passive sonar to "see". A lot of math is involved in figuring out what is going on out there, where the enemy is going, where we should go, etc. I can't get too far into it because it's classified (math is not a secret...but the way we use it to conduct submarine operations is). The only non-classified display in sonar is "passive broadband waterfall". On that display, the sound waves detected by the passive sonar array are abstracted with a dot that indicates that sound was detected on that bearing, at any frequency. The greater the amplitude, the brighter the dot. If the dots stack up in the same place over time, that might be a vessel that we need to track. Of course, a human is constantly listening to the sounds as well, and to truly figure out which ones are enemies and which ones are not, and which traces are just marine animals or "biologics" requires human judgement. :) Here's what the sonar display looks like (this is from an older system; the new ones are in color and higher resolution, but are the same in every other respect.). I know how to do a LOT with this display, but again that stuff is classified. But you can look at it; the display itself is not classified. :) www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/subsecrets/images/sprisonscr.jpeg
Cool analysis! I really want to see the analysis for other species' bridges now. Also your outro phrase catches me off guard every single time, it's so good!
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The editing of this video is much better. Thanks for that. Less endless looping of the same scenes.
As for windows..... Starfleet should do them like the original (and better) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA bridge. Have durasteel shutters that close over them when battle gets too rough.
Part of the exploding console problem is that they don't simply get powered by electricity. Star Fleet ships operate using an EPS grid, Electro-Plasma System. Plasma, ionized gas, generated by the impulse and warp cores (the engines are actually separate) is pumped unidirectionally to everything in the ship, every single electronic or mechanical device, and is LOCALLY converted to electrical power. When an EPS conduit is ruptured, it releases the ionized gas to then act like an explosion. If an EPS conduit loses the power to isolate and guide the plasma to the destination device, it quickly melts through the conduit, made mostly of copper, and sprays that molten copper around, giving that "rock" look to the debris. Particle weapons and antimatter explosions would produce high levels of EM interference that would cause temporary disruptions in the EPS conduits, causing such explosions, thus why you get the "explodium packed" consoles that are so dangerous to crews. As for why the consoles would use such vast amounts of power, seemingly over 1000W worth of electroplasma, I can't really say, but may have something to do with the fact they use optics to communicate with the other systems, not electrical cables, so as note to be susceptible to EM interference. Perhaps it takes a lot more power to generate the necessary light levels to make it through the hundreds of meters of optical cables in the ship. (Making my living in IT, I know this isn't necessary in the real world, as single mode cables are able to transmit data optically for kilometers using barely over 2w of power, but this is Star Trek, perhaps they need higher light levels for some reason.) Perhaps it has more to do with local computational requirements, but I have yet to see why that would be needed. Perhaps they all have local replicator systems to slowly autorepair the consoles after damage, as we have seen many consoles continue working partially after an explosion. In any case, it isn't simply an electrical problem or surges of electricity. Using an EPS system is obviously highly dangerous to the crew, so I do not know why they use it that way, but it is what it is. I know plasma is necessary to power the heavy needs of the engines, weapons, and shields, and the shield grid is all over the chip, so perhaps they decided to power all the consoles from it because the shield power grid was already distributed around the ship, rather than run electrical lines. (I do know in IT in the real world, there are some datacenters that distribute 480V power to the rack level, and then use local power supplies to convert it to low voltage, 48V, direct current for directly powering the servers and storage, and this somehow makes it more efficient. It's actually part of the Open Rack specification, an attempt to make the design of server racks into an opensource and non-licensed spec. Maybe Star Fleet ship designers used similar thinking for consoles.)
Running 480v to the rack makes sense because whenever you convert to DC you both need much heavier wiring, but also have much higher transmission losses
Running higher voltages over distance incurs less power loss. The 48V you're referring to however do not directly power the servers and network hard in most cases; they will power the UPSs that in turn power them. If you look closely at a UPS, they have a 230V (or 115V) power interface, and a 48V DC interface on the primary side (consumer models notwithstanding, we're talking datacenter here) (in some cases they use 24V DC primary, it depends on the capacity of the UPS).
Lets face it, the real reason they put rocks and explosives in the consoles it to make sure you look after the ship. Regardless of the made up technolay, the controls in such a ship just send a message to the system involved to do the thing, and this invloves negligable power. They can even do this from another ship as seen in the second movie. Even your car is wired up this way. Its like telling alexa or google to turn your lighn on or off. If your light bulb blowes, your alexa hub isnt going to explode. Even if the control pannels has a bizaly huge power source, there is no reason that the sheild control pannel would explode when the shield are hit, any more then then any other console on the ship.
they should just keep the consoles on their own low power system and use them to drive all the explody stuff remotly over some kind of networking. Also none of that explains why the console still work after exploding and any cost saving they get by doing that this way aren't worth peoples lives.
Usually that's all that so-called "Tactical" stations do in Starfleet. Only difference in Klingon vessels is you might have your ops officer managing defensive systems (shields, etc) on her console while the gunner focuses on blowing stuff up, rather than those two roles on one station and then the ops person doing damage control and miscellaneous engineering stuff as the Federation seems to favor.
@@user-ve5ei2xe8h Star Trek 5 the Final Frontier, the Klingon captain had a periscope and could act as the gunner, because the captain wants to have fun as well.
A note on safety restraints; the Constitution, Constellation, Oberth, Miranda and basically any other ship with those big wingback chairs introduced in The Motion Picture, do all have leg restraints. The angular armrests on those chairs hinge upward to wrap around the legs. IIRC, you can see Picard using them on the Stargazer just before he attempts to use the Picard Maneuver on the Enterprise in The Battle.
11:54 Excelsior? "I hear she's got Transwarp Drive." Goddammit, Lore. Transwarp *is* spoken in the movies. Miguel Ferrer's character literally says that Transwarp isn't functioning in a clip you just played.
A word on CIC. My second ship was the USS O'Kane DDG-77, I was an engineer but because of previous incidents my knees back and neck were messed up. I didn't want out of the Navy well atleast not yet anyways. I wanted to pick a job easier on my body our ship had a damn good Capitan he had already been awarded a Silver Star due to his actions after everything blowing up around him in the Pentagon on 9/11. He suggested OS, and while it wouldn't be the same excitement I was used to that CIC is rarely boring for long. Captains fight their ship from CIC, they have their own seat, display etc.. The CO and Combat sit side by side and are positioned so they can just about all of CIC, what they can't see tends not to matter. The bridge sure likes to think they steer the ship and engineers will remind them when they step out of line that the little speed control thingy don't mean shit. Take out the Bridge of an Arleigh Burke that's alert and for that matter all the copy cat builds around the world and they really didn't do much. The CO and most of the actually important officers and enlisted too for the most part are bunkered down deep. The Capitan does his Capitan stuff in CIC, Central Control is another vitally important area has direct control of speed. And you can quite easily steer the ship from the steering room.
I do want to see alien bridge layouts. The EPS system's high kelvin temperatures may be able to cut through almost any solid material if there's a sudden interference-based lapse in the structural integrity field, or in EPS containment. Considering the EPS conduits only seem to surge and burst under battle conditions, hard impacts, or during encounters with anomalous regions of spacetime, they're probably rated as "safe" for use with Starfleet personnel, even though they are working in proximity to explosive danger. A similar argument for "proximity to explosive danger" in the modern era is Lithium Ion batteries. They can ignite almost anything if they rupture, yet we haul them around in our pockets and bags like there's no chance they'll do so, even given evidence to the contrary. Similarly, cars are potentially hazardous on the roads, and we drive them at high speeds practically every day, and in many cases, we drive them within meters of opposing traffic.
Transparent metals already exist. They are, however, prohibitively expensive and heavy and currently give no more protection to heavy weapons than heavy, thick, bulletproof "glass" (windows haven't been made out of actual glass for decades). It is useless on heavy vehicles (tanks, ships) and way to expensive and heavy on small vehicles like a humvee.
Last I knew ALON *was* better in .50 cal trials than glass (thinner, somehow lighter, and more bullet resistant), but it is hard to make it in the large panels we need.
Transparent aluminium, is *much* better than bullet proof glass of the same mass or plastic. They might be more expensive to make but considering the cost launching to orbit it is cheaper. manufacturing costs are already dropping.
@@seriousmaran9414 I cant wait for something similar to that material to exist. That said, if one were to take the strength of Aluminum today, it's a very light however very weak metal compared to other metals. Certainly stronger than glass for a given thickness but still falling far short of steel and the notably refined alloys used in eg modern submarines. I would 'guess' (given it's all fantasy anyway) that the future materials used would still demonstrate relatively greater strength in non-transparent materials.
@@DarenSpinelle transparent aluminium is being used in small quantities. The only real advantages are it is relatively light and you can see through it. Useful for Windows but nothing much else. Issue is you need to compress it at very high pressures as well as heat so it would need a huge and expensive machine to produce big panels. Generally I agree that there are alloys that are light and/or easier to make and use.
Lore Reloaded ,of course we want to hear and see some of your thoughts on "alien" bridge designs! Many people have asked about Klingon and Romulan bridges, and that seems the best place to start because there is quite a few good visuals from The Original Series to today's shows. Look forward to whatever is next, thanks for another fun video essay. (:
The 24th century bridge designers started adding random clutter in the bridge to help shield The crew from the exploding panels. They now had cover they could hide behind. Those random pylons were there to protect the crew.
In regards to exploding consoles, and putting my laughter at the humor aside, I feel it could be argued that what they say are safety measures work as intended in universe and prevent worse damage than we see. Example off the top of my head: Ship is hit by energy weapon, system overloads, surge switch kicks in, console explodes and crew member dies…but what if the surge switch prevented the entire wall/system from blowing out? Or while we see the fire rocks, a small fire rock is preferable to a violent inferno. Just some thoughts I had; great video as usual.
Fun Fact: Transparent Aluminum already exists. Its called Aluminum Oxynitride, its a composite material used for lenses in laser experiments. There is interest in using it as bullet proof windows, but the cost of production is still very high.
Nice breakdown, Lore. My take on the windows is this: Personally, I don’t have a problem with the CONCEPT of a bridge window. If anything, I would go mad without the ability to look out an actual window and I would worry about the viewscreen going out in an emergency. Truthfully, I’ve always considered the lack of a window a bit of a design flaw. However, my problem with the windows is from a canon perspective-particularly when it comes to the Enterprise. Even though we’ve rarely if ever seen bridge windows on Starfleet bridges in the past, I could even give them a pass if we were going to say, yes, OTHER classes of starships have bridge windows-that the Constitution, Miranda, Excelsior, and NX are actually the outliers. So, the Discovery can have a bridge window, no problem. I actually love the under-slung bridge of the Walker-class with a gorgeous open view of whatever planet is below you-I think that makes a lot of sense. But then to come along and put, not just a window, but a MASSIVE, wall to wall hexagon window on the Enterprise bridge…that feels like a deliberate “eff you.” That’s the issue I have with it. As far as the exploding bridge consoles, to me, that has ALWAYS been stupid. It’s actually something we didn’t see a lot in TOS. We saw it occasionally, but typically, in TOS, if the Enterprise took a hard enough hit, a control board on the bridge might stop working (that makes sense), but it wouldn’t typically blow up in your face and send you flying across the room with your flesh burned away-I mean, why the hell would it? It’s a computer screen. It’s not the warp core, it’s not a fuel take, why should it explode? That makes zero sense. It’s just a visual trope used to add drama-which we didn’t see a lot of until the movies and especially the TNG era-and I kind of wish they would stop it, because it’s just dumb. Show people getting killed by things that should actually kill them-like hull breaches, like things exploding that would actually explode.
You are seriously taking a design decision as a direct and purposeful insult to you? You don't think that these people are designing things the way they do because they love their work and have actually thought about why they make the changes they do? That's pretty pathetic. By the way, the pre refit TOS Enterprise did have a window in the front of its bridge..... precious canon is preserved and if you were the one making the choice your own ignorance would have been on display for the whole Fandom to mock. Because obviously you must have had malicious intent if you dared to steer away from canon, as if there's anything resembling canon in the franchise to begin with. Even TOS is absolutely full of contradictions and broken canon.
@@DrewLSsix - You seem a little more personally insulted than I am. Hopefully you won’t take it too personally when I point out the facts. Yes, when the original model for the Enterprise was first crafted, there was indeed a rectangle on the bridge module that resembled a window. However, that feature was removed before photography for “The Cage” was completed. In the final produced version of the pilot (and I mean the original, not even the remastered), there was NO bridge window on the Enterprise. Not on the exterior model, not on the interior set. I own the old pre-remastered version on VHS. It’s not there. [EDIT: Actually, to be fair, I should point out the TOS Enterprise did have a bridge “window” of sorts. The bridge did have what appeared to be a glass dome in the ceiling- and there’s the famous zoom-in shot in “The Cage” where the camera pushes in through the dome into the bridge. But that window was over their heads. There was no window in front of them.]
I wouldn't be opposed to having a dedicated visual navigation station on somewhere that allows for a window access, but a window itself just seems like a structural weakness - the joining of two separate materials if not any inherent weakness in the transparency. (Yes, a lot of bridges have overhead windows). I'd be much more comfortable with having a viewscreen and no window, as that would seem more protective of the mission critical bridge area. At least a viewscreen doesn't have to worry about filtering solar radiation through the bridge, so the crew isn't blinded (if not actually irradiated) while maneuvering and a local star comes into focus.
@@andrewshouse9840 - There’s definitely give and take. As you said, every window could represent a structural weakness, while viewscreens and instruments can go out. But think about submarines; a submariner would probably agree with you. In fact, he doesn’t even use a viewscreen; he does everything by instrumentation-which is amazing when you think about it.
One thing I like about the original excelsior bridge was the lighting in the base of the chairs for the alert status. Definitely an 80s thing but still like it. I would love a break down of bridges of alien ships.
Hey lore reloaded are you familiar with ...Aluminum Oxy Nitride. It's sold under the trade name AlON. It's an 80 percent transparent ceramic that has aluminum as it's primary matrix ...it's used for armored vehicle windows ...and is going to be used more in space construction due to reduced weight.
Alright Khan, I'm glad that there is a direct correlation with the distances on Earth in a relatively 2d space vs 3d deep space to debunk the inanity of windows on a starship.
Placement is also important. On current U.S. Navy ships, the navigation bridges are placed high on the superstructure, and have good visibility. The battle bridges, on the other hand, are buried deep in the hull. Star Trek keeps putting their bridges on the outside, when they should be the centermost part of the ship, buried under the armor of all the less-important parts.
Perhaps more should be made of the battle bridges in Star Trek. Main bridge is where it is for reasons of tradition but when things go south key officers move to an interior location at the median point between the outer hull and the reactor.
@@travissmith2848 Except we rarely see any key officer anywhere but the main bridge. Every time you have the Captain, XO, Ops, Chief Engineer, and Security Chief on the main bridge. And sometimes the Chief Medical Officer is there too. All three senior officers (CO, XO, and Ops) should not be in the same room during a battle. But in Star Trek they are on the same watch rotation practically all the time. So what key officers are you referring to?
@@davidtherwhanger6795 Something basically never actually used, hence make a bigger deal of them: when a major battle occurs have one or two (though perhaps not all three) take the lift to the battle bridge. Though I think we can give Trek a pass on not splitting up command staff as those are the ones we care about and going beyond that half dozen or so as principles doesn't work as well in story telling.
@@travissmith2848 well it’s more a flaw of visual storytelling like movies/TV. Shooting all your main cast in the same room is just easier and cheaper. In a novel, for example, you don’t have to think about how many sets you need to shoot in a day when people are separated.
Soooo, the bridge consoles are connected directly to the voltages that come out of the warp core? I'd imagine that finding people brave enough to touch the buttons would be a tough job. Surely the power would be stepped down to a useable (and safe) voltage by the time it got to the consoles. At the very least the circuitry would melt before the voltage overwhelmed the circuit breakers.
The bridge's would be safer if they removed the rocks and plasma power conduits running straight to the consoles. As to the ships appearing next to each other, they are not, they are represented next to each other for visualization purposes, like the Asteroid belt, the next ship would just be a pinprick if viewed through a passive window by a naked eye and yet even exterior shots show asteroids as huge rocks just a few feet from each other. This was illustrated when Riker and Worf hacked the Enterprise's computer to make it appear as if another ship disrupted the battle exercise between the Enterprise and the Stargazer. Everything only appears side by side so we can comprehend what we view. This is like how an asteroid belt would really just be distant points of light not the jumbo of obstacles shown. Having the ships close enough to be seen in detail with the human eye would be ridiculous especially when photon torpedoes are anti-matter weapons, a single torpedo could damage an entire fleet if they were in close enough formation to be seen in such detail with the naked eye. However, my objection is that with Interstellar space travel, most of the time would just be passing the time, granted FTL travel may change this, but how often would a bridge really be needed. It's far more likely for there to be multiple uses for that space. Seatbelts are not effective enough for the acceleration forces involved, inertia dampening fields would be needed. Seatbelts without inertial dampeners would probably rip the person into thirds for a 3 point seat belt, into fifths for a five point seat belt. If the acceleration can overwhelm the inertial dampeners, it would be too much for seatbelts to handle. Face it, Star Trek bridges are for plot and plot alone, you can rationalize forever but it will never really make sense.
I agree but for windows, every time you dock mostly for space dock or fight someone who doesn't have windows and ROLF as you drift up beside them power off or just send a probe to hack into their mainframe and cause it to give false readings/images.. And the seatbelts I've done the math for my own sci-fi novel, and getting hit in a ship meant to be hit with those weapons would never be worse than on a modern naval vessel... which also don't have seatbelts but still. In fact, it's really unlikely to ever see a G force greater than what a human can take in star trek/expanse style combat... And if you exceed ever 50g then you can have a seatbelt made to not cut you... we call it on earth kevlar... Which for reference a 50 cal round only generates 100gs and you don't see tank crews bouncing around from being hit...
Atthe end of the day, inertial dampers are one of those technologies that just have to exist in Star Trek. Otherwise people have to secure for every little maneuver and you run into massive problems gatting anywhere at sublight speed.
@@Jack_Stafford Insulation in space is MLI insulation, basically layers of reflective foil separated from contacting each other often by a honeycomb net (yes corrugated cardboard has been used) simply because in a vacuum heat can only be radiated not conducted or convected and there is a lot of vacuum in space. There's a reason why the Lunar Lander in the Apollo program looked like it was all tin foil and cardboard because it was, as that's what insulation on a space craft is. As with a thermos, the best insulation is a vacuum and a vacuum does not look like rocks.
I remember being a kid and watching the very first episode of Star Trek TNG the first time it aired, and how excited I got realizing this new Enterprise could split into two halves and when they "transferred command to the battle bridge". Great imagination fuel for a little kid!
Have to say, the slick and shiny look of the ST3 Excelsior always got me! It looks huge too. It’s funny how that one looks more dated than the Constitution or later Excelsiors now though.
With regards to the whole thing about metals, we have transparent ceramics (e.g. aluminium oxynitride) that are generally as hard as or harder than whatever you're bolting them into, but they are expensive and so even if you invented one that's flexible enough to replace the usual structural members, it'll be used sparingly anyway for the foreseeable future.
Another dedicated system room we see on the TOS Constitution is the Main Phaser Control Room, from which the Phasers can be operated independent of the bridge, and from which some components of the Phasers could be accessed (notably the coolant lines, which rupture during a battle in one episode). The NX-Class had a similar function with the armory room, from which the Phase Cannons could be operated, and which also contained the forward torpedo launchers. I think we see the bridging from the more manual systems to the automated ones in TNG+ in the TOS Movies. The Refit Constitution-class Enterprise as of ST:II had a large pair of manned torpedo bays. When we see the torpedo tube of the Enterprise-A in Star Trek: VI, it appears to be a much more cramped and automated system. We unfortunately don't get to see Excelsior's torpedo room. Considering the era, it would have been interesting to see if it had the Refit-style torpedo room or the Ent-A automated system. We never, to my knowledge, see the torpedo room in TNG, but we do in Voyager (IIRC, in Year of Hell), and it was a cramped space with severe risk of plasma burns to any crewmen in the room when the torpedo is fired - unlike the Enterprise-A, where Spock and McCoy were safe and unharmed right behind the tube doors. As a side note, we see that the torpedoes are substantially smaller during the ST:VI era as well, rather than the large coffin-sized lozenges in ST:II and once again later in TNG. Perhaps this is why it took so seven to destroy Chang's ship when its shields were down, compared to the significant damage done to the Reliant in ST:II (big chunks of the ship were blown apart) and the Klingon BoP in ST:III (damaged them so badly they had to go to emergency power) and the ship-vaporizing blasts we see on occasion in TNG - it could be that the smaller torpedoes may have had a comparably smaller warhead. It might also be that, after having to pelt an unshielded Klingon scout ship with more than half a dozen torpedoes to destroy it caused Starfleet to reverse course on the whole smaller but more numerous torpedoes. As off-topic as that got, it may be that the energy required for the increased computer automation, or the nature of Isolinear circuitry, necessitates running EPS conduits into the consoles. We see Consoles get overloaded in TOS and ST:The Motion Picture. They short out, smoke, catch fire, and even shocked Chekov and burned his hand pretty badly in TMP, but what we did *not* see were consoles exploding (with the exception of the Kobyashi Maru test in the simulator, which was apparently theatrics, since we did not see those kinds of console detonations in either ship in the battles later). The bridge on Reliant suffered severe structural failures from battle damage, and debris falling on Khan's crewmen killed them, but we did not see the consoles explode. Again, back to the circuitry, perhaps Duotronics could work on levels of electricity that can use conventional conduits just fine, but the newer technology just cannot. It would make much more sense that Isolinear systems actually *require* the direct EPS taps than the idea that Starfleet went on an unrelenting efficiency bender that turned every workstation on the ship into a bomb, and then they refused to correct the issue the first time one of their ships shrapnel's its own bridge crew to death. Of note, apparently this problem had already taken hold 20 years before TNG, as the Enterprise-C had bridge detonations that killed her captain.
By the time of TNG, the writers had shifted from having a separate helm and navigation station to combining them into a single "CONN" station. The other station at the front on the Galaxy, Sovereign, California, and Luna classes is the primary operations station.
Nx01 Enterprise has a Tactical center apart from the bridge. The Enterprise D onward has a tactical center in engineering. It also seems that Starfleet builds their ships to be completely modular. The secondary bridge or cic is wherever they want it to be, if they want to have one.
@@LoreReloaded enterprise season 3 episode 14. Not sure on the time stamp. There are people on the bridge using the communication system to speak to people in the tactical center. It is specifically called the tactical center. They talk about it several more times in the series. If your asking about TNG just rewatch any number of episodes that the bridge is disabled so they use the main engineering consul to run the ship.
@@LoreReloaded how about a list of Technology the Federation just forgot they have. For example hull playing that defended the nx01 against particle weapons while still allowing transport ion. Or Scotties transwarp beamng. What happened to these game changing techs?
I come from a Navy family and to my understanding modern warships dating back to around the end of WW2 have CIC as the PRIMARY command centre. The bridge serves mostly as a lookout station and a control point for manual navigation. Almost everything is controlled directly from CIC, including maneuvering in certain situations, and unless they're locked out of CIC somehow you wouldn't find the CO on the bridge during an action.
Here's mine ready for it. Captain in, guess what, the middle, but a half step down and on a chair that can lock in place or swivil with a flip of a switch. then navigation and helm you guessed it immediately in front of the captain, but using a singular "wavy" patern consol and tileted 20 degrees towards eachother that way they have a ear towards the Captain but are slightly facing eachother to better communicate while the "wavy" patern gives a psuedo cubical effect. The number two, and either comms or a diplomat/relevant officer station would both be next to the captain with their own mini-consols which can be immediately linked to the primary controls of any station needed, or customized to whatever task they are performing. Off from the sides of these two in a wing patter and angled towards the forward viewscreen but that they always had a ear facining the captain would be two science stations, a dedicated comms, and of course tactical and combat stations, tactcial would manage coordination of all combat elements and multi ship weapons fire and onboard security and even have a phaser immediately ready on their console, where combat would manage just the ship weapon systems and monitoring "ammo" as well as have basic updates from Engineering. Lastly as a compromise to the circular design the back wall would have Engineering stations along the back wall but also have a position closer to the captain dedicated to relaying information to the captain and to take charge of the officers monitoring Engineering should the captain be unavailable. Obviously with the exception of the navigation and helm all sections have a little bit of cross command/communication with other sections so the ship while being more crew heavy could theoretically operate either without the captain, effectively operate another ship remotely (say if the Enterprise's bridge got destroyed before everyone moved to the battle bridge), and immediately respond when somehow the impossible happens, and a fuse somehow magically fails to blow itself and instead allows enough energy throw to turn a consol into anti-personel grenade, and they can take over another station without having to physically move to the exploded console. Oh and a secondary and third viewscreen to the sides of the main which would primarily be meant to hold the last image displayed so to reduce the need to cycle between the two or three images a ship would display and to reduce unnecessary head movements.
What you lose by having windows on a starship's bridge is that the bridge has to be next to the outside of the ship where it is most vulnerable instead of deep within the ship where it is least vulnerable. It might make sense to have windows in an auxiliary control center on the outside of a ship for use if by some extremely unlikely possibility an emergency arises where it is necessary to look out a window because the viewscreen system is inoperable. But with the level of technology that interstellar travel implies, having the main bridge next to the outside of a ship that may need to fight is completely stupid.
Awesome video lore. It did always bother me that they had people standing on the bridge with how chaotic combat can be just makes no sense unless you are trying to get people killed.
First episode of voyager janeway says brace yourselves and the 1st officer just goes from a spot he can brace himself at to running around the railing to get to his chair spoiler he never makes it and dies
@ Lore Reloaded: Might want to look into Aluminium oxynitride, it's basically see through metal and has been in use by the military for the bulletproof windows on vehicles for awhile, among other things. A see through material is not advantageous for most purposes though, so cost aside no it's only likely to be used in areas you really want a window to be at, and will also in Star Trek have obvious issues with being vulnerable to lasers, extreme sunlight, and some other types of radiation that, by it's intentional design, can pass through it possibly more than you want in some environments. You can throw some heavy smart tinting and shielding coatings on them sure, but suffice to say I'd take a high end display over one of these windows if that means I can have a purpose built armor plate there instead that while not caring if its transparent, could be designed specifically to protect me from everything out there that I don't want in here... So sure, put them on some viewing decks and some areas, but be cautious with them, and any case of having a bridge that only got one thin level of metal, transparent or not, between it and the enemies in front of you once the shields fail by any means, it just universally a bad idea. If the bridge can navigate by sending signals to the engines, they can damn well find a way to send and receive signals with some cameras around the hull if nothing else so no the power going down is not a valid excuse in most cases, and you could just have someone run up to an observation deck and report back via comns if the main ship power is out for the decision making elsewhere in the bridge, even if they can't really do anything with no power to anything on the ship for some reason...
Transparent aluminium isn't necessarily as good as deuterium, they don't build starships out of aluminium. That said, I agree windows are useful and probably worth the trade off. Starfleet ships do sort of have a CIC equivalent. Galaxy, Intrepid, and Defiant class ships have all been shown capable of handling bridge functions from main engineering. Yes non Starfleet please.
Yup my bad, I did indeed mean duranium. Deuterium is the matter half of the matter-antimatter reaction used in the warp core, but I think it's a gas rather than liquid. Most of the deuterium on Earth is in the oceans but in Trek they get it from the Bussard scoops in space rather than separating heavy water. That said, they might keep it pressurised.
@@Slavir_Nabru Deuterium is the second isotope of hydrogen, consisting of one proton and one neutron. The third isotope is called tritium, two neutrons and one proton. This is real life as well as Trek. Thus, it will largely be a gas. The funny thing is, the Starfleet Matter-Antimatter-Drive (Warp Drive) uses Deuterium, why? Because, if you recombine Anti-Hydrogen (one Anti-Proton) with Deuterium (one Proton, one Neutron), you gain the energy from the annihilation (E=mc²) plus the binding energy of the weak nuclear force when releasing the Neutron. Also, funny detail is the Bussard collectors collect Hydrogen from the interstellar medium (which probably is sifted through for Deuterium). The Impulse engines again are Fusion drives; they fuse two Hydrogen atoms into Helium (and push the hot Helium out the back), while other Fusion reactors do exist on the ship that produce energy (in this case, using the heat gained in the Fusion process instead of accelerating the Helium with that energy). So, we can conclude the Starfleet uses essentially one type of fuel, which is renewable to a degree, for powering many systems in different ways with it. How they generate the Anti-Hydrogen they use is not elaborated upon, unfortunately, but I think it is safe to assume it is a renewable resource as well in Trek tech.
I’d like to see some alien bridge breakdowns. Maybe for a bit of contrast you could do a breakdown of what a bridge for an actual commercial ship, cruise ship, or military vessel is and how it does (or doesn’t) translate to what we see in Trek.
Honestly, the most important argument against windows on the bridge is that the bridge should NEVER be in a place where it CAN have windows. It should, along with the CIC and engineering be in the most protected place the ship has. Sure, there can be a navigational bridge, with science stations and basic controls directly under the hull, with a window, but who the fuck places one of the most important parts of the ship directly where the enemy can fire at it? Another argument against windows, at least in war ships is the fact that the light coming out from them makes a nice aiming point. Nice of you to show exactly where the crew is at the moment. Makes us killing you soo much easier. Edit: About the exploding consoles, seriously, these things are fly by wire. They HAVE to be, otherwise there would be no way that any console could be configured to take over the function of another console. So if they were designed with a modicum of forethought they should not even be in the vicinity of high energy conductors. So unless the ship designers are just too stupid to understand this basic principle, they are essentially mass murderers that get off of knowing that they killed several dozen star fleet officers.
While I agree with you on all of this, we're talking about a universe where we see explosions on the bridge when there's serious damage to the ship. Obviously in the context of the show this is done to make battles more impactful so they feel like there's actually some risk to the characters, but this would be an absolutely insane design choice in world.
Defiant class sinks the bridge into the hull then surrounded it with additional decking. It means no windows and no weak sports it was also intended to be harder for Borg to cut out
@@matthewcaughey8898 yeah but i was wondering: what if for soem reason the CIC is made inoperable? you'd be blind in space... beside most other Scifi media ( "Science Facts", to quote a movie director, or not ) has them...
At the Excelsior class had something similar to seat belts, which should've been standard on all classes. I do believe the seats for Galaxy Tactical is tucked into the center pillar or a "borrow" from the back wall stations.
In “Yesterday’s Enterprise” the E-D did have a CIC. There is an announcement over the ships speakers for a crewman to report there. It’s one of the scenes in Ten-Forward
I’m the alternate universe there was one.. yea.. the war variant, I wasn’t looking at that episode when I did this. Prime timeline doesn’t appear to have one
Right at the start of Yesterdays Enterprise, there are some announcements playing in the background as Guinan is walking around 10 Forward thinking that something is badly wrong. One is calling a doctor to report to Cetacean Ops, another instructs an officer (an Ensign?) to report to Combat Information Centre.
On a US Navy warship, the Captain's chair is the most far left chair with the Execs chair to the far right. Dead center is the helm with the order controls to the immediate right. weapons control is buried in the interior of the ship as is CIC. On the bridge only the Captain and XO have chairs, everyone else stands. While in Battle department heads are in their own separate locations and the XO is an auxiliary con if one exists. The point being that in battle you don't want the line of succession all in the same place. I would love to see something like this in a sci-fi series where they have real military consultants offering real-world layouts. In ST TOS they had fire-control in a separate location but for theatrics moved everything to the bridge. Also, the Chief engineer is not really an engineer, he/she is a department head who runs the engineering department but rarely gets dirty, and in battle is never on the bridge.
In the TNG episode, Brothers. When the bridge is evacuated, Geordie and Wesley are genuinely surprised that they can't access bridge functions like navigation and warp control from Main Engineering. I can't see any reason why other functions wouldn't be accessible from most stations around engineering. Kind of like how your phone screen can display multiple button configurations.
The thing with exploding consoles is this: It is more than once stated that apart from the EPS power grid a seperate grid for the computers exists. The ODN grid. Yes it still would need power, but would it really be necassary to plug the bridge directly into the main eps grid? If starfleet is so big on redunancies, like O'Brien never is tired to remind us off, it actually would make sense to have bridge controls on some kind of independend fusion powered system. If that even would be too much power necassary just to keep the computer controls operational. In the end the equivalent of an intranet would be all, that's necassary just to control things. The chief engineer is in engineering practically all the time anyways to work the machines, if anything happens anyways. But I get it. Nothing what we see actually supports this designs posited.
I like the Klingon bridges, with their throne-like, raised Captain's chair able to see all the crew in front of him (because a Klingon would never turn his back on a potential rival).
It's also worth noting that even though the Galaxy-class bridge looks enormous on screen, its footprint is actually only slightly bigger then the bridge of the original Enterprise.
At 0:37 The Excelsior has it's iPod plugged in and ready to blast some beats. Good while it's being towed back to space dock. As for captain in the middle and the bridge on top design, it feels like that would make a lot of sense as a design aesthetic that no Star Fleet procurement team would allow to change. My take is that military and quasi-military traditions run deep. Star Fleet being mocked for this slavish devote to a clearly goofy reliance would be a good point for Lower Decks to tackle. Same for Klingon's same idea while putting support struts blocking the captain's line of sight (and sound) to important bridge officers even though they would probably have some very elaborate arguments boiling down to "but we've always done it this way" while citing their victories in numerous fights. The flip flopping of clearly present restraints and seats to no visible restraints with some officers standing would be up to design philosophies of the era just like the uniforms because it's not that iconic. Also Star Trek throws out cannon for hack writing.
18:00 They may look like rocks but I believe it may actually be bits of charred insulation which maybe designed to protect users from direct explosions when the console gets an energy surge.
The Nova bridge is clearly the later Excelsior bridge set. Same as used for the Excelsior-class USS Righteous in Star Trek: Borg. They only changed the Conn/Ops consoles and the MSD.
The freedom class ship from beyond can't have existed in the prime timeline from my understanding due to the enterprise series. But feel free to correct me. From my understanding, the enterprise was the first warp 5 (so after that one) ship. And the federation and by extension Starfleet weren't really a thing until towards the end of enterprise.
On the subject of the rocks: The rocks could be an emergency heat dissipation system. A substance in the console solidifies, ejects out of the console, and prevents a much, MUCH bigger and more lethal explosion, while spraying (relatively) light, foamy pumice into the air. Also, some of the walls will spray rocks, and this could also be a part of the same basic idea: the rocks are a ballistic/energy absorber, that is designed to ablate and expand, preventing hull breaches in the bridge. Once again: deadly to ensigns, yet a life-saver to the bridge as a whole. Also, if we count the novels and Starfleet has Horta as crewmen, they probably view the rocks as popcorn.
About the consoles: Why are they running on the main power system anyway? It's a glorified touch screen, 12 Volt should be ample to feed them. You wouldn't run 1kV trough a TV, would you?
Here's the thing about windows on Star Trek ships: they are not a liability in combat because Federation ships rely on shields for defense. Once those are gone, it doesn't matter if the wall is duranium hull, or transparasteel window, it's unarmored and will be vaporized by the first disruptor blast that hits it. Also, look at the more combat oriented ships, Defiant class, D7, Jem'Hadar fighters. No windows, lots of armor.
It can reasonably argued that we do see CIC’s of a sort in some Starfleet vessels. Just somewhat integrated with the bridge itself. For the small Defiant class, the area with the chart table directly behind the Captain is the CIC. (Pay no mind to the holo projector episode). Similarly on the Galaxy class the elevated section behind the Captain is effectively the CIC. Something like the Battle Bridge would not be viewed as a CIC. But the idea that the Captain sits at the nexus between the Maneuvering Bridge and the CIC stations makes sense. In fact given the “in the round” design of the classic TOS bridge, it can almost be argued that the bridge IS the CIC, it just happens to have the helmsmen in it. Everything to the rear of Kirk’s chair, Spock, Uhura, etc, would be CIC tasks and stations. The CIC’s evolved out of the original early WW2 Radar shacks. Radar screens needed a dark space. The Bridges needed windows to avoid running into things. Command Staff found they were spending more and more time in the Radar and Radio shacks. Which were getting hot and crowded. So the CIC was born. With the Iowa’s and the Essex’s being the first ships designed specifically with purpose built CIC’s. But really the CIC is not the same as the Bridge. The Bridge is for controlling the ship. The CIC is for controlling the fight. On a Flagship the Captain Commands the Bridge, the Admiral Commands the CIC, which may in turn Command many ships. Remember that’s what “Flagship” means. It’s the place where the Admiral very literally hangs his flag. The Ship would fly the Admiral’s flag highest so the fleet knew to look to that ship and only that ship for orders. CIC’s evolved in the Carriers for that purpose. To let the Admiral see the entire picture. What Star Trek has always gotten wrong isn’t CIC’s or Bridges… it’s Admiral’s. The Myth from the movies that Admiral’s don’t pilot ships they pilot desks. Rear Admiral’s command Task Forces of a dozen ships from a Flagship. (Where the Captain is often more of a First Officer to the Admiral’s whims.)
In TNG onwards the closest we seem to see to a CIC appears to be main engineering, used on numerous occasions to take control of the ship if the Bridge is compromised, and constantly staffed.
If the California Class is about identical to the Galaxy, then we must remember that the chairs came out of the walls beneath the consoles, and then could disappear back under the console so you could stand. When I saw the DISCO size, I automatically thought of ST online, where everything looks oversized & pleasantly spacey.
Despite inertial dampeners and gravity generators(?), a apece ship needs a way for the crew to strap in. Hell even Irwin Allen understood that in "Smith, Will and the Robot makes 3". The absence of seat belts (or personal force fields at duty stations), coupled with multi-level bridge designs, and sharp edge consoles ans seating, really transform Stafleet vessels into flying death traps.
The Minbari ships in Babylon 5 have a 360 degree view of everything outside, eliminating the need for the limitations of windows, viewscreens or placing the bridge in a highly vulnerable spot where it can be blown off. Star Trek uses holodecks, which should be able to do this, as well as make all necessary consoles as made by Barclay in "The Nth Degree."
On the Ares studios channel, they have a show on Fridays I believe called starfleet tactical. They have a host on many of the shows that actually served on navy vessels and talked about the CIC on navel vessels. They also go over space combat, etc. Some show are great some need work but is a decetn show hosted by good people.
Firstly, let me say a resounding YES to the idea of a overview of alien bridge layouts. As to the issue of windows and materials for such - we DO have something similar to transparent aluminum known as ALON, a substance that is, for all intents and purposes, transparent artificial sapphire, and it currently sees use in military vehicles and other places. With the clearly-shown ability to have integrated display systems and optical protection, this could see some use, though I am not sure about its' effectiveness in high-radiation environments (such as space). On the matter of seats - I've never understood Starfleet's reluctance to include basic restraints on any and every bridge (and other) seat, even if only for emergencies such as combat and/or loss of internal gravity. They've given some nods in the direction of this now and again, but for the most part is seems to have been completely ignored and forgotten. I think, however, that many of the commentators here have been over this in a fairly comprehensive and thorough manner that makes anything further that I might say rather redundant. Thank you, though, for the series!
On a planet with a atmosphere, a breach in the window isn't opening into the depths of space. Navy submarines can also have windows in some cases, but then they are installed in the sail, which is not a part of the pressure vessel and is flooded during the dive.
Fun fact, transparent aluminum does actually now exist. It's actually being considered for use on the International Space Station, as it's incredibly resilient compared to any form of modern glass.
I think a look at the Klingon ship's bridges would be good, especially since they are a warrior race and expect battle. Another good ship to cover would be the Timeship RelativIty, cause it has such a unique bridge layout.
First Contact also showed the Enterprise doing just fine for half the battle with the Borg with the viewscreen off and the bridge functioning more like a CIC. Even then it shows that the viewscreen on the Sovereign class is a 2-D holographic projection. Pretty cool. Then you have the jem'hadar bridge that has no viewscreen and relies on augmented reality displays worn by the crew.
When the vacuum of space is on the other side, I don’t want to trust a force field of a thin piece of glass like object in between me and the vacuum of space. By the time you’re close enough to see something you’re already right on top of it, and you barely see 1% of of the 360 degrees around the ship. Fracture the window your entire bridge crew is dead, power goes out and they’re dead. You want to see a wonderful CIC look to the Battlestars Galatica and Pegasus.
And with the bridge located top center on the saucer section, you can't even see the bottom 75% of your ship to have a sense of how close you are and you end up scraping all the way down the side of space dock like in Galaxy Quest
FYI - The window would be useless on a submarine since the control room is never in the bow. There would therefore be limited port/starboard views. For those confused by a CIC being absent from a starship, those capabilities are taken over by the bridge consoles and their main computer connections.
Windows on modern US Navy ships are there for one major reason... docking and close-quarters maneuvering where the MK1 eyeball can be useful. For combat, most engagements will be beyond visual range with missiles.
Okay, so let's just assume that Starfleet uniforms are made of materials that provide some baseline level of protection against flash/flame and shrapnel. But if exploding consoles are a well-known hazard aboard a starship, I can't imagine why officers aren't wearing some sort of protective equipment for their faces and hands.
I've gotta say, I have never thought about it before, but Trek bridges have a hell of a lot of tripping hazards. I mean, crew is blown away from consoles all the time, just think of the OSHA complaints :D
Also there's the fact that in the recent Lower Decks episode they actually had to remove the view screen, and the hull, so they could navigate through sight. A situation that wouldn't happen if they had a goddamn window.
You missed Three classes of ships with similar but different designs. The NX-01, The Intrepid Class and the Defiant Class. All with the navigation in front and ops somewhere to the side or behind the Captain.
You missed the perfect opportunity for the Miranda class to say "Do you know would be useful in this situation? A WINDOW." Also although I do agree with your points about if your points about windows windows I still believe Is "windows" would never be a standard feature on large military subs. Usually your visibility is no more than 10' in Addition there would be sea slime or barnacle build-up on it which would need to be cleaned regularly. Smaller subs probably would have them standard issue, but not to large missile subs.
@@mainstreetsaint36 Yes but if you installed a sheet of transparent aluminum in your wall at your house that you could Look through what would you call it?
There's another problem too: Stealth. Military subs aren't just bare metal, they're coated with other materials that interfere with sonar and suppress sound from the sub itself. Granted you can kick that problem down the road and just say "more advanced materials we don't know about yet", but at the very least it's an issue that isn't solved by transparent aluminum or the like.
There is a huge difference between an ocean combat scenario on earth where the action can come down to close quarters with aircraft or missiles coming within visual range and combat in space where the combat ranges out to much greater distances. Also, a broken window on the bridge of a cruiser isn't a disaster on earth, but leads to explosive decompression in space. Finally, the real action during combat on a modern fighting ship takes place in the combat information center deep in the hull. The Enterprise D had one of these, but they rarely used it.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
And to this day, I contend that the Expanse and Battlestar Galactica are the only series with sensible starship command center designs.
@High Lord Baron That doesn't always help in The Expanse though. The ships are very much glass cannons in that universe (which is perfectly fair given the tech level of humanity in it, and the fact they're hurling nuclear warheads at each other.)
@@233Deadman the CIC of the Donnager ist actually designed to not get penetrated by PDC rounds..... you have to hit it with a Railgun.
I don't agree. I think Mass Effect's Normandy's CIC is pretty well designed as well.
@High Lord Baron the original BSG has one of the coolest and most practical designs COMMISAR SIR!!!
@@233Deadman And stealth rocks!
I served on the USCGC BEAR (WMEC-901) during it’s Balkan’s War deployment. The bridge design of the 9 ship Historical class was actually based on the layout of the USS ENTERPRISE (NCC-1701) bridge. The layout transferred nicely to a seagoing ship. This basic design has been applied to many US Naval ship designs since.
I’ve also served under a pompas ass of a captain such as the Captain of the USS EXCELSIOR. Those were nightmare years.
Thank you for your service.
Hey, we don't exist
I would love to see a breakdown of the Romulan bridges. We don't see them often, but we do get a look at the BoP bridge in Balance of Terror, the D'deridex bridge in Face of the Enemy, & the Scimitar bridge in Nemesis.
We also have a Warbird bridge in "The Die is Cast".
As well as Valdore, the mo'gai class romulan Warbird
Windows: Transparent aluminum? Star Trek: The Voyage Home.
Bridge layout: Acoustical projection via dome shape Acoustical resonance designed to direct voices to and from the central location of the Captains' Chair.
As for the multilevel designs. A VERY bad idea in practice. A twisted ankle in turbulence is just going to and has in real life, happened.
One thing that I've never heard commented on is the incredible distance of handholds. Two meters is the maximum distance currently allowed in any mobile operations center due to potential turbulence. This is true on the ocean and should hold true of any bridge in Trek. Can't have the Captain falling ass over teakettle and bonking his head... Well, until the script demands it.
i disagree with the failure of transwarp. they should give it another chance.
@@SamSitar - Umm... Great... I never mentioned transwarp. Was this supposed to go on another comment reply?
the battle bridge makes more sense than the bridge.
@@ts757arse And in the end, all Trip did was lowered the chair. The end product had none of those changes he worked on while high.
@@SamSitar The obviously different warp scale during TNG suggests that they did continue to work on transwarp, they just decided to continue calling it warp. Nothing actually says it was the same transwarp as the green glowing Borg transwarp or the Transwarp corridors.
Lore Reloaded,
Submarine veteran here. Served 1999-2003 on two nuclear powered submarines, USS Florida SSBN-728 and USS Asheville SSN-758, was a sonar tech STS3(SS). The SS means I am Qualified in Submarines (very difficult to achieve even if you have a STEM degree, takes months of study and a 2 hour board interview by an officer and two enlisted members, but required for all of us to get.) The 3 means "3rd class petty officer", enlisted (I worked for a living!) paygrade E-4.
You will never see windows on a submarine because, below about 200 feet (60.96 m), there is nothing to see. Light doesn't penetrate that far. Those civilian scientific submarines that go all the way to the bottom have lights, but they can only see a few yards (a few m) around the boat. :)
When we're submerged, we use passive sonar to "see". A lot of math is involved in figuring out what is going on out there, where the enemy is going, where we should go, etc. I can't get too far into it because it's classified (math is not a secret...but the way we use it to conduct submarine operations is). The only non-classified display in sonar is "passive broadband waterfall". On that display, the sound waves detected by the passive sonar array are abstracted with a dot that indicates that sound was detected on that bearing, at any frequency. The greater the amplitude, the brighter the dot. If the dots stack up in the same place over time, that might be a vessel that we need to track. Of course, a human is constantly listening to the sounds as well, and to truly figure out which ones are enemies and which ones are not, and which traces are just marine animals or "biologics" requires human judgement. :)
Here's what the sonar display looks like (this is from an older system; the new ones are in color and higher resolution, but are the same in every other respect.). I know how to do a LOT with this display, but again that stuff is classified. But you can look at it; the display itself is not classified. :)
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/subsecrets/images/sprisonscr.jpeg
Cool analysis! I really want to see the analysis for other species' bridges now. Also your outro phrase catches me off guard every single time, it's so good!
The editing of this video is much better. Thanks for that. Less endless looping of the same scenes.
Sometimes I have to, I try not to do that
Excellent video! And I'm glad you mentioned BABYLON 5. The Whitestar bridge is one of the best layouts I've seen onscreen.
As for windows..... Starfleet should do them like the original (and better) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA bridge. Have durasteel shutters that close over them when battle gets too rough.
Part of the exploding console problem is that they don't simply get powered by electricity. Star Fleet ships operate using an EPS grid, Electro-Plasma System. Plasma, ionized gas, generated by the impulse and warp cores (the engines are actually separate) is pumped unidirectionally to everything in the ship, every single electronic or mechanical device, and is LOCALLY converted to electrical power. When an EPS conduit is ruptured, it releases the ionized gas to then act like an explosion. If an EPS conduit loses the power to isolate and guide the plasma to the destination device, it quickly melts through the conduit, made mostly of copper, and sprays that molten copper around, giving that "rock" look to the debris. Particle weapons and antimatter explosions would produce high levels of EM interference that would cause temporary disruptions in the EPS conduits, causing such explosions, thus why you get the "explodium packed" consoles that are so dangerous to crews.
As for why the consoles would use such vast amounts of power, seemingly over 1000W worth of electroplasma, I can't really say, but may have something to do with the fact they use optics to communicate with the other systems, not electrical cables, so as note to be susceptible to EM interference. Perhaps it takes a lot more power to generate the necessary light levels to make it through the hundreds of meters of optical cables in the ship. (Making my living in IT, I know this isn't necessary in the real world, as single mode cables are able to transmit data optically for kilometers using barely over 2w of power, but this is Star Trek, perhaps they need higher light levels for some reason.) Perhaps it has more to do with local computational requirements, but I have yet to see why that would be needed. Perhaps they all have local replicator systems to slowly autorepair the consoles after damage, as we have seen many consoles continue working partially after an explosion.
In any case, it isn't simply an electrical problem or surges of electricity. Using an EPS system is obviously highly dangerous to the crew, so I do not know why they use it that way, but it is what it is. I know plasma is necessary to power the heavy needs of the engines, weapons, and shields, and the shield grid is all over the chip, so perhaps they decided to power all the consoles from it because the shield power grid was already distributed around the ship, rather than run electrical lines.
(I do know in IT in the real world, there are some datacenters that distribute 480V power to the rack level, and then use local power supplies to convert it to low voltage, 48V, direct current for directly powering the servers and storage, and this somehow makes it more efficient. It's actually part of the Open Rack specification, an attempt to make the design of server racks into an opensource and non-licensed spec. Maybe Star Fleet ship designers used similar thinking for consoles.)
Running 480v to the rack makes sense because whenever you convert to DC you both need much heavier wiring, but also have much higher transmission losses
Running higher voltages over distance incurs less power loss. The 48V you're referring to however do not directly power the servers and network hard in most cases; they will power the UPSs that in turn power them. If you look closely at a UPS, they have a 230V (or 115V) power interface, and a 48V DC interface on the primary side (consumer models notwithstanding, we're talking datacenter here) (in some cases they use 24V DC primary, it depends on the capacity of the UPS).
Lets face it, the real reason they put rocks and explosives in the consoles it to make sure you look after the ship.
Regardless of the made up technolay, the controls in such a ship just send a message to the system involved to do the thing, and this invloves negligable power. They can even do this from another ship as seen in the second movie. Even your car is wired up this way. Its like telling alexa or google to turn your lighn on or off. If your light bulb blowes, your alexa hub isnt going to explode. Even if the control pannels has a bizaly huge power source, there is no reason that the sheild control pannel would explode when the shield are hit, any more then then any other console on the ship.
they should just keep the consoles on their own low power system and use them to drive all the explody stuff remotly over some kind of networking. Also none of that explains why the console still work after exploding and any cost saving they get by doing that this way aren't worth peoples lives.
@@KeinNiemand Ever try to talk sense to an opensource developer? I assume it's the same with Starfleet ship designers.
I'd love to see klingon bridge layouts. Theyre pretty compact and straight up have a gunner station. This man exists to shoot your shit on command.
Klingons do what they doo
Usually that's all that so-called "Tactical" stations do in Starfleet. Only difference in Klingon vessels is you might have your ops officer managing defensive systems (shields, etc) on her console while the gunner focuses on blowing stuff up, rather than those two roles on one station and then the ops person doing damage control and miscellaneous engineering stuff as the Federation seems to favor.
Don't forget the Klingon BoP, the Captain in the center and most bridge crew is nearly within arms reach of him. Punishment is usually very severe.
Wasn't there some kind of periscope like feature attached to a klingon captains chair in one of the movies?
@@user-ve5ei2xe8h Star Trek 5 the Final Frontier, the Klingon captain had a periscope and could act as the gunner, because the captain wants to have fun as well.
I agree that a breakdown of non-UFP bridges would be fun to watch. Thanks for another great video.
A note on safety restraints; the Constitution, Constellation, Oberth, Miranda and basically any other ship with those big wingback chairs introduced in The Motion Picture, do all have leg restraints. The angular armrests on those chairs hinge upward to wrap around the legs. IIRC, you can see Picard using them on the Stargazer just before he attempts to use the Picard Maneuver on the Enterprise in The Battle.
11:54 Excelsior? "I hear she's got Transwarp Drive." Goddammit, Lore. Transwarp *is* spoken in the movies. Miguel Ferrer's character literally says that Transwarp isn't functioning in a clip you just played.
It may just be a meme now. He literally does say it the moment after it cuts from the console display.
And if my grandmother had wheels she would be a wagon
Young minds, fresh ideas....be tolerant.
"My friends, the great experiment: The Excelsior." - Cap Kirk.
Sounds like a hotel to me...😆
A word on CIC. My second ship was the USS O'Kane DDG-77, I was an engineer but because of previous incidents my knees back and neck were messed up. I didn't want out of the Navy well atleast not yet anyways. I wanted to pick a job easier on my body our ship had a damn good Capitan he had already been awarded a Silver Star due to his actions after everything blowing up around him in the Pentagon on 9/11.
He suggested OS, and while it wouldn't be the same excitement I was used to that CIC is rarely boring for long. Captains fight their ship from CIC, they have their own seat, display etc.. The CO and Combat sit side by side and are positioned so they can just about all of CIC, what they can't see tends not to matter. The bridge sure likes to think they steer the ship and engineers will remind them when they step out of line that the little speed control thingy don't mean shit.
Take out the Bridge of an Arleigh Burke that's alert and for that matter all the copy cat builds around the world and they really didn't do much. The CO and most of the actually important officers and enlisted too for the most part are bunkered down deep. The Capitan does his Capitan stuff in CIC, Central Control is another vitally important area has direct control of speed. And you can quite easily steer the ship from the steering room.
I do want to see alien bridge layouts.
The EPS system's high kelvin temperatures may be able to cut through almost any solid material if there's a sudden interference-based lapse in the structural integrity field, or in EPS containment. Considering the EPS conduits only seem to surge and burst under battle conditions, hard impacts, or during encounters with anomalous regions of spacetime, they're probably rated as "safe" for use with Starfleet personnel, even though they are working in proximity to explosive danger.
A similar argument for "proximity to explosive danger" in the modern era is Lithium Ion batteries. They can ignite almost anything if they rupture, yet we haul them around in our pockets and bags like there's no chance they'll do so, even given evidence to the contrary. Similarly, cars are potentially hazardous on the roads, and we drive them at high speeds practically every day, and in many cases, we drive them within meters of opposing traffic.
Transparent metals already exist. They are, however, prohibitively expensive and heavy and currently give no more protection to heavy weapons than heavy, thick, bulletproof "glass" (windows haven't been made out of actual glass for decades).
It is useless on heavy vehicles (tanks, ships) and way to expensive and heavy on small vehicles like a humvee.
Last I knew ALON *was* better in .50 cal trials than glass (thinner, somehow lighter, and more bullet resistant), but it is hard to make it in the large panels we need.
Transparent aluminium, is *much* better than bullet proof glass of the same mass or plastic.
They might be more expensive to make but considering the cost launching to orbit it is cheaper. manufacturing costs are already dropping.
@@seriousmaran9414 I cant wait for something similar to that material to exist. That said, if one were to take the strength of Aluminum today, it's a very light however very weak metal compared to other metals. Certainly stronger than glass for a given thickness but still falling far short of steel and the notably refined alloys used in eg modern submarines.
I would 'guess' (given it's all fantasy anyway) that the future materials used would still demonstrate relatively greater strength in non-transparent materials.
@@DarenSpinelle transparent aluminium is being used in small quantities. The only real advantages are it is relatively light and you can see through it. Useful for Windows but nothing much else. Issue is you need to compress it at very high pressures as well as heat so it would need a huge and expensive machine to produce big panels.
Generally I agree that there are alloys that are light and/or easier to make and use.
The rocks and union quota comment had me literally laughing out loud.
Lore Reloaded ,of course we want to hear and see some of your thoughts on "alien" bridge designs! Many people have asked about Klingon and Romulan bridges, and that seems the best place to start because there is quite a few good visuals from The Original Series to today's shows.
Look forward to whatever is next, thanks for another fun video essay.
(:
The 24th century bridge designers started adding random clutter in the bridge to help shield The crew from the exploding panels. They now had cover they could hide behind. Those random pylons were there to protect the crew.
You should have 1 million subscribers you’re channel is excellent.
Ludicrous speed 😂👍
Great video.
You're making videos at a pro level Lore. Keep up the excellent work. I always look forward to them.
In regards to exploding consoles, and putting my laughter at the humor aside, I feel it could be argued that what they say are safety measures work as intended in universe and prevent worse damage than we see. Example off the top of my head:
Ship is hit by energy weapon, system overloads, surge switch kicks in, console explodes and crew member dies…but what if the surge switch prevented the entire wall/system from blowing out? Or while we see the fire rocks, a small fire rock is preferable to a violent inferno. Just some thoughts I had; great video as usual.
Fun Fact: Transparent Aluminum already exists. Its called Aluminum Oxynitride, its a composite material used for lenses in laser experiments. There is interest in using it as bullet proof windows, but the cost of production is still very high.
Nice breakdown, Lore. My take on the windows is this: Personally, I don’t have a problem with the CONCEPT of a bridge window. If anything, I would go mad without the ability to look out an actual window and I would worry about the viewscreen going out in an emergency. Truthfully, I’ve always considered the lack of a window a bit of a design flaw.
However, my problem with the windows is from a canon perspective-particularly when it comes to the Enterprise. Even though we’ve rarely if ever seen bridge windows on Starfleet bridges in the past, I could even give them a pass if we were going to say, yes, OTHER classes of starships have bridge windows-that the Constitution, Miranda, Excelsior, and NX are actually the outliers. So, the Discovery can have a bridge window, no problem. I actually love the under-slung bridge of the Walker-class with a gorgeous open view of whatever planet is below you-I think that makes a lot of sense. But then to come along and put, not just a window, but a MASSIVE, wall to wall hexagon window on the Enterprise bridge…that feels like a deliberate “eff you.” That’s the issue I have with it.
As far as the exploding bridge consoles, to me, that has ALWAYS been stupid. It’s actually something we didn’t see a lot in TOS. We saw it occasionally, but typically, in TOS, if the Enterprise took a hard enough hit, a control board on the bridge might stop working (that makes sense), but it wouldn’t typically blow up in your face and send you flying across the room with your flesh burned away-I mean, why the hell would it? It’s a computer screen. It’s not the warp core, it’s not a fuel take, why should it explode? That makes zero sense. It’s just a visual trope used to add drama-which we didn’t see a lot of until the movies and especially the TNG era-and I kind of wish they would stop it, because it’s just dumb. Show people getting killed by things that should actually kill them-like hull breaches, like things exploding that would actually explode.
the windows should be reserved for a few locations and that's it.
and you're right TOS did get it right. no sparks when ship takes a hit
You are seriously taking a design decision as a direct and purposeful insult to you? You don't think that these people are designing things the way they do because they love their work and have actually thought about why they make the changes they do? That's pretty pathetic.
By the way, the pre refit TOS Enterprise did have a window in the front of its bridge..... precious canon is preserved and if you were the one making the choice your own ignorance would have been on display for the whole Fandom to mock. Because obviously you must have had malicious intent if you dared to steer away from canon, as if there's anything resembling canon in the franchise to begin with. Even TOS is absolutely full of contradictions and broken canon.
@@DrewLSsix - You seem a little more personally insulted than I am. Hopefully you won’t take it too personally when I point out the facts. Yes, when the original model for the Enterprise was first crafted, there was indeed a rectangle on the bridge module that resembled a window. However, that feature was removed before photography for “The Cage” was completed. In the final produced version of the pilot (and I mean the original, not even the remastered), there was NO bridge window on the Enterprise. Not on the exterior model, not on the interior set. I own the old pre-remastered version on VHS. It’s not there.
[EDIT: Actually, to be fair, I should point out the TOS Enterprise did have a bridge “window” of sorts. The bridge did have what appeared to be a glass dome in the ceiling- and there’s the famous zoom-in shot in “The Cage” where the camera pushes in through the dome into the bridge. But that window was over their heads. There was no window in front of them.]
I wouldn't be opposed to having a dedicated visual navigation station on somewhere that allows for a window access, but a window itself just seems like a structural weakness - the joining of two separate materials if not any inherent weakness in the transparency. (Yes, a lot of bridges have overhead windows). I'd be much more comfortable with having a viewscreen and no window, as that would seem more protective of the mission critical bridge area.
At least a viewscreen doesn't have to worry about filtering solar radiation through the bridge, so the crew isn't blinded (if not actually irradiated) while maneuvering and a local star comes into focus.
@@andrewshouse9840 - There’s definitely give and take. As you said, every window could represent a structural weakness, while viewscreens and instruments can go out. But think about submarines; a submariner would probably agree with you. In fact, he doesn’t even use a viewscreen; he does everything by instrumentation-which is amazing when you think about it.
No one would have died if the bridge s were as safe as a baneblade tank
For the Emperor.
Remeber Cadia...
@@WyvernCV The planet broke before the Guard did.
To hell with Chaos!
Made of wood?
One thing I like about the original excelsior bridge was the lighting in the base of the chairs for the alert status. Definitely an 80s thing but still like it. I would love a break down of bridges of alien ships.
The passionate defense of windows on a starship brought to mind a crew member in a spacesuit, using a squeegee on the outside of the ship.
I'm looking forward to hearing about the different bridges of different species. ^^ I love videos like these because they help with world building. ^^
Hey lore reloaded are you familiar with ...Aluminum Oxy Nitride. It's sold under the trade name AlON.
It's an 80 percent transparent ceramic that has aluminum as it's primary matrix ...it's used for armored vehicle windows ...and is going to be used more in space construction due to reduced weight.
I started to notice the background music around descriptions of the Miranda class... Now it's all I notice.. cause that shit is funnnnnnky! I dig it!
Alright Khan, I'm glad that there is a direct correlation with the distances on Earth in a relatively 2d space vs 3d deep space to debunk the inanity of windows on a starship.
Placement is also important. On current U.S. Navy ships, the navigation bridges are placed high on the superstructure, and have good visibility. The battle bridges, on the other hand, are buried deep in the hull. Star Trek keeps putting their bridges on the outside, when they should be the centermost part of the ship, buried under the armor of all the less-important parts.
USN here. I was going to say this too.
Perhaps more should be made of the battle bridges in Star Trek. Main bridge is where it is for reasons of tradition but when things go south key officers move to an interior location at the median point between the outer hull and the reactor.
@@travissmith2848 Except we rarely see any key officer anywhere but the main bridge.
Every time you have the Captain, XO, Ops, Chief Engineer, and Security Chief on the main bridge. And sometimes the Chief Medical Officer is there too.
All three senior officers (CO, XO, and Ops) should not be in the same room during a battle. But in Star Trek they are on the same watch rotation practically all the time.
So what key officers are you referring to?
@@davidtherwhanger6795 Something basically never actually used, hence make a bigger deal of them: when a major battle occurs have one or two (though perhaps not all three) take the lift to the battle bridge.
Though I think we can give Trek a pass on not splitting up command staff as those are the ones we care about and going beyond that half dozen or so as principles doesn't work as well in story telling.
@@travissmith2848 well it’s more a flaw of visual storytelling like movies/TV. Shooting all your main cast in the same room is just easier and cheaper. In a novel, for example, you don’t have to think about how many sets you need to shoot in a day when people are separated.
Soooo, the bridge consoles are connected directly to the voltages that come out of the warp core? I'd imagine that finding people brave enough to touch the buttons would be a tough job. Surely the power would be stepped down to a useable (and safe) voltage by the time it got to the consoles. At the very least the circuitry would melt before the voltage overwhelmed the circuit breakers.
The bridge's would be safer if they removed the rocks and plasma power conduits running straight to the consoles.
As to the ships appearing next to each other, they are not, they are represented next to each other for visualization purposes, like the Asteroid belt, the next ship would just be a pinprick if viewed through a passive window by a naked eye and yet even exterior shots show asteroids as huge rocks just a few feet from each other. This was illustrated when Riker and Worf hacked the Enterprise's computer to make it appear as if another ship disrupted the battle exercise between the Enterprise and the Stargazer. Everything only appears side by side so we can comprehend what we view. This is like how an asteroid belt would really just be distant points of light not the jumbo of obstacles shown. Having the ships close enough to be seen in detail with the human eye would be ridiculous especially when photon torpedoes are anti-matter weapons, a single torpedo could damage an entire fleet if they were in close enough formation to be seen in such detail with the naked eye.
However, my objection is that with Interstellar space travel, most of the time would just be passing the time, granted FTL travel may change this, but how often would a bridge really be needed. It's far more likely for there to be multiple uses for that space.
Seatbelts are not effective enough for the acceleration forces involved, inertia dampening fields would be needed. Seatbelts without inertial dampeners would probably rip the person into thirds for a 3 point seat belt, into fifths for a five point seat belt. If the acceleration can overwhelm the inertial dampeners, it would be too much for seatbelts to handle. Face it, Star Trek bridges are for plot and plot alone, you can rationalize forever but it will never really make sense.
I agree but for windows, every time you dock mostly for space dock or fight someone who doesn't have windows and ROLF as you drift up beside them power off or just send a probe to hack into their mainframe and cause it to give false readings/images.. And the seatbelts I've done the math for my own sci-fi novel, and getting hit in a ship meant to be hit with those weapons would never be worse than on a modern naval vessel... which also don't have seatbelts but still. In fact, it's really unlikely to ever see a G force greater than what a human can take in star trek/expanse style combat... And if you exceed ever 50g then you can have a seatbelt made to not cut you... we call it on earth kevlar... Which for reference a 50 cal round only generates 100gs and you don't see tank crews bouncing around from being hit...
Atthe end of the day, inertial dampers are one of those technologies that just have to exist in Star Trek. Otherwise people have to secure for every little maneuver and you run into massive problems gatting anywhere at sublight speed.
There are no rocks. It is just insulation and other material that makes up a computer control panel.
GIVE this man a job!
@@Jack_Stafford Insulation in space is MLI insulation, basically layers of reflective foil separated from contacting each other often by a honeycomb net (yes corrugated cardboard has been used) simply because in a vacuum heat can only be radiated not conducted or convected and there is a lot of vacuum in space. There's a reason why the Lunar Lander in the Apollo program looked like it was all tin foil and cardboard because it was, as that's what insulation on a space craft is. As with a thermos, the best insulation is a vacuum and a vacuum does not look like rocks.
You forgot to mention the golden joystick control on the Sovereign.
I remember being a kid and watching the very first episode of Star Trek TNG the first time it aired, and how excited I got realizing this new Enterprise could split into two halves and when they "transferred command to the battle bridge". Great imagination fuel for a little kid!
Have to say, the slick and shiny look of the ST3 Excelsior always got me! It looks huge too. It’s funny how that one looks more dated than the Constitution or later Excelsiors now though.
With regards to the whole thing about metals, we have transparent ceramics (e.g. aluminium oxynitride) that are generally as hard as or harder than whatever you're bolting them into, but they are expensive and so even if you invented one that's flexible enough to replace the usual structural members, it'll be used sparingly anyway for the foreseeable future.
I always wondered if the "Rocks" could be some sort of hardened insulation foam?
Rock workers union. The only union from the stone age to still exist. When you're that old you have a hell of a lot of influence!
The second oldest profession
Ezri Dax's Mom
These are the only two vids of yours ive watched in weeks. Ill watch the next one too. I usually never comment also
Another dedicated system room we see on the TOS Constitution is the Main Phaser Control Room, from which the Phasers can be operated independent of the bridge, and from which some components of the Phasers could be accessed (notably the coolant lines, which rupture during a battle in one episode). The NX-Class had a similar function with the armory room, from which the Phase Cannons could be operated, and which also contained the forward torpedo launchers.
I think we see the bridging from the more manual systems to the automated ones in TNG+ in the TOS Movies. The Refit Constitution-class Enterprise as of ST:II had a large pair of manned torpedo bays. When we see the torpedo tube of the Enterprise-A in Star Trek: VI, it appears to be a much more cramped and automated system. We unfortunately don't get to see Excelsior's torpedo room. Considering the era, it would have been interesting to see if it had the Refit-style torpedo room or the Ent-A automated system. We never, to my knowledge, see the torpedo room in TNG, but we do in Voyager (IIRC, in Year of Hell), and it was a cramped space with severe risk of plasma burns to any crewmen in the room when the torpedo is fired - unlike the Enterprise-A, where Spock and McCoy were safe and unharmed right behind the tube doors.
As a side note, we see that the torpedoes are substantially smaller during the ST:VI era as well, rather than the large coffin-sized lozenges in ST:II and once again later in TNG. Perhaps this is why it took so seven to destroy Chang's ship when its shields were down, compared to the significant damage done to the Reliant in ST:II (big chunks of the ship were blown apart) and the Klingon BoP in ST:III (damaged them so badly they had to go to emergency power) and the ship-vaporizing blasts we see on occasion in TNG - it could be that the smaller torpedoes may have had a comparably smaller warhead. It might also be that, after having to pelt an unshielded Klingon scout ship with more than half a dozen torpedoes to destroy it caused Starfleet to reverse course on the whole smaller but more numerous torpedoes.
As off-topic as that got, it may be that the energy required for the increased computer automation, or the nature of Isolinear circuitry, necessitates running EPS conduits into the consoles. We see Consoles get overloaded in TOS and ST:The Motion Picture. They short out, smoke, catch fire, and even shocked Chekov and burned his hand pretty badly in TMP, but what we did *not* see were consoles exploding (with the exception of the Kobyashi Maru test in the simulator, which was apparently theatrics, since we did not see those kinds of console detonations in either ship in the battles later). The bridge on Reliant suffered severe structural failures from battle damage, and debris falling on Khan's crewmen killed them, but we did not see the consoles explode. Again, back to the circuitry, perhaps Duotronics could work on levels of electricity that can use conventional conduits just fine, but the newer technology just cannot. It would make much more sense that Isolinear systems actually *require* the direct EPS taps than the idea that Starfleet went on an unrelenting efficiency bender that turned every workstation on the ship into a bomb, and then they refused to correct the issue the first time one of their ships shrapnel's its own bridge crew to death. Of note, apparently this problem had already taken hold 20 years before TNG, as the Enterprise-C had bridge detonations that killed her captain.
By the time of TNG, the writers had shifted from having a separate helm and navigation station to combining them into a single "CONN" station. The other station at the front on the Galaxy, Sovereign, California, and Luna classes is the primary operations station.
Nx01 Enterprise has a Tactical center apart from the bridge. The Enterprise D onward has a tactical center in engineering. It also seems that Starfleet builds their ships to be completely modular. The secondary bridge or cic is wherever they want it to be, if they want to have one.
You have an episode with time stamp?
@@LoreReloaded enterprise season 3 episode 14. Not sure on the time stamp. There are people on the bridge using the communication system to speak to people in the tactical center. It is specifically called the tactical center. They talk about it several more times in the series. If your asking about TNG just rewatch any number of episodes that the bridge is disabled so they use the main engineering consul to run the ship.
@@LoreReloaded how about a list of Technology the Federation just forgot they have. For example hull playing that defended the nx01 against particle weapons while still allowing transport ion. Or Scotties transwarp beamng. What happened to these game changing techs?
I come from a Navy family and to my understanding modern warships dating back to around the end of WW2 have CIC as the PRIMARY command centre. The bridge serves mostly as a lookout station and a control point for manual navigation. Almost everything is controlled directly from CIC, including maneuvering in certain situations, and unless they're locked out of CIC somehow you wouldn't find the CO on the bridge during an action.
You should design your own bridge how you would want it personally and let us see it! Maybe judge some viewer made bridge designs just for fun!
Here's mine ready for it.
Captain in, guess what, the middle, but a half step down and on a chair that can lock in place or swivil with a flip of a switch. then navigation and helm you guessed it immediately in front of the captain, but using a singular "wavy" patern consol and tileted 20 degrees towards eachother that way they have a ear towards the Captain but are slightly facing eachother to better communicate while the "wavy" patern gives a psuedo cubical effect.
The number two, and either comms or a diplomat/relevant officer station would both be next to the captain with their own mini-consols which can be immediately linked to the primary controls of any station needed, or customized to whatever task they are performing. Off from the sides of these two in a wing patter and angled towards the forward viewscreen but that they always had a ear facining the captain would be two science stations, a dedicated comms, and of course tactical and combat stations, tactcial would manage coordination of all combat elements and multi ship weapons fire and onboard security and even have a phaser immediately ready on their console, where combat would manage just the ship weapon systems and monitoring "ammo" as well as have basic updates from Engineering.
Lastly as a compromise to the circular design the back wall would have Engineering stations along the back wall but also have a position closer to the captain dedicated to relaying information to the captain and to take charge of the officers monitoring Engineering should the captain be unavailable.
Obviously with the exception of the navigation and helm all sections have a little bit of cross command/communication with other sections so the ship while being more crew heavy could theoretically operate either without the captain, effectively operate another ship remotely (say if the Enterprise's bridge got destroyed before everyone moved to the battle bridge), and immediately respond when somehow the impossible happens, and a fuse somehow magically fails to blow itself and instead allows enough energy throw to turn a consol into anti-personel grenade, and they can take over another station without having to physically move to the exploded console.
Oh and a secondary and third viewscreen to the sides of the main which would primarily be meant to hold the last image displayed so to reduce the need to cycle between the two or three images a ship would display and to reduce unnecessary head movements.
What you lose by having windows on a starship's bridge is that the bridge has to be next to the outside of the ship where it is most vulnerable instead of deep within the ship where it is least vulnerable. It might make sense to have windows in an auxiliary control center on the outside of a ship for use if by some extremely unlikely possibility an emergency arises where it is necessary to look out a window because the viewscreen system is inoperable. But with the level of technology that interstellar travel implies, having the main bridge next to the outside of a ship that may need to fight is completely stupid.
Great vid, thank you! Looking forward to you breaking down the Ferengi bridges!
Awesome video lore. It did always bother me that they had people standing on the bridge with how chaotic combat can be just makes no sense unless you are trying to get people killed.
First episode of voyager janeway says brace yourselves and the 1st officer just goes from a spot he can brace himself at to running around the railing to get to his chair spoiler he never makes it and dies
@@neon5162 Basically to be honest unless you have plot armor on any starfleet bridge you are dead.
@ Lore Reloaded: Might want to look into Aluminium oxynitride, it's basically see through metal and has been in use by the military for the bulletproof windows on vehicles for awhile, among other things. A see through material is not advantageous for most purposes though, so cost aside no it's only likely to be used in areas you really want a window to be at, and will also in Star Trek have obvious issues with being vulnerable to lasers, extreme sunlight, and some other types of radiation that, by it's intentional design, can pass through it possibly more than you want in some environments. You can throw some heavy smart tinting and shielding coatings on them sure, but suffice to say I'd take a high end display over one of these windows if that means I can have a purpose built armor plate there instead that while not caring if its transparent, could be designed specifically to protect me from everything out there that I don't want in here...
So sure, put them on some viewing decks and some areas, but be cautious with them, and any case of having a bridge that only got one thin level of metal, transparent or not, between it and the enemies in front of you once the shields fail by any means, it just universally a bad idea. If the bridge can navigate by sending signals to the engines, they can damn well find a way to send and receive signals with some cameras around the hull if nothing else so no the power going down is not a valid excuse in most cases, and you could just have someone run up to an observation deck and report back via comns if the main ship power is out for the decision making elsewhere in the bridge, even if they can't really do anything with no power to anything on the ship for some reason...
Transparent aluminium isn't necessarily as good as deuterium, they don't build starships out of aluminium. That said, I agree windows are useful and probably worth the trade off.
Starfleet ships do sort of have a CIC equivalent. Galaxy, Intrepid, and Defiant class ships have all been shown capable of handling bridge functions from main engineering.
Yes non Starfleet please.
Transparent aluminum is far superior to deuterium for windows… because deuterium is a liquid.
😁
@@patrickstewart3446 In Trek context i think he meant Duranium. it was basic metal alloy used in ship construction.
Yup my bad, I did indeed mean duranium. Deuterium is the matter half of the matter-antimatter reaction used in the warp core, but I think it's a gas rather than liquid. Most of the deuterium on Earth is in the oceans but in Trek they get it from the Bussard scoops in space rather than separating heavy water. That said, they might keep it pressurised.
@@Slavir_Nabru Deuterium is the second isotope of hydrogen, consisting of one proton and one neutron. The third isotope is called tritium, two neutrons and one proton. This is real life as well as Trek. Thus, it will largely be a gas.
The funny thing is, the Starfleet Matter-Antimatter-Drive (Warp Drive) uses Deuterium, why? Because, if you recombine Anti-Hydrogen (one Anti-Proton) with Deuterium (one Proton, one Neutron), you gain the energy from the annihilation (E=mc²) plus the binding energy of the weak nuclear force when releasing the Neutron. Also, funny detail is the Bussard collectors collect Hydrogen from the interstellar medium (which probably is sifted through for Deuterium). The Impulse engines again are Fusion drives; they fuse two Hydrogen atoms into Helium (and push the hot Helium out the back), while other Fusion reactors do exist on the ship that produce energy (in this case, using the heat gained in the Fusion process instead of accelerating the Helium with that energy). So, we can conclude the Starfleet uses essentially one type of fuel, which is renewable to a degree, for powering many systems in different ways with it. How they generate the Anti-Hydrogen they use is not elaborated upon, unfortunately, but I think it is safe to assume it is a renewable resource as well in Trek tech.
@@patrickstewart3446 Jumping Jack Flash
At normal temperature and pressure, it's a gas!😎
I’d like to see some alien bridge breakdowns. Maybe for a bit of contrast you could do a breakdown of what a bridge for an actual commercial ship, cruise ship, or military vessel is and how it does (or doesn’t) translate to what we see in Trek.
Honestly, the most important argument against windows on the bridge is that the bridge should NEVER be in a place where it CAN have windows. It should, along with the CIC and engineering be in the most protected place the ship has.
Sure, there can be a navigational bridge, with science stations and basic controls directly under the hull, with a window, but who the fuck places one of the most important parts of the ship directly where the enemy can fire at it?
Another argument against windows, at least in war ships is the fact that the light coming out from them makes a nice aiming point. Nice of you to show exactly where the crew is at the moment. Makes us killing you soo much easier.
Edit:
About the exploding consoles, seriously, these things are fly by wire. They HAVE to be, otherwise there would be no way that any console could be configured to take over the function of another console.
So if they were designed with a modicum of forethought they should not even be in the vicinity of high energy conductors. So unless the ship designers are just too stupid to understand this basic principle, they are essentially mass murderers that get off of knowing that they killed several dozen star fleet officers.
While I agree with you on all of this, we're talking about a universe where we see explosions on the bridge when there's serious damage to the ship. Obviously in the context of the show this is done to make battles more impactful so they feel like there's actually some risk to the characters, but this would be an absolutely insane design choice in world.
Defiant class sinks the bridge into the hull then surrounded it with additional decking. It means no windows and no weak sports it was also intended to be harder for Borg to cut out
@@matthewcaughey8898 yeah but i was wondering: what if for soem reason the CIC is made inoperable? you'd be blind in space... beside most other Scifi media ( "Science Facts", to quote a movie director, or not ) has them...
At the Excelsior class had something similar to seat belts, which should've been standard on all classes. I do believe the seats for Galaxy Tactical is tucked into the center pillar or a "borrow" from the back wall stations.
In “Yesterday’s Enterprise” the E-D did have a CIC. There is an announcement over the ships speakers for a crewman to report there. It’s one of the scenes in Ten-Forward
I’m the alternate universe there was one.. yea.. the war variant, I wasn’t looking at that episode when I did this. Prime timeline doesn’t appear to have one
Right at the start of Yesterdays Enterprise, there are some announcements playing in the background as Guinan is walking around 10 Forward thinking that something is badly wrong.
One is calling a doctor to report to Cetacean Ops, another instructs an officer (an Ensign?) to report to Combat Information Centre.
Yea, a cic existed in the alternative universe that had Starfleet almost completely destroyed
@@LoreReloadedBetter to use Windows 7 than macOS 💖😊👍
On a US Navy warship, the Captain's chair is the most far left chair with the Execs chair to the far right. Dead center is the helm with the order controls to the immediate right. weapons control is buried in the interior of the ship as is CIC. On the bridge only the Captain and XO have chairs, everyone else stands. While in Battle department heads are in their own separate locations and the XO is an auxiliary con if one exists. The point being that in battle you don't want the line of succession all in the same place. I would love to see something like this in a sci-fi series where they have real military consultants offering real-world layouts. In ST TOS they had fire-control in a separate location but for theatrics moved everything to the bridge. Also, the Chief engineer is not really an engineer, he/she is a department head who runs the engineering department but rarely gets dirty, and in battle is never on the bridge.
In the TNG episode, Brothers. When the bridge is evacuated, Geordie and Wesley are genuinely surprised that they can't access bridge functions like navigation and warp control from Main Engineering. I can't see any reason why other functions wouldn't be accessible from most stations around engineering. Kind of like how your phone screen can display multiple button configurations.
The thing with exploding consoles is this: It is more than once stated that apart from the EPS power grid a seperate grid for the computers exists. The ODN grid. Yes it still would need power, but would it really be necassary to plug the bridge directly into the main eps grid? If starfleet is so big on redunancies, like O'Brien never is tired to remind us off, it actually would make sense to have bridge controls on some kind of independend fusion powered system. If that even would be too much power necassary just to keep the computer controls operational.
In the end the equivalent of an intranet would be all, that's necassary just to control things. The chief engineer is in engineering practically all the time anyways to work the machines, if anything happens anyways.
But I get it. Nothing what we see actually supports this designs posited.
I like the Klingon bridges, with their throne-like, raised Captain's chair able to see all the crew in front of him (because a Klingon would never turn his back on a potential rival).
And Lower Decks just today gave a demonstration on the usefulness of a Window on the bridge.
It's also worth noting that even though the Galaxy-class bridge looks enormous on screen, its footprint is actually only slightly bigger then the bridge of the original Enterprise.
At 0:37 The Excelsior has it's iPod plugged in and ready to blast some beats. Good while it's being towed back to space dock.
As for captain in the middle and the bridge on top design, it feels like that would make a lot of sense as a design aesthetic that no Star Fleet procurement team would allow to change. My take is that military and quasi-military traditions run deep. Star Fleet being mocked for this slavish devote to a clearly goofy reliance would be a good point for Lower Decks to tackle. Same for Klingon's same idea while putting support struts blocking the captain's line of sight (and sound) to important bridge officers even though they would probably have some very elaborate arguments boiling down to "but we've always done it this way" while citing their victories in numerous fights. The flip flopping of clearly present restraints and seats to no visible restraints with some officers standing would be up to design philosophies of the era just like the uniforms because it's not that iconic.
Also Star Trek throws out cannon for hack writing.
18:00 They may look like rocks but I believe it may actually be bits of charred insulation which maybe designed to protect users from direct explosions when the console gets an energy surge.
The Nova bridge is clearly the later Excelsior bridge set.
Same as used for the Excelsior-class USS Righteous in Star Trek: Borg.
They only changed the Conn/Ops consoles and the MSD.
The freedom class ship from beyond can't have existed in the prime timeline from my understanding due to the enterprise series. But feel free to correct me.
From my understanding, the enterprise was the first warp 5 (so after that one) ship. And the federation and by extension Starfleet weren't really a thing until towards the end of enterprise.
On the subject of the rocks:
The rocks could be an emergency heat dissipation system. A substance in the console solidifies, ejects out of the console, and prevents a much, MUCH bigger and more lethal explosion, while spraying (relatively) light, foamy pumice into the air.
Also, some of the walls will spray rocks, and this could also be a part of the same basic idea: the rocks are a ballistic/energy absorber, that is designed to ablate and expand, preventing hull breaches in the bridge. Once again: deadly to ensigns, yet a life-saver to the bridge as a whole.
Also, if we count the novels and Starfleet has Horta as crewmen, they probably view the rocks as popcorn.
could also simply be hard foam insulation or similar material that looks like rocks when it shatters.
About the consoles: Why are they running on the main power system anyway? It's a glorified touch screen, 12 Volt should be ample to feed them. You wouldn't run 1kV trough a TV, would you?
it could be that those ARE the fuses blowing out. we do see crewmembers manning the station right after it went 4th of july in some scenes...
Here's the thing about windows on Star Trek ships: they are not a liability in combat because Federation ships rely on shields for defense. Once those are gone, it doesn't matter if the wall is duranium hull, or transparasteel window, it's unarmored and will be vaporized by the first disruptor blast that hits it.
Also, look at the more combat oriented ships, Defiant class, D7, Jem'Hadar fighters. No windows, lots of armor.
I was amused by the "disco" dome, above the _USS Enterprise_ bridge. Seen above the helm/nav station on the animated series and films.
It can reasonably argued that we do see CIC’s of a sort in some Starfleet vessels. Just somewhat integrated with the bridge itself. For the small Defiant class, the area with the chart table directly behind the Captain is the CIC. (Pay no mind to the holo projector episode). Similarly on the Galaxy class the elevated section behind the Captain is effectively the CIC. Something like the Battle Bridge would not be viewed as a CIC. But the idea that the Captain sits at the nexus between the Maneuvering Bridge and the CIC stations makes sense. In fact given the “in the round” design of the classic TOS bridge, it can almost be argued that the bridge IS the CIC, it just happens to have the helmsmen in it. Everything to the rear of Kirk’s chair, Spock, Uhura, etc, would be CIC tasks and stations.
The CIC’s evolved out of the original early WW2 Radar shacks. Radar screens needed a dark space. The Bridges needed windows to avoid running into things. Command Staff found they were spending more and more time in the Radar and Radio shacks. Which were getting hot and crowded. So the CIC was born. With the Iowa’s and the Essex’s being the first ships designed specifically with purpose built CIC’s. But really the CIC is not the same as the Bridge. The Bridge is for controlling the ship. The CIC is for controlling the fight. On a Flagship the Captain Commands the Bridge, the Admiral Commands the CIC, which may in turn Command many ships. Remember that’s what “Flagship” means. It’s the place where the Admiral very literally hangs his flag. The Ship would fly the Admiral’s flag highest so the fleet knew to look to that ship and only that ship for orders. CIC’s evolved in the Carriers for that purpose. To let the Admiral see the entire picture. What Star Trek has always gotten wrong isn’t CIC’s or Bridges… it’s Admiral’s. The Myth from the movies that Admiral’s don’t pilot ships they pilot desks. Rear Admiral’s command Task Forces of a dozen ships from a Flagship. (Where the Captain is often more of a First Officer to the Admiral’s whims.)
In TNG onwards the closest we seem to see to a CIC appears to be main engineering, used on numerous occasions to take control of the ship if the Bridge is compromised, and constantly staffed.
If the California Class is about identical to the Galaxy, then we must remember that the chairs came out of the walls beneath the consoles, and then could disappear back under the console so you could stand. When I saw the DISCO size, I automatically thought of ST online, where everything looks oversized & pleasantly spacey.
Definitely would like to see alien bridge breakdown. Great video.
Despite inertial dampeners and gravity generators(?), a apece ship needs a way for the crew to strap in. Hell even Irwin Allen understood that in "Smith, Will and the Robot makes 3".
The absence of seat belts (or personal force fields at duty stations), coupled with multi-level bridge designs, and sharp edge consoles ans seating, really transform Stafleet vessels into flying death traps.
Hay so is the battle bridge like the best place on the ship to chill and not be bothered? I think the crew went there in tng only a few times.
The Minbari ships in Babylon 5 have a 360 degree view of everything outside, eliminating the need for the limitations of windows, viewscreens or placing the bridge in a highly vulnerable spot where it can be blown off. Star Trek uses holodecks, which should be able to do this, as well as make all necessary consoles as made by Barclay in "The Nth Degree."
On the Ares studios channel, they have a show on Fridays I believe called starfleet tactical. They have a host on many of the shows that actually served on navy vessels and talked about the CIC on navel vessels. They also go over space combat, etc. Some show are great some need work but is a decetn show hosted by good people.
Firstly, let me say a resounding YES to the idea of a overview of alien bridge layouts.
As to the issue of windows and materials for such - we DO have something similar to transparent aluminum known as ALON, a substance that is, for all intents and purposes, transparent artificial sapphire, and it currently sees use in military vehicles and other places. With the clearly-shown ability to have integrated display systems and optical protection, this could see some use, though I am not sure about its' effectiveness in high-radiation environments (such as space).
On the matter of seats - I've never understood Starfleet's reluctance to include basic restraints on any and every bridge (and other) seat, even if only for emergencies such as combat and/or loss of internal gravity. They've given some nods in the direction of this now and again, but for the most part is seems to have been completely ignored and forgotten.
I think, however, that many of the commentators here have been over this in a fairly comprehensive and thorough manner that makes anything further that I might say rather redundant. Thank you, though, for the series!
On a planet with a atmosphere, a breach in the window isn't opening into the depths of space. Navy submarines can also have windows in some cases, but then they are installed in the sail, which is not a part of the pressure vessel and is flooded during the dive.
Fun fact, transparent aluminum does actually now exist. It's actually being considered for use on the International Space Station, as it's incredibly resilient compared to any form of modern glass.
I think a look at the Klingon ship's bridges would be good, especially since they are a warrior race and expect battle. Another good ship to cover would be the Timeship RelativIty, cause it has such a unique bridge layout.
Constitution class did have an auxiliary control room that could control most of ships functions
I've been waiting for this all day!
Great video! Worth the wait
First Contact also showed the Enterprise doing just fine for half the battle with the Borg with the viewscreen off and the bridge functioning more like a CIC. Even then it shows that the viewscreen on the Sovereign class is a 2-D holographic projection. Pretty cool. Then you have the jem'hadar bridge that has no viewscreen and relies on augmented reality displays worn by the crew.
1:01 Alright, what's a Starfleet officer got to do to get some LUBRICATION around here?
When the vacuum of space is on the other side, I don’t want to trust a force field of a thin piece of glass like object in between me and the vacuum of space. By the time you’re close enough to see something you’re already right on top of it, and you barely see 1% of of the 360 degrees around the ship. Fracture the window your entire bridge crew is dead, power goes out and they’re dead. You want to see a wonderful CIC look to the Battlestars Galatica and Pegasus.
And with the bridge located top center on the saucer section, you can't even see the bottom 75% of your ship to have a sense of how close you are and you end up scraping all the way down the side of space dock like in Galaxy Quest
Hey Lore, not sure if you are messing around but they definitely say transwarp several times throughout the movie.
Including the helmsman in the very clip he showed from Star Trek III ! "... all speeds available, through transwarp..."
haha
However, it is not to assume the term Transwarp used in both cases (Excelsior and Borg) refers to the same technology / fundamentals of operation.
I would love to see more videos on Bridges.
FYI - The window would be useless on a submarine since the control room is never in the bow. There would therefore be limited port/starboard views. For those confused by a CIC being absent from a starship, those capabilities are taken over by the bridge consoles and their main computer connections.
Windows on modern US Navy ships are there for one major reason... docking and close-quarters maneuvering where the MK1 eyeball can be useful. For combat, most engagements will be beyond visual range with missiles.
Okay, so let's just assume that Starfleet uniforms are made of materials that provide some baseline level of protection against flash/flame and shrapnel. But if exploding consoles are a well-known hazard aboard a starship, I can't imagine why officers aren't wearing some sort of protective equipment for their faces and hands.
would like to see a video reviewing the Orville bridge & comparing it to Starfleet bridges.
I've gotta say, I have never thought about it before, but Trek bridges have a hell of a lot of tripping hazards. I mean, crew is blown away from consoles all the time, just think of the OSHA complaints :D
Also there's the fact that in the recent Lower Decks episode they actually had to remove the view screen, and the hull, so they could navigate through sight. A situation that wouldn't happen if they had a goddamn window.
You missed Three classes of ships with similar but different designs. The NX-01, The Intrepid Class and the Defiant Class. All with the navigation in front and ops somewhere to the side or behind the Captain.
You missed the perfect opportunity for the Miranda class to say "Do you know would be useful in this situation? A WINDOW."
Also although I do agree with your points about if your points about windows windows I still believe Is "windows" would never be a standard feature on large military subs. Usually your visibility is no more than 10' in Addition there would be sea slime or barnacle build-up on it which would need to be cleaned regularly. Smaller subs probably would have them standard issue, but not to large missile subs.
But it's not a window, it's transparent metal (aluminum to be exact).
@@mainstreetsaint36 Yes but if you installed a sheet of transparent aluminum in your wall at your house that you could Look through what would you call it?
There's another problem too: Stealth. Military subs aren't just bare metal, they're coated with other materials that interfere with sonar and suppress sound from the sub itself. Granted you can kick that problem down the road and just say "more advanced materials we don't know about yet", but at the very least it's an issue that isn't solved by transparent aluminum or the like.
There is a huge difference between an ocean combat scenario on earth where the action can come down to close quarters with aircraft or missiles coming within visual range and combat in space where the combat ranges out to much greater distances. Also, a broken window on the bridge of a cruiser isn't a disaster on earth, but leads to explosive decompression in space. Finally, the real action during combat on a modern fighting ship takes place in the combat information center deep in the hull. The Enterprise D had one of these, but they rarely used it.