I always laugh at how life support represents a huge fraction of power. They can boost shields 20% from life support. Shields that protect them from gigantic weapons.
Meanwhile Apollo 13 astronauts survived for 3 days with no power and a tiny oxygen tank.
Well you have to account for Riker’s “dating” programs running on the Holodeck at all times due to his excessive privilege as an unelected official of the Enterprise. He gets away with it because he deemed it a critical life support system. That alone counts for half of the energy usage of life support.
It’s called life support and not survive support though. Big difference between conserving as much energy as possible vs being able to freely do what you want without thought of concern.
When they were first testing star fleet ships researched realized that everyone was ignoring the icon and text dialog that popped up when a ship was damaged. Exploding consoles assures that the current ship status is addressed in a timely manner.
I did some math. Volume of TNG bridge: 480,000 liters. 1 person breathes 8 liters per minute of air. That’s not using up all the oxygen but it’s how much you would use without any oxygen reduction at all.
480,000 / 8 = 60,000 minutes of air before noticing the air is stale.
60,000 minutes / 11 crew on the bridge (including Wesley) = over 3 days of no air before they’d even notice that oxygen was lower.
What about temperature regulation? Lights? Water? Food? It’s not just air that’s “life” support.
I think entertainment is also included, so TVs, music, etc. that’s all put on the side burner when life support goes down, it’s a large portion of power if you include everything and not just “oxygen”.
TNG enterprise reactor creates 12.75 billion gigawatts and has a crew of around 1000. For comparison, One World Trade Center uses 110 mega watts for 8,000 people.
Edit:
A better comparison is the ISS which uses an absolute maximum of 17kw per astronaut for lights/computers/air/water/heat.
That’s 17 Megawatts for the Enterprise ~1000 crew?
So that’s 17 *10^9 / 12.7 *10^18 =
Life support uses about 1 billionth of the Enterprise’s power.
What…? Space is incredibly cold unless you have the warmth of a sun to warm you up, so you would always need heat, or AC at any given time. You can shut turn these lower to save power and find and optimal orbit for heat or something, but yeah, temperature regulation in space is crucial.
Space has no air to transmit temperature. Well, maybe a few atoms of hydrogen and dust every m³ (and they do have about -200°C if i remember right), depending on where you are, but that does nothing. Only way to transmit heath in space is via radiation. You lose a bit of warmth via infrared radiation but i doubt that a crewed spaceship has no insulation. And the 400k liter of air in Enterprise should be an adequate buffer.
That bit about inszantly freezing in space is Hollywood, same with firey explosions.
You don’t instantly freeze, but you will freeze since space is incredibly cold, regardless of no atmosphere to transmit temperature. It’s still cold and you need heat to survive in any situation unless you are close enough for radiation from the sun.
That bit about inszantly freezing in space is Hollywood, same with firey explosions.
Radiational transfer is still a thing even though conduction transfer can’t happen.
Why do you think you need to heat AND cool something depending on where you are in space? And if space couldn’t transfer temperature the sun could never warm us, there is obviously more than one way to transfer heat here……
No one said anything about INSTANTLY feeezing. Try not to be so smarmy while completely missing the point.
I always laugh at how life support represents a huge fraction of power. They can boost shields 20% from life support. Shields that protect them from gigantic weapons.
Meanwhile Apollo 13 astronauts survived for 3 days with no power and a tiny oxygen tank.
Well you have to account for Riker’s “dating” programs running on the Holodeck at all times due to his excessive privilege as an unelected official of the Enterprise. He gets away with it because he deemed it a critical life support system. That alone counts for half of the energy usage of life support.
All those fires on the bridge every time they get hit use up a lot of oxygen.
Lower oxygen and no fires. Win win.
I blame duct tape engineering on that.
It’s called life support and not survive support though. Big difference between conserving as much energy as possible vs being able to freely do what you want without thought of concern.
I think the bigger issue is that shields can be at 99% after a hit and somehow there’s still sparks shooting out all over the bridge.
When they were first testing star fleet ships researched realized that everyone was ignoring the icon and text dialog that popped up when a ship was damaged. Exploding consoles assures that the current ship status is addressed in a timely manner.
Oh, so the fireworks purposefully added to the consoles is canon?
Star Trek doesn’t have canons. It’s photon tubes.
I insist that Enterprise should have tried some at some point.
Archer: “Open the cannon hatches!”
Malcolm: “I still don’t think that’s–”
Archer: “Shut up, we implemented your annoying red lights, now we’re doing this my way! Open the cannon hatches!”
Crew: Gets sucked out into space
Now I want a mod for Black Flag that changes the ship to the Enterprise.
I did some math. Volume of TNG bridge: 480,000 liters. 1 person breathes 8 liters per minute of air. That’s not using up all the oxygen but it’s how much you would use without any oxygen reduction at all.
480,000 / 8 = 60,000 minutes of air before noticing the air is stale.
60,000 minutes / 11 crew on the bridge (including Wesley) = over 3 days of no air before they’d even notice that oxygen was lower.
What about temperature regulation? Lights? Water? Food? It’s not just air that’s “life” support.
I think entertainment is also included, so TVs, music, etc. that’s all put on the side burner when life support goes down, it’s a large portion of power if you include everything and not just “oxygen”.
TNG enterprise reactor creates 12.75 billion gigawatts and has a crew of around 1000. For comparison, One World Trade Center uses 110 mega watts for 8,000 people.
Edit:
A better comparison is the ISS which uses an absolute maximum of 17kw per astronaut for lights/computers/air/water/heat.
That’s 17 Megawatts for the Enterprise ~1000 crew?
So that’s 17 *10^9 / 12.7 *10^18 =
Life support uses about 1 billionth of the Enterprise’s power.
Data: Shields are at 10%
Captain: Transfer life support to shields
Data: Shields are now at 10.0000001%
Vakuum has no temperature. Maybe a problem close to a star. And that bit against infrared loss…
You know we have a space station up there?
What…? Space is incredibly cold unless you have the warmth of a sun to warm you up, so you would always need heat, or AC at any given time. You can shut turn these lower to save power and find and optimal orbit for heat or something, but yeah, temperature regulation in space is crucial.
Space has no air to transmit temperature. Well, maybe a few atoms of hydrogen and dust every m³ (and they do have about -200°C if i remember right), depending on where you are, but that does nothing. Only way to transmit heath in space is via radiation. You lose a bit of warmth via infrared radiation but i doubt that a crewed spaceship has no insulation. And the 400k liter of air in Enterprise should be an adequate buffer.
That bit about inszantly freezing in space is Hollywood, same with firey explosions.
You don’t instantly freeze, but you will freeze since space is incredibly cold, regardless of no atmosphere to transmit temperature. It’s still cold and you need heat to survive in any situation unless you are close enough for radiation from the sun.
Radiational transfer is still a thing even though conduction transfer can’t happen.
Why do you think you need to heat AND cool something depending on where you are in space? And if space couldn’t transfer temperature the sun could never warm us, there is obviously more than one way to transfer heat here……
No one said anything about INSTANTLY feeezing. Try not to be so smarmy while completely missing the point.
It is also funny how they never shut down the artificial gravity
That would be pricy… For the show producers
I’m guessing the replicators recycling the air and water are part of life support. Apollo 13 used pee bottles, a box of foam and some duct tape.