There’s no wiring on the Enterprises. It’s all broadcast energy from the warp core directly powering whatever passes for chips, and it’s all solid state electronics. This is why, while individual components may fail, you never get situations like, there’s no power to only one lift; or, only the bridge looses power. Nobody crawls into a Jeffries Tube to fix wiring, and they never have bulky tool kits; their equivalent of sonic screwdrivers can either make molecular repairs, or the whole component is swapped out.
Many components are modules with onboard capacitors required for performing their functions; this is why control boards explode so much when the Enterprise takes damage: it’s capacitors discharging. Same for the sparks: rapid (but not complete) discharging for the capacitors causes sparks - it’s a designed safety feature to reduce full-on explosions. Sparks are better than booms.
You never see wiring. Ships fall apart in combat; stations explode; support beams fall on people… but never a mess of dangling wires.
I just made all of that up. I’m sure there’s a complete description of the electronics on Memory Alpha somewhere. But I think there are no fuses because there are no wires.
Could we please get going with this technology?
It at least wasn’t uncommon (not sure about now) for radio stations with towers ontop of or near their buildings to just use the ambient energy for lighting, so it kinda sorta exists – it just probably isn’t a great idea.
Surely if there’s enough ambient energy to light multiple bulbs, there’s also enough ambient energy to cause some serious problems for the radio hosts’ health?
I mean yeah, I doubt this is still widely done.
Power loss is the main issue; I think there’s an inverse square law in there somewhere. But there has been progress in improving that; every do often you hear about some research that’s improved the efficiency of transmission.
Nicola Tesla really believed in this, and pushed it hard. He envisioned giant towers broadcasting out power to communities.
But, to continue with my (again, newly invented head canon): it works in Federation starships because there’s no loss. It’s an closed environment, and they obviously have advanced field technology if they have energy shields, tractor beams, scanners, and transporters. They broadcast power throughout the ship, and as long as you’re in it, you’ve got an essentially infinite supply (on the human scale). No energy is lost, because the ship structure/hull itself re-absorbs any energy not harvested by a receiver, so inefficiency loss is negligible. Leave the ship, whatever tech you have has to have its own power supply, and that can run out.
I believe Tesla tried tried doing this when he was trying to figure out the best way to distribute this new found electricity however it was very difficult controlling where the wireless energy enters the electronic as it would lash out to anything metal or conductive
And yet the Borg have wires; what do they know that we don’t?
The Borg don’t spark, either. I think it’s because they have a lot of on-board electronics that have to run from fairly beefy internal power supplies. Borg units have to function outside of broadcast power range.
Federation phasers, tricorders, things like that are probably mostly solid state with embedded power supplies; the power conduits are probably etched directly into the components at the molecular level. There’s no empty space in a coms badge; it’s all solid tech. Like modern cell phones, only even less componentized. In TOS, they physically modified phasers and such to make them do other things; by the time of TNG, they just reprogram them.
But mainly, the Borg a) have no sense of aesthetics, so they can just cobble together whatever tech without regard for making it look nice, and b) individual Borg are disposable. Wires hanging off to get caught on stuff and ripped out, causing an individual to malfunction or function at reduced efficiency - preventing that is not as important as growth. Borg are fungible, not unique individuals with value. Lose one, another takes its place.
The Federation values individuals, and they want to look damned good while they’re doing their thing. So: streamlined, sleek, compact, safe, and reliable.
All electronic connectors are actually just piped liquid napalm under pressure because it was discovered that it is an excellent electrical conductor. The ship has over 500 kilometers of piped liquid napalm in every part of the ship
Just don’t make any violent ship movements or else a panel will just explode in your face … and spontaneously throw rocks at you.
Most of my Star Trek exposure is from Lemmy. Is this true?
More or less. The power for everything is run through the electro-plasma system, terminating in EPS conduits at every terminal. Plasma IRL is fucking hot.
This bad boy can fit so many plasma leaks
I find it frankly hilarious that all these ships are apparently designed so that damage to just about any part of the ship has a high likelihood of causing a bridge panel, often used by the captain, commanders, and lieutenants, to explode right into the faces of the most important people on the ship.
You would think after reading the 20th captain’s log with variations of “Ensign Ricky died after a bridge panel exploded in his face following minor torpedo damage to Shuttle Bay 3,” Starfleet might consider some redesigns and retrofittings.
So true. Sparks are gonna fly bridge people.
It’s cause they insulate the wiring with a rare compound known as explodium, sourced from the Acme company
This baby has f4ve lights!
Yet it kicked so many asses
I actually laughed out loud. Thank you for sharing.
If you think that’s bad, you should see the flame throwers they installed on the bridge of Discovery.
