Even though Star Trek was on a notable roll of excellence in the early 90s, nobody told the playground bullies. Being made fun of for constantly talking about Star Trek isn’t something I’m bitter about at all, mostly because, in the end, I proved to be an early adopter of what everyone would soon realize is possibly the greatest thing EVER.
But, I still remember a few teary moments when I wanted to be beamed up by Scotty, Chief O’Brien, or whoever-was-running the beaming on Deep Space Nine—and that’s because I wanted to escape and be accepted and nurtured by all the nice Star Trek people. And even as an adult, I still have teary moments, and occasionally find myself wordlessly whispering that I want to be “beamed up,” to be saved from it all.
Until the terrible epiphany hit me recently. Actually living on the Enterprise would be really depressing.
It doesn’t even really matter which Enterprise we’re talking about, because all of them have the same creepy problems, but it mostly applies to the Next Generation crew, since we saw the most of them over the years.
Let’s start with light. Think about what you look for when you’re shopping for a new apartment/house. GOOD LIGHT. None of that applies to living on the Enterprise. It doesn’t matter if your apartment has as window on Star Trek, because that window always looks out into outer space. It’s night all the time and you’ll get super depressed. Have you ever lived in an apartment without a window, or a room where the window faces a brick wall? Yeah. That’s what having quarters on Deck Whatever Section Who Cares would be like. Exponentially depressing.
And this isn’t just my anecdotal experience of living in a few tricky New York apartments, real science backs me up here. In this jam over on Scientific America from 2008, a bunch of rats were deprived of light and essentially turned out BRAIN DAMAGED. Now, I’m not sure how brain damaged a regular rat is, but if critters that go around eating garbage can get even more depressed than they already are, just imagine what would happen to super-enlightened Captain Picard.
Sure, we’re told in numerous versions of Star Trek that the Enterprise has simulated nights and days, and yet we don’t see any nifty holographic fake suns rising in their rooms or anything. It’s always creepy nighttime or weird light from whatever wacko nebula they’re hanging out near. In the Next Generation era, they’ve got awesome holographic technology, but we never see people sleeping on the holodeck, waking up to simulated sunrises. Instead, every night, Kirk, Spock, Riker, Picard, and sure, Neelix, get tucked into their dark, dark rooms and awake in total darkness. All of these people are probably certifiably crazy. Like, insane.
When we couple this with the super-small dating pool on a starship, the predicament gets really bad. Trek expert and generally awesome guy, Keith DeCandido mentions frequently the hilarious sexual repression pervading Starfleet, and I fear it’s much worse than he thinks. Everytime we see a Starship crew going on vacation of any kind it’s a borderline sex-romp. From TOS’s “Shore Leave,” to TNG’s “Justice” and “Captain’s Holiday,” to DS9’s “Let He Who is Without Sin,” Star Trek people are mega-horny when they get out in the daylight and off the ship.
And poor Wesley Crusher! His hormones are literally raging in a dark, beige world in which there are no fellow teenagers to go neck with on the weekends. If Back to the Future’s Marty McFly were put in the same physical environment as these jokers, he might be just as clueless about sex as poor Wes. Am I accusing Beverly Crusher of a weird kind of child abuse? Yes. Is it her fault? Not really, because as I mentioned, she’s probably 100% crazy because of lack of light and zero sex.
In the real world, the concern of “cabin fever” isn’t just limited to the catchy Muppets song. Back in 2007, the European Space Agency called for applicants to hang out in an isolation tank for 17 months right here on Earth in order to prep for a Mars mission. In 2009, NASA’s Human Research report was similary concerned about people being cooped would start to make all sorts of errors and become mega-space cranky. Funnily enough, the above article on Discovery.com even suggests the need for a Deanna Troi on these missions.
In the Star Trek world, where people have been traveling in space for years and years, I guess we have to assume they go through some sort of program similar to being put in an isolation tank prior to being allowed to do the whole starship thing. But, for us, getting beamed up right now, it seems totally inconceivable. I suppose after centuries of space travel, humans (and humannoids) could evolve to not need regular light every day, but personally, I’m not sure I want to live in that world.
Maybe this is why everyone on Deep Space Nine seems to be having a better time than any version of the Enterprise. DS9 acknowledges people need restaurants, distractions, open spaces so they don’t go totally crazy. And yet, when did Deep Space Nine start to feel more like “real Star Trek?” That would be when they got the Defiant, a tiny, cramped tin-can with probably like two windows. YES. Back to being super depressed! Famously, the most cranky and sexually repressed person in all of Star Trek—Worf—SLEEPS on the Defiant even when he doesn’t need to. Do we need anymore evidence about how insane all these people truly are?
There is also a conspicuous lack of anti-depressant meds in Star Trek. Other than hyposprays full-off-god-knows-what to wake people up, it seems like it’s all organic vitamins and stuff on the Enterprise. I mean, we know Star Trek people love their caffeine, it doesn’t seem like they take any drugs which actually relax them. It’s actually mildly shocking Counselor Troi doesn’t just pass out from sensing all the anxious emotions being projected at her from over 1,000 people who are getting poor sleep, too much caffeine and zero sex. In this way, the most realistic episode of all of Star Trek is “Night Terrors,” in which the whole crew goes apeshit due to lack of dreaming. Nice try Star Trek, nice try. If you really lived on the Enterprise it would be “Night Terrors” EVERY night.
So, the next time you’re getting nostalgic for that utopian enlightened vision of the future, and say to yourself that you’d like to be “beamed up,” go ahead and do it. Have them beam you up.
Just make sure to get dropped off on a real planet right away.
Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com and still wants to get beamed up no matter what he just wrote.
Amusing, but I must respectfully disagree! There are a TON of stars in space. Just because we can’t see them from earth doesn’t mean they can’t see them in space. Just look at the hubble site:
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/ In fact, I think I might actually be pulling my shades in order to sleep.
Also, the bridge of the Enterprise D resembles a cocktail lounge. If nobody went crazy from being on a Soyuz (amazingly, still in use), then I think all manner of folks would be fine on the cruise ship that is the Enterprise.
Everytime we see a Starship crew going on vacation of any kind it’s a
borderline sex-romp. From TOS’s “Shore Leave,” to TNG’s “Justice” and “Captain’s Holiday,” to DS9’s “Let He Who is Without Sin,” Star Trek people are mega-horny when they get out in the daylight and off the ship.
Yet, the married ones have their families aboard, there are nurseries and schools for children. But none of the main characters in TOS or TNG were married, so maybe THAT’S why.
Voyager seemed to be a bit better about these things, from what I recall of the first two years.
Lighting is a problem totally fixable with technology. The issue is that we have these “warm” light bulbs that mean “fake light which we will pretend is totally like a camp fire.” A lot of my winter time blues went away when I switched to full spectrum lighting.
I think the sex thing is pretty good actually. In todays military, they’re unable to do even that so when they get off base it’s all watch out ladies and put on the rubbers! (Hopefully). But at least they’re able to boink at least a little on the Enterprise. So that’s actually an imporvement.
Nah. I’m not buying it. Lack of sunlight could easily be dealt with through UV-lamps or something. Or you could just eat vitamin D. And looking out of your window and seeing “space”? That’s be totally awesome. Not to mention getting to land on foreign worlds every now and then.
Lack of sex… Who knows what people do on the holodeck when we’re not looking?
And I’d hope that psychotherapy has evolved beyond solving problems by prescribing pills for everything in the future.
See Generations. When the ship is in a star system, the sunlight would come through the windows. You wouldn’t have blue sky, but the light could be quite bright.
And there are other teens on the Enterprise-D. We saw Wesley with friends from time to time in the first season. It’s just that in later seasons, the producers downplayed the civilian scientists and family members who were supposed to make up a large percentage of the crew. The idea behind the Galaxy class was to be a cross between a university village and a luxury liner, a comfortable and stimulating living environment that could sustain a largely civilian community for 15 years at a time. Unfortunately the producers quickly forgot that and mostly ignored everything beyond the command crew and the main sets.
Regarding anti-depressants: What do you think is in the food? When pretty much everybody eats a diet completely controlled by a computer, you wouldn’t have to bother with pills anymore (and thereby also avoid people forgetting to take their pills).
LMAO!
Either that, or Guinan spikes the drinks in Ten Forward. And what is “synthehol,” anyway?
@@.-@ MattHamilton,
As someone who spent 24 years in the military and still works on a military base after retiring, I have to wonder which military you’re looking at. The military I see every day has lots of sex going on, even when they’re deployed. You can’t stop it, you can only make it harder to get.
Lights — easily fixed with full spectrum lighting and timers in the bedrooms.
(A more serious problem is that 95% of the crew quarters won’t have any windows, being in the interior volume. Which is the safer place to be, considering the ship is getting shot at 10-20 times a year.)
Sex — for issues like harassment, favoritism, and chain of command, there are very few people on board that the command crew can mess around with. The lower decks people are probably going at it like rabbits. (cf. Heinlein’s assessment of the sex drive of highly intelligent, highly motivated people in stressful environments — although there might be some Mary Sue-ism in there. And the 24th century’s most important Nobel prize went to the person who invented self-cleaning holodecks.)
The real problem aboard the Enterprise is PTSD. Seriously, every 2 weeks or so the ship is wracked with crisis, some junior officers die, the bulkhead across the corridor from your quarters gets blown out into space, etc. Imagine two civilian botanists with no particular command responsibilities on a date in the observation lounge, when suddenly 2 Romulan D type warbirds decloak off the bow, then 2 Klingon birds of prey decloak off the stern. (It’s not likely Picard would tell the civilians he’s violating the Neutral Zone.)
I could do without lighting. Go to a quick walk in the holodeck for a few minutes, back-brain gets its allotted amount of “outside” time, problem solved.
But I’d still go crazy… of boredom. Because THERE IS NO TV. and no radio, cinema, internet, and no new music. and only one video game which is a. stupid. b. so addictive it will kill you. Actually there seems to be no new art/media at all, and by “new” I mean “created in the last 200 years”. Oh wait, there’s 3D chess. whoop-de-doo.
All they have is classical music and plays and you have to participate in the plays. Holodeck? After a day working in deck -13 swabbing dilithium filters I don’t want to have to have simulated activities in which I have to think and walk and run and will probably die due to a malfunction, I just want to plop down on the sofa and watch a show. Only in front of the sofa there’s no TV, just scale models of past Enterprises.
Personally, I’d be very surprised if the windows (at least on the Enterprise-D and -E) weren’t programmable to show a variety of different landscape scenes. From what we saw on the show, the windows didn’t even have shades, or any other method of darkening them for sleep. So I have to assume that was just “TV license,” a way of continually reminding viewers that “this is a spaceship, in space,” just like the constant engine hum in the background. (I find that noise quite soothing, as it happens, but my cat hates it; she leaves the room if I try to watch TNG.)
I am not worried so much about the sex thing (never seemed to stop Kirk from nailing everything that moved that even mimiced the appearance of a female human). I would be more worried about mass carnage carried out by a disgruntled crewman who was just issued a red shirt and felt s/he had nothing left to lose…
Keep in mind, that for all Kirk’s reputation, he only nailed 2 women in the entire TOS and both of those were a matter of necessity.
@14: I do remember a TNG episode showing that there was a way to darken the viewport above someone’s bed, but I don’t remember what episode it was.
I’m sure there are yummy sugary breakfast cereals there.
(I hope that was real, just for the snark possibilities…)
@10, that’s kind of what I mean. It may be harder to get or something in our military now, but on the Enterprise, so long as it doesn’t interefere with your duties, it is not discouraged. In fact, it’s kind of encouraged for the people to have famililal attachments. So, yeah, thanks for proving my point.
A starship is like a submarine… the size of the Queen Mary. If modern submariners can go for weeks to months on a sub without cracking up, I can’t see how Starfleeters on a cruise-ship-sized craft, with superior full-spectrum lighting, lots of activities and people to interact with, and holodecks and bars, would have a problem staying on that ship for years.
@20
Exactly. I think the trope is called Space is an Ocean. Roddenbery liked to compare the Enterprise with a submarine. He even went too far with it, with some analogies that don’t actually work in space appearing in episodes.
The difficulty of having the same amount of people living in crammed space is something the navy of most countries understand. The longest submarine voyage, I think, is 11 months, while people used to serve in the same ship on voyages far away from home for more than three years back in the days of Magellan. That’s why they had so much corporal punishments, to maintain discipline in this difficult environment. Probably Starfleet uses better methods, like constant Troy counseling, to accomplish that.
@20, Submarines surface, often.
LOL, uh oh, I think this is the Star Trek version of the ‘Everybody in Star Wars is illiterate’ ;) I will attempt to take this in the spirit of humor it was written in ;)
I always assumed that the light issue was handled using the same kind of lights people use for things like SAD, and that they had cycles of lighting.
As for sex, I didn’t really get the impression that they were that repressed at all – there seemed to be various relationships and families on board. That said, I have a pretty low tolerance for the idea that celibacy = crazy.
I think you’re missing the point that Starfleet is not a bunch of grunts shanghaied in from poverty stricken backwaters to be phaser fodder, these are highly motivated, highly intelligent people pursuing a vocation. They are not there on the promise of a steady pay packet and the possibility of future higher education. And while they are in many ways militaristic, they are predominantly scientific, seekers after knowledge. They are explorers. So colouring Star Trek with our mundane concerns may be amusing, but it isn’t accurate.
Reading this brought back those days spent in gray metal compartments courtesy of Uncle Sam. A running joke (repeat, joke) was that inmates at the state pen lived better. The curious can search online for Simulate Navy (or Shipboard) Life at Home. These have grown over the years from 10 items to 60.
Surface ships have sunlight available, but generally one is too busy or tired. Corridors and common spaces have lights dimmed, and berthing areas are lights out (and supposedly quiet) after a certain hour. Workspaces are well lit, and watch rotation does not help maintain sanity.
Sex definitely happens; I recall a not insignificant number of female sailors on deployment would get pregnant- and then get to go home early for shore duty.
Aeryl @22- No, they don’t. Especially ballistic missile submarines. They leave home, submerge, and surface 6 months later (USN practice) when returning to port.
Yep, modern subs stay under pretty much continuously, and even on the surface, only a handful of folks get any exposure to the outdoors, and never for that long. Ryan, the conditions you described sound pretty much like the conditions on most warships today, even those that sail on the surface, and unless you want to make the case that this has made sailors bonkers for years, I think you need to re-think your hypothesis.
Obviously you’ve managed to regress those memories of Sub Rosa better than I have…
OK, ships in TNG have counselors. And Troi is supposedly a good one.
But who counsels her?
@28: Guinan, apparently.
I think I’d be depressed by the clothes and seeming lack of fashion sense. True, Tasha does compliment Troy on her wardrobe in “The Naked Now”, but even the casual attire is unappealing (Wesley’s ghastly jumper in “Where No One Has Gone Before”, for example).
I’ve noticed that in TNG all (or almost all) bed scenes (character in bed sleeping or trying to sleep) have the room faintly illuminated by a kind of night-light. Makes sense for a visual show. Neeliz did decide to replicate curtains when Voyager was stuck in a void in “Night”. I’d definitely want curtains. After all, you never know who is out there looking in!
If on the TNG Enterprise, I’d miss trees and green fields, So, the hollodeck would suffice for that. I am always amused, in TNG, that there’s always an empty holodeck when one of the senior staff, Geordie for example, wants one. With a ship of this size, I’d expect them to be in constant demand.
Wesley does have some interaction with teens of his age. He’s seen with them at the end of “Evolution” in Ten Forward. He also has an embarrassingly accurate early romance full of, in my opinion, well-observed teenage angst with the girl in “The Dauphin”. Plus, I think it is not rude to assume he had a bit of fun with Ashley judd in “The Game”. Riker has at least one flirtatious moment in Ten Forward in “Pen Pals” with a Star Fleet brunette. Data, of course, has his relationship with Jenna in “In Theory” and its seems clear he has sex with Tasha in “The Naked Now”. Also, although there are not many inter-crew romances, Troy and Crusher (and Riker) all have romances with off-ship folks. So, I don’t worry too much that life on board the TNG Enterprise would be celibate. Nothing wrong with celibacy anyway. I think sex on the TNG Enterprise, anyway, is a happening thing. Then, of course, there is poor Geordie whose hopeless search for love underpins at least three episodes (remember the holo-date with Christie at the start of “Booby Trap”?).
I think we have to assume that recreational facilities on The Enterprise are more extensive than what we see (Crusher’s drama group, Mozart concerts with Data, and a few sports moments – Picard fencing, for example). Also, presumably they have movie evenings as in “Voyager”. I seem to remember reasing, somewhere years ago, that the idea about TV is that humans have gone beyond such trivial entertainment, so TV is no longer a valid for of entertainment because everyone on board the Enterprise is trying to “better themselves”. Not convinced anyway.
Of course, The Enterprise has a huge computer so there would be plenty of things to read. Presumably the computer has all films ever made etc, all TV shows and so on.
However, I do entirely agree with the thought in the aritcle that entertainment has not prgressed by the 24th century and appears to be more dull than what we have now.
Look, the wet navies figured this out long ago, and a space navy will have also. Drills. Physical training. Studying to pass the exams for the next grade. And of course, nothing is ever clean enough to make a petty officer really happy. No one believes in “idle hands are the devil’s playground” like a navy believes. One of the least realistic things about the federation navy is how little attention the officers pay to keeping the ship’s personnel busy.
@31: Actually, I’ve always felt that the lack of robots and automation in Starfleet can be best explained as a way of keeping the crew busy and active by requiring them to do things that could easily be automated.
@31, Wonders of space travel, you don’t need anyone chipping paint.
@32: Yes, besides making sure the crew isn’t helpless when something breaks down, by making everything crew-repairable-as-needed.
If anything, I think living in Star Trek world would drive me insane due to the fact that there seem to be so many ways to create a fake reality and fake memories and fake people…I think I’d just go nuts and constantly doubt my own reality and history! I’d end up neurotic like Barclay ;)
Let me make some observations…
Just because the Enterprise is in space, doesn’t mean it’s dark outside. Sure, space outside is dark, but if the Enterprise is close to a sun (like say if it’s orbiting a class M planet, the exterior windows are likely to get plenty of sunlight. And the views would be damned pretty.
Second, the Enterprise-D has some awesome amenities. Of course, there’s the holodecks. Game, set and match. On top of that, there’s the arboretum if you want some place with green and growing things. Also, one of the areas of the Enterprise-D that never made it onscreen, because it was way too big, was the mall! It’s in the forward section of the saucer, it’s several decks high. It’s not a shopping mall, it’s more of a mall in the sense that the Washington Mall is a mall. It’s a big, brightly lit open space on the ship, with plants and grottos and gazebos and such – if Paramount gave Roddenberry the budget to make the set, it’d probably be the social center of the ship.
I’d agree that the sex life aboard a starship in deep space would be pretty bent, especially for Wesley Crusher. I think Wesley did have a few other kids to play with, though I don’t know if he had any eligible teenage females that he could get action with. It’d be like living in a podunk small town, hundreds of miles from the nearest real city. And yeah, the Enterprise was pretty much the Love Boat, when the crew didn’t jump at the chance to get shore leave and get laid on Ryssa.
For the Defiant, probably the best modern-day equivalent would be a nuclear submarine on a months-long cruise under the ocean. Cramped, utilitarian quarters – several dozen men living in a space about the size of a 4 bedroom house. No sunlight or windows, metal and machinery packed into every available square inch.
@36: What’s your source for the Enterprise-D’s “mall”? I thought I knew the ship pretty well and had all the major reference sources about it, but I can’t recall having heard of that. I know there was supposed to be a large, spacious arboretum under that big rectangular array of blue-lit windows on the top rear of the saucer, although the TNG Blueprints forgot to include it on the interior plans.
The light thing is easily solved. That is what Shore Leave is for after all. That is why the Big E pitched up around the planet of the week half the time, and why on landing parties we’d sometimes bring down a the second in command of engineering to search for plants (okay, that was on Voyager, but still) and other people who were not technically essential to the landing party. So they would get their quota of planetside time to ward off the crazy. In many ways that is what the submarine service has done ever since its inception.
@@@@@ #31 and 32: In “Up the Long Ladder”, Riker tells a civilian colonist on board at the moment that the Enterprise cleans itself.
It’s important to remember that the 24th century humans of the ST universe are not like 20th century ones psychologically. They’re much more emotionally stable and secure because they’ve been raised that way from birth. That and a good understanding of how to use compensatory technology overcome at least some of the propblems described in the article.
Think of it this way… Let’s compare the USS Enterprise D (Star Trek) to the now decommissioned USS Enterprise (US Navy Aircraft Carrier). Star Trek has a general crew compliment set around 1000 (give or take), the Navy ship had a crew compliment of around 4600 (If my math is right, just the living space in star trek in roughly seven times the size of the entire square footage of the Navy ship). Both crews had members coming and going, some spending years on the ship, aside from brief shore leave. Star Trek depicted crew quarters that were capacious with individual beds, bathrooms, and living spaces, while the Navy ship had shared bunks and bathrooms that changed ownership and occupation per shift. Star Trek crew members had access to holodecks, the entire library database of the Federation, and replicators. The Navy crew may have had group television, access to some books or the internet, and the mess hall. The monotony of space is directly analogous to the monotony of the open ocean. Some people couldn’t dream of living life without either of these things. Lighting was adjustable in one’s quarters in Star Trek. Navy lighting is standardized. As for sex, shore leave is shore leave. If sex isn’t your primary objective, life on a starship would be luxurious (not that you couldn’t “get some” from time to time). So if asked to make a choice between a) exploring space on a luxurious Starship with low lighting, advanced technology, and some time between romantic encounters and b) living on Earth with either the option to live on dry land or the seas, a) would be my first choice every time. I must admit that the article was pretty thought provoking though.
Keep in mind, it was a TV show, which limits what could be shown. Also, who wants to watch people doing normal stuff for an hour. The show focused on a small number of the crew. Just because it wasn’t shown, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist or happen. Look at how a modern aircraft carrier works, as well as cruise liners.
aircraft carriers closely resemble a city at sea in concept and scope. A Nimitz carrier holds just under six thousand crewmen and is over a fifth of a mile long. An aircraft carrier could be considered a city at sea whose primary resource or function is that of an aircraft maintenance, supply and launching center which moves about the globe fulfilling its function where it is most needed while stopping occasionally for resupply. They have rec rooms/dining rooms even small movie theaters and ii access for personal PCs etc. Combine that with the world’s largest cruise liners equipped to hold thousands of people, with all the amenities of modern life – including shopping malls, ice rinks, radio and television stations and wedding chapels. Two such ships combined would still be smaller then a galaxy class ship. Hll, a carrier is almost as big as a single nacel on the Ent D Plus, I’d wager, seeing how computers, blu ray and game systems have developed, I’m sure in 400 years we’ll be past wHat was imagined in STNG. I’d do it. And people will screw whenever and however they can manage.
I think that a bit of a journey into history would find that there are some analogies to the level of isolation seen in the Enterprise, like the history of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic era, where some ships remained at sea for over a year, multi-year voyages during the whale fisheries before the American Civil War, Shackleton’s voyages and similar voyages of exploration, etc. Some large merchant ships — which will have crews of fewer than 50 — have voyages that are several months long, then turnaround in a few hours.
Also, navies have had centuries of experience in learning how to keep their crews from getting too close to terminal cabin fever. One method is 100+ hour work weeks (fairly typical for an officer on a USN warship; my source for this is conversation with people who were officers on USN warships). An anecdote: a friend was an officer and plank owner on a USN frigate. The ship was delivered with the brass items very carefully lacquered, which meant that they need not be polished. The first thing the Navy did when the ship was delivered was to remove all that lacquer, so the brasswork needed polishing.
And, as mentioned above, the crewmen on USN submarines don’t get to look outside for several months. Nor, do I believe, do significant numbers of the crew of an aircraft carrier get to the fresh air and sunshine on the flight deck.
Sorry, but the level of isolation has been dealt with by humans before. As for dating and hormones? It’s called self-discipline. Sex isn’t a necessity.
@22 Aeryl:
No, they don’t. USN ballistic missile submarines submerge as soon as possible after leaving port and don’t surface until the end of their 90 day cruise USN attack boats may surface once in a while, but if you look at them, there’s no place for anybody to stand. Except for a few watchstanders on the sail, nobody will see outside. When a submarine surfaces, it’s an easy target, and the next time it submerges may be the last.
“….It’s night all the time and you’ll get super depressed……..” May or may not get super depressed but just as the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas – mostly because of the low humidity – the stars in vacuum are brighter than the stars at 30,000 feet and that’s pretty bright.
Far enough south to pick up the Southern Cross the Milky Way is downright impressive.
That said I doubt any direct view surfaces could withstand micro-meteorites for long. Maybe the deflector is that good. Boeing has considered putting the flight deck well back from the nose on a high speed civil transport and relying on simulated views for the flight crew – this avoids the tilting nose on the Concorde and the difficulty of level flight without view of the ground with the B70.
War patrols the U-boats recharging on the surface would rotate people, mostly to smoke, but tensions did run high. I suspect the Star Trek ships would have some form of steel beach with EVA if only on the outside tetherball style games. Then again I was never clear on the warp capacity of the various shuttles -maybe it varied with the episode – but I suspect people who just had to get away did.
I think it would be worthwhile for Ryan to write a follow-on to this article after reading some naval and maritime history and communicating with some current mariners, especially those of the USN, which probably has the longest deployments, but also those of the RN and those who crew the super-large containerships and supertankers.
A lot of the Enterprise is left unseen. Keep in mind this was to be originally conceived as a multi generational ship. On a 20 to 30 year mission. Ed Whitefire’s original deck-plans for the ship included a massive 5 deck Mall referred to as the Grotto. Under the large widows at the rear of the Saucer was a Casino under one and another massive Lounge under the other. Down the back of the neck was a large open multi level lounge with a waterfall. The Residential areas of the Saucer was referred to as Port Town and Starboard Town. with Educational facilities and massive open hydroponic and botanical gardens, all centered around the Mall. The Saucer section is basically a mobile Starbase / City with everything a Military Family could want. Now the Stardrive section except for the Waterfall Lounge was all business.
@45, sounds cool. A large crew compliment with multiple age groups would need a variety of gathering places and watering holes