I'm arguing with my brother about weapons on warship lifeboats. Would stuff like a pistol be included in the survival equipment of a modern-day warship lifeboat or raft? How about in a fighter plane or bomber that gets shot down?Maybe some of our resident military types can help with this.
We were wondering about not only Trek episodes like "The Sound of Her Voice", and to a lesser extent other episodes like "Waltz" - there are movies like Alien 3 (where having a weapon on the EEV would have helped a lot) or Starship Troopers (whose escape pods had a couple rifles under a convenient hatch). I'm just wondering about the real-world comparisons here.
Mark
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I'm sure a hand phaser would be in a lifeboat survival kit. I'd further that each lifeboat has a small shield generator that could act in concert with other linked lifeboats to provide effective short term defenses from weapons and transporters.
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
Well, the escape pods used on the Intrepid and Defiant class do seem to feature what looks like phaser strips and transport emitters.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
If they've got transporters then they have the necessary equipment to rig sometype of shielding system... however I'd say that the deflector grid would be a much safer better, just supercharge it and there should be some protection from weapons fire.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"If they've got transporters then they have the necessary equipment to rig sometype of shielding system..."
How d'you figure?
Posted by Fleet-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
I don't think lifeboats or ASRV's are equiped with shield generators since they are too small for that type of of technology.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I've never seen anything that mentioned lifeboats having transporters. I also think those small phaser strips would be more for shooting away asteroids and debris from a exploding starship, rather than fighting an enemy starship.
Posted by Intruder1701 (Member # 880) on :
In our lifeboats on my last ship, we had something like 200 of them about 60 people each, we didnt have any sort of weapons, the closest thing we had to a weapon was a flare pistol.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Given their small size I'd say it's likely that most starfleet lifeboats would keep at least a few of the small type-1 phasers. Especially if you consider that a phaser is as much a tool as it is a weapon.
I imagine that the transporters aboard the Defiant/Intrepid escape pods would be very short range and be used to rescue crewmembers who have been caught in a hull breached section during an evacuation (contrary to popular belief, exposure to hard vacuum is not instant death.) or for emergency transport to the surface of a planet if the pod is breaking up during re-entry or too damaged to make the attempt in the first place. It'd have to be relatively short range though, I'd imagine and maybe only capable of transporting one at a time.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
The "phaser as a tool" thing is avalid point. I'd further guess taht a lifeboat can be broken down after landing into some sort of shelter. THey've had a looong time to work lifeboat design to get the most from all the materials in a survival situation.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN:
"If they've got transporters then they have the necessary equipment to rig sometype of shielding system..."
How d'you figure?
Annular Confinement Beam... don't ask me exactly how it would work, but it is a shield type device. And so is a navigational deflector. Either one could be rigged to perform some function similar to a defensive shield. [Note, I don't know if lifepods have transporters, that's why I said if they've got them. TNG TM might have a word to say on if they've got them or not.]
Whether or not we want to justify it, there are systems aboard the small vessels like the shuttles and lifepods that we can't see fitting, but they do. I seriously doubt that there are regular defensive shields aboard a lifepod, but I am more than certain that there is sometype of energy deflection system in the least for the protection from the blast of an exploding ship, small debris, and then certain but limited amounts of radiation--- otherwise lifepods would just be a coffin waiting to be turned into swiss cheese.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
That sounds fair. Of course, you also have people like Worf who can make a workable forcefield out of a COMMUNICATOR, so...
Mark
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Ol'Worf still almost bit it in aKLingon lifeboat though. Of course, their lifeboats probably suck.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: That sounds fair. Of course, you also have people like Worf who can make a workable forcefield out of a COMMUNICATOR, so...
Actually... but before I say something. I feel like I'm the consultant for McGyver or something, explain how all the things are possible...
So here's the explaination on Worf's little thing. If I remember the episode correctly he used a communicator to create a temporary shield. Now the way he went about this I think would have been to increase the power supply [I think his main problem was making a battery right?] and then boosting output. Since a communicator is a miniture subspace transceiver assembly, all Worf had to do was modify the field generator in the transceiver assembly to create a bubble field around him... then presumably because of the right kind of field factors [strength and frequency] the subspace field created by Worf's commmunicator trapped gravitons from the ship's artifical gravity generators, thus creating a deflector screen capable of deflecting the bullet.
Does that make it easy to understand?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
To understand that you're a bullshit generating machine, yes.
It would be simpler to have just said "Worf salvaged components from the pod's damaged syatems as well as his communicator to make the forcefield".
Since this is Worf we're talking about, it's likely O'Brien would have been able to make a small starship from the same materials and the occasional profanity. Scotty would have made a forcefield and a bottle of scotch. Geordi would have somehow broadcast his location to Romulans or the Duras sisters without knowing it. B'Lanna would have died. Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I think you're missing some context here, Jason... Worf created his forcefield in TNG "Fistful of Datas", to defend himself against some safeties-off holobullets. I highly doubt that his concoction would have enough power to stop a phaser blast, but it'd do against bullets for a few seconds as he demonstrated.
Obviously, personal forcefields are not yet practical in TNG, or else at least some of the troops we saw during the Dominion War would have been equipped with them.
Mark
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Oh. I thought he'd rigged something in the escape pod when Ezri went looking for im or something... I always turn off "Fistfull of Datas" when I see it on TV.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Hell, if you've got a whole lifepod screw the communicator [well save for turning it into a great big broadcasting unit], you don't need it to make a personel shield... you've got bigger and better things to deal with.
Then again, it's a Klingon lifepod, which means it worthless even as a lifepod.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
quote: Obviously, personal forcefields are not yet practical in TNG, or else at least some of the troops we saw during the Dominion War would have been equipped with them.
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