2.10 Environmental Systems: Atmospheric System

In brief: Voyager’s environmental support system is extremely reliable and rarely subject to significant problems. This is important to the believability of our ship, but it means that story situations in which the life support systems can credibly fail are relatively infrequent.

More: Voyager maintains breathable air for its crew through the use of two identical atmospheric processing and distribution networks. Each network serves as a backup to the other. A third, reserve system, can provide breathable atmosphere for 24 hours in the unlikely event of failure by both primary systems. Finally, emergency supply modules can provide up to 30 minutes of air, sufficient to allow the crew to evacuate to designated emergency environmental shelters. The Officer’s Mess (Wardroom) and the Bridge are among these shelter areas. Plants and other tailored microorganisms may augment the atmospheric processing systems during periods of power conservation.