2.13 Sensors, Probes, Subspace Radio, Turbolifts & Lifeboats

Sensors

In brief: “Sensors” are an impressive collection of sophisticated scientific instruments which provide much useful information to our crew. In order to avoid cluttering dialog with a battery of confusing technical names, we lump these instruments under the generic term “sensors”. The Enterprise is one of the most advanced scientific research craft in existence and has the most advanced and sophisticated sensors ever built.

More: The Enterprise has a number of sensor arrays located around the hull of the ship. Additionally, there is a main sensor at the front of the engineering hull which continually sweeps far ahead of the ship to detect possible upcoming hazards.

Tricorders: These nifty handheld devices contain a miniature sensor array, giving our crew the ability to detect a wide variety of phenomena.

Probes

In brief: The Enterprise carries a variety of small unmanned instrumented space probes which can be used to return valuable sensor information to the ship. Probes are generally used to find out things about areas which are out of sensor range (inside of a thick dust cloud, for example) or into which one does not wish to take the Enterprise.

Probes are fired from the Photon Torpedo launchers. A variety of probe types are available. Class-One probes are short-range devices which carry the widest range of instrumentation. Class-Three probes are intended for entry into a planet's atmosphere. Class-Eight probes are capable of warp travel and are based on a photon torpedo spaceframe.

Subspace Radio

In brief: A faster-than-light means of communications, necessary because the size of the Federation and of the vast operating range of starships. (Without subspace radio, a starship could warp to a distant planet and back in much less time than it would take to send a conventional radio message).

The speed of subspace radio: Subspace radio propagates at a maximum speed of about Warp 9.9999 (about 100 times faster than maximum warp, 9.6). The key limitation is that this speed falls off dramatically over time as the warp fields decay. This is not a problem within the Federation, as there is a complex network of relays and boosters which keep subspace messages going at near-maximum speed (which allows a message to cross the entire Federation — 10,000 light years — about two weeks). Outside of the Federation, this network does not exist and messages travel much more slowly. It is therefore fairly common for the Enterprise to be several weeks out of touch with the nearest Starbase.

Turbolifts

Turbo-elevators are capable of travelling both vertically and horizontally. Turbolifts connect to nearly every deck and section of the Enterprise. Control of the turbolifts is vocal (“Deck 12, Sickbay, please.”) A network of Jeffries Tubes and ladder wells can also be used for travel between decks when the turbolifts are inoperative.

Lifeboats

Several hundred lifeboat pods are available for use in extreme emergency. These pods would be ejected from small hatches in rows along the ship's exterior. The pods would probably drift, awaiting rescue. (We'll probably never see these in full use, but in a crisis, we might hear an order for all personnel to report to lifeboats.) In a lesser emergency, the captain might give an order for the crew to evacuate to the primary hull and to separate from the engineering hull (assuming that it was the engineering section that was in trouble.)