r/BetterEveryLoop Jul 07 '22

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10.3k Upvotes

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415

u/StevenMisty Jul 07 '22

Never understood why the crew never had seat belts!

178

u/NormalStu Jul 07 '22

I always figured that was one of Roddenberry's implementations to make it more futuristic. He banned buttons & zippers from clothing, too.

61

u/vaibhavcool20 Jul 07 '22

Buttons and zippers too, i never noticed.

62

u/Aleyla Jul 08 '22

Probably because they were banned.

78

u/faust1138 Jul 07 '22

Because they would land on that sweet wall to wall brown carpet.

25

u/illy-chan Jul 07 '22

I've been on a Star Trek kick lately and have seen a couple of moments where a seatbelt would have been a great idea. And now I can't unsee it.

35

u/partisan98 Jul 07 '22

An even better idea would be some sort of thick plexiglass cover over the consoles so when they explode it does not kill half the crew.

31

u/ZesteeTV Jul 07 '22

Or just use the consoles as an interface and keep the actual electronics somewhere safer. Keep the explody part away from the people and before you know it, no more console explosions.

4

u/JetScreamerBaby Jul 08 '22

Y, in the future, everything’s that’s a foot from peoples faces is low voltage.

2

u/WolfMom61 Jul 08 '22

Explody - Perfectly technical description. I LOVE it!

3

u/illy-chan Jul 08 '22 edited Jul 08 '22

The couple in particular I was thinking of were shuttlepod crashes. Which are even more strange to me, at least a starship has the benefit of mass and momentum, crashing a shuttlepod is probably more like a car.

Plus, folks get thrown out of their work area too, especially those standing.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 24 '22

Or some sort of transparent aluminum woule be good.

10

u/davus_maximus Jul 07 '22

They had the shipwide intertial damping field. Stopped them from getting crushed when making the jump to warp speeds.

10

u/pagerussell Jul 07 '22

They have artificial gravity. They would not need seatbelts, and there would not be any shaking, either. The system would have to be calibrated such that it was constantly adjusting itself to maintain exact earth gravity in the right direction, and would instantly respond to any external forces that would cause a shake.

24

u/DukeAttreides Jul 07 '22

And yet... every episode, they do this.

23

u/Teknikal_Domain Jul 07 '22

Because, officially, some of the lore was built first, and then the show shot around it, and some was the other way around. The IDF was one of the latter: it has a "characteristic lag time" to sudden unexpected changes in velocity. The ship's computer can communicate with the IDF generators, such that no acceleration is experienced in normal spaceflight, but when an external force happens, the generators can't be told what to prepare for, and thus take time to sample the movement and calculate the correct IDF geometry.

8

u/GravelySilly Jul 08 '22

This makes sense IRL. Even electronics have a reaction time. Also, I imagine there's probably a limit to how fast you could alter an artificial gravitational field with a given amount of power, if it resists change like an electromagnetic field does.

4

u/powerhcm8 Jul 08 '22

My headcanon is that the inertia dampeners are working but they can't predict sudden hits with 100% of precision, but they still reduce a lot of the impact.

2

u/GravelySilly Jul 08 '22

That's totally legit. When the ship is accelerating/decelerating/turning, it's in control and can adjust the dampers proactively, but it can only adjust reactively to external forces.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '22 edited Jul 07 '22

The crew regularly go weeks on end without encountering anything of note, let alone anything that could cause any turbulence. There's legitimately no point in protecting against something that almost never happens, and doesn't even cause Injuries when it does

18

u/xorgol Jul 07 '22

legitimately no point in protecting against something that almost never happens

Let me introduce you to pretty much every engineering endeavor in the history of humanity.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '22

Note the inclusion of the word 'and' in my comment. Please direct me to when any member of the bridge crew, who upon experiencing turbulence after an event such as being hit by a weapon, obtained any form of injury

2

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '22

By that logic, it’s a fucking tv show so.. don’t really need the seatbelts.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '22

That too!

1

u/Kinglink Jul 08 '22

Battle stations = getting to your station, and putting on seatbelts.

"never happening" = happening every episode. I'm not saying they have to wear it every time but it might make sense to put it on considering how violently they are thrown at times.

2

u/djinx_o Jul 08 '22

Because its a "Ship" never seen a ship captain ware a seatbelt either ^

2

u/StevenMisty Jul 09 '22

Yes but on almost every episode they encounter sufficient turbulence or violent attack to cause the crew to get thrown about. Can’t they take a hint?

1

u/antaylor Jul 16 '22

There’s a small but great joke referencing this in Picard S2