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Why is it that in all of Star Trek, when a ship, or even a compartment, loses life support, everyone immediately struggles to breath as if there is no air?

Surely the air hasn't gone anywhere? I think that "life support" in regards to atmosphere would be air filters, pumps and circulation systems. Having them not working is very bad, but the air will still be there.

Contrast the ST view of life-support with the SG:A view, for example the episode "No Man's Land," the Daedalus loses shields and gets hit, disabling the life support system. One of the bridge officers says they're "shallow breathing" and Rodney explains that they have about 20 hours (I think) until they won't be able to breath.

Is the life-support thing just a brain bug that the fans-cum-writers picked up somewhere? Or am I missing something?

You're talking about the franchise where the only time artificial gravity failed was when someone intentionally torpedoed the generators.
They lose heating, lights, air, but artificial gravity is always on (though that particular bit goes for pretty much any TV SciFi franchise I guess).
And given that the 'running out of oxygen' thing cropped up again in SGU I'm inclined to say the people writing those series simply have no idea how life support actually works.

True.

IIRc, one of the TNG books addressed the artificial gravity thing, #39 "Rogue Saucer"

Geordi is trapped in a turbolift that's jammed and decides to break the grav-plating to help him get out. He reflects that everything on Fed starships was designed around gravity being the last thing to go as humanoids are fairly useless in zero-g.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Why is it that in all of Star Trek, when a ship, or even a compartment, loses life support, everyone immediately struggles to breath as if there is no air?

It's not all of Star Trek. TOS Space Seed had the bridge crew persist for hours after the life support had been shut off. In TNG Brothers, the bridge life support system went into reverse and it still took thirty seconds before the bridge became untenable.

That said, you already know the answer. It's cheap, lazy writing.


As for artificial gravity, that's more of a production constraint. It costs money and - more importantly - is time-consuming to successfully portray the illusion of microgravity.

Uraniun235 wrote:

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Why is it that in all of Star Trek, when a ship, or even a compartment, loses life support, everyone immediately struggles to breath as if there is no air?

It's not all of Star Trek. TOS Space Seed had the bridge crew persist for hours after the life support had been shut off.

Nah - I doubt it was that long. I know what you mean, it wasn't instantaneous and a length of time passed (enough for Kirk to make a final log entry), but I believe a relatively short amount of time passed between the scenes. Khan said 'The air should start getting thin now.' And that was shortly after they noticed the life support had been cut off and Khan made his ultimatum. That implies it doesn't take too long for the lack of or malfunction of life support to start becoming noticeable, and for people to start dropping.

Does anyone remember any actual examples of this supposed 'life support goes down and they start gasping immediately' thing? Because I certainly don't.

I cannot remember the name, but the Voyager episode where they put the crew in stasis to avoid some freaky nebula. At the climax, Seven is forced to divert power from stasis pods 1-10 (the command staff, naturally) to the shields or engines I think. She then diverst powers from life support to the stasis pods, and within moments is stuggling to breath and passes out from lack of oxygen.

Isn't the answer obvious? When life support turns off a transporter wheels into action, automatically transporting the oxygen from the affected compartment into the storage tanks.

At least once, the Ent-D lost life support and, after an hour or two maybe, the crew started to (oddly) freeze.

erik_t wrote:At least once, the Ent-D lost life support and, after an hour or two maybe, the crew started to (oddly) freeze.

I believe that was in the episode 'Angel One'. They lost life support and started moving people into rooms to concentrate efforts to stay warm. Why nobody replicated a campfire, I have no idea.

I believe it was actually "The Last Outpost," and it wasn't just life support that the Enterprise lost; an energy draining device on the planet below completely sapped all of the ship's power, taking down the lighting, heating, and every other major system. Apart from antimatter containment, luckily enough.

And wouldn't replicating a campfire actually be a horrendously bad idea under those circumstances? I'd have thought it'd greatly increase the rate at which the oxygen supply was being depleted (assuming it wasn't already too low to even light a fire in the first place).

I'm not sure replicating a campfire would be possible. Replicating the wood, sure, replicating something to light it with, no problem, but replicating a campfire already burning?
Of course, if they have replicators going why can't they simply
a) replicate something not oxygen burning for heating (like anything electrical powered using a battery), or
b) reroute replicator power to life support?

CaptainChewbacca wrote:

erik_t wrote:At least once, the Ent-D lost life support and, after an hour or two maybe, the crew started to (oddly) freeze.

I believe that was in the episode 'Angel One'. They lost life support and started moving people into rooms to concentrate efforts to stay warm. Why nobody replicated a campfire, I have no idea.

You miss the crux of the matter - heat rejection is a most serious issue in real vacuums. Had the coolant pumps failed, in all likelihood the crew would have suffered death by heatstroke. Although the crewman/surface-area ratio is so shockingly low that they might not have thermal concerns either way.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Why nobody replicated a campfire, I have no idea.

Wasn't there an episode where some low-tech refugees tried to start a fire in a cargo hold, then complained that 'lightning had come from the roof and stopped the fire'?

Jawawithagun wrote:Isn't the answer obvious? When life support turns off a transporter wheels into action, automatically transporting the oxygen from the affected compartment into the storage tanks.

It's all virtual holodeck oxygen. When power is diverted from life support it just up and vanishes!

Darth Tedious wrote:

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Why nobody replicated a campfire, I have no idea.

Wasn't there an episode where some low-tech refugees tried to start a fire in a cargo hold, then complained that 'lightning had come from the roof and stopped the fire'?

Yes. The episode was "Up the Long Ladder."

paladin wrote:

Darth Tedious wrote:

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Why nobody replicated a campfire, I have no idea.

Wasn't there an episode where some low-tech refugees tried to start a fire in a cargo hold, then complained that 'lightning had come from the roof and stopped the fire'?

Yes. The episode was "Up the Long Ladder."

Thanks. I remember the plot being the dying cloners needing genetics from the refugees, but I would never have recalled the name.

Just a thought, maybe crew members don't gasp because there's an actual lack of oxygen, but out of panic-
"Life support is shut down?!? ZOMG!!!!" (cue hyperventilating)

The ship has force fields for windows, or E-E did anyway. I figure when they loose life support power the windows slowly start failing and all the air leaks out... or something. Maybe they have a shitload of liquid hydrogen or a similar cold liquid on-board that steals all the heat?

Sea Skimmer wrote:The ship has force fields for windows, or E-E did anyway.

Where?

Gandalf wrote:

Sea Skimmer wrote:The ship has force fields for windows, or E-E did anyway.

Where?

That room where Picard showed Lily Sloane the Earth from orbit to prove they were on a starship (in First Contact).

Darth Tedious wrote:

Gandalf wrote:

Sea Skimmer wrote:The ship has force fields for windows, or E-E did anyway.

Where?

That room where Picard showed Lily Sloane the Earth from orbit to prove they were on a starship (in First Contact).

There was a solid door which slid up to reveal said force fielded vista. You can see it recessed in this screenshot here.

That was a docking port. There's numerous mentions of them in the technical manuals.

Federation starships probably have forcefield emitters built into practically every square metre of their hulls, operating like a multi-redundant network. They can always erect forcefields over a hull breach.

Gandalf wrote:There was a solid door which slid up to reveal said force fielded vista. You can see it recessed in this screenshot here.

That was a docking port. There's numerous mentions of them in the technical manuals.

I'd forgotten about that panel! None the less, I'm pretty sure this was what Sea Skimmer was talking about. I haven't read the tech manuals myself. Docking port, you say? I'll buy it, but is there any mention of why they make their docking ports too short to walk through without bending down?

Darth Tedious wrote:I'd forgotten about that panel! None the less, I'm pretty sure this was what Sea Skimmer was talking about. I haven't read the tech manuals myself. Docking port, you say? I'll buy it, but is there any mention of why they make their docking ports too short to walk through without bending down?

It may have been for things other than people. Maybe they could run some pipes through the gap or something.

With people on the other side it would be like passing supplies up into a truck.

Clearly, I'm grasping at straws.

Gandalf wrote:

Darth Tedious wrote:I'd forgotten about that panel! None the less, I'm pretty sure this was what Sea Skimmer was talking about. I haven't read the tech manuals myself. Docking port, you say? I'll buy it, but is there any mention of why they make their docking ports too short to walk through without bending down?

It may have been for things other than people. Maybe they could run some pipes through the gap or something.

With people on the other side it would be like passing supplies up into a truck.

Clearly, I'm grasping at straws.

I was willing to buy it before, now I'm totally convinced!
Back to the issue of life support, maybe the docking ports all spring open in addition to the forcefields failing?

It's a rich tapestry of things going wrong that combine to acheive the effect we know as 'life support failure'...

I'm sticking with my theory about panic and hyperventilation.