• Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I did some math. Volume of TNG bridge: 480,000 liters. 1 person breathes 8 liters per minute of air. That’s not using up all the oxygen but it’s how much you would use without any oxygen reduction at all.

    480,000 / 8 = 60,000 minutes of air before noticing the air is stale.

    60,000 minutes / 11 crew on the bridge (including Wesley) = over 3 days of no air before they’d even notice that oxygen was lower.

    • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      What about temperature regulation? Lights? Water? Food? It’s not just air that’s “life” support.

      I think entertainment is also included, so TVs, music, etc. that’s all put on the side burner when life support goes down, it’s a large portion of power if you include everything and not just “oxygen”.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        TNG enterprise reactor creates 12.75 billion gigawatts and has a crew of around 1000. For comparison, One World Trade Center uses 110 mega watts for 8,000 people.

        Edit:

        A better comparison is the ISS which uses an absolute maximum of 17kw per astronaut for lights/computers/air/water/heat.

        That’s 17 Megawatts for the Enterprise ~1000 crew?

        So that’s 17 *10^9 / 12.7 *10^18 =

        Life support uses about 1 billionth of the Enterprise’s power.

        Data: Shields are at 10%

        Captain: Transfer life support to shields

        Data: Shields are now at 10.0000001%

      • MonkderDritte@feddit.de
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        6 months ago

        temperature regulation

        Vakuum has no temperature. Maybe a problem close to a star. And that bit against infrared loss…

        You know we have a space station up there?

        • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          What…? Space is incredibly cold unless you have the warmth of a sun to warm you up, so you would always need heat, or AC at any given time. You can shut turn these lower to save power and find and optimal orbit for heat or something, but yeah, temperature regulation in space is crucial.

          • MonkderDritte@feddit.de
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            6 months ago

            Space has no air to transmit temperature. Well, maybe a few atoms of hydrogen and dust every m³ (and they do have about -200°C if i remember right), depending on where you are, but that does nothing. Only way to transmit heath in space is via radiation. You lose a bit of warmth via infrared radiation but i doubt that a crewed spaceship has no insulation. And the 400k liter of air in Enterprise should be an adequate buffer.

            That bit about inszantly freezing in space is Hollywood, same with firey explosions.

            • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              You don’t instantly freeze, but you will freeze since space is incredibly cold, regardless of no atmosphere to transmit temperature. It’s still cold and you need heat to survive in any situation unless you are close enough for radiation from the sun.

              That bit about inszantly freezing in space is Hollywood, same with firey explosions.

              Radiational transfer is still a thing even though conduction transfer can’t happen.

              Why do you think you need to heat AND cool something depending on where you are in space? And if space couldn’t transfer temperature the sun could never warm us, there is obviously more than one way to transfer heat here……

              No one said anything about INSTANTLY feeezing. Try not to be so smarmy while completely missing the point.