Basic overcurrent protection? In my sci-fi?
Next you're gonna tell me you can't just "re-route power" by pressing buttons on a screen and not, you know, actually unhooking any wires!
Building everything to be able to re-route to everything is WHY all the consoles are constantly exploding.
O'Brien constantly breaking good cardassian engineering with infernal federation secondary backups.
Exactly, sure you could have relays or Automatic Transfer Switches like we use from generators. But if you're just slamming more power at stuff than it's meant to use, where's your overcurrent protection?
I don't know about you people, but personally, I always write programs at work by removing boards from my computer and plugging them in a different order.
How do you know the buttons don't trigger relais or the like which then actually unhook the wires?
Judging from what things look like when they open up the walls, they could just be telling the system to use a specific circuit path. It looks like everything is just a bunch of blocks or cards with super dense computer chips on them and half the repairs we ever see are just these being unslotted and replaced. The other half being waving fake tools around.
you can't just "re-route power" by pressing buttons on a screen and not, you know, actually unhooking any wires!
High-voltage switches might be a bit complicated. One I've seen requires you to tighten a spring and then have it released extremely fast to prevent sparking. Still, there should be a way to do it safely, without having to go near or touch the wiring.
wait till they rediscover seatbelts
If bracing for impact is good enough for the Enterprise, it's good enough for my Hyundai.
Everyone else in the minivan:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4d/b2/ee/4db2eedb2235018f827398503423a9ec.jpg
That's what the inertial dampeners are for!
... if they were working
"Inertial dampeners have failed."
Many times someone will say this while the ships is performing combat maneuvers at several hundred kilometers per second.
If that were true, everyone onboard would instantly become "chunky salsa." (Obscure Trek-related quote, for anyone that can place it.)
Have you tried diverting power from life support yet?
Isn't there a joke about that in Nemesis?
Once again I remind you all that these consoles are not powered by a substance as boring as regular electricity. Oh no. It has to be highly energetic tuned plasma...straight to the user interface consoles...for, uh, reasons.
The reason is because the engines produce this material as a waste product. So instead of venting it into space it's processed and funneled back through the ship to power everything from lights to equipment.
Very efficient and very VERY dangerous. Many Vulcans retired from the VSA because Humans pulled shit like this.
All I'm saying is, there's no way this would pass a MIL-STD-882 safety assessment in the twenty first century. So I have no idea how they got their spaceworthiness certificate.
Gotta have a way to effortlessly kill redshirts. Whoops! Another plasma conduit blew out. Poor Gary.
Battle shorting the practice of negating the fuses in a ship or other war machine because a blown fuse disabling a key system could lead to the loss of the whole ship in battle, and the equipment can maybe work over its rated limit for a time when necessary. Cathode Ray Dude did a video about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpJ_6LCly4A
"In a battle or emergency, where the survival of the vessel (or other protected asset) is dependent upon the continued operation of the equipment, it is sometimes wiser to risk equipment damage than have the equipment shut down when it is needed. For example, the electrical drives to elevate and traverse the guns of a combat warship may have "battleshort" fuses, which are simply copper bars of the correct size to fit the fuse holders, as failure to return fire in a combat situation is a greater threat to the ship and crew than damaging or overheating the electrical motors."
Huh. Learn something all the time.
Something can probably be done though with matter synthetiser and teleporters.
If only they had Space OSHA.
That would be so cool a sci-fi adaption of forklift-driver Klaus (warning, a bit gory but hilarious):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYOkZz6Dck
Another problem is about where to redirect the overcharge. In space there is no ground where the current can go. Yet you need to dissipate the energy somewhere.
It's probably grounded to the hull somewhere, put in a couple electric gizmos and feed the power back into your batteries. Now the enemy is charging your ship while they blow it up because you didn't turn on your sheild.
Oh great, now what am I supposed to do with all these extra damage-accentuation rocks?!?
Maybe don't put so many things that can catch fire on the bridge too.
In the 24th Century they discovered that liquid napalm was a highly efficient electrical conductor ... so they used it to wire their ships.
Do we have fuses that can safely dissipate like 350Megajoules? I don't remember which specific episode it was, but I remember on DS9 they were going to overload the warpcore to stop something and someone said the only system on the station capable of absorbing that much raw electrical energy was the shield system, since that's literally what it is; a giant fuse.
Fuses don't dissipate electricity. They pass electricity and then blow when exceeded. Blowing is either flipping off (like your breaker) or breaking (like replaceable fuses). The point of a fuse is to be the weakest link so if a surge occurs it doesn't damage equipment or wiring.
In the case you described, they were looking for a load (where energy is used or dissipated to do work) to absorb that much energy at once. There might be a fuse that could withstand that kind of load; there was wiring that could afterall. But if the shield system could absorb the full power of an overloaded warp core, it might not have needed one if there was no downside to overcharging it.
Do we have fuses that can safely dissipate like 350Megajoules?
A 350 Megajoule fuse oughta do it
that what*
Resettable fuses and circuit breakers!
