Star Trek's Enterprise: Aft Workstations

Galaxy Class Starship
U.S.S ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-D
Aft Workstations

Science Stations

Science station I and II are the first two aft stations located directly behind the Tactical station on the upper level of the Main Bridge. They are use by bridge personnel to provide realtime scientific data to command personnel. These stations are not assigned full-time technicians, but are available for use as needed.

In some cases, the science station are used by personnel attached to secondary missions including researchers, science officers, mission specialists, and others who need to coordinate operations closely with the bridge. A typical example might be an ongoing study of stellar composition, normally handled down in the stellar spectroscopy lab, but which has occasional periods of large-volume observations better managed from the bridge. Another example would be the control of an automated probe, gathering interstellar dust samples from a hazardous area, later requiring specific ship maneuvers in order to succesfully recover the probe and its samples.

Science I and II are generally configured for independent operation, but can be linked together when two researchers wish to work cooperatively. The aft Science stations have priority links to CONN, Ops, and Tactical. During Alert status, science stations can have priority acces to sensor arrays, if necessary overriding ongoing science department observations and other secondary missions upon approval by the Operations Manager.

The Science I station incorporates an isolinear chip matrix panel that permits specialized mission profile programes to be loaded as needed, and also permits investigators to accumulate data for later study.

Primary functions of Science stations include

The ability to provide access to sensors and interpretive software for primary mission and command intelligence requirements and to supplement Ops in providing realtime scientific data for command decisionmaking support.
The ability to act as a command post for coordination of activities of various science laboratories and other departments, as well as for monitoring of secondary mission status.
The ability to reconfigure and recalibrate sensors systems at a moment's notice for specific command intelligence requirements.

Mission Ops

The third ast station is Mission Ops. This station provide additional support to the Operation Manager, and is specificfically responsible for monitoring activity relating to secondary missions. In doing so, Mission Ops acts as an assistant to the Operations Manager, relieving him/her of responsability for lower-priority tasks that musst be monitored by a human operator.

Mission Ops is responsible for assignment of recources and priorities according to guidelines specified by the Operation Manager and by operating protocols. For example, Ops may determine that a particular research project is to have usage of specific sensor elements, subject to priority usage of those same sensors by the bridge. Although the actual minute-to-minute assignment of resources will be automatically handled by the Ops panel software, Mission Ops will monitor the computer activity to ensure that such computer control does not unduly compromise any mission priorities. This is particularly important during unforeseen situations that may not fall within the parameters of preprogrammed decision-making software.

Mission Ops is responsible for resolving low-level conflicts, but will refer primary mission conflicts to the Operations Manager.

A Mission Ops tech generally serves as relief Operations Manager when the duty Ops officer is away from station.

This station is also responsible for monitoring telemetry from primary mission Away Teams. This inlcudes tricorder data and any other mission-specific instrumentation.

Mission Ops is also responsible for monitoring the activities of secondary missions to anticipate requirements and possible conflicts impact on primary missions in progress, Mission Ops is required to notify the Operations Manager.

During Alert and crisis situations, Mission Ops also assists the Security Officer, providing information on Away Teams and secondary mission operations, with empahsis on possible impact on security concerns.

Environment

The Environmental Systems station permit monitoring and control of the life support systems aboard the Enterprise. Although this station is often unattended due to the highly automated nature of these systems, this station is of crucial importance during crisis and Alert situations.

This station is normally programmed to monitor status and performance for atmosphere, tempeture, gravity, inertial damping, and shielding subsystems. Environment also monitors critical consumables such as oxygen and water. Finally, this station also oversees the function of the various recycling and reprocessing systems that insure a continuous supply of breathable air, water, food, and other consumables. When unattended, this station's programming will alert Ops of any situation requiring crew attention.

During Alert and crisis situations, Environment serves as a deputy Operations Manager, monitoring and allocating life support resources to maximize crew survivability. The Environmental Systems Officer (when required on the bridge) is authorized to initiate Yellow and Red Alert conditions and is responsible for execution of survival scenarios such as evacuation to environmental shelter areas.

Engineering

The Engineering systems monitor duplicates in simplified form the Chief Engineer's primary status displays from Main Engineering. These displays include the warp propulsion system, impulse propulsion system, and related subsystems. The purpose of this station is to permit the Chief Engineer to maintain supervision over engineering system while on the bridge. This is particularly critical during Alert situations that may require the Chief Engineer's presence on the bridge while simultaneously requiring that officer to maintain a close watch over the status of key systems. During most routine Cruise Mode operations, bridge monitoring of these systems is the responsability of the Flight Control Officer and the Operation Manager.

Although this station is normally configured for passive systems status display, priority access by the Chief Engineer or senior staff can provide full control of virtually all engineering systems.

The console is linked to the engineering system through the bridge's dedicated optical data network (ODN) trunks, but an additional measure of redundancy is provided by dedicated optical hardlines, which permit direct control of key systems in the event of major control system failure. In such a case, the main computer cores would be assumed to be unavailable or unreliable, so manual control of systems would be enabled with support from the bridge Engineering subprocessor.

In Full Enable Mode, this station is capable of individually adressing each control and servo device (as well as Engineering command software) in all propulsion systems (subject to safety restrictions), giving the Chief Engineer enormous flexibility to reconfigure system operations in response to unforeseen situations.

This station is normally unattended, except by the Chief Engineer of key Engineering personnel, although most of its displays are readily accessible to both Ops and Conn through their respective control programs.


Copyright © 1997 Tan Ngo-Dang Contact: tangowebmedia@sympatico.ca URL: http://www.tht.net/~tan/ncc1701d/aft_work.htm	Created on 06/29/97 Updated on 12/08/97 Page status: final