franchise-star-trek-tng-technical-manual1

3.11 ENGINEERING3.11.1 Engineering aft station panelThe Engineering systems monitor duplicates in simplifiedform the Chief Engineer's primary status displays from MainEngineering. These displays include the warp propulsionsystem, impulse propulsion system, and related subsystems.The purpose of this station is to permit the Chief Engineer tomaintain supervision over engineering systems while on thebridge. This is particularly critical during Alert situations thatmay require the Chief Engineer's presence on the bridgewhile simultaneously requiring that officer to maintain a closewatch over the status of key systems. During most routineCruise Mode operations, bridge monitoring of these systemsis the responsibility of the Flight Control Officer and the OperationsManager.Although this station is normally configured for passivesystems status display, priority access by the Chief Engineeror senior staff can provide full control of virtually all engineeringsystems.The console is linked to the engineering systems throughthe bridge's dedicated optical data network (ODN) trunks, butan additional measure of redundancy is provided by dedicatedoptical hardlines, which permit direct control of keysystems in the event of major control systems failure. In sucha case, the main computer cores would be assumed to beunavailable or unreliable, so manual control of systems wouldbe enabled with support from the bridge Engineering subprocessor.In Full Enable Mode, this station is capable of individuallyaddressing each control and servo device (as well as Engineeringcommand software) in all propulsion systems (subjecttosafety restrictions), giving the Chief Engineer enormousflexibility to reconfigure system operations in response tounforeseen situations.This station is normally unattended, except by the ChiefEngineer or key Engineering personnel, although most of itsdisplays are readily accessible to both Ops and Conn throughtheir respective control programs.3.12 GUIDANCE AND NAVIGATIONCritical to the flight of any vehicle through interstellarspace are the concepts of guidance and navigation. Theseinvolve the ability to control spacecraft motions, to determinethe locations of specific points in three and four dimensions,and to allow the spacecraft to follow safe paths between thosepoints.The theater of operation for the USS Enterprise takes itthrough both known and unknown regions of the Milky Waygalaxy. While the problems of interstellar navigation havebeen well-defined for over two hundred years, navigatingabout this celestial whirlpool, especially at warp velocities, stillrequires the precise orchestration of computers, sensors,active high-energy deflecting devices, and crew decisionmakingabilities.SPACECRAFT GUIDANCEThe attitude and translational control of the USS Enterpriserelative to the surrounding space involves numeroussystems aboard both the Saucer Module and Battle Section.As the starship maneuvers within the volume of the galaxy,the main computers attempt to calculate the location of thespacecraft to a precision of 10 kilometers at sublight, and 100kilometers during warp flight. The subject of velocity isimportant in these discussions, as different sensing and