Environmental System Controls
People most associate a ship or station's Environmental Systems with life-support and atmospheric controls, but they also include things like gravity generation and waste recycling. In Starfleet, environmental systems are considered a critical-need and therefore all vessels and stations have redundancy built in. The Galaxy class, for example, has TWO primary atmospheric systems that operate on 96-hour cycles. These are backed up by seven secondary systems and numerous smaller emergency shelters that can be sealed with their own life-support.
Environmental systems are highly automated, limiting the amount of crew needed to run them. Usually they can be operated and watched from a ship's Engineering station. Larger vessels and stations typically have a dedicated station on the bridge, but even then it is only manned during yellow or red-alert situations. Each system, however, does have at least one operating facility aboard where maintenance and Diagnostics are performed. These control rooms also allow for detailed and long-term monitoring. Responsibility for environmental systems is usually shared between Engineering (called environmental engineering), which provides maintenance and modification, and Operations who typically has day-to-day control and observation.
In emergency situations (including combat), Operations personnel manning life support and gravity-generation controls have but one duty: ensure these systems remain working at all costs.
Environmental Systems
- Atmospheric Control/Life-support
- Gravity generation
- Water & Sewage Reclamation
- Solid Waste Recycling
- Matter Replication Recycling
- Hazardous Waste Recycling