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From: ugzannin@sunybcs.UUCP (Adrian Zannin)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: Re: Inconsistency: the doors
Message-ID: <1663@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-May-85 16:47:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.1663
Posted: Mon May 13 16:47:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 16-May-85 04:03:54 EDT
References: <709@ssc-vax.UUCP> <166@ucdavis.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 33

> > Has anybody figured out how those doors work?  Do they have limited 
> > telepathy, somewhat akin to the limited prescience of the Hitchhiker
> > elevators?  The episode that triggered this is "The Naked Time", in which
> > a sobbing Spock enters a room, the door closes and he leans back against
> > it.  Why doesn't it reopen and dump him out into the corridor on his
> > butt?
> > 
> > 					-- Mark A.
> > 					...{uw-beaver|fluke}!ssc-vax!adolph
> In one of the animated episodes, the one where the little guys on the
> planet shrunk everyone, they show that the doors are opened by some sort of
> photoelectric cells starting a couple inches off the ground.  Presumably,
> the cells also stop at some point ... so the door can tell between somebody
> leaning against the top of a door or the lower part of somebody's body
> trying to walk out the door.
> 
> 					Lord Kahless
   Assuming that the dorrs are operated with photoelectric cells, this 
explanation still leaves an inconsistency.  If you take into account the speed
with which the characters walk/run when approaching the doors, the photo-
electric cells would have to be placed a MINIMUM of 5 feet from the door so
that the doors would be activated in time and would be open by the time the
person got to it.  If this is true, then when Spock went to lean against
the door, it should have opened before he even got a change to lean on it.
Also, that would mean that everytime someone walked down a corridor, all the
doors should open and close as he passed by them (even when poor Janice Rand
is taking a shower...thank god for locks!).

-- 
     Adrian Zannin

 ..{burdvax,rocksvax,bbncca,decvax,dual,rocksanne,watmath}!sunybcs!ugzannin
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