Blue Alert (Star Trek)
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Blue Alert is used on starships in the Star Trek fictional universe that have the ability to land and take off from planetary bodies.
When a Blue Alert is called, a number of procedures are performed. Before entering a celestial body's atmosphere, the warp drive is shut down, plasma in the nacelles is vented overboard and Structural integrity fields are set on high. Loose articles are secured and the crew is informed to standby.
Blue Alert is a recent addition to Star Trek. During the Star Trek series in the 1960s, special effects were not available to allow the Enterprise to land. By the time of the Star Trek: Voyager series, special effects had reached the point where the Voyager could occasionally land on a planet and then take off. While some technical drawings of the Defiant class starship showed landing gear, the Defiant was never seen landing on a planetary body.
Before that, a Galaxy class saucer section that had detached from the stardrive section could survive a de-orbit burn and crash land on the surface on the planet if it was disabled while in orbit. However, the landing was such that the saucer section would be a total loss. This was seen for the first time in the film Star Trek: Generations, when the saucer section of the Enterprise-D crash landed on Veridian III.
According to the Star Trek: TNG Technical Manual, a powered saucer section landing consists of the following phases:
- Separation
- Free Glide
- First turn
- Image Landing site
- Second turn
- SDF/IDF to maximum possible strength
- Contact
- Slideout