Crushing force at Acceleration or at Steady Velocity?

[iconoclast]

I was having a conversation with my sister's partner the other day. I made the contention that space travel for humans is impossible for the foreseeable future, because at super fast speed any person within a space craft would be crushed by G-force; we discussed this for a while, and came to the conclusion that ONLY acceleration would produce this crushing effect; if a craft was moving at a steady velocity, persons could survive onboard (without inertial dampening), even at 1 million miles per hour. That seems very farfetched, but I have no evidence to say its wrong. Obviously accelerating from 0 to 100,000 miles an hour, in a very short space of time, would be lethal. Ships would have to gradually increase there speed. It would take days to get from 0 to 100,000 safely.

If a ships suddenly jolts forward (as in Star Trek) I envision that any persons would be thrown back and crushed.

Your thoughts?

[Hitchhiker]

'Tis why the writers came up with the ingenious plot device of "inertial dampeners".

Along with the "artificial gravity net" and "telepathic door syndrome", it's one of those plot devices that can't really be explained because the writers never gave us enough information.

Although I would assume that the inertial dampeners work by applying an equal amount of force in the opposite direction within the starship . . . or something like that. . . .

But without the miraculous inertial dampeners, yes, we'd all be squished into semi-tasty organic paste.

[Voyager2004]

Yes, at a fast jolt, or increase in speed, one would be crushed by the G-Forces. That's why the Inertial Dampeners were created.

But once at a steady and constant speed, then I believe, like another geniously smart person in my class, believe that one wouldn't be crushed by the G-Forces. But, if you're at a steady velocity and then suddenly decrease, the result would be the same as acceleration if the interial dampeners were not on.

Oh, ya, and it would definitely take days just to increase to a fast speed without the dampeners.

[Hitchhiker]

[Voyager2004]

[Hitchhiker]

[zeframcochrane]

In the VOY episode "Sky Spirits" they try to land voyager on a planet. not surprisingly, something goes wrong and they lose the inerial dampners and the impulse drive. captain janeway suggests escaping at low warp, but tom just comments: "It's mechanically possible captain, but without the inertial dampners we would just be smears on the walls afterwards."

So you see you need dampners to accelerate to high velocities, and dont ay that it is impossible, they have already managed to create a localised spatial distortion that could be used to make inertial dampners.

[Voyager2004]

[zeframcochrane]

I'm not sure exactly the type of nature of the distortion that they made, i just know that they have been able to accelerate a bananna to a set speed faster than they were able to before without it being liquidfied.
In any case, it would be years before we would be able to use this sort of technology because the amount of power generated to cause the "Distortion" was that of a small nuclear power plant at the labs in which the reasearch was carried out.

[Voyager2004]

[Hitchhiker]

[Voyager2004]

[zeframcochrane]

I found it in an obscure search on "Inertial Dampners" in google. the site was removed i think, but you could try it

[zeframcochrane]

I found this, it might help.

Another problem crops up because of the way we�ve represented space travel on Star Trek. Warp drive allows you to travel many times faster than the speed of light which, in and of itself, is something that seems to violate a basic tenet of relativity. But there might be some clever ways around that. A lot of physicists would agree that there might be a way to get around some of those problems.

When we show, for example, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Enterprise jumping to warp, that ship is clearly accelerating at extraordinary rates. Probably hundreds or thousands of G forces would be involved in that kind of acceleration. By comparison an astronaut on the space shuttle maybe experiences 3Gs, three times the force of gravity. If you were to just be accelerated at a hundred or a thousand Gs, you�d be crushed like a bug. so how does our crew survive the jump to warp? Well, we coined the term inertial damper.

The inertial dampers basically allow us to nullify the effects of acceleration. Whether it�s when we�re jumping to warp or if the ship is being rattled by an ion storm or rattled by some sort of an explosion from an alien weapon. the inertial dampers basically take the edge off of those kinds of accelerations. How do they work? Well, we have no idea. That's not a technology that is presently possible. But one would imagine that if you can manipulate gravity � and of course on Star Trek we have artificial gravity plates, we have some way of controlling the force of gravity � if you can control the force of gravity and create an artificial gravity environment on your ship, one would imagine that you could also control inertia because they�re, in effect, the same thing.

Acceleration and deceleration are basically the same thing, so the inertial dampers are not only protecting our crew when it jumps to warp and accelerates to this extraordinary velocity, but they�re also protecting the crew when it slows down and stops. So deceleration is essentially the same thing as acceleration. It�s a change in velocity.

I found this at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/st/interviews/bormanis/page39.shtml

[Voyager2004]

Ya, well, I pretty much knew all that, but thanks for posting it! There might be some people here who didn't know that.