Watching the TNG movies and a question occurred to me...
Posted by low_amplitude@reddit | TNG | View on Reddit | 49 comments
So, "inertial dampeners" is the technology that keeps people from feeling the acceleration of a starship when it speeds up or goes to warp. If that's the case, what is the reason (other than Hollywood spectacle) for why people go flying when the Enterprise collides into something? If inertial dampeners keep you from feeling acceleration, then it should keep you from feeling deceleration as well.
ErichPryde@reddit
Well.... the handwavium answer is that they dampen known, programmed vectors automatically, but have to respond to unknown course changes.
muchmaligned@reddit
I think of inertial dampers like the buffer when streaming a video or anti-skip technology on portable CD players. Designed for limited protection against occasional, expected bumps and lags, not catastrophes.
World_still_spins@reddit
So much fun changing cds mid song, and having the buffer randomly play the next song .
low_amplitude@reddit (OP)
This is the best answer so far. Unpredictable changes would be a logical limitation.
It would be cool though if whatever artificial gravity they have worked with the inertial dampeners to detect rapid change in inertia and automatically "catch" people who are thrown. I can imagine a gravity and inertia system that suspends them in mid-air and safely lowers them.
That being said, it's more exciting and dramatic when people are flung over railings.
AzraelleWormser@reddit
I imagine that, without the intertial dampeners, the shaking and flinging would be a lot worse.
ToroidalCore@reddit
I'm an electrical engineer, and while I don't do much work in it these days, control theory is a whole subfield. There's a concept called a feed forward which is basically this, the system can better compensate for a disturbance if it's already known.
For unknown disturbances, which would be like the ship getting hit, the system has to constantly sample what it's doing and adjust. This would be feedback.
RadVarken@reddit
Whatever they use for artifical gravity is very non-responsive. It remains when power goes out and they rarely if ever use it as a weapon (increasing or decreasing gravity). It seems unlikely they could disable it quick enough to save people.
ErichPryde@reddit
Or force field "crash webbing" would also be a cool thing.
JoskoMikulicic@reddit
Yes. This.
Malnurtured_Snay@reddit
Well, when everything is fine and dandy they work well.
But sometimes, when things aren't fine and dandy, they work less than well.
UYscutipuff_JR@reddit
inertial dampeners are off line
My gripe is the exploding consoles
Malnurtured_Snay@reddit
And why there filled with rocks?
doubtfurious@reddit
Those are the Cordry Rocks. They disrupt the charge leptons in the isolinear pathways of the main deflector.
AzraelleWormser@reddit
That's first-year stuff at the academy!
sarcasticbaldguy@reddit
Exploding rocks.
Medium_Hope_7407@reddit
And the lack of seat belts…
tsukiyomi01@reddit
Seriously, why are there standing consoles in the first place?!
norway_is_awesome@reddit
That was one change I liked in the JJ movies; having seat belts.
cincymi@reddit
It’s because they’re powered by a plasma conduit.
ModernDayHector@reddit
like they dont have circuit breakers!
ErichPryde@reddit
Same, it's got to be the leading cause of death excluding a ship actually being destroyed...
euph_22@reddit
Literally the only explanation is "plot necessary space BS".
At the accelerations they are experiencing, essentially anything other than total dampening would immediately turn the crew into paste.Literally tens of thousands of g's.
ForgeoftheGods@reddit
I figured that the inertial dampeners would primarily work due to artificial gravity in place. There are so many competing factors at play on Earth that we don't experience primarily due to the affects of gravity. It would seem to make sense that the inertial dampeners primarily prevent known expected rapid changes in acceleration, but unexpected is primarily dealt with by gravity until the dampeners kick in with a slight delay. The same difference as being thrown around by a mild to severe earthquake and being in a fighter jet hitting 5 Gs.
Used-Gas-6525@reddit
Is this a Plinkett burner account? Pretty sure he went into this at length in the Generations review.
lcarsadmin@reddit
Dampeners, not arrestors. They arent ment to keeo you from feeling acceleration, they ate meant to keep you from being chunky salsa.
rjwut@reddit
The dampeners are still working, they just can't compensate instantly for unplanned forces. If they stopped working while the ship was accelerating or decelerating at any significant rate on an interstellar scale, the crew would be chunky salsa on the wall instead of lying on the floor.
Rylos1701@reddit
Chunky salsa on the wall.
I know I’ve read that somewhere. Is it the encyclopaedia from the 90s?
ShadowExistShadily@reddit
I first heard it in Shadowrun.
sqplanetarium@reddit
The Expanse is great at showing the effects of acceleration (and the limits on how many g’s a human can survive for how long). Also what would happen if something caused a sudden stop.
chronopoly@reddit
Inertial dampeners have plot necessity AI baked in.
aspect-of-the-badger@reddit
The shocks are great on my car till I hit a pot hole.
610Mike@reddit
I think of them like shocks/struts on a vehicle. Yes them help make the ride smoother, but go over a speed bump, you’re still going to feel it.
Tough_Friendship9469@reddit
They dampen, not eliminate inertia. You still feel a pothole, even though your car has modern shocks and struts.
pakrat1967@reddit
Inertial dampeners aren't really about not feeling acceleration. They are to stop the "spacial drift" effect experienced by astronauts. Like when the push off from something. They tend to keep moving until another force acts upon them.
In the episode Booby Trap. If the dampeners had been on, Picard's little slingshot trick wouldn't have worked.
Lost_Balloon_@reddit
*Dampers.
Professional-Trust75@reddit
the system works alongside the warp drive. so when they go to warp the dampeners know to work. when they collude its unexpected so the system takes time to catch up basically.
BarberProof4994@reddit
The inertial dampening field is designed to put the interim into a sump. It can get overloaded during violent movement or shock.
What were seeing with people getting thrown around is meant to show that the ship is experiencing 1000s of gs that would have turned the crew into paste.
Longjumping_Rule_560@reddit
Your car has a suspension, but hit a speedbump or a pothole fast enough and unsecured items and passengers go flying.
ModernDayHector@reddit
Have you ever heard the line 'inertial dampeners offline!'?
Belle_TainSummer@reddit
They have lag, and also captains turn them down just a smidge so they can have a better "feel" for the ship during actions.
Also, in combat Starfleet ships are so tough that to damage one you have to engage point blank range with weapons that are capable of piercing planetary crusts. When people are chucking that much raw energy around then merely stumbling across the deck when a blast does penetrate the shields, means the engineers are doing some fucking not-so minor miracles in their job. That is an amazing amount of dampening they are doing on the fly.
Here4th3culture@reddit
The internal dampeners probably “run” with the warp drive. There wouldn’t be any reason to have them on constantly, once you’re done accelerating you don’t need to have them on.
Also, accelerating vs stopping because you collided with someone is a lot different. A collision is a hard stop. Same reason you can handle flooring it in your car to reach 100mph but if you slam into a wall at 100mph you’re gonna have a bad day.
FoxtrotSierraTango@reddit
They do run constantly, there was the episode called The Chase where the Cardassians try to sneak attack the Enterprise but LaForge finds it. Riker has the crew turn off the inertial dampeners to make it look like the ship takes more damage than it actually does.
Here4th3culture@reddit
They might be “on” but not running, or at least not running in any significant way. Suppose it takes the dampeners running at 100% while accelerating to warp speed, there’s no reason to have them on max output 24/7. They’re probably running at 5-10% constantly, enough so people in the shop don’t feel every thruster or slight course corrections while traveling / cruising at sublight speed.
Regardless, my second point still stands
ErichPryde@reddit
The bigger issue is actually at sublight speed. The impulse engines create actual thrust, the warp drive does not. Full impulse is a velocity of 0.25 C, or about 167 million miles per hour. That's a lot of thrust.
While at warp though, space time is being bent in front of and behind the ship, while it rests in a pocket of "normal" space called a warp bubble. The ship isn't actually experiencing newtonian acceleration in a conventional way.
Ironically this means that at full impulse a starship is experiencing some time dilation, while the warp engine avoids this.
BILLCLINTONMASK@reddit
You'll often hear them say "inertial dampeners failing" as they're flying around the ship
thelastdenisovan@reddit
Stunt doubles need a paycheck!
bufandatl@reddit
The dampers are synchronized to the normal operations of a ship and counter act that movement. Getting hit by weapon fire or other influences can’t be compensated directly.
But the it‘s all obviously just bad writing.
ErichPryde@reddit
It's bad science, but good writing, because most people are willing to accept instantly some amount of response when a ship crashes into something without thinking much about the astemronomical speeds (full impulse is like 0.25c) used in Star Trek.
It's all about frame of reference.
BadBoyJH@reddit
They're like noise cancelling earphones. You can still hear stuff through those.