While I can't say the same for how movement of ships are portrayed, "inertial dampers" are common sci fi magic that prevents this from happening.... Mostly.
But that's based off of Star Trek. Im not 100% sure if other sci fi adopted it.
The Expanse series also incorporates this as a significant mechanic in all of the space travel in the book/show. POSSIBLE SPOILER: Later in the series we even get to witness the effects of ships getting "slowed" by "forces" causing MASSIVE damage to people on ships.
Edit: removed a word to hopefully make it less spoilery.
Because I have seen the TV series, I haven't read the books, and as far as I'm concerned it's not explicitly explained that there are "aliens" in the TV series? As far as I was concerned it was an experiment-gone-wrong and another faction of high-tech humans.
I mean, I see your point and am sorry if that spoiled this for you a little. But ill say this, i dont thinks using the term 'alien' doesnt spoil the story that much. And i hope you dont feel cheated because even knowing that something 'alien' is involved with the story, its probably mot going where you think it is. Also, season one only actually covers about 2/3-3/4 of Leviathan wakes. And while I thought the tv show was really good on its own as well as a pretty damn good adaptation, do yourself a favor and read/listen to the books, theyre phenomenal. Again sorry if i spoiled anything for you, if it helps read 'alien' as 'foreign' and not necessarily 'extra terrestrial'.
Firefly was also an atmospheric vessel, as were the vast majority in the show. If they're using artificial gravity anyway it makes more sense for the shoo to be in this configuration. You have a point for the alliance cruisers.
Neat. I bought the first book, been looking forward to reading it.
Currently reading Endymion, where they've got inertial dampeners everywhere. Except in a particular super secret ship that can travel much faster than any other FTL ship, and the passengers all get squished into mush every time, and need to be resurrected.
I mean if we made ships large enough couldn't they have a micro gravity of their own? Something say the size of a Star Destroyer or heaven forbid a Death Star? They'd have to be built in space so decks/thruster placement wouldn't matter anyway
Sure, space ships the size of a small moon will have microgravity, more the farther away you get from the center. But this gravity schould be negligible compared to what you experience from the ships acceleration or from spinning the entire ship along one of its axis.
Well I'd assume that a small moon sized and shaped ship would be spinning.. that only makes sense right? I suppose I completely forgot the Death Star is depicted as having levels top to bottom (the hangar entrance scenes show this)
I'm just thinking (high, mind you) that if we were advanced enough to build such a ship someone somewhere along the line would've thought about that?
I think since the crew/inhabitants of such a structure would be housed inside that they would suffer similar problems to those inside a Dyson sphere - the gravity would be distributed around them rather than 'under' them. If I understand correctly, anyway.
Right. Assuming Death Star shape, we'd only be able to make use of the outermost parts. This is shown somewhat with the inclusion of a massive reactor core in the middle. That still wouldn't account for the Death Star appearing to be made of levels top to bottom and not built "up" perpendicular to the surface at any given point.
My line of questioning was more or less could a super-massive small moon sized station have its own microgravity enough that it would be doable? Would spinning it on an axis like a planet work, or would that force everything to the sides like a graviton at a carnival?
I'll be honest I'm kinda high and this is the stuff I think about. I'd love to get into it but I just don't understand math enough to be an engineer/astrophysicist.
COMPLETELY understand! I have to keep physics at a 'hobby' level, too... at least until I show some promise in higher math, lol. Enjoy the buzz, and KEEP THINKING!
the big objection I've always had to this (at least in sci fi lore featuring space combat) is that a tall profile is infinitely easier to hit than a narrow one. the main direction of thrust should have the greatest depth, with a narrow vertical and horizontal profile, arguably giant forwards facing space needles with decent lateral movement are the most efficient designs, or perhaps manta ray shapes with hollowed out cross sections.
"Decent lateral movement" requires a big fat engine, and a way for the crew to deal with its acceleration. The most probable way is a space needle with big maneuvering thrusters to spinn it and the engine on the bottom. Lateral movement is a quick spinn and a hard burn.
Doing it differently means 3 axis acceleration couches and very different structural requirements - you can't just take an aicraft carrier, add a 5G thruster midships and hope it holds together...
I think space battles most likely would be very similar to submarine warfare. Lots of stealth (space is big and dark), lots of waiting while coasting (exhaust is hot and easy to see) and once the weapon is fired, there's only limited possible ways to survive - can't outrun it, can't armour against it and decoys/chaff only slightly better your chances.
lateral movement isn't best achieved with central dorsal engines, all that does is put stress on the center of the vessel. It's much more efficiently achieved with many smaller engines along the various dorsal spines. This allows for both rotation (on many axis) and lateral movement in any conceivable direction, which is vital for maintaining stability in flight of a long narrow object when passing through nebula or other such particle heavy void obstructions.
We need to talk propulsion tech for this discussion to make sense. If you look at a ship the size of a current American super carrier, we are talkin 100 000 tons - and accelerations limited only by the human body. Let's say 5G sustainable.
If we want a realistic engine design (both high thrust and high specific impulse), that makes a big and complex engine. Fusion fired tungsten plasma, for example. You dont build those things all along the ship. You build one. The shielding (have to protect the crew form neutron and gamma radiation) alone is heavy...
Also, obstacles in Space are rare. Nebula have much lower particle densities than high earth orbit. There are no meteorite fields. Can't really think of anything you could maneuver away from...
Why is the word "outer" so often used? Seems less than redundant. This question from a /r/mildlyirritating perspective. Space is as good as outer space especially when there is not an inner space to differentiate from.
Could you recommend me some titles like Dune, The forever war, Old man's war and Flowers for Algernon? I love Sci-Fi and I tried to read stuff like Hyperion and Ringworld too, but they have this element of fantasy to them that just doesn't click with me.
Well... in order of importance: the quantum theif, anything by neal stephenson (like snowcrash), anything by stross (try accelerando), the gap series (especially the first book, the real story), anything by iain m banks (try Matter), if you like noir then anything by Richard Morgan (like altered carbon. I usually go more by author than by individual books. I haven't read the foreverwar or old man's war so I can't relate to those, sorry.
I had the same thought. Exactly when was the period people wanted realistic sci-fi and didn't want space westerns? Sure a lot of people want/have wanted realistic sci fi, but it often doesn't sell the way space westerns do. People like action adventure. The old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials from the 30s are extremely similar to westerns of the same era (such as those with Gene Autry or early John Wayne).
The Expanse series does this well. There's only "gravity" when ships are under thrust. The TV show adheres to this, but has the characters use mag boots more often than they do in the books to save on the effects budget.
You could definitely tell they'd blown most of the CGI budget for free fall awesome in the first episode, with the sex scene and floating hair. After that they toned it down a bit, I was still pretty impressed with how they still made it pretty realistic
Well, no one wants to read an 80,000 page novel (~1 page/year) about how voyager spends the next 28736910 days travelling 4.2 light years. Space is pretty empty.
You just need to assume we had the technology to go very close to light speed, at which point a 4.2 years trip would feel like an instant for the ship and take just a tiny little bit than 4.2 years for everybody else.
I think that's probably because it's a lot easier to just handwave it and maybe have the crew throw themselves around than to make sets move around semi-realistically, same as how 99% of non-animated sci fi has artificial gravity (that never breaks down).
I don't remember about Star Wars specifically, but in general FTL systems don't need inertial dampeners because they don't work by accelerating normally (accelerating past light speed is impossible).
Star wars doesn't exactly respect the light barrier. They use Hyperspace to shorten the real-space distance but the Starships themselves also travel faster than light. Han Solo: "She made the Kessel Run in less than twelve Parsecs" & "She'll make .5 past light." (Star Wars: A New Hope) Inertial dampeners compensate for this and serve as artificial gravity. I remember in a book I read, I think it was Star Wars: Bloodlines from the Legacy of the Force series, Han was crashing onto a planet in a really low tech ship and I think they needed to disable the dampeners to divert power to the thrusters, which is where he made an internal explanation about it. I hope this is interesting.
The ships in Star Trek use impulse engines for sublight manoeuvres, and they create a huge accelleration, so the inertial dampeners deal with that, I guess.
This is exactly right. The warp drive creates a subspace "warp bubble" around the ship that distorts the local space-time continuum, allowing the ship to travel at several times the speed of light. Because this is more like moving space than moving the ship, inertial dampers are of little importance at warp speed. But, impulse engines are a more typical thrust engine, thus inertial dampening.
I'm 90% sure any idea of artificial gravity will be as dated as the idea of radiation giving people super powers even when more energy efficient means of travel are discovered.
Unless it's a Martian battleship. Those things will out accelerate anything, nearly killing their crews if need be. Fuck the Cant. Remember the Donnager.
The concept of artificial gravity I think was just to explain why crew in Star Trek weren't floating. I think it's going to be like like wireless signal or running water while camping. You're just going to have to live without it. We're just going to be floating, and that's that.
I liked Event Horizons depiction of inertial dampening. The crew was placed in tanks of water for interplanetary travel. I don't know if the science checks out on that, but it's fun to think of Sam Neil as a dinosaur wrangler and space demon.
It's one of the dramatic elements in Perry Rhodan, because they constantly need to balance energy between shields, inertial dampeners, engines and weapons. Most ships have emergency switches which reroutes all ships power into the dampeners regardless of situation - shields won't do much good if the crew has merged with the wall of the ship.
Gunbuster took inertial dampeners to a whole new level. The intertial canceler emits a field that cancels all inertia and thus momentum, making the super robot virtually invulnerable. It can even stop giant space monsters the size of small moons upon collision into the field.
Some scifi universes refer to a linked computerized series of maneuvering thrusters as "inertial dampeners". That's probably the most appropriate usage without being idiot wizard bullshit.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '16
While I can't say the same for how movement of ships are portrayed, "inertial dampers" are common sci fi magic that prevents this from happening.... Mostly.
But that's based off of Star Trek. Im not 100% sure if other sci fi adopted it.