The Star Trek Shield Impact Effect... WITHOUT Inertial Dampeners...

[Spacescifi]

On 1/31/2025 at 9:51 PM, boriz said:

 

I'm watching remastered B5 right now. Part way through series 2. Great TV. Far better than anything we have now, unfortunately. Harlan Ellison's influence was a factor. (He wrote A Boy And His Dog, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, and one of the best TOS stories ever, The City On The Edge Of Forever).

Energy shields, inertial dampers, artificial gravity, transporter beams, warp drives, phaser beams, all fantasy sci-fi tech with no real-world physics. Without a real scientific basis, your opinion is just as good as anyone's. Have at it friend. Nowadays, even the writers seem to have no clue and are, to be generous, inconsistent. They are exploiting the genius of Gene Roddenberry in any way they can. Creating something original, like Roddenberry, seems to be beyond TV exec's at the moment, sadly.

Personally, I imagine that any energy, kinetic or otherwise, gets splashed/deflected, and distributed around the shield. So that what was a concentrated point of energy is spread around a much larger area. Like this:

The ship moves (or rocks, which is common) because although the energy is now much more diffuse, the shield generators transmit the residual to the hull. But that's just how I rationalise Chekov and Sulu gripping their desk while leaning left and right : )

I speak in general terms. I have not watched much of new Trek, because when I do, it sucks. Ultimately, if your suspension of disbelief is broken, that's the fault of the writer/producer, don't blame yourself.

Suggestion: Try watching better written Trek.

It embarrasses the current IP holder of Trek, but the best recent Trek-like is The Orville. Before that, it was Enterprise (Intro theme notwithstanding). I suggest you test your suspension of disbelief on those.

Examples of non-Roddenberry exploitation would be Firefly and Stargate SG-1 and Farscape. All great in their own way, and although influenced by Roddenberry, proper attempts at new sci-fi writing.

I miss new sci-fi writing.

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Ya know, I tend to look at the logical application of any scifi technology in practice, and the results often surprise me, because it can be used in novel ways the source material does not use it.

For example if a deflector shield worked in that manner, by spreading mass around and off to the sides away from it, then why not modify it for air flight?

Seems to me that if you can deflect air behind you fast enough then all done is turn your massive shield bubble into a massive air propeller for flight.

Am I right or did I just fail in my understanding of air flight physics for the upteenth time lol?

If this works it will stall past a certain high altitude, but that's not really a problem since that is what rockets and external pulse propulsion drives are for as alternatives when air is thin or non-existent.

Edited February 7 by Spacescifi

[Nuke]

the more i think about shields, the more i love ballistic point defense cannons. especially since they have been doing a good job of keeping missiles off of our naval vessels, and israel, for years.

one thing they never tell you about the bridge of the d, is that it smells like cat pee. the local cats had been breaking into the studio and doing their business there. probibly because they never gave spot his own character arc and they didnt care much for data's poetry. but the thought of the bridge of the d being infested with ferrel cats kinda makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Edited February 8 by Nuke

[magnemoe]

On 2/7/2025 at 6:45 PM, Spacescifi said:

 

Ya know, I tend to look at the logical application of any scifi technology in practice, and the results often surprise me, because it can be used in novel ways the source material does not use it.

For example if a deflector shield worked in that manner, by spreading mass around and off to the sides away from it, then why not modify it for air flight?

Seems to me that if you can deflect air behind you fast enough then all done is turn your massive shield bubble into a massive air propeller for flight.

Am I right or did I just fail in my understanding of air flight physics for the upteenth time lol?

If this works it will stall past a certain high altitude, but that's not really a problem since that is what rockets and external pulse propulsion drives are for as alternatives when air is thin or non-existent.

This, same goes for magic. Some smart guy playing World of Wonder, an turn based fantasy with multiplayer, found that you could cast float enchant on an boat, spell levitate target an meter over the ground. Now the boat who could carry 7 units could drive on land and it got the road bonus, it had an long range. Think a apc or truck to move forces around. This changed the meta in the game it was better to have smaller numbers of expensive hard hitting units you could move around fast than having weaker units all over. You could also pre position floating boats  so groups boarded an new fresh boat, this was easier for defender. 

Sometimes it don't work, silence was an spell effect in Elder Scroll 4 Oblivion, some though it suppressed all sound you made so it made you silent but unable to speak or cast spell. 
No it only made you mute not silent. 

Edited Sunday at 06:10 PM by magnemoe

[ColdJ]

On 1/31/2025 at 4:33 PM, Spacescifi said:

The difference here is this starship does NOT have scifi inertial dampeners. Which means inertia will be in play when the nuke impacts their shields.

Then it can't be a Starship. Star Trek, Star Wars, or any other SciFi ship that can get to the moon in a minute or make evasive maneuvers in space, cannot work without Inertial Dampeners. The moment you make any sort of course change like they do, without inertial dampeners, you will be pancaked against a wall. Any sort of SciFi acceleration, pancaked on the back wall. Of course your brain probably got smooshed before you hit the wall, jammed against your skull. Real pilots in Jet Fighters need special flight suits just to make sure their blood keeps circulating under high G.

In your scenario, you would have to assume that the shield causes everything inside it to be the equivalent of being trapped in Amber. If it gets moved then everything inside it gets moved at exactly the same rate and as such, to the occupants, the only way they know they got moved is by observing what is outside the shield.

If you don't want the theoretical craft to not have inertial dampeners, then it didn't get knocked back when the nuke hit the shields. Instead the energy got disipated or redirected around the shield, and so did not reach the craft in the centre.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, ColdJ said:

Then it can't be a Starship. Star Trek, Star Wars, or any other SciFi ship that can get to the moon in a minute or make evasive maneuvers in space, cannot work without Inertial Dampeners. The moment you make any sort of course change like they do, without inertial dampeners, you will be pancaked against a wall. Any sort of SciFi acceleration, pancaked on the back wall. Of course your brain probably got smooshed before you hit the wall, jammed against your skull. Real pilots in Jet Fighters need special flight suits just to make sure their blood keeps circulating under high G.

In your scenario, you would have to assume that the shield causes everything inside it to be the equivalent of being trapped in Amber. If it gets moved then everything inside it gets moved at exactly the same rate and as such, to the occupants, the only way they know they got moved is by observing what is outside the shield.

If you don't want the theoretical craft to not have inertial dampeners, then it didn't get knocked back when the nuke hit the shields. Instead the energy got disipated or redirected around the shield, and so did not reach the craft in the centre.

 

Nope... you can travel fast without actually accelerating at all if you use a form of warp space drive (like making the universe move toward you on a conveyor belt. Just warp around at sublight speeds, drop out a warp, and do any necessary course corrections with normal acceleration engines then.

I could keep the OP idea of a scifi shield in that scenario.

Only places gravity would still kill would be if you warped too close to the sun.

Edited Monday at 04:51 PM by Spacescifi

[ColdJ]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Nope... you can travel fast without actually accelerating at all if you use a form of warp space drive (like making the universe move toward you on a conveyor belt. Just warp around at sublight speeds, drop out a warp, and do any necessary course corrections with normal acceleration engines then.

That is positing the idea that the universe moves while you stay still. Lovely idea but if several ships are all using the warp drive at the same time it falls apart.

Anyway I was only talking Impulse speeds. You know how many G's Astronauts are put under just getting out of the gravity well? Now imagine a craft that can get out in 5 seconds.

It take 6 days just to get to the Moon, now imagine the acceleration of one that can get there in 60 seconds.

You say Sublight speeds. It takes 8.3 minutes at the speed of light to reach the Sun. So assuming this is an out of Solar system craft, how long did it have stay at warp?

I get the thought experiment but no Inertial dampening system, then no high speed space travel.

And you couldn't Warp from in atmosphere without serious damage to the planet as you take the surrounding atmosphere with you.

[Terwin]

4 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Only places gravity would still kill would be if you warped too close to the sun.

That is only if you go slow.(like 0.1c or less)

Sort of like going over a speed bump at 2mph vs 60mph.  The first you might barely notice, and the second could break your axle or your spine.

Every body is at the bottom of a well, and if you have no inertial dampeners, then zipping past ceres at near-light speeds might break bones and break off pieces of your ship just due to the rapidly shifting gravity.  Fly past a real planet and you can get everyone smeared against the starboard wall of their current room as the ship gets jerks to port because of the the 'gravity pot-hole' created by the planet.

And if any other ship uses the same sort of drive, then they might well fling your ship into a star anyway, just because you are unanchored to local space while they are moving in a different direction..

[Spacescifi]

5 hours ago, ColdJ said:

That is positing the idea that the universe moves while you stay still. Lovely idea but if several ships are all using the warp drive at the same time it falls apart.

Anyway I was only talking Impulse speeds. You know how many G's Astronauts are put under just getting out of the gravity well? Now imagine a craft that can get out in 5 seconds.

It take 6 days just to get to the Moon, now imagine the acceleration of one that can get there in 60 seconds.

You say Sublight speeds. It takes 8.3 minutes at the speed of light to reach the Sun. So assuming this is an out of Solar system craft, how long did it have stay at warp?

I get the thought experiment but no Inertial dampening system, then no high speed space travel.

And you couldn't Warp from in atmosphere without serious damage to the planet as you take the surrounding atmosphere with you.

 

You don't have to go super fast. I have envisioned a far more modest scifi warp drive, which has warp acceleration equal to whatever acceleration your main engines are accelerating when you activate warp, after which you can shut off main engines and let sublight warp do the rest.

A 3 day trip of coasting is just a few hours or less now warping to the moon. Even better is that it is faster than constant acceleration using acceleration drives, since you can warp accelerate the whole way and then drop out of warp all of a sudden.

 

Hyperdrives are far more ideal for FTL than warp drives, but warp is good for interplanetary, and acceleration drives are good for final approach and course corrections.

Edited Monday at 11:32 PM by Spacescifi

[boriz]

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