Creating an Inertial Dampener

[SeventhArchitect]

Yes, I know that Inertial Dampeners from Star Trek do not exist, but, the idea is a wonderful one if someone can figure it out. It would make light speed travel possible with powerful engines. The only current problem is a question. What exactly would be done to make an inertial dampener?

Well, as far as I know, you could start with: What would absorb the inertia?

How could that inertia be turned to nothing without breaking Newton's laws?

I've thought this through before by thinking about how a specific type of engine could be made, specifically the fictional warp drive. Something that creates thrust without exhaust of any kind. that would be the perfect engine.

There are so many different things to achieve ultimate power through, but this is about making Inertial Dampeners.

In Newtonian physics, in order to make something that works at all, you have to follow these laws, they are built into physics. In fact, if you think about it, figuring out how to make an inertial dampener would make it possible to make an engine with absolutely no exhaust, like the fictional warp drive. This is because you're finding a way to divert from Newton's laws, to other laws. Could be done with the laws of Equivalent Exchange, which is the laws of conservation of mass, only Equivalent Exchange is what I call it. Same thing. In a sense.

Anyway, force can be turned into energy through certain means, of which none are really usable without using Newton's laws.

One way it could be done is by finding a type of process that doesn't depend on Newton's laws, and unless someone else knows something I immediately don't, it may be the only way.

May I suggest the use of electromagnetism upon this subject? Think of a continuous loop of particles moving in one direction similar to a hadron collider, only you're not smashing atoms or accelerating anything, these are just kept moving in one direction at a certain speed. These particles move continuously throughout this vacuum loop, harbored inside the vessel, not touching anything. As I am thinking now, inertia (definition: a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.) is a part of specific energy. An atom has Electrons that move around it in continuous motion because it's just like the planets that orbit a star. They are moving fast enough in orbit that their speed of moving in one direction, and their mass, work to keep them from accelerating towards the center mass, i.e. the sun.

In this case, the electrons move so fast around the atom, creating the electron shells, because their mass is so small that they need an outrageous amount of speed in order to keep from colliding with the nucleus.

All of that is an example of explaining what inertial energy is. (I hope that makes sense)

Transfer. You move the inertia from the accelerated particles, to the particles in the forever loop. Doing so through a field, which inertial dampeners are supposed to do. This method would actually eliminate the need of the forever loop altogether, because it would just focus all inertia into the group of particles within loop. This would mean no matter how much the engines fire off, the ship won't move.

An inertial dampener is supposed to spread the inertia throughout the ship, including the people on board, and any matter within range.

Oh god, just...Just disregard most of that. I give up for now. Say what you want.

[SeventhArchitect]

My first question "What would observe the inertia?" would make making an inertial dampener a very pointless job.

[K^2]

That is not what inertia is or how it works.

[Brotoro]

I never had the impression that they were dampening inertia...just dampening the unfortunate effects that would result from your inertia if you sat unprotected in a very rapidly accelerating ship. For people who have the technology to make artificial gravity, combatting the detrimental effects of high acceleration would be easy, since you just have to generate an opposing gravitational field within the ship that balances the forces caused by the acceleration on the objects in the ship.

[Headhunter09]

That's also not how electrons work. Making the analogy between celestial orbits and quantum mechanics is very misleading.

[jwenting]

it's called a shock absorber, cars have had them for decades.

[Nuke]

lol, no. sorry.

though honestly i dont think we need them. our only theoretical means of interstellar travel would be the alcubierre drive, which doesnt need one. anything else just do constant 1g acceleration and get free gravity in the process.

[LordOfTheOrbits]

Sorry, but there is no way of getting something like this to work. If you want to get any change in physical velocity, you must do so by using Newton's third law.

[jwenting]

Alcubierre drive won't work, it's pure fiction. The radiation inside the bubble would be so severe that anything in it would be turned into sub atomic particles rather quickly.

And that's if you could get a bubble at all (which might theoretically be possible, though I seriously doubt it's not an engineering impossibility.

[SargeRho]

That's the first time I ever hear about severe radiation inside the bubble.

[Accelerando]

though honestly i dont think we need them. our only theoretical means of interstellar travel would be the alcubierre drive, which doesnt need one. anything else just do constant 1g acceleration and get free gravity in the process.

to be fair, inertia reduction technology was a fairly critical plot device in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series, which is pretty hard SF, overall. the idea was that by manipulating some property of the quantum foam, or something on a similarly subatomic scale, it's possible to reduce particles' inertia. the more practical idea is to squeeze out as much speed as possible from every unit thrust from their torchship engines, because almost all civilizations are STL in these books, and the protagonists are preparing to run from a horrible alien threat that's also STL but able to achieve much higher fractions of c.

I'm curious what the input of actual physicists will be.

[Nuke]

Alcubierre drive won't work, it's pure fiction. The radiation inside the bubble would be so severe that anything in it would be turned into sub atomic particles rather quickly.

And that's if you could get a bubble at all (which might theoretically be possible, though I seriously doubt it's not an engineering impossibility.

im well aware of that. i was just making the point that if you had one you wouldn't need inertial dampeners.

besides inertial dampeners aren't very useful when you think about it. its totally possible to build a rocket with enough acceleration to turn the crew in to meat slurry, but the question is why? you dont need to change speed that fast once you are in orbit. i cant imagine a (non military) situation where you would need more than 1g of acceleration and its the optimal acceleration profile for an interstellar generation ship.

[Brotoro]

...i cant imagine a (non military) situation where you would need more than 1g of acceleration...

Rescue missions.

[K^2]

i cant imagine a (non military) situation where you would need more than 1g of acceleration and its the optimal acceleration profile for an interstellar generation ship.

Anything interstellar. Of course, warp bubble solves that problem rather nicely, as pointed out in this thread already.

[Awaras]

Anything interstellar. Of course, warp bubble solves that problem rather nicely, as pointed out in this thread already.

A ship capable of continual 1g acceleration would reach light speed in less than a year... Considering it would need at least 4.37 years (measured from Earth, less in shiptime due to relativistic effects) to get to the nearest star even if moving at C the entire time, adding a year or two of acceleration/deceleration is not that big an issue...

[K^2]

A ship capable of continual 1g acceleration would reach light speed in less than a year... Considering it would need at least 4.37 years (measured from Earth, less in shiptime due to relativistic effects) to get to the nearest star even if moving at C the entire time, adding a year or two of acceleration/deceleration is not that big an issue...

Ship will maintain proper acceleration of 1G. As it gets closer to the speed of light, coordinate acceleration is going to diminish. That means the ship needs to accelerate continuously through the flight to keep increasing its proper velocity. You aren't going to get better coordinate time, but you can dramatically improve proper time required to reach destination. In other words, while it will always take 4.37 years to get to Proxima, by ship time, you can reduce it to months or even weeks if you can accelerate sufficiently fast.

I recommend reading Wikipedia article on proper acceleration.

[StrandedonEarth]

Something that creates thrust without exhaust of any kind.

Exhaust is pretty much unavoidable, even fusion and fission reactors have reaction products to be disposed of (exhaust). The trick is generating thrust without requiring reaction mass (what you toss out in one direction to generate thrust in the opposite direction, "equal and opposite reaction"). Jet engines use reaction mass, the air that is sucked in and heated by burning fuel to increase the exhaust velocity. The only thing that doesn't really use reaction mass is a propeller, which is actually immersed in it, pushing against air or water.

The only known way to generate thrust without reaction mass is with electromagnetic effects. A true space drive using known principles would either use electromagnetic or gravitational effects, such as anti-gravity (Larry Niven's 'Known Space' series of novels uses gravity polarizers for normal space maneuvers, along with hyperdrive for interstellar), also useful for inertial damping. Venturing into unknown principles would create the Holy Grail of spaceflight, the "Space Drive," as mentioned in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. Basically anything that would push against the space-time continuum itself ('ether'), much like a propeller in water or air, would qualify as a space drive. Spaceflight would be soooo much easier if you didn't have to carry reaction mass for ac/deceleration everywhere you go

[K^2]

The only known way to generate thrust without reaction mass is with electromagnetic effects.

Completely wrong. Electromagnetic field carries energy and momentum. Even if the field is your reaction mass, there is still reaction mass, which brings you back to limitations of the rocket formula. Best example of that is the photon drive.

[Nuke]

i personally dont want to spend 4 years on a ship producing 2 gs of acceleration. people may tolerate 1.25 or 1.5gs fine (im just assuming, im having a hard time finding a source for prolonged g tolerance, everything i found only seems to have data on peek tolerance on the order of a few seconds) if they are physically fit and you increase your acceleration slowly over time.

[einsteiner]

The purpose of the inertial dampeners in Star Trek was to spread forces on the hull of the ship evenly onto everything and everyone inside. This way when the impulse engines push on the ship the ship doesn't push on the crew and splatter them against the back wall. From the standpoint of the crew, there would be no forces being applied because there would be no relative force between them and their surroundings. This would be similar to how astronauts feel zero gravity because the gravity of the earth is pulling them and their ship the same amount. The ramjet ship in Poul Anderson's "Tau Zero" uses the same idea to let the ship accelerate at 20 g while the crew only feels 1 g. In the book it's described as a field that pulls on every particle inside it evenly.

Star Trek warp engines supposedly reduce the inertial mass of the ship, allowing the engines push it around and for it to enter subspace more easily, but that's a separate piece of technology from the inertial dampeners.

[MaverickSawyer]

My understanding of it is that the warp drive creates a localized, ship-centric gravity field. Don't know if that's correct, but it makes sense...

[SargeRho]

It'd have to accumulate mass in front, and negative mass behind the ship.

[Sillychris]

As a race, we have become marvelous at manipulating the electroweak force and have just started to toy with the nuclear strong force.

The remaining force, gravity, we haven't the foggiest idea how to work with.

Controlling gravity is what we will need to create an inertial dampener... however that may be achieved.

[Red Iron Crown]

Inertia is a fundamental property of matter, for any kind of inertial dampener to work we'd need some fundamental shift in our understanding of the nature of matter and how it interacts with the universe.

Fiction uses inertia dampeners as a plot device to allow reasonable travel times, any other justifications are just to make it easier to swallow for the hard science fiction crowd.

[Aghanim]

If we have warp drive there is no inertia (?), so inertial dampener wouldn't be necessary. ST need dampener because its impulse drive could generate up to 100 g (Acceleration up to 100 g are not uncommon, ST manual)