Creating an Inertial Dampener

[Idobox]

An inertial dampener is basically a device that makes squishy humans accelerate at the same rate as the hull without exerting force on the feet.

You could have a conventional engine pushing the engine, and a device that pushes everything except the hull. Seems awfully complicated.

The other option is to have a force that accelerates both the hull and what's inside at the same rate, and it looks terribly like gravity. Any form of space-time deformation will cause your ship to accelerate without turning occupants into a fine paste, so long as you keep tidal forces low (ie uniform field). That way, you have an engine that works with no reaction mass (well, it depends on how you generate the space time deformation), that can in certain cases go FTL, and lets everybody inside experience free-fall.

A very good use for high-acceleration would be evasive maneuvers, for example in a military situation.

[MrZayas1]

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

Shock absorbers? That wouldn't work in space i don't think...

[JonH]

Just a thought: If we understood Gravity and could in fact build "Gravity Plating" could we not build a ship that has it in the haul design and tie it into a gyroscope that would feed power to the plating in the opposite direction of the "G-Forces" at work on the ship?

Gravity is the only "Field" I know of that pulls on every particle at the same time and at the same rate. This would act as an "Inertial Dampener" as described in the series and many others wouldn't it?

[shynung]

On 10/3/2014 at 9:05 PM, MrZayas1 said:

Shock absorbers? That wouldn't work in space i don't think...

Shock absorbers are needed when using a rocket motor that thrusts in pulses rather than continuously, like the Orion NPP. This is because neck-breaking jerks are generally unpleasant to the crew, and often wreaks havoc on the machinery; the shock absorbers are meant to ameliorate them into slightly gentler nudges.

[The Thinker]

inertial dampening would have to occur through an Inertia Dampening Field. this field would then have to occur through the use of quantum field matrix or another unknown energy matrix and through that field it would disperse all inertia throughout the specified object or specified space that this field would occupy  

[p1t1o]

On 3/1/2014 at 2:38 AM, SeventhArchitect said:

<snikt>

Your question translate to "How can we locally and drastically change the laws of this universe?"

I dont think any human can answer this question today, other than saying "You cant, period."

HOWEVER

It IS possible to levitate a biological organism with a magnetic field strong enough.

http://www.physics.org/facts/frog-really.asp

This field acts upon every atom in your body, so you could - hypothetically - use it to perfectly protect crew from extreme accelerations. Floating in a field, the acceleration will be applied to all parts of your body equally, meaning that you wouldnt actually feel anything, even accelerating at 10G. This would also provide protection against heavy impact as well.

Not quite a Star-Trek level inertial damper, but provides some of the use and with 100% real science!

[K^2]

22 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

It IS possible to levitate a biological organism with a magnetic field strong enough.

Even at MRI strengths, human body distorts the magnetic fields, and you have to correct for it when reconstructing the slices from corresponding Fourier spectra if you want high quality imaging. If you were compensating high acceleration with a magnetic field, the gradients from that distortion would be the thing that kills you. You have to apply force evenly throughout the body and in direct proportion to density in order to get anything but marginal improvement in maximum acceleration. And the only force that can do this is gravity.

The good news is we know how to generate gravity artificially and on demand. An electric field orthogonal to a magnetic field produces energy flux in direction orthogonal to both and of strength proportional to the product of two field strengths. (see Poynting Vector) Modulating either of the two fields, consequently, produces modulation on the energy flux. And that can be used to generate an effect that is the gravitational equivalent of electromagnetic induction. In other words, you can briefly generate a gravitational field that doesn't terminate on any mass. It's true artificial gravity, however brief.

The bad news is that the most optimistic estimate I could come up with for the field strength could compete with gravitational field of a grain of sand. There's a factor of 1/c⁴ that shows up in the relevant equations, and no matter how much magnetic and electric field you can throw at it, and how quickly you can can kill the electric field to produce the effect, you just aren't picking up enough decimal places to compete against the c⁴.

Now, if we could get our hands on some of that negative-mass dark matter/energy fluid from the other thread, I could probably come up with a scheme that gives you effect of an at least limited inertia dampener. But that's a separate story entirely.

[YNM]

(isn't this necro-resurrecting a 4 yr long-dead thread ?)

18 hours ago, p1t1o said:

How can we locally and drastically change the laws of this universe?

Suspend yourself in aspic. Or honey.

Edited December 14, 2018 by YNM

[p1t1o]

55 minutes ago, K^2 said:

<snikt>

Im just saying its within the bounds of the laws of physics, not that we could build it today.

You can achieve, today, a similar effect by floating the crew in tank of breathable fluid, which is technology that exists today, as demonstrated for real in the movie "The Abyss".

[K^2]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

Im just saying its within the bounds of the laws of physics, not that we could build it today.

For a mag field, it's a hard limit. Not something you're going to be able to compensate for. It's like trying to levitate a cake with a fire hose. It should technically be possible, but we all know what happens in practice, because you'll never be able to create a flow that perfectly cancels all the imperfections in the surface creating a pressure differential. The way a magnetic field penetrates materials that interact with it in any way really is more like a flow than anything.

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

You can achieve, today, a similar effect by floating the crew in tank of breathable fluid, which is technology that exists today, as demonstrated for real in the movie "The Abyss".

That's definitely doable. There are limits on how much you can push even fully submerged - even if you manage to fill all the voids, at some point, density difference between bones and flesh will be sufficient to separate the two - but you'd be able to go way higher than anything a modern fighter pilot can handle. Without somebody carrying out definitive tests it's hard to say for sure, but I'd be surprised if you can't go well into triple digits in units of G. Even without breathable fluid, human body can handle several times higher g-forces submerged in water than simply in a g-suit and a proper chair. And these, on their own, provide a factor of 3 or so from unequipped person.

Abyss - yeah, but with caveat that despite some successful tests on animals, and limited pressure chamber tests on the same, the tech was never really proven. Russia has recently restarted the research in that direction, but what I've seen hasn't really done anything the old Soviet research hasn't. In fact, it seems to be catching up still. That said, still probably the most believable part of the Abyss.

[p1t1o]

17 minutes ago, K^2 said:

For a mag field, it's a hard limit. Not something you're going to be able to compensate for. It's like trying to levitate a cake with a fire hose. It should technically be possible, but we all know what happens in practice, because you'll never be able to create a flow that perfectly cancels all the imperfections in the surface creating a pressure differential. The way a magnetic field penetrates materials that interact with it in any way really is more like a flow than anything.

Well it works with a frog at 1G, so thats something!

Edited December 13, 2018 by p1t1o

[K^2]

12 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Well it works with a frog at 1G, so thats something!

I'm honestly not trying to step on how cool paramagnetic levitation is. And it only gets cooler once you start diving into math and physics of paramagnetism. (And also, because of all the liquid helium.) All I'm saying is that at 1G you can "levitate" a human on a bed of nails. The mark to beat is 15-20Gs.

That said, even 1G, if it's uniform enough, can be great for all the times your engines aren't running. Mag fields have a wonderful property that they don't diverge, so a relatively light Helmholtz coil can provide fairly uniform B field throughout a rather large ship. I don't think mass requirements will scale well for small exploration vessels, but if we have liners like what BFR is meant to lift, the additional mass might actually be sensible. Granted, on a larger ship, it's significantly easier to set up something like tethered centrifuge as well, but having a solid-state system without hundreds of meters of cables involved seems beneficial. And keeping superconductor magnets cool in space is significantly easier than on Earth.

I'll throw some numbers at it. See what I get for tonnage of the coil rings to get artificial gravity on BFR's Starship.

[kerbiloid]

Magnets-scmagnets won't work themselves because a magnet receives the inertia, so it shouldn't be a part of the ship.

Once the particles of your ship get accelerated, something should be accelerated in the opposite direction to keep total energy and impulse unchanged.

You could only mask the inertia but not eliminate it.

1.
A hyperspace tunnel to, say, Earth. Keep staying on ground while accelerating at light years away.
Obviously could work only for direct acceleration, no side maneuvers, no deceleration.
Could be enough for the intergalactic projectiles against the Andromedians.

Wouldn't let the crew feel safe under >1 g anyway as the ship is not accelerated as a whole. First engines, then all other, so the bodies will be pressed against the walls as usually.

2.
Make a hole to another space and shove your nozzles to there. Let them sniff the exhaust while you are accelerating.

Wouldn't let the crew feel safe under >1 g anyway as the ship is not accelerated as a whole. First engines, then all other, so the bodies will be pressed against the walls as usually.

3.
Have some "entangled" or "connected through a hyperspace tunnel" counter-mass (not necessary of same mass, it can be a single particle or the whole Universe except your ship, depending on design) to accelerate it back. You fly in one direction, it flies in the opposite.
Play with your wave function and make an improbability drive to suddenly reappear in the desired direction.
Let the counter-mass reappear in the opposite one to keep the conservation laws happy.
If you hit some ancient and wise civilisation with the recoil, that's their problems, they should care about their safety long ago because they are were ancient and wise.

So, in any case the inertia killing hiding is a subtopic of teleportation and improbability drive.

Edited December 14, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

5 hours ago, K^2 said:

<snikt>

I've just realised that...though it might not be the answer to our inertia dreams...and perhaps it cant be scaled up much above 1g without instability...but this kinda demonstrates that we could build an electromagnetic gun that fires frogs.

[kerbiloid]

In form of plasmafrogs or froglets.

[The Thinker]

why build a gun that can fire frogs when we can build a gun that can fire solid probes??

[K^2]

12 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I've just realised that...though it might not be the answer to our inertia dreams...and perhaps it cant be scaled up much above 1g without instability...but this kinda demonstrates that we could build an electromagnetic gun that fires frogs.

In the interest of keeping things ethical, I move that we use gliding frogs for this.

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, The Thinker said:

why build a gun that can fire frogs when we can build a gun that can fire solid probes??

Because probes don't sing!

Spoiler

 

 

[p1t1o]

19 hours ago, The Thinker said:

why build a gun that can fire frogs when we can build a gun that can fire solid probes??

Serious questions somewhat defuses the humour of the idea of a frog-cannon.

But if we are going to blue-sky the idea, then it does open up the possibility of launching probes that are constructed out of biological materials.

Its not entirely within the realm of fantasy, material science is where a great deal of advances are coming from these days and is approaching the scale of biological systems.

Edited December 15, 2018 by p1t1o

[magnemoe]

On 8/30/2016 at 5:42 PM, shynung said:

Shock absorbers are needed when using a rocket motor that thrusts in pulses rather than continuously, like the Orion NPP. This is because neck-breaking jerks are generally unpleasant to the crew, and often wreaks havoc on the machinery; the shock absorbers are meant to ameliorate them into slightly gentler nudges.

This, other pulsed fusion designs also uses them but far less bulky as they produces way less trust but jolting is something you want to avoid. 

Now I say we want an continuous +4g continuous trust for days before this is even relevant. You could always reduce trust to 1 g. You only need more in an combat setting. 

On the other hand being able to play around with inertia would be extremely useful for lots of stuff, it would also break physic fundamentally unless stuff like levitation. 

[KSK]

*raises hand*

Do we propose to plumb this inertial dampener into a source of water? If not, I suggest that we focus our efforts on creating an inertial damper. Because soggy spacecraft don't sound very pleasant.

[YNM]

33 minutes ago, KSK said:

soggy spacecraft don't sound very pleasant.

Well, aspic or honey.

[wumpus]

On 12/13/2018 at 6:54 AM, p1t1o said:

Your question translate to "How can we locally and drastically change the laws of this universe?"

I dont think any human can answer this question today, other than saying "You cant, period."

HOWEVER

It IS possible to levitate a biological organism with a magnetic field strong enough.

http://www.physics.org/facts/frog-really.asp

This field acts upon every atom in your body, so you could - hypothetically - use it to perfectly protect crew from extreme accelerations. Floating in a field, the acceleration will be applied to all parts of your body equally, meaning that you wouldnt actually feel anything, even accelerating at 10G. This would also provide protection against heavy impact as well.

Not quite a Star-Trek level inertial damper, but provides some of the use and with 100% real science!

I suspect there would be nasty gyroscopic effects if you were rotating while your "motionless frame of reference" suddenly lurched in a linear direction at 10Gs.  I suspect a lot of "Starfleet Academy" would involve living in a orbiting base that would routinely have low-level lurches until the cadets learned not to do all the things you can't do in a ship with "inertial compensators".

[Green Baron]

 

Spoiler

They predict Calima weather for the mid of the coming week. Very dry and warm air, some people may have respiratory problems.

If somebody could deliver a dampener by then, inertial or not, ... ?

 

[kerbiloid]

On 12/15/2018 at 6:45 PM, p1t1o said:

it does open up the possibility of launching probes that are constructed out of biological materials.

It took 2 million years and enormous amount of engineer efforts to revive the good old practice but on a much higher level.

Spoiler

***

To avoid using living frogs as a weapon, we can first cut them.