Artificial gravity

[Timo]

Like Diane Carey puts it in Best Destiny, gravity is life support - the most vital type of it imaginable.

Without full control of artificial gravity, the slightest maneuver by the starship would smear the crew to the walls in an inch-thick layer of red pasta (at least unless the entire crew sat at the exact middle of the turning starship). Artificial gravity must be the same thing as inertia control, or at least the two must work in absolutely perfect concert. A starship might fight if all atmosphere were replaced with chlorine and internal temperature rose to 250C - the crew could simply don spacesuits, or something. But a starship could not fight if artificial gravity went down, unless the ship were able to fight without her crew.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

If the innards of the grav plates spin at 125,000 rpm's and the trek universe had really good ball bearings , then in the event of a power failure it might take months for the grav plates to "spin down" to the point that you would experience a significant reduction in the artificial gravity. Conceivably it might be years before gravity disappeared completely.

 

[YARN]

Like Diane Carey puts it in Best Destiny, gravity is life support - the most vital type of it imaginable.

Without full control of artificial gravity, the slightest maneuver by the starship would smear the crew to the walls in an inch-thick layer of red pasta (at least unless the entire crew sat at the exact middle of the turning starship). Artificial gravity must be the same thing as inertia control, or at least the two must work in absolutely perfect concert. A starship might fight if all atmosphere were replaced with chlorine and internal temperature rose to 250C - the crew could simply don spacesuits, or something. But a starship could not fight if artificial gravity went down, unless the ship were able to fight without her crew.

Timo Saloniemi

A well thought out post.

Still, supposing that the ship were drifting in space, which makes sense in a case of systems failure, artificial gravity would not be that big a deal. If the ship is broken and drifting in space, you don't have to worry about making dramatic maneuvers.

The space shuttle does OK without inertial dampers or artificial gravity, but turn the heat and air off and you've got problems. People can survive for extends periods in zero g, but without heat and atmosphere you're in trouble much more quickly.

I think you overestimate the number of space suits they have on hand for the crew. A given starship, from what I've seen does not appear to carry more than a dozen or so space suits.

Moreover, if we are talking about the very last systems to fail, we are talking about what you need to turn the ship into a giant life boat.

Your point about fighting another ship seems misplaced. By the time we are worrying about trading gravity for heat, air, and light, the shields and weapons systems are miles behind us.

Let's be honest. It simply would cost too much money to show the crew and object floating around in those crisis episodes when all the ship's systems are off-line.

 

[sojourner]

It always bugged me that in trek when a ship goes into red alert they don't immediately don spacesuits. Think of the lives lost by that one simple omission.

 

[Captain Rob]

Let's be honest. It simply would cost too much money to show the crew and object floating around in those crisis episodes when all the ship's systems are off-line.

If that happened all of the time then that scene in STIV would have substantially reduced dramatic impact.
Slightly OT; wouldn't the discovery of artificial gravity/antigravity in real life be the magic bullet for space travel? Just think how easy the Space Shuttle could get to space if it could control the effects of Earth's gravity on it.

 

[YARN]

Let's be honest. It simply would cost too much money to show the crew and object floating around in those crisis episodes when all the ship's systems are off-line.

If that happened all of the time then that scene in STIV would have substantially reduced dramatic impact.

Perhaps, but what does this prove?

At any rate, what I remember most about that scene is that Klingons have pink nail polish for blood that floats in dubious-looking globs.

 

[Timo]

The space shuttle does OK without inertial dampers or artificial gravity, but turn the heat and air off and you've got problems. People can survive for extends periods in zero g, but without heat and atmosphere you're in trouble much more quickly.

Yet the Space Shuttle is a tiny vehicle, meaning that accelerations involved in mere attitude changes won't be extreme; the ends of a multi-hundred-meter starship swinging around are a different matter. OTOH, the Space Shuttle being a tiny vehicle means it is capable of cooling down fast. Something the size of an Enterprise might take years to lose heat - or indeed might suffer more of overheating problems even at total power loss, because the starship would need massive and complex systems for expunging internal heat. It should also be remembered that the Space Shuttle is a virtually unpowered vehicle (but still needs large radiators to cope with waste heat, and must abort the mission if those radiators cannot be deployed by opening the cargo bay doors), whereas a starship constantly operates systems of extreme power throughput and thus generates lots of internal heat.

We do see some cold seeping in during an extended period of power loss in "The Last Outpost" (six hours) - but that's stated to be abnormal, with robust systems mysteriously failing. It may even be that the amazing ability of the Tkon outpost to suck power from the ship's systems contributes directly to the heat loss, by also sucking heat off the ship.

I think you overestimate the number of space suits they have on hand for the crew. A given starship, from what I've seen does not appear to carry more than a dozen or so space suits.

May well be (although I suspect there are alternate survival means, such as more lightweight breathing apparatus for interior use, in far greater supply). But crews can cope with local loss of atmosphere by moving to other locations. Crews facing local loss of gravity can't move, because they will be dead in an instant.

Moreover, if we are talking about the very last systems to fail, we are talking about what you need to turn the ship into a giant life boat.

I'd rather argue that the absolute requirement is that gravity must not fail first, or second, or third. That the arrangements made to ensure this actually result in gravity failing last is more or less coincidental (except of course from the out-universe, dramatic point of view).

In any case, designing ship's systems to ensure survival after the ship has been destroyed in combat is a bit futile - something like the old joke of building entire aircraft out of black box material. If technology allows for the creation of systems that ensure survival at destruction, this technology would probably better be applied in preventing destruction. When all is already lost, our heroes generally can do their usual "rocks to replicators" trick and survive nevertheless; they don't need shipboard systems when they already have adequate lifeboats and the like.

It always bugged me that in trek when a ship goes into red alert they don't immediately don spacesuits. Think of the lives lost by that one simple omission.

That's a bit like asking a tank driver to don a mouth guard when crossing a ditch under fire. Makes far too little difference, loses valuable seconds of time exactly when no seconds should be lost, infuses the crew with ill-founded and unnecessary fear and distrust in their vehicle, and in any case is made redundant by the availability of atmosphere-containing forcefields.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[YARN]

Yet the Space Shuttle is a tiny vehicle, meaning that accelerations involved in mere attitude changes won't be extreme; the ends of a multi-hundred-meter starship swinging around are a different matter.

If the ship is simply drifting (regardless of relative speed), then this is a non-issue.

If a starship were spinning like the Discovery in 2010, people in the middle of the ship would be weightless, but would increasingly "gain weight" as you moved toward the ends of the ship. The ship would have to be spinning pretty quick for the centrifugal effect to be worrisome. And how often do starships breakdown while spinning? Just about every time we see a busted starship on the screen (big and small) it is is shown just sitting there.

OTOH, the Space Shuttle being a tiny vehicle means it is capable of cooling down fast. Something the size of an Enterprise might take years to lose heat

Years?

Supposing, however, that the Enterprise is basically (magically?) a sort of thermos that loses very little of its heat to space, you still have the nagging problem of needing air to breathe. And you can go MUCH longer without gravity than you can breathable air.

- or indeed might suffer more of overheating problems even at total power loss, because the starship would need massive and complex systems for expunging internal heat. It should also be remembered that the Space Shuttle is a virtually unpowered vehicle (but still needs large radiators to cope with waste heat, and must abort the mission if those radiators cannot be deployed by opening the cargo bay doors), whereas a starship constantly operates systems of extreme power throughput and thus generates lots of internal heat.

If so, this is another point in favor of life support over gravity. Without gravity people float around. Without life support, if what you say is right, they might burn up from all that internal heat (coming from where?).

We do see some cold seeping in during an extended period of power loss in "The Last Outpost" (six hours) - but that's stated to be abnormal, with robust systems mysteriously failing. It may even be that the amazing ability of the Tkon outpost to suck power from the ship's systems contributes directly to the heat loss, by also sucking heat off the ship.

Well, that does seem to be a knock against the thermos argument, right?

May well be (although I suspect there are alternate survival means, such as more lightweight breathing apparatus for interior use, in far greater supply).

If so, it is curious that we don't see these devices used when starships lose life support in various episodes.

At any rate, I think it is only fair to stick to what we know from watching the shows. I could speculate a fair number of premises to support my case too, but it wouldn't really count for much.

But crews can cope with local loss of atmosphere by moving to other locations. Crews facing local loss of gravity can't move, because they will be dead in an instant.

What other locations? People are distributed evenly within these ships. Go to another section and you will find people there have already been sucking down your air.

Why would the mere loss of gravity = "dead in an instant"???

People seem to do pretty well on the ISS in virtual zero-G.

At most, some crew members located at extreme ends of the ship would encounter centrifugal effects if..... IF.... the ship happened to be spinning, but they would only be in danger if the ship were spinning rather quickly.

Again, starships don't seem to spin like tops when they lose power (they just sit there with their lights off), so this is a bit much.

Moreover, if we are talking about the very last systems to fail, we are talking about what you need to turn the ship into a giant life boat. I'd rather argue that the absolute requirement is that gravity must not fail first, or second, or third. That the arrangements made to ensure this actually result in gravity failing last is more or less coincidental (except of course from the out-universe, dramatic point of view).

Well, OK, but this amounts to a change in your argument; we were talking about whether gravity should be given priority (in terms of persistent operation in times of crisis) over life support. We can all agree that gravity should not be among the first systems to fail and still disagree about the priority of life support in relation to gravity.

In any case, designing ship's systems to ensure survival after the ship has been destroyed in combat is a bit futile - something like the old joke of building entire aircraft out of black box material.

I agree that if you are in combat, it makes sense to temporarily give priority to gravity over life support so that people can man their stations and return fire.

Then again, if we are agreed that gravity and life support should be among the very last systems to fail, the point is moot. If they haven't lost weapons systems and shields, then they still have life support and gravity.

Also, it is not always combat that causes the ship to lose power. Sometimes the big whale probe deprives you of power. Sometimes you lose power after limping away from a battle. Sometimes systems just break.

If technology allows for the creation of systems that ensure survival at destruction, this technology would probably better be applied in preventing destruction. When all is already lost, our heroes generally can do their usual "rocks to replicators" trick and survive nevertheless; they don't need shipboard systems when they already have adequate lifeboats and the like.

What lifeboats? A handful of shuttlecraft? A dozen environmental suits? Escape pods (how long do you think the heat and air lasts in one of those)?

To me the question is pretty simple. If I am the captain and my engineer tells me "Well, we can turn off the grav plating or shut down life support." I am going to opt for turning off the gravity first - especially if we don't know how long the system would need to be shut off.

 

[Timo]

If the ship is simply drifting (regardless of relative speed), then this is a non-issue.

But that's virtually never the case for a starship.

The point about gravity being life support is that failure in gravity kills you instantaneously - long before damage has cast your ship adrift. Or if it doesn't kill you, it forces you to drift, which means you are dead anyway in most cases - you can't run from whatever caused your gravity to fail.

Starship safety systems shouldn't be optimized for saving a ship from "benign danger". They should be designed to protect the ship from grave danger, after which benign situations would automatically follow. Building the gravity system to specs that only save the crew if there's a hiccup during uneventful flight would be silly; building the system to combat specs may well turn gravity into the most reliable system overall aboard the ship, because its role is so absolutely crucial in combat.

And how often do starships breakdown while spinning?

In about 100% of the cases. Okay, the Defiant in "For the Uniform" broke down due to sabotage in relatively level flight, apparently. But that doesn't budge the numbers much.

Without gravity people float around.

Without gravity people become ricocheting bullets. Unless a starship is holding absolutely still, which just plain never happens. Starships are designed to do just about anything but stand still.

Without life support, if what you say is right, they might burn up from all that internal heat (coming from where?).

They might burn up in a matter of minutes or hours. Gravity kills in a split second. Priorities, priorities...

And how could there not be internal heat when starships operate devices capable of hurtling them from star to star or blowing up planets? Such things should be volcano hot (in at least some part of the no doubt carefully engineered cooling chain) for hours if again not years after total shutdown.

Well, that does seem to be a knock against the thermos argument, right?

Only insofar that this happens once and is considered an anomaly by our heroes.

In reality, spacecraft today are indeed thermos flasks - it's an inevitable consequence of them sitting in the middle of vacuum. Apollo 13 didn't freeze solid despite complete power failure, for example. Had she been flying to the Moon through a heat-transferring medium, the crew would not have had any problems with shivering: the air around them would have frozen solid quickly enough, preventing shivering... But engineers do their damnedest to defeat the thermos flask effect, to give the spacecraft at least some capacity for losing heat, or else the crews and systems would fry. Starfleet may have created an efficient passive means for doing so, thus against all expectations allowing its starships to lose heat in space.

If so, it is curious that we don't see these devices used when starships lose life support in various episodes.

But they never do. Life support goes down on "Deck 15" or somesuch, not on the location where the camera sits, because it would be too expensive to show something like a life support failure.

We do see breathing masks in ST2, but none are used in e.g. "Balance of Terror" in an environment where toxic gas release seems a very real risk. Somewhat unrealistic, but not completely implausible because the camera so carefully avoids showing life support failure locations.

What other locations? People are distributed evenly within these ships. Go to another section and you will find people there have already been sucking down your air.

Who cares? If those locations haven't suffered a life support failure, then they can just as easily support 50 people as they originally supported 25. Starships aren't flimsy deathtraps like today's spacecraft.

Life support failure in Star Trek never affects all parts of a starship at once. There will always be the chance of concentrating survival resources in one room while neglecting others. Even artificial gravity behaves in this manner. The only difference here is that gravity failure is much more immediately fatal than breathing air failure or temperature failure.

Why would the mere loss of gravity = "dead in an instant"??? People seem to do pretty well on the ISS in virtual zero-G.

But only the ISS has virtual zero gee. Starships have hundreds or thousands of gee!

Roughly 100% of the time, we catch our ships undergoing impulse or warp maneuvers (even if that's just linear acceleration). Only starships that have already been fatally damaged, or starships moored to a spacedock, are floating in zero gee.

Lack of motion is not something you should count your life on. Inertia is a cruel killer: even vehicles as humble as automobiles can get you killed through inertia. Driving a tank over an obstacle can kill the crew when the thing slams down again. And gravity typically catches you unawares: you may notice your breathing air going stale, and react to that, but inertia kills faster than you can react. You literally don't know what hit you (although you will know in advance that the likeliest killer aboard a starship is the nearest wall).

they would only be in danger if the ship were spinning rather quickly

The math doesn't support that. If the E-D turns around to face the enemy, taking five leisurely seconds in doing so, and gravity is lost in the middle of the turn, then people in Ten Forward will suddenly be subjected to more than a hundred gees of axial acceleration. Fifty is plenty to fatally rearrange your innards all by itself, even negating the effects of a short flight to the outer windows and impact against them.

Most starships are hurt when maneuvering like that. They would be minimally inconvenienced if breathing air suddenly was lost in the middle of such a maneuver; anybody can hold breath for five seconds, or survive not holding breath. They would be incapacitated if the crew got subjected to a sudden 10 to 100 gees, depending on location.

Well, OK, but this amounts to a change in your argument; we were talking about whether gravity should be given priority (in terms of persistent operation in times of crisis) over life support.

And yes, it should. Unless gravity is the most reliable system, it means you won't survive either in short term or in long term. If atmospheric control is the most reliable system, if will continue to provide air for a shipful of corpses; if gravitic control is, it will continue to provide gravity and inertial protection for a shipful of people still fighting for their lives and looking for ways to get breathing air.

Also, it is not always combat that causes the ship to lose power. Sometimes the big whale probe deprives you of power. Sometimes you lose power after limping away from a battle. Sometimes systems just break.

And if the result is loss of air, it's barely a nuisance: things can be repaired. But if the result is loss of gravity, everybody dies. Especially if the failure happens not in the predictable middle of a battle, but in the unpredictable serenity of uneventful flight.

One can afford to have a finicky air supply in both cases. One cannot afford to have finicky gravity in either case. The priorities should be clear. Once you survive the calamity of the day thanks to having reliable gravity, you can start worrying about life support.

If I am the captain and my engineer tells me "Well, we can turn off the grav plating or shut down life support." I am going to opt for turning off the gravity first - especially if we don't know how long the system would need to be shut off.

Which means you will not know what hit you.

Again, you can react to changes in most life support parameters. You can't react to changes in inertia, because those kill you before you can react. By turning off gravity, you deprive yourself of the option of influencing your own fate.

Really, a simple analogy might be best. Do you equip your car with good safety belts or good fire protection? If the former fail, the latter won't do you any good because you can't run from the nicely delayed and contained fire anyway. You will hopefully be dead or unconscious - but you may also be simply immobilized and aware that the fire is slowly getting to you.

If the latter fails, even at highway speeds, there's still hope; there are seconds if not minutes to spare for reacting accordingly and saving your life.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[YARN]

Starship safety systems shouldn't be optimized for saving a ship from "benign danger". They should be designed to protect the ship from grave danger, after which benign situations would automatically follow.

Fair point.

If the ship is in a situation where people need to be able to quickly react to a battle, then gravity would be a more immediate concern.

Without gravity people become ricocheting bullets. Unless a starship is holding absolutely still, which just plain never happens.

Why? Crew will be in the same frame of motion as the ship, why would they ricochet at all?

They will be moving in the same direction and speed as the ship. No biggie - you float around. When people do space walks outside the space shuttle they "float around" the outside of the shuttle even though both objects (shuttle and astronaut on EVA) are orbiting the Earth at 17,000 MPH. The astronaut can change directions and float around push off objects, but the effect is gentle because both are basically still moving in the same direction at the same speed.

And how could there not be internal heat when starships operate devices capable of hurtling them from star to star or blowing up planets?

Who knows what the systems do? If I recall correctly, the systems of the Enterprise are not even supposed to run on electricity.

But only the ISS has virtual zero gee. Starships have hundreds or thousands of gee!

We go from exerting 1g on our occupants to exerting 0g on our occupants. How does this kill them?

We have seen a ship lose gravity when fired upon. In the Undiscovered Country we see a Klingon ship hit by a torpedo as the Enterprise and that cruiser were heading in the same direction. We see the Klingon ship moving against the stars (i.e., passing them).

The occupants of the Klingon Counselor's ship were not squished by hundred of thousands of Gs, but simply began to float around.

Roughly 100% of the time, we catch our ships undergoing impulse or warp maneuvers (even if that's just linear acceleration). Only starships that have already been fatally damaged, or starships moored to a spacedock, are floating in zero gee.

See above. We have seen a moving Trek ship lose gravity and there was not "squish" factor.

Driving a tank over an obstacle can kill the crew when the thing slams down again. And gravity typically catches you unawares: you may notice your breathing air going stale, and react to that, but inertia kills faster than you can react. You literally don't know what hit you (although you will know in advance that the likeliest killer aboard a starship is the nearest wall).

I never argued that gravity should be the 1st system that might fail in an emergency. It should be one of the last systems to fail, but not the very last system.

If we have already lost systems like shields, weapons, and propulsion, we don't have to worry about being slammed around. The ship is going to play by Newton's rules (if you've lost warp and impulse drive you're moving according to the normal rules of the universe) and keep flying in whatever direction it was traveling in and so will the crew.

The math doesn't support that. If the E-D turns around to face the enemy, taking five leisurely seconds in doing so, and gravity is lost in the middle of the turn, then people in Ten Forward will suddenly be subjected to more than a hundred gees of axial acceleration.

100Gs?

Really, have you done the math on this?

At any rate, at the point that you have lost gravity in my preferred system of prioritization, it would make no sense to turn to face an enemy as your weapons shields would already be offline.

 

[sojourner]

That's a bit like asking a tank driver to don a mouth guard when crossing a ditch under fire.

Or maybe it's more like telling your troops to prepare for battle before it begins.

Makes far too little difference,

Tell that to all the crew who died not from the phaser fire but from the los of atmosphere

loses valuable seconds of time exactly when no seconds should be lost

obviously your not going to stop and put on a suit to the dereliction of duty

, infuses the crew with ill-founded and unnecessary fear and distrust in their vehicle

Yea, maybe we should remove the escapepods too, and the parachutes from modern combat aircraft

, and in any case is made redundant by the availability of atmosphere-containing forcefields.

until the ship reaches a point where it can't manifest those forcefields. Spacesuits are just another line of defense in keeping the crew alive especially when they have time to prepare such as going into a possible combat situation.

 

[Timo]

Tell that to all the crew who died not from the phaser fire but from the los of atmosphere

Are there any known cases?

It just so happens that when starships duke it out, forces much greater than loss of atmosphere are afoot. It would be profoundly silly to worry about your breathing air when loss of air in 99% of the cases is associated with loss of half your torso if not loss of half your fellow crew.

Essentially, you are already wearing a spacesuit. It just happens to be fairly large, and happens to be called a starship compartment. You wear it inside another spacesuit, which is even larger and is called a starship deck. That is worn inside yet another spacesuit, which is even larger and is called a starship. At some point, you simply must stop worrying. Or does a tank driver wear a kevlar vest, and a kevlar bra under that vest, and then kevlar nipple shields under the bra, and then a kevlar implant under the skin?

Spacesuits as seen in even 24th century Star Trek are clumsy affairs. They probably decrease your survival odds instead of increasing them, by hindering your survival actions.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[sojourner]

Tank drivers don't have to worry about loss of atmosphere. Why do you have such a problem with what is essentially a very simple precaution that could save lives?

It's the depiction of spacesuits in the 24th century that is clumsy. If the actual technology existed I am guessing they could make suits as formfitting as 7 of 9's skintights.

 

[Timo]

Why do you have such a problem with what is essentially a very simple precaution that could save lives?

Because it's unrealistic. Naval personnel don't really wear lifejackets any more even when the ship goes to battle, unless their fighting stations place them at risk of being swept to the sea. Taking the precaution would needlessly inconvenience them, and quite possibly make it impossible for them to flee from their stations deep inside the vessel if the order came to abandon ship. Grabbing the flotation devices after leaving the cramped confines is a more sound way to increase one's survival odds...

Tank drivers don't have to worry about bullets hitting them, so they don't wear flak jackets. Starship drivers don't have to worry about air running out, so they don't wear breathing gear. Until and unless something goes wrong.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hofner]

Starfleet considered providing their crews with spacesuits for battle situations one time. But a study showed that the crews were much more likely to be killed by warp core explosions or exploding consoles than loss of atmosphere so they dropped the idea.

Robert

 

[sojourner]

Starship drivers don't have to worry about air running out

Yes, actually the do.

Until and unless something goes wrong.

Timo Saloniemi

Yes, exactly. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Why don't submarine crews don SCUBA gear?

 

[sojourner]

^The depth would crush them.

 

[RedShirt]

Without gravity people become ricocheting bullets. Unless a starship is holding absolutely still, which just plain never happens.

Why? Crew will be in the same frame of motion as the ship, why would they ricochet at all?

They will be moving in the same direction and speed as the ship. No biggie - you float around. When people do space walks outside the space shuttle they "float around" the outside of the shuttle even though both objects (shuttle and astronaut on EVA) are orbiting the Earth at 17,000 MPH. The astronaut can change directions and float around push off objects, but the effect is gentle because both are basically still moving in the same direction at the same speed.

You are drastically underestimating the difference in scale between the mass of an astronaut pushing himself around during EVA and the mass of a Galaxy Class starship performing an orientation maneuver.
I think the assumption you keep making is that the ship and its occupants will always be going the exact same speed relative to each other when gravity/inertial damping fails - this will not necessarily be the case.
The maneuver that Timo describes involves acceleration to start and deceleration to stop. A ship as big as the E-D is going to be exerting a LOT of force do do the turn as described. Failure of the gravity/ID systems anywhere during that maneuver is going to cause inertia - the force that pushes you back into your seat when you accelerate your car or throws you towards the dash when you hit the brakes - to reassert itself on the occupants and unless they are secured in place in some fashion they will not be accelerating or decelerating at the same rate as the ship... until they hit the nearest wall that is.
This is the "ricocheting" he's referring to.

And how could there not be internal heat when starships operate devices capable of hurtling them from star to star or blowing up planets?

Who knows what the systems do? If I recall correctly, the systems of the Enterprise are not even supposed to run on electricity.

Of course it runs on electricity, it's just derived from a futuristic source - namely plasma. The plasma is generated by the fusion reactors, which get pretty damn hot themselves.
Even if all electrical circuits on board the ship had plasma flowing through them instead of tried & true AC/DC power, those circuits will still have resistance and inductance requirements to function properly - both of which generate heat.
There are a lot of electronics aboard the E-D... plus probably several hundred kilometers of plasma conduits supporting them.
Not to mention any radiative heat energy the ship may absorb from the local star while orbiting the planet of the week...

We have seen a ship lose gravity when fired upon. In the Undiscovered Country we see a Klingon ship hit by a torpedo as the Enterprise and that cruiser were heading in the same direction. We see the Klingon ship moving against the stars (i.e., passing them).

The occupants of the Klingon Counselor's ship were not squished by hundred of thousands of Gs, but simply began to float around.

Which you have to admit was absolutely ludicrous when you think about how the laws of motion actually work.
The Klingon ship was hit from below with enough force to throw it from its previous trajectory, pushing it "up" from the E-A's point of view, and starting it on a great arcing spin.
If gravity and inertial damping was lost at the moment of the explosion everybody should have appeared to have been thrown to the floor as the floor was actually rushing up at them when those systems failed.
If ID stayed functional even when gravity failed then nobody should have started floating unless they were already in the act of pushing themselves off of something (possibly even just walking).
Watching the characters & props(!) that were just sitting around minding their own business spontaneously starting to float is very worthy of a facepalm every time I watch this scene.

If we have already lost systems like shields, weapons, and propulsion, we don't have to worry about being slammed around. The ship is going to play by Newton's rules (if you've lost warp and impulse drive you're moving according to the normal rules of the universe) and keep flying in whatever direction it was traveling in and so will the crew.

Again, NOT if the ship is radically accelerating or decelerating beyond a point that the humanoid for can withstand.
Per Newton's rules.
Hence the old "chunky salsa" metaphor.

 

[sojourner]

On that last point, how is it going to be accelerating or decelerating if it has lost propulsion? I think what Yarn is describing is the typical situation to where a ship in combat no longer becomes a threat and is left to drift as it's attacker moves on to other things. (like the next ship)