Cod "science" that ruins a sci fi film

[Mr. Laser Beam]

But as has already been pointed out, the ship will not always be accelerating. Remember the Discovery from 2001? Most of the time its engines were off. A ship in space will only need to fire its engines for course corrections or to change its speed (which will not be often). At all other times the ship will be coasting. And if the decks are perpendicular to the direction of movement, the crew will be in zero-G for all that time.

It would seem much simpler to just design a complete artificial gravity system and forget about it. Then the crew would be in full gravity all the time and would not need to worry about it.

 

[JuanBolio]

But as has already been pointed out, the ship will not always be accelerating. Remember the Discovery from 2001? Most of the time its engines were off. A ship in space will only need to fire its engines for course corrections or to change its speed (which will not be often). At all other times the ship will be coasting. And if the decks are perpendicular to the direction of movement, the crew will be in zero-G for all that time.

It would seem much simpler to just design a complete artificial gravity system and forget about it. Then the crew would be in full gravity all the time and would not need to worry about it.

Oh, I know the ship wouldn't be accelerating all the time, and that while it was coasting the crew would be in free fall. That's why I agreed with Christopher's suggestion that the AG field was important if you wanted to avoid free fall.

However, it still makes more sense to have your gravity field and the ship's acceleration pulling you in the same direction.

 

[Christopher]

^^Right. It's a simple matter of turning the AG field up or down to compensate for the shifts in thrust. For instance, if you're in free fall, you set the AG to 1g. If you're thrusting at 0.7g, you reduce the AG field to 0.3g for a net gravity of 1. If you then thrust at 2g, you set the AG field into reverse so that it pushes you upward at 1g, cancelling out half that thrust to maintain the 1g pull. Much simpler than having the gravity vector perpendicular to the thrust vector.

 

[The Borg Queen]

This is a reality where a guy can make black holes with his hands that are several INCHES across that don't instantly crush the entire planet and you're bothered about Daphne running faster than light?

Just to clarify, a black hole as big as the ones he makes in the show would have about the mass (and thus the gravity) of Jupiter.

 

[Christopher]

This is a reality where a guy can make black holes with his hands that are several INCHES across that don't instantly crush the entire planet and you're bothered about Daphne running faster than light?

No, I'm simply pointing out that the earlier poster was incorrect to say that they got the science right with regard to Daphne's speed.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

"Accelerating to FTL speeds" is a meaningless concept. It's impossible to reach or exceed the speed of light by using thrust to accelerate through space. The only way to do it is by warping space itself, whether with a warp bubble or a wormhole, and that entails no thrust or acceleration upon the ship itself (except for the gravity of the wormhole as the ship approaches it, but if the ship is on a freefall trajectory, there'd be no thrust or perception of weight).

That's not exactly how Star Trek portrays it though. I believe it was in the DS9 episode "The Ship" where Jadzia said the crew of the Jem'Hadar had been crushed in to the bulkheads when they jumped to warp?

 

[Christopher]

^^Hey, I'm just talking about real physics here. That's how it should work as a general principle, even if fiction sometimes gets it wrong. Perhaps one could rationalize it by assuming that without inertial dampers, the crew would've been killed by the intense unstable gravity gradients of the forming warp field.

 

[JuanBolio]

"Accelerating to FTL speeds" is a meaningless concept. It's impossible to reach or exceed the speed of light by using thrust to accelerate through space. The only way to do it is by warping space itself, whether with a warp bubble or a wormhole, and that entails no thrust or acceleration upon the ship itself (except for the gravity of the wormhole as the ship approaches it, but if the ship is on a freefall trajectory, there'd be no thrust or perception of weight).

That's not exactly how Star Trek portrays it though. I believe it was in the DS9 episode "The Ship" where Jadzia said the crew of the Jem'Hadar had been crushed in to the bulkheads when they jumped to warp?

It could be gravity gradients, or it could just be an internal inconsistency. Trek is full of 'em. Remember "Faster than light - no left or right"?

 

[Bob The Skutter]

"Accelerating to FTL speeds" is a meaningless concept. It's impossible to reach or exceed the speed of light by using thrust to accelerate through space. The only way to do it is by warping space itself, whether with a warp bubble or a wormhole, and that entails no thrust or acceleration upon the ship itself (except for the gravity of the wormhole as the ship approaches it, but if the ship is on a freefall trajectory, there'd be no thrust or perception of weight).

That's not exactly how Star Trek portrays it though. I believe it was in the DS9 episode "The Ship" where Jadzia said the crew of the Jem'Hadar had been crushed in to the bulkheads when they jumped to warp?

It could be gravity gradients, or it could just be an internal inconsistency. Trek is full of 'em. Remember "Faster than light - no left or right"?

I think I misunderstood which direction Christopher was coming from, I see what he means now from his previous post.