Inertial Buffers

[Vulcan Logician]

So I've been on the forum for only about a month or two, and I'm sure this has been mentioned before... but!

Why are inertial dampers necessary? While in the warp bubble, isn't a starship technically standing still?

I've been to memory alpha. No answer.

The question is (as per my the new addition to my VOY drinking game) why do we need inertial dampers?

 

[Albertese]

Well, that may or may not be the case with Warp travel, depending on who you ask. However, it is absolutely essential for Sublight flight. Even if we assume full impulse is only 0.25 light speed, the G-forces the ship would be subjected to during any sort of acceleration would turn the crew to chunky salsa. Recall that an acceleration counts as speeding up, slowing down, or any change of heading, And ship's do this all the time. So, ruling out warp flight altogether... you really do want your inertial dampers working in fine form... You could still maneuver without it on, but only by tremendously hampering the performance of your ship.

--Alex

 

[Metryq]

Albertese nailed it. Non-warp maneuvering would require the inertial dampers. Recall the scenes in "The Doomsday Machine" when Kirk & co. maneuvered the Constellation on impulse.

 

[Timo]

Several episodes suggest that impulse acceleration may be in the order of hundreds if not thousands of gees. But even turning a Galaxy class ship around as sharply as the VFX would have us believe would turn her into a giant centrifuge, subjecting people at the ends to lethal accelerations. And merely moving forward should turn the aft bulkheads to floors and the floors to walls, so obviously some sort of a force or gadget is needed to combat that. And that's before taking to account all those cases where the ship is shaken by impacts, externally forced course changes and whatnot...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Saturn0660]

Even if we assume full impulse is only 0.25 light speed

--Alex

WHY WHY WHY!!!!!!
NOT AGAIN!!!