I’ve always been unclear as to what these things actually are. Is there some kind of complex forcefield projected throughout a ship, literally holding up every object, every person, and I guess every individual particle throughout the ship against inertia and physical stresses?
Inertial dampers/Structural integrity fields
- Thread starter FredH
- Start date
Liquid gravity bubble which can be hardened or softened through modulation of energy field. In a crunch the local cell can stop a bullet, though you won't be able to expand your lungs to breathe.
The inertial dampeners work by manipulating gravity, momentum, or even subjective time to provide an equal but opposite reaction to the ship's movement, allowing for rapid acceleration, deceleration, and sharp turns.
Since ships frequently project fields and manipulate all kinds of things, the effect is most certainly achieved through field manipulation.
SIF is an actual field projected throughout the hull reinforcing it so it can withstand Warp velocities and other high stress scenarios.
Since Warp doesn't exactly exert a classical effect of speed on a ship (or at least it shouldn't), there shouldn't be a 'speed differential' that would be felt on the hull to start with, but it seems, that in Trek its a combination of factors - so some kind of pressure or stress is exerted on the hull that manifests itself as a proverbial resistance force on the hull which intensifies the higher on the Warp scale you go.
