Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Warp acceleration and inertial damping

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

OK, so relativity says that matter can't travel at the speed of light. You can go faster or slower, but not exactly at it. As I understand the general concept of warp drive, it allows you to jump past C without actually hitting it. Now if acceleration is delta-v over time, and time is zero, wouldn't that make acceleration infinite, if you're jumping from one speed to another without passing through the intervening speeds? Boy, that is one HECK of a damping field!

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"How do you define fool?"
"I don't attempt it. I wait for demonstrations. They inevitably surpass my imagination."
- CJ Cherryh, Invader

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :

Well, as a ship jumps to warp, it's not technically "accelerating". The space around it is moving, the ship is just sitting there. The ship is moving relative to everything else but the space around it, so would its real velocity be zero? At least, that's what the voices tells me.

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"God's in his heaven. All's right with the world."

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

The concept behind today's "warp drive" theories (and, I expect, Trek's) is that matter and energy cannot move faster than c, relative to the space around it, but space can move faster than c, relative to the space around it. So, rather than moving yourself, you make a bubble of space around you move beyond light-speed. Therefore, you stay stationary w/ respect to the bubble of space, and the bubble moves past c, which is allowable, since it's just space, not matter or energy.

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Cat: "I'm courting."
Lister: "Courting who?"
Cat: "Whoever shows up!"
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Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

Exactly. I'm probably going to change my sig if I see one more post asking about acceleration effects when a ship goes to warp.

*ahem*

Warp drive is a non-Newtonian form of propulsion. The drive system "warps" space past the subspace bubble formed around the ship. The more rapidly the coils fire, the more rapidly space "slips" past. Inside the subspace field, the ship is traveling relative to itself and however much of "reality" was enclosed within the subspace bubble at the same speed it was when the warp drive was engaged. No inertial effects are involved, ergo no intertial damping is needed.

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

However...there was a Voyager ep where Paris says, "The ship might survive the jump to warp, but without intertial damping, we'd all be stains on the back wall." (or something close). I don't remember what ep it was.

I don't know how this figures into the whole equation...

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

quote:
time is zero

Time was not zero IIRC, but Planck-time. The smallest bit of measurable time (I wonder how they figured that out).

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Fuck all those gun-toting
hip gangster wannabes."
-Tool, Ænima

---
Titan Fleet Yards - Harry Doddema's Star Trek Site

Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :

somebody really quick with a stop watch with really little increments....

Isn't it the time is takes an atom to quiver side to side or some such thing???

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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking" Nugget
Star Trek: Gamma Quadrant
Star Trek: Legacy
Read them, rate them, got money, film them

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Yes, I believe that's correct Ritten. Since time can only be measured if something changes, the smallest amount of measurable time would be the fastest change we can measure: the vibration of a certain atom (I don't remember which one though).

Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :

Time clocks in used, or that have been used, are mercury ion and cesium.
US Naval Observatory (dang, we even have our hands in time...

)

The Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light
to across a distance equal to the Planck length. This is the �quantum of time�, the
smallest measurement of time that has any meaning, and is equal to 10-43
seconds. No smaller division of time has any meaning. With in the framework of
the laws of physics as we understand them today, we can say only that the
universe came into existence when it already had an age of 10-43 seconds.
PhysLink

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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking" Nugget
Star Trek: Gamma Quadrant
Star Trek: Legacy
Read them, rate them, got money, film them

"...and I remain on the far side of crazy, I remain the mortal enemy of man, no hundred dollar cure will save me..." WoV

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

I never understood why one of the first things to go ofline in a battle are the inertial dampners... It's very critical to have them offline, so you'd think it have a good failsafe build in, or at least a backup...

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- Blade

Posted by Daniel (Member # 453) on :

You may not need inertial dampeners for warp, but you DO need them for impulse. So there.

P.S. You'd think they'd have invented effective breakers too, but noooo. We have warp drive, nuclear fusion, transporters, replicators, deflectors, but no breakers. Makes lots of sense to me. Yep.

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-Eleanor Arroway, "Contact" by Carl Sagan

[This message has been edited by Daniel (edited May 10, 2001).]

Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

Redundancy on 'Fleet ships SUCKS.

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"How do you define fool?"
"I don't attempt it. I wait for demonstrations. They inevitably surpass my imagination."
- CJ Cherryh, Invader

Posted by James Fox on :

My opinion on the 'shaking around' during battle is that if they don't *say* the inertial dampeners are down, they are not down, and the shaking results from the dampeners being 'surprised' by the sudden jolt you get from a weapon.

Also, I there seems to be *some* connection between intertial dampeners and warp drive: haven't we seen refrences to bad things happening on ships that have thier dampers when exiting warp?

My vague personal idea would be that something about warp drives makes the ship vibrate, perhaps from multiple subspace fileds beings formed and bouncing off each other. A sudden exit from warp would induce pretty powerful vibrations, or something...

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

And Aban, you should know better than to quote Voyager when it comes to technical stuff... ;-)

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by Austin Powers (Member # 250) on :

Yeah, don't quote Voy! ;-) (Is it even considered "canon" by us?) ;-)))

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advanced states of mental incompetence by the repeated consumption of
fermented vegetable drinks. - Red Dwarf "Timeslides"

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I know, I know. I shouldn't be qupting Voyager...

Thanks for the explanation of Plank Time Ritten. That's pretty cool. I knew I was close