I'm pointing out we have reason to believe JMS's words should nto be taken as a literal scientific fact (that rather when there is a potential contradiction, some interepretation has to be made.)[BL]Phalanx wrote:
What does that have to do with the comic you referenced?
Or do you think its practical to have some sort of technobabble inertial damper system, yet still somehow be unable to generate some form of artificial gravity, or an equivalent?
I've heard things like that too, but they still relate to affecting/modifying gravity as I recall.
It may not involve gravity control. It may be akin to magnetic fields, but in this case it interacts with all matter. I believe I read somewhere that we're working on something like that today, but it's not artificial gravity.
The other problem with assuming this is that if they HAVE a method of Inertial Damping, why not a method of generating an artificial gravity effect? (Think about it - if they can generate hundreds of gees or more of acceleration to counter for the engines in a single second or less, how can they somehow NOT do the same for a single g over a sustained period of time.)
Er... so we're deliberately inventing technobabble to solve problems for B5?Gravity will accelerate an object at more or less the same rate no matter its mass (unless you're talking about two planets or something...), whereas the field generates a fixed amount of force, and the more something masses, the greater the energy you'll have to expend on it.
Gravity exerts a "field effect" that effects all matter at an equal rate. That is, if gravity accelerates a ship at 40 gees, ALL objects in that ship (including the people) will be accelerated at that same rate in the same amount of time. If you use a reaciton drive to accelerate said ship at 40 gees, it will more or less affect teh ship only. Anything not attached or strapped in inside (crew, furniture, etc.) will NOT be accelerated along with it (but will probably be plastered against the bulkheads.)
Even if you strap in, you still have to contend with the fact that your internals are still subject to this same effect - which means that if you still go too fast you end up having all sorts of unpleasant effects up to and including death. The reason this is not the case for the gravitic drive is that said drive is, as I said, accelerating ALL objects within the field's influence at the same rate -this includes teh body's internals. Any inertial damper would be emulating this effect.
Any sort of Inertial Damper would have to exert a field that accelerates ALL matter within its influence at a rate equal to the engines generate. Even if we assume its some OTHER kind of force other than gravity, it still would have to EMULATE gravity's effects.
The other problem wtih your argument is that this effect has nothing to do with amounts or quantitite, but rather how the force (or forces) act on the target. What you said would be true regardless - larger masses will invaribly require larger amounts of energy to move REGARDLESS - this is a fundamental concept that cannot be violated (although you can probably "cheat") A larger mass operating under gravitic drive will STILL require more energy to accelerate than a smaller mass operating under teh same drive - the only difference is the fact ALL forces inside the ship are moved at the same rate.
Irrelevant. IF they can generate hundreds of gees worth of acecleration to counter the ship's own engines (IE so that all masses in the ship are moving at the same rate as the ship.), generating a single gee should not be difficult. For one thing, a single gee puts far less stress on a device designed to compensate for tens or hundreds of gees, and would only need to be designed to operate for prolonged periods of time.It may be a matter of efficiency and power draw of the inertial dampening. Think of ancient ships, where the technology to manually propel a ship was there, but they'd still use sails to propel the ship.
Or are you saying its impossible for them to generate a single gravity (or even half a gravity) to simulate an Earth enviroment for long periods (days or weeks), yet they can sustain accelerations of tens or hundreds of gees for seconds or minutes?
Think of it this way - one method (inertial damping) requires significantly more power over a short period of time, as opposed to generating a little energy over a long period of time. How is it the latter is going ot take more energy and strain the equipment more than the former does?
