Firearms & inertial dampeners?

[Argosy]

How can projectile weapons work on board ships equipped with inertial dampeners?

Shouldn’t the bullets be stopped or slowed to non-lethal velocities just like all other objects and personnel in the habitable volume of a starship when this system is turned on?

Thoughts please.

[stargater1990]

How can projectile weapons work on board ships equipped with inertial dampeners?

Shouldn’t the bullets be stopped or slowed to non-lethal velocities just like all other objects and personnel in the habitable volume of a starship when this system is turned on?

Thoughts please.

inertial dampeners reduce the overall mass of the ship, therby lowering the inertia that would kill people at very high speeds. it dosent slow down the ship or any thing inside it at all.

[jds1982]

inertial dampeners reduce the overall mass of the ship

Er no they don't, the only way they could do that is to chop off part of the ship, but they do make it act as if it had less mass. Think of it like this, if you're in a bus and it suddenly stops, you get thrown forward because your body has the same forward speed as the bus and it continues forward at that speed, inertial dampeners would stop this kind of thing from happening. You could walk around the bus when it was in motion with no problem because relative to the bus you have no foward motion, it's only in relation to the ground that you have forward inertia. So inertial dampeners stop inertia globally but not locally. That's a mess of an explanation but it's all I've got.

[stargater1990]

Er no they don't, the only way they could do that is to chop off part of the ship, but they do make it act as if it had less mass. Think of it like this, if you're in a bus and it suddenly stops, you get thrown forward because your body has the same forward speed as the bus and it continues forward at that speed, inertial dampeners would stop this kind of thing from happening. You could walk around the bus when it was in motion with no problem because relative to the bus you have no foward motion, it's only in relation to the ground that you have forward inertia. So inertial dampeners stop inertia globally but not locally. That's a mess of an explanation but it's all I've got.

thats what i meant,

[Crazy Tom]

No, becuase the bullets and the people would both be under the infuence of the inertial dampeners.

[peragrin]

No, becuase the bullets and the people would both be under the infuence of the inertial dampeners.

exactly, but your thinking backwards. A person can walk around a ship with inertial dampers on it just fine, relative movement with in the damping field is fine. The same ability that let's you walk around, and even fall down would let a bullet still travel. The bullet speed doesn't change as it is still in a 1g environment like you find here on earth.

Now an interesting experiment to perform aboard a large enough starship is can you fire a bullet down a long hall and adjust the bullets trajectory with sharp maneuvers of the ship itself.

[2ndgenerationalteran]

the inertial dampeners prevents external forces from reacting on things inside of the ship, essentially separating the ship into one inertial plane and the occupants and everything within the ship into its own separate inertial plane. (i'm not sure if "plane" is the right term to use) But things outside of the ship would react in a normal way, and things inside would react the same, just allowing for acceleration that would usually kill people.

[dropstitch]

Simply put: the projectiles fired from the weapons aren't subject to the inertial force on the ship when they're fired. Imagine you and your friend were playing catch on board a bus speeding down a highway at 70MPH, the tennis ball wouldn't be affected by the inertial force of the bus you're on because the ball, just like you, is traveling at the same speed. So the force applied on the ball to throw it would exceed that of the speed you're traveling at.

Dampeners or not, the objects in the ship are still traveling at the same speed as the ship. All the dampeners do is reduce the effect of acceleration/deceleration. Don't confuse momentum with acceleration.

[thekillman]

essentially they negate external forces. so G-force is nullified. as a railgun firing isnt an external force, and the ID only work on the inside[so far known], there isnt a problem

[EternalAlteran]

To the dampeners the weapons, people and the ship are all the same system and therefore affected the same way. It is just like being on a moving ship. When you throw a ball when standing on the deck, the ball would have a normal speed relative to you. It would be the same speed as on land. Also if you would stand on a ship facing the engines if this does not apply, you would hit yourself in the face.

But because everything is effected by the dampeners, it would generate a normal effect and only the entire ship is affected compared to the rest of space.