Hi, researchers.

This is just a fun query which has been on my mind since the 60's.
Older kids will remember the skateboards of the day as little red
pieces of plywood with skinny steel wheels. If you hit a pebble, or
even a large grain of sand,the board came to an immediate halt, while
the rider continued on to the inevitable cement face-plant. Welcome to
childhood physics 101, 60's style.

Then Star Trek hit our TV screen. Even as a child (with my face in a
cast, no doubt), I couldn't figure out how their space ship could
accelerate/decelerate to/from such magnificent speeds without the
whole crew being flung to the front or the back of the ship.

Forgetting the whole "faster than the speed of light" conundrum, let's
just say our fully manned/womanned space ship is trekking along at a
paltry ten million miles an hour and little Billy yanks the emergency
brake and brings the ship to a complete stop in three seconds. What
sort of technology could explain why the whole crew didn't become
bulkhead pie?

Any reasonable answer will get the pocket change here, but try to make
it a little more Moe Howard than Albert Einstein. I'm sure some of you
folks have already done the mathematical/comic legwork here.

Thank you for your time.

Dear calaboss-ga 

As a result of your bruises, you’ve correctly identified there is a
problem with the physics behind Star Trek and the speed of the
Enterprise. Rapid acceleration and deceleration on the scale as seen
in Star Trek would turn your body into pulp. This criticism was raised
in the earliest days of the program.
The solution the writers invented was "inertial dampers". A shock
absorber for spaceships. These prevented any injury or death to the
crew. The technology and physics behind them were never revealed in
the programs.

http://www.psiphi.org/cgi/upc-db/excerpt/0060977108.html has extracts
from The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence M. Krauss, and Stephen
Hawking in which this topic is discussed (its in lay man’s terms -
even I understood it).

Visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/st/interviews/bormanis/page39.shtml
where Andre Bormanis, the show's science advisor, confesses.

Visit http://www.ship3.fsnet.co.uk/voyship_all19.htm to find out in
which episodes they were mentioned.

Please do ask for clarification of any part of this research or if the
links do not work.

answerfinder-ga


Search strategy
I remembered reading something about this in the past so:
"star trek" physics stopping
://www.google.com/search?q=%22star+trek%22+physics+stopping&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N
"star trek" "inertial dampers"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22star+trek%22+%22inertial+dampers%22

Not the answer I was looking for (like I could find one), but certainly reasonable.

Note also that the energy expenditure required to stop and turn an
object travelling at high speeds would generate phenomenal heat - so
your 'bulkhead pie' would be nicely cooked..

See, Diagonal? A witty reply was anticipated, but not received from the researcher.

calaboss,

If I am making a Comment from the Peanut Gallery, I will often indulge
myself in humor. However, if I am posting an Answer for a person I do
not know, whose face I cannot see, and whose voice I cannot hear, on
which they are going to be slapping anywhere from 1 to 5 stars (or --
HORRORS! -- a Refund Request), I tend to be much more conservative and
take the Answer a little more seriously. I suspect most Researchers
operate under similar constraints.

By the way, I would have posted a smart-mouth Answer to your Question,
but I was too busy watching a re-run of Voyager. :)

aceresearcher