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Though often left unmentioned, [[Inertial Dampening]] is a [[Required Secondary Powers|requisite side-technology]] to any spaceship that can turn or accelerate faster than an ocean liner. It's the reason why [[The Bridge]] has [[No Seat Belts]]. Note that the physical [[Hand Wave]] that accompanies many forms of [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]] dictate that the ship does not accelerate in the traditional Newtonian or, for that matter, Einsteinian fashion, and so the inertial dampener is mostly for maneuvering and orbit changes.
 
In hard [[Sci Fi]], especially written but occasionally not, a more realistic method is used to cushion acceleration shock. Immersion in a fluid equal in density to the body would theoretically cause buoyancy forces to act counter to any accelerations; this is sometimes coupled with [[Human Popsicle|cryonics]]. Some method to allow the subject to continue to breathe in the fluid would be required, be it oxygenated liquids or a circulatory gas-exchange system. Since people riding around in bathtubs are not interesting on-screen (except from a voyeur's point-of-view) this has only rarely trickled down to the big and small screens; the exploration ship in ''[[Event Horizon]]'' and presumably the cryonics pods in the ''[[Alien (Filmfranchise)|Alien]]'' series are the exceptions.
Another relatively hard way would be use of dynamical [[Artificial Gravity]] to compensate inertial forces.
 
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* All too present in [[Macross]] series' [[Schematized Prop]]. Not only the system dampens inertia, it converts it into storable energy required for transformation (that is, unless this troper read the description wrong...)
** It is not perfect however, and not only [[Macross Plus|Guld]] have paid for it in one of the most awesome [[Heroic Sacrifice]] ever, unmanned (Ghost variants) and cyborg-piloted (VF-27 Lucifer) Variable Fighters are outright stated to have better maneuverability than ordinary human/Zentraedi piloted ones.
* Averted in ''[[Gundam]]'' all over the place. The [[World Building]] specifically comments that the facilities for sending people into space are slower than the ones used to transport objects because humans can't tolerate that level of Gs. In two separate series (''[[Gundam Wing]]'' and ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00]]''), [[The Rival]] uses a machine that is incredibly fast but has little to no safety features in order to keep up with the Gundams; both pilots end up exhibiting [[Blood From the Mouth]], and in ''Wing'', we even see the Rival black out and suffer a heart attack from the stresses involved, despite being young and healthy.
 
 
== Comic Books ==
* Averted: In the [[Tintin (Comic Book)]] adventures ''[[Tintin (Comic Book)/Recap/Destination Moon|Destination Moon]]'' and ''[[Tintin (Comic Book)/Recap/Explorers Onon the Moon|Explorers on the Moon]]'', the crew of the Moon-Rocket faints from the pressures caused by take-off and landing.
* Depending on the writer, this is often the reason why [[Iron Man]] can suddenly rocket off, take huge punches, fall from orbit and just crawl out of the crater. Other times it is simply [[Hand Wave|Hand Waved]].
* One of [[Don Rosa]]'s [[Disney Ducks Comic Universe|Scrooge McDuck ]] stories had the Beagle Boys get their hands on a raygun that "completely" removed inertia from objects (really having none at all would be a bizarre idea, but it was cut down to minimum so that anything short of air resistance would instantly stop the object's movement), as well as one that removed "all" friction. The results were interesting to say the least.
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== Fan Fiction ==
* "[[The Open Door (Fanfic)|A ship can't pull 10,000 Gs without some form of inertial compensation.]]"
 
 
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** It's not certain that inertia is the issue in ''Forbidden Planet''. The spacecraft is "decelerating" from its [[FTL]] cruising speed to the sub-light speeds it'll need to rendezvous with (and eventually land on) the destination planet. The crew had to do ''something'' involving those booths to survive the process, but whether this was due to plain old high G forces or to some completely weird effect of their FTL technology is never made clear.
* Inertial dampening seems to be built into the protective bubble surrounding the makeshift spacecraft in ''[[The Explorers]]''. In small words, "you don't get squished."
* Subverted in ''[[Spaceballs (Film)|Spaceballs]]'': When the Eagle 5 comes out of "hyperactive", we see that Vespa's luggage is strewn about all over the place (of course, a crash landing will also do that, but the hyperdrive probably helped). Of course, we've just been exposed to the reason why you should buckle up in Ludicrous Speed. Smoke em if you've got em!
** Also subverted when coming out of ludicrous speed causes Dark Helmet to fly across the bridge and crash into the front of the ship.
* The 2009 ''[[Star Trek (Filmfilm)|Star Trek]]'' film has Sulu as helmsman forgetting to turn [[Inertial Dampening]] off. It's [[Played for Laughs]] (Pike asks about the parking brake; Sulu realizes it's a joke but doesn't get the connection, and Spock asks if he disengaged the external inertial dampers). {{spoiler|And then you get a little [[Mood Whiplash]], because ''Enterprise'' being late to the party is the reason it isn't one of the destroyed Federation saucers you see floating around at the destination...}}
* In [[Alien]], as the Nostromo is landing, Dallas warns the crew that the inertial damping is switching off and they should be prepared for "a little jolt". Turns out to be no so little...
 
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** In later books, they use their dampers to counter the gravity manipulating dovin basals that the enemy was using as shields, propulsion, and to kill ''their'' shields, effectively making them shields for the shields.
** Also from the expanded universe, it is revealed that IG-88 always has his ship's dampeners off, since he doesn't need them. This allows him to perform maneuvers that would otherwise kill an organic being, often giving him the edge.
* Taken to the logical extreme in [[EEE. E. "Doc" Smith]]'s ''[[Lensman]]'' novels, where entire spaceships, including their contents, are rendered inertialess. The consequences of this technology are explored in great detail.
** Perhaps the most interesting consequence is that the technology does not remove inertia, but rather suspends it. When the inertialess drive is shut down you have exactly the same inertia you had when you turned it on. If you neglect to shut off your inertialess drive and match velocities with your destination, heaven help you. Your restored inertia will either fling you into space at thousands of miles an hour, or fling you into the GROUND at thousands of miles an hour.
** Moreover, inertialess drive technology allows Doc Smith to Justify using [[Space Friction]]. If an inertialess ship collides with a particle of interstellar hydrogen it comes to a screeching halt because the hydrogen ion has inertia and the ship doesn't. Therefore, Doc Smith spacecraft must keep up continuous thrust to move while inertialess, and their speed is directly related to the power of their engines because the faster they go the more friction they encounter from interstellar dust and gas. Speeds eventually reach the point where the fastest ships have to be teardrop shaped for streamlining.
** Reducing your space ship's inertial mass to 0 also means you no longer have to worry about it becoming infinite as you approach light speed. This is, in fact, how ships in the Lensmen universe accomplish [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]].
** Spoofed in ''Backstage Lensmen'', a parody by [[Randall Garrett (Creator)|Randall Garrett]].
{{quote| Unfortunately, the Bergenholm, while it could completely neutralize inertial mass, never quite knew what to do with gravitational mass, which seems to come and go as the circumstances require.}}
* In the ''[[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]]'' stories (and others by David Weber), inertial sinks (called "inertial compensators" in the Honorverse) are required to deal with, by "absorbing" the inertia otherwise generated, the ridiculously high accelerations ships can generate. Failure of the system, either through combat or sabotage, is considered terrifying by crews as undergoing 300 or more Earth gravities of acceleration instantaneously turns people into chunky salsa.
** Weber makes a point of describing this effect at least once in any book which involves space combat or high system-stress situations (basically all of them). The best was "Turning the entire crew into something vaguely resembling tuna paste."
* The later books of the ''[[Rendezvous With Rama]]'' series have the immersion version of this trope. In an interesting twist, the characters at first don't realize just what the hell the tanks are for and have to be herded into them at quite literally the last minute by the ship's robotic crew.
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* In [[Harry Harrison]]'s [[Alternate History]] novel ''[[Tunnel Through The Deeps]]'' (AKA ''A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!''), Augustine Washington's helicopter is sabotaged, preventing him from getting from the Atlantic colony (US where the revolution failed) to the heart of the British Empire in time to meet the Queen. A man approaches him and offers to test a new method of rapid intercontinental travel. They submerge Washington (with a breathing apparatus) into a fluid-filled rocket that is launched in a ballistic trajectory, allowing him to safely get from America to Britain in a few hours. The best part is that all calculations were done using a ''mechanical computer''.
* This troper read a novel once, in which inertial absorbers allowed a ship to rapidly accelerate to near-light speeds without suffering the effects of [[Time Dilation]].
* Averted in [[CJC. J. Cherryh]]'s ''[[Alliance Union (Literature)|Alliance Union]]'' series. In addition to its primary purpose of traveling through hyperspace, a starship's FTL drive can be used to make instantaneous changes in velocity. Since this involves no acceleration, a starship can quickly achieve relativistic velocities without having to worry about inertia.
* For all its hardness, Poul Anderson's ''[[Tau Zero (Literature)|Tau Zero]]'' does have inertial dampening technology. It only works when travelling very close to the speed of light, though, so the heroes' [[Ram ScoopRamscoop]] has to accelerate at a measly 1''g'' for the first year of its journey.
* The "balanced drive" in Charles Sheffield's McAndrew stories uses a flat plate of superdense matter at the front of the ship, with the crew pod trailing behind at just the right distance so that acceleration g-forces in one direction and the plate's gravity in the other add up to a comfortable 1g. This would actually work, except for the [[Sarcasm Mode|slight engineering problems]] of making the superdense plate, keeping it compressed, and accelerating its huge mass.
* ''[[Lacuna (Literature)|Lacuna]]'' plays this straight with their gravity generating drives, which are also used as inertial dampeners in the ship. Strong movements can still be felt however.
 
 
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Averted in the roleplaying game ''[[Jovian Chronicles]]''. Most ships in the setting are actually built with their decks vertically arranged so that the g-force of acceleration (or deceleration for the second half of the trip) simulates gravity. (not unlike ''[[Tintin (Comic Book)]]'''s rocket)
* Necron ships in [[Warhammer 40000]] use inertialess drives. How they work is never really explained but they allow their ships to reach superluminar speeds without the use of warpdrives, apparently by enabling them to instantly and massively accelerate. Apparently the technology needed to build such engines is incredibly advanced and far beyond the reach of any of the other factions.
* Gravitic Compensators in ''[[GURPS]]: Spaceships'' negate 99% of the force of acceleration, which is good for empires with extremely powerful engines because ''GURPS'' [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|accounts for the effect of extreme changes in speed on characters]].
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== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Deus Ex (Video Game)|Deus Ex]]'', a prototype weapon has these as a safety feature. They are called "kinetic bleeders"
* The Arwing fighters in the ''[[Star Fox (Video Gameseries)|Star Fox]]'' series have "G-Diffusers". At one point in Star Fox 64's first mission, Falco's diffuser goes on the fritz, and he does indeed fly slower and take smoother turns for a while.
** Actually that's their reactor systems.
* ''[[Portal (Video Gameseries)|Portal]]'''s heroine has these built into her legs, as a justification for her being completely immune to falling damage (which would be quite a pain in such a game).
* In the computer game ''[[Anachronox]]'', you can read a bit of background that talks about the discovery of Anachronox and when a ship entered into an area that sped them up to faster than light speeds and when they stopped at a point far across the galaxy, they ''would'' have been amazed, except for the fact that intertial dampers hadn't yet been invented and so they ended up as messy spots on the wall. The next ship to enter ''did'' have inertial dampers and was just fine.
* The reason the pilot capsules in [[Eve Online]] are filled with liquid is partly because it reduces inertia and partly because it allows the pilot to better mindlink with the ship (as the capsule is essentially a sensoty deprivation tank).
* One of many components in your fighter, in the ''[[Wing Commander (Videovideo Gamegame)|Wing Commander]]'' series, that can fail as you take damage, though the games don't model any actual effects of its loss other than ''any'' collision being fatal. In [[Wing Commander (Literaturenovel)|the novels]], it's noted to be fast, but not instantaneous.
* In ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'', the Liir use a specialized drive to prevent inertia -- since their ships are filled with liquid and are a lot heavier than those of land-based species, they use a drive called 'stutterwarp' that performs millions of short-range (in the range of millimetre-long) teleportations per second, slowly driving their ships in a direction without causing inertia.
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' avoids this trope handily. Using the eponymous technology, ships engines form a field that changes the mass of everything within it, allowing travel at light speed, while everything within stays still because of its relative mass within the field. Of course, this doesn't change what happens when a ship is struck by projectiles.
** It should be pointed out that, in the case of dreadnoughts, the projectiles they fire have the kinetic force in the kiloton range (i.e. equivalent to a nuclear blast), while the people inside of the target ship, even if mass effect generators are off-line, get ''slightly'' buffeted to the side.
* Presumably, AMS Compatibility in [[Armored Core (Video Game)|Armored Core]] 4/for Answer also directly influences tolerance to G-forces. That particular universe ''is'' filled with hyper-maneuverable [[Humongous Mecha]] that can hit upwards from 100 kph in an instant acceleration to any lateral direction, repeatedly.
 
 
== Web Comics ==
* Averted (and [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1000/fv00917.htm played for laughs]) in [[Freefall (Webcomic)|Freefall]].
* Since [[Artificial Gravity]] is used for propulsion in ''[[Schlock Mercenary (Webcomic)|Schlock Mercenary]]'' and ships routinely reach high fractions of ''c'', it's explicitely said that gravity-based inertial dampening is its own field of engineering, "Inertiics", and that said engineers make a lot of money making sure that people aren't hurt or injured by unwanted acceleration. This field is so advanced that it is implemented in a limited form in powered armor (which compensate for an impact with a gravitational tug, as acceleration only kills you when applied unevenly). The narrator also notes at one point that, due to the staggering magnitude of the g-forces involved in ship movement, the last thing you ever want to hear your shipboard AI say is "brace for acceleration", as that is very likely to be the last thing you hear at all.
 
 
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