Effects of acceleration


Title isn’t very helpful for what I wanted to ask, sorry. Also, the question has no basis in current technology and, possibly, no basis in reality ever.

The question I’m wondering about is in regards to the effects humans feel during acceleration, and possible scenarios where the felt acceleration would possibly be zero.

As we all know, accelerating the human body too rapidly has a variety of side effects, including loss of consciousness and death. This (typically, although extreme accelerations probably vary in exact cause) has to do with the blood exerting too much pressure on the brain, or too little blood making it into the skull.

With that being said, what would happen if the entire body (including fluids, like blood) could be accelerated at the same rate as the craft it resides in? I imagine there would be no perceived acceleration, but would there be any physiological responses? A technology capable of accelerating all matter inside its influence could, if I’m not missing some detail, be used to achieve insane linear accelerations in manned craft without killing the occupants.


That’s what gravity actually does, and even arbitrarily strong gravity won’t damage you (as long as it is uniform, otherwise tidal forces will). This is why a supermassive black hole won’t rip you apart (it is big enough so gravity is more or less uniform at human scales up to the event horizon.

This can actually be theoretically used as an acceleration compensator:

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Correct. If you push on every atom of a person’s body uniformly, you can push as hard as you like and they won’t even know that they’re being pushed - other than seeing the world around them moving by faster and faster.

Apart from gravity, there’s always diamagnetic levitation which would, in theory, permit people to be accelerated at high rates without feeling the acceleration. In practice, I’m sure it’s thoroughly impractical because of mass and power requirements to maintain the magnetic fields. The levitating frog trick needed a 16 Tesla field to negate a 1g acceleration.


It is a technology is it not? Tech is always improved. Always becoming more and more efficient and more reliable. So we will make it someday.


Depends. If the energy requirements are along the lines JB posted, it’s incredibly inefficient with little way of improving possible.

A different technology, perhaps.



Oh I love space and the mysteries of the cosmos. I like to let my mind wonder with this type of stuff.

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