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[Girlinhat]

It's rather confirmed that cargo ships are boxes.  This is because the trans-newtonian materials are able to displace inertia within their field.  Items attached to the outside of the ship suffer inertia as normal, so cargo must be "inside".

For conventional Aurora, take your pick, it's all fair.

[PTTG??]

Come to think of it, we may need to use "non-newtonian" materials to explain how ships can handle extreme accellerations. Right now the engine designs include the capability to accelerate at many Gs, so we'd need some way to avoid crushing the crew...

[Flying Dice]

Eh, inertial compensators are pretty standard SF fare, which is understandable, given how they let writers have very fast ships and non-pulped crew. If you wanted to get anywhere close to that sort of velocity without a handwave technobabble device, you'd probably need something like an Evangelionesque plug with mondo padding on the inside combined with a shitload of drugs and a mindlink with a computer (or an AI that can take over) to keep you from passing out entirely or being pulped against the inside of your ship.

[RedKing]

In my Aurora fics, the higher-G ships (FACs and whatnot) use acceleration couches where the crew are sealed into bodysuits with millions of tiny computer-controlled cells filled with ballistic gel. The computer can inflate/deflate the cells adaptively to cushion the body against G-Force, and apply pressure to the extremities to keep the blood from pooling (although it later dawned on me that your viscera would still be pulped internally in a 20G hairpin turn, even if your body was cushioned).

Capital ships are assumed to move slowly enough to allow for normal operations and a typical bridge, because hey....gotta have the admiral on the bridge. 

[Bremen]

We already know that in normal Aurora TNEs cancel out inertia within their field, and acceleration is really just an application of inertia.

I believe in Newtonian Aurora there was talk of having a maximum acceleration based on your species' gravity tolerance, though.

[Another]

Formula1 pilots regularly experience around 4-5 g at fast turns and the same is considered the norm for fighter jet pilots. Top level pilots and astronauts can maintain consciousness up to 20 g, but actively moving a hand to press a button is a real problem past 6 g.

A body in a liquid-filled container would would be able live and move at considerably higher accelerations if it also breathed incompressible liquid. You would effective feel only difference between your density and the liquid density multiplied by whatever acceleration the container experiences as a whole. In the end the density difference between bones, muscles, nerves and blood would become noticeable but if you made the liquid to be within 1% from the average density of an arm - you would be able to move that arm at 100 times bigger accelerations than in air. 400 g may be acceptable for antimatter-propelled manned space fighter*.

Accelerating for prolonged periods of time can't be healthy at any much larger than 1 g. Even breathing liquid is unlikely to change it as it has its own long term problems.

*whales or dolphins would be poor candidates for space pilots as they still breath air.

[Dutchling]

dolphins would be poor candidates for space pilots

Blasphemy!

[RedKing]

*whales or dolphins would be poor candidates for space pilots as they still breath air.

The Starsingers are not amused.

[Flying Dice]

Hence why you need the goop from NGE that supplys oxygen directly to the lungs. Just swallow the slime and you'll be fine.

[Girlinhat]

The Abyss?

[Karlito]

Hence why you need the goop from NGE that supplys oxygen directly to the lungs. Just swallow the slime and you'll be fine.

That, and a respirator. There's some actually serious proposals for this kind of thing.

Spoiler: NGE (click to show/hide)

Although, I hope no one actually has to inhale their parents. That would be unfortunate.

[EuchreJack]

Formula1 pilots regularly experience around 4-5 g at fast turns and the same is considered the norm for fighter jet pilots. Top level pilots and astronauts can maintain consciousness up to 20 g, but actively moving a hand to press a button is a real problem past 6 g.

A body in a liquid-filled container would would be able live and move at considerably higher accelerations if it also breathed incompressible liquid. You would effective feel only difference between your density and the liquid density multiplied by whatever acceleration the container experiences as a whole. In the end the density difference between bones, muscles, nerves and blood would become noticeable but if you made the liquid to be within 1% from the average density of an arm - you would be able to move that arm at 100 times bigger accelerations than in air. 400 g may be acceptable for antimatter-propelled manned space fighter*.

Accelerating for prolonged periods of time can't be healthy at any much larger than 1 g. Even breathing liquid is unlikely to change it as it has its own long term problems.

*whales or dolphins would be poor candidates for space pilots as they still breath air.

Obviously, the best candidates would be Vampires.  They'd actually enjoy swimming in blood (after all the human arm is mostly blood, ergo other people's blood is within 1% of average density, especially impure blood from grinded subjects [so it has bone and organs unfiltered]), and as undead they don't have to breath anything (see fiction with undead walking on the ocean floor, the first Pirates of the Carribean comes immediately to mind), and finally they have super vampire reflexes (see the move Underworld and other vampire fiction).

This coincides favorably with the newest DF update.

[Sirus]

That gives me a bizarre idea for a sci-fi novel in which vampires, upon capture by the world government, are forced to become starship crew because of the above reasons.

[Girlinhat]

Curiously the thing that stuck with me the most about that wikipedia entry is the description of "those who have breathed at depth and hold their breath as they surface."  Apparently it can cause the long to explode AND to collapse.  What freak perversion of nature can cause two mutually exclusive things to happen?  Even if they don't occur on the same lung, that's still some power there.  That's like, "When we apply this device, the water may freeze or it may boil."  What the hell is going on in the ocean?!

[Osmosis Jones]

That's like, "When we apply this device, the water may freeze or it may boil."

Soooo, basically what happens to water in space then? It freezes as it boils, and then sublimates away. Pressure is crazy shit

I could see an exploded lung collapsing; the expansion ruptures sufficient alveoli (or whatever it is that hold the lung up) that the lung can no longer resist the pressure of the surrounding body.