Star Trek Beyond: 5 Ups And 3 Downs (The Science Edition)

2. OMG They Are So Dead From That G-Force

It's a thrilling set piece as the action ramps up - jump starting the Franklin by dropping it off a cliff. Presumably, those engines are supposed to get a kick start from some kind of gravitational slingshot in when in orbit and dropping it off a cliff is essentially the same as bump starting your old Morris Minor by rolling it down a hill, either that or Pegg confused terminal velocity (which is arbitrary anyway) with escape velocity, allowing them to get off world.

Anyway, we digress.

Something that would make it slightly less (or maybe more, I'm not a Hollywood director) exciting is a smash cut back to the interior after the engines kick into action to find the entire crew unconscious, dead or bleeding profusely from their eyes, ears and nose. All thanks to the wonders of G-force.

G-force is basically the force acting on the body as a result of acceleration. You know what G-force is. It's the thing that makes you feeling momentarily heavier when the plane takes off.

The human body has been known to withstand a fair amount of G-force but, eventually, that sh*t will catch up with you. Whilst it's tricky to calculate exactly how much would be required to kill a human, as duration is a big factor here, the Euthanasia Coaster is a hypothetical rollercoaster designed to kill its riders by exposing them to 10Gs for over a minute, forcing the blood away from their heads, cutting off oxygen to the brain.

Now I don't know exactly how fast the ship was going, but I'd hazard a guess that the terminal velocity of a starship under Earth-like gravity is what is known in the biz as Pretty Damn Quick.

The Franklin may well have had something built in to counter the effect but I doubt it, and I doubt it for two reasons: 1. it's a starship and was never designed to operate under the influence of gravity like that and, 2. It was switched off.