Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2021

39 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2021 ASTRO PUBLISHING fore of oxygen. To remedy these dangerous inconveniences, military pilots and astronauts wear a special anti-g suit (or simply “g-suit”). How- ever, even this solution has its limits, and nothing would be able to pro- tect a living being aboard a space- ship suddenly launched at science fiction speeds. All the passengers of that spaceship would be instantly re- duced to mush by the irrepressible thrust of their seats. This is the case of the starships of the Star Trek saga, launched at “warp speed” of billions of km/s instantly. To get around this problem, the authors of Star Trek invented the “inertial