Mrs. L.A. has the weekly Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon on, on BBC America. Once again, the order ‘All stop!’ was given. ‘All stop’ relative to what?
I suppose they have inertia meters, and ‘all stop’ means to reduce velocity relative to their inertia; but it’s impossible to ‘stop’ without a reference. And yeah, I know it’s a TV show and it doesn’t matter. Still bugs me, though.
Also: ‘Kelvins’ and ‘degrees Kelvin’ (which they often get wrong, numbers-wise).
This has nothing to do specifically with Star Trek; it’s just naval terminology. “All stop” is an order to the engine room to stop the engines. If they really wanted to slow down fast, they would order “full astern” or something similar.
They use the phrase because it sounds naval. In the context of the show, it means ‘come to a stop’.
It is an interesting point, how do you know how fast the ship is traveling? I don’t see an “inertia meter” working as it has been proven that from within a body you cannot distinguish between zero gravity and free-fall. I suppose if they were pulling up alongside a planet or another ship…
In reality it would take days or weeks to stop a starship at significant velocity without the crew flying all over the place. But pseudo science ignores such stuff anyway.
Dennis
In reality, it would take a year to reach the speed of light at 1 g, and a year to slow down from the speed of light at 1 g. Hence, ‘inertial dampers’.
They have artificial gravity, and if you can manipulate gravity, you can manipulate inertia.
If the ship is traveling at warp speed, it’s embedded within a force field. The force field moves through space, carrying the ship along with it. (Think of a fly trapped in amber.) The effects of inertia are thus negated.
Some sort of field must also operate at sublight speeds, hence we have “inerta dampeners.” To suggest the dampeners ever go “off line” is ludicrous, since the effects of inertia would be felt immediately.
Artificial gravity must also be an integral part of such fields. Lose them and nothing would be stationary inside the ship, presuming it retains its structural integrity.
Things normally take a long time to slow down when traveling through space because of inertia. Remove the effects of inertia, and you could theoretically stop on a dime. Or, you could “stop” relative to a planet or other body simply by matching your velocity to theirs.
As further proof that they have artificial gravity, “down” on the ship is not at all related to their direction of acceleration. Plus, on TOS you can hear people in the background saying “gravity down to .9” or something similar in the early episodes.
Impulse power involves some sort of space drive which lets the Enterprise bank and swoop at sublight speeds. Doing that would bang the hell out of people without artificial gravity/inertia dampers compensating.
That probably has something to do with Gerodie and a woman being able to walk through walls, but not sink through the floor.
My fanwank to that was that something about the gravity plating prevented them from falling through the floor.
Star Trek is not designed around real science. The operations of the ship are designed around old sea-going naval ships and submarines. The original Star Trek even had a Scottish engineer because of the belief that Scots made the best engineers (keep in mind this is the belief of actors and TV producers, not an actual evaluation of naval engineers). The way that they control the ship is this weird mix of old-fashioned naval ship operations and sci-fi technobabble. Not only does it often not make sense, but often it’s not even consistent with itself from episode to episode.
“All stop”, as pointed out upthread, is just a command to stop the engines. A real ship will slow to a halt due to friction with the surrounding water. So, if they want the ship to “stop”, then the Captain says “all stop.” The “all stop” command is based on the old “engine order telegraph” (EOT), which was a way to communicate engine commands from the bridge down to the engine room. The EOT had several positions on the dial, typically something like Full Ahead, Half Ahead, Slow Ahead, Stop, Slow Astern, Half Astern, Full Astern. You would have a separate EOT for each engine, so when the captain ordered “all stop”, someone on the bridge would rotate the dials for all engine EOTs to the “stop” position and would ring the bells indicating a change. The guys down in the engine room would hear the bells and would look up to the dials to see how the bridge wanted the engines to be set, and would follow the orders accordingly. On many EOTs, just moving the dial would ring the bells, so you’ll often see them move the dial all the way to either end (basically to ring the bells to get the engine room’s attention) and then they’ll move the EOT’s handle to the actual engine speed they want. The engine room will often acknowledge the order by moving their dial to the same position, which moves an indicator on the bridge’s EOT.
Of course, in space it doesn’t work like an old-fashioned ship in water, but then Star Trek has never been known for scientific accuracy. This is the same show that routinely put ships into geosynchronous orbits over one of the planet’s poles, and when a ship’s engines fail, the ship somehow immediately de-orbits instead of just continuing around the planet for years like a real ship in orbit would do.
You’ll enjoy Star Trek a lot more if you just ignore the idiotic technobabble and blatant scientific inaccuracies and just focus on the stories. 
Here is an EOT in action (all stop is called out a few times):
If you ‘stop’ relative to a planet or star, you are going to be in free-fall directly towards it. Eventually you will fall onto that planet or star at great speed.
Most of the time a ship on Star Trek does not stop when it approaches a planet; instead it goes into something called a ‘standard orbit’. The standard orbit concept doesn’t seem to have a simple definition, like much else in the show.
‘Full Stop’ only really has validity if it is defined with respect to an object with relatively low mass; an asteroid perhaps, or another spacecraft, but even then the effects of gravity will pull the two objects together slowly. With amusing results.
“All stop” means that someone is doing something annoying, and everyone should stop what they’re doing until they figure out who’s doing it.
I assume relative to whatever object they are focused on. Like when they come up on a Klingon bird o’ prey, “all stop” doesn’t mean come to a dead stop in space (and fall out of orbit). It means to start station keeping with the Klingon ship.
You’re over thinking it.
“All stop” command is usually given when there is something nearby they want to look at. So as they say, it’s all relative.
And a “standard orbit” is just powered hovering. Because the transporters can’t beam through 8000 miles of solid rock, the ship has to stay over the landing party. It also is necessary for firing phasers when the need arises, such as to stun a city block or attack a god, or a head. That’s why failure of engines in a standard orbit brings the ship crashing down.
In reality, Starfleet just uses terms differently, and they have changed over time. Much like us “dialing” a smart phone. And you thought only the Children of Tam spoke in metaphors.
eta Ninja’d on all stop!
If you’re over the planet’s equator and you match your velocity to its rate of rotation, you’ll be in synchronous orbit. But yes, the orbit will eventually decay.
More than once, they’ve ‘stopped’ in open space with no reference point.
All Star Fleet uniforms have threads of upsydaisium woven into them.
They got rid of that nonsense in TNG. In 1966 just knowing that you couldn’t go faster than light by stepping on the accelerator harder was a major advance in TV sf. Despite it’s deficiencies, TOS was about the first space show that wouldn’t have made me want to throw the remote control at the TV if I had one.
“Sir, lookout reports an M-class planet, three points off the port bow!”
“Strike the t’gallants and put another reef in the tops’ls! Prepare to bring her about to the starboard tack!”
“Aye-aye, Cap’n! Strike the t’gallants and put another reef in the tops’ls! Prepare to come about to the starboard tack…Sir! Lookout reports a Klingon frigate, hull up off the starboard bow!”
“Run out the phasers, hoist the deflector shields, and beat to quarters, if you please, Mr. Spock.”