I read quite a bit of science fiction. I understand it’s science fiction but I’ve always wondered the theory behind how gravity dampners or gravity plates work on space ships in these books?
I’ve read 1000s of Sci-Fi books and stories. I’ve seen a great explanation for it. I believe it comes down to Clark’s Third Law. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Artificial gravity via rotation makes sense and is well grounded in science, but that is not what you’re asking about.
ETA: Of course the classic and oldest explanation was Cavorite
I think Terry Pratchett figured it out, though his system has yet to be attempted. He reasoned that [ol]
[li]Knowledge is power[/li][li]Power is energy[/li][li] Energy = Mass x C^2[/li][li] Mass = gravity[/li][/ol]
Therefore, simply lining the floor of a spacecraft with textbooks should enable you to walk normally. Unfortunately, he never did any experiments or calculations to determine the exact ratio of knowledge to gravitic effect, so there’s quite a few details left to be worked out.
Then you’d have to ask the author of one of those fictional books. It works in books exactly the way that the author wants it to work.
In real life, the way gravity generators work is they have a mass as big as a planet.
Most of the science-fiction novels that I’ve read, and movies / TV shows that I’ve seen, that have some sort of “gravity generator” just handwave it, with no solid basis in science.
In “hard” sci-fi, when the author wants some sort of artificial gravity, he or she uses techniques that have a basis in actual science, like the spinning space station, and the rotating bridge section on the Discovery, in “2001.”
Another common ‘hard’ sci-fi technique is to just handwave some means of perpetual acceleration so that you turn the spaceship into less of a boat with acceleration coming from the back into something more like a skyscraper with acceleration coming from below. This works for all of the points of your trip where you are having some particular velocity change.
Not exactly what you are asking but it works from a theoretical standpoint, minus one gaping hole.
Or they provide acceleration by constantly increasing your velocity in a direction that you then perceive as ‘up’*
(One of my pet peeves in SF is that even when they have onboard gravity provided by thrusters producing continual 1g acceleration, is that the cockpit view should be ‘up’, but it’s often shown as ‘forward’ instead.
It’s a trope that is usually just handwavium.
I like Schlock Mercenary’s take - actual Artificial Gravity is impossible, the effect is achieved by manipulating existing gravity waves from balls of neutronium.
The Expanse gets this right.
In fairness though, if you’re going to have a bridge with a big viewscreen, like they have in so much sci-fi, it makes a lot of sense for that screen to entirely digital, with no necessary relationship with what’s directly “out” in that direction.
And of course, if it really were the case that there was motion to be seen out of the window – stars going by like ping pong balls (like in star trek et al) – humans would find it much more comfortable to watch this facing forward along the direction of motion.
(of course in reality, in deep space, they’ll almost never be motion to see outside)
Yup. They just built a new command center for one of our big bases. It’s a windowless room with big display screens for walls providing a 360 degree view as if seen from a tall control tower. The Earth provides gravity and defines “down”, the people’s heads point towards “up”, and the room is built so all the workstations face the projected view to the North. Once you sit down you’re “facing” north and it’s easy. The fact the desks actually face real-world West is immaterial; you can’t see or feel it.
Maybe. Or maybe I misunderstood you.
If you design the spaceship so the view out the display screen is into the direction of motion and in front of where the people sit or stand you’re done.
There’s no need for the line of sight from person to screen to be the same inertial direction as the actual direction of motion. Yes, it will feel real weird if there are any accelerations in any direction other than the 1G artificial gravity. But the whole point of long duration spaceflight is there won’t be much, if any such accelerations.
Until you get to the halfway point, switch off “gravity” = cut the engines, rotate the vehicle 180 degrees, then turn the engines and “gravity” back on. And reverse the viewscreen’s feed so it’s still looking out into the direction of motion. Then once again you’re sitting in your 1G seat looking at a screen facing “forwards”, the direction the vehicle is going.
The fact that direction actually used to be out the top of your head and is now through the soles of your feet is immaterial.
Not all of the time, as far as I could tell, but at least sometimes.
I think that’s what they have in STTNG, except for some reason, there were times that the thing displayed on the screen was so bright that the crew had to shield their eyes, which just seems a bit silly
Which is how Charles Sheffield did it in several of his stories (the McAndrew stories).
I mean their computer systems are so insecure that aliens can hack in with 5 minutes at some random terminal. They don’t use circuit breakers or relays for the bridge panels - as near as I can tell, the main power bus for the shield generators is fed right through the corresponding panel on the bridge, making it explode like a bomb if you take too large of a hit.
You can set the ship to self destruct with a voice command. They have holographic AI crewmembers but do not have AI crewed warships to use as disposable weapons against their enemies. They can copy entire human beings with transporter technology, yet somehow cannot reverse old age or make backup copies of starfleet personel before away missions. They don’t wear isolation suits when traveling to unknown planets, when Starfleet has encountered numerous forms of alien parasite in the past, including parasites that can control a crewmember’s mind. They don’t have anything preventing holographic characters from developing sentience.
I just created a thread on the topic of what spaceships should display out of the windows: What should we display out of the “windows” of a spaceship?
Then it’s easy … we already have a mass as big as a planet right at our feet …
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I like the SF that just doesn’t bother to explain … everyone knows that the Ricci tensor gets inverted with all that faster-than-light travel … and that’s why astronauts always keep magnets in their shoes …
Except for that one time they did, but only once (which is another problem they seem to keep having - forgetting last week’s brilliant idea)
It is no big deal–just reprogram their Rybo-viroxic-nucleic sequences.
Of course, like any good idea, it was weaponized: Projectors that emitted carefully modulated gravity waves to tear the other ship apart. They were called gravy-guns.