I don’t watch science fiction much, aside of Asimov during my teens I haven’t read any sci-fi books. But to my surprise I got hooked on Battlestar Galactica (no spoilers please!), and it got me thinking:
In the sci-fi universe, so to speak, is there a general understanding on why people don’t float around in spaceships, but walks on the floor, or at least, has somebody “explained” it in their own world? Not how it have to be done in reality, but how it’s supposed to work in the fictional universe pictured.
You can create gravity by spinning the ship and letting centrifugal force do the work. But most SF doesn’t bother with any explanation other than saying, “The artificial gravity is created by – wait! Over there! Is that an alien ship about to attack!”
If this bothers you, then you probably shouldn’t be reading or watching science fiction.
In 2001 a Space Odyssey the ships spin to create gravity.
On Star Trek, they have gravity, and jarring accidents every episode, but no seat belts or even strap hangers like the subway. You’d think they’d catch on. Or at least show someone killed by hitting their head on the desk corners.
The other convenience, from Buck Rogers onward, is landing on planets with atmosphere.
The gravity generators are designed to create a nominal “down” that corresponds with the decks of the ship. For convenience all decks are aligned the same way, so the crew doesn’t have to flip out of the elevators using hand-grips (or the elevator cars align themselves with the designated “down” of the deck they reach).
Usually, if there’s any explanation at all given (beyond just saying “artificial gravity generators”), it’s centrifugal force (to my knowledge, Babylon 5 was the only TV show to use this). BSG does have one ship that rotates and looks like it might use that for artificial gravity, but only one: My guess is that artificial gravity is a relatively recent invention, and that’s an old ship (but I don’t think it’s ever addressed in the show).
One detail we do know about Battlestar Galactica (and don’t worry, this isn’t really a spoiler) is that at least some ships have multiple different directions of artificial gravity, so some folks can be “upside-down” relative to others.
And in the novel 2010, the Leonov did not spin, and everyone floated around. When it was turned into a movie, somebody must have realized that this was going to be a pain in the rear to film, so the Leonov underwent a radical redesign to include a spinning section. The movie otherwise left me underwhelmed, but that little detail impressed me.
Lack of Gravity is expensive to film, so they usually don’t bother with it. Read Heinlein’s essay on “Making Destination Moon”. It’s half a century old, but the Hollywood mindset (and the realities of movie production) haven’t changed. They HAVE filmed a handful of realistically zero-G movies, but outside of Destination Moon I still haven’t seen a movie to realistically portray low gravity as on the Moon. Or Mars.
Centrifuges were used as artificial gravity in 2001, 2010, and Aliens. In principle, you can get artificial gravity by constantly accelerating a 1G, but nobody’s done it in the movies AFAIK. Everybody else evidently uses some futuristic Special Relativistic Physics to make artificial gravity. Heck, they’re already exceeding the Speed of Light, why balk at Control of Gravity? (Forbidden Planet, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica,…)
And only once in the history of Star Trek did anyone ever think of using the artificial gravity generator to stop an intruder.
The Mirror Universe episodes of Enterprise; they were trying to stop a Gorn pirate from roaming around the ship and someone got he great idea “Hey let’s just turn the artificial gravity up really high where the Gorn is” adn the Gorn collapsed to the floor.
Star Trek: VI was the only time we ever actually saw the artificial gravity failing (on a Klingon battlecruiser) and the total chaos that resulted.
Ah yes, the Soviets considered artificial gravity a decadent capitalist luxury.
For any starship that uses reactionless drives (i.e. most of them), your internal “gravity” force could probably be generated using the same technology as your propulsion force.
It’s first hinted at in the second season, but not shown explicitly until “Razor”, the two-hour special that started season 4:
(minor spoiler)The Battlestar Pegasus has those double landing bays on each side, and we see a Raptor turning over to land “upside-down” in one of the lower bays
Yes, didn’t the earliest earth ships have no gravity – the ships seen in flashbacks to the Earth-Minbari war with the crew strapped into seats – with the “modern” (B5 period) ones using spinning sections. (And then the new ones using bits of Minbari and Vorlon tech to get artificial gravity).
In 2001, the stewardesses of the inter-lunar transports wear velcro shoes to “walk” in zero-gravity. (Actually a very inefficient way to get about in zero-G).
Babylon 5 had a scene where Sheridan is outside the station for some reason and he’s standing on a platform with big letters saying “MAGNETIC SURFACE”.
I don’t know if this is accurate, but I remember in my old Star Trek Technical Manual, there was a description of these circular devices in the floors that spun at high speed to somehow generate gravity. When the power went out on the ship, the slowly spun down so that the gravity would still work, but if power was out long enough, eventually there’d be no gravity on the ship as the devices finally came to a stop. Of course, the technology behind it was not explained.
