In Star Wars they have grav-plates that make up the floors of the ships. They never attempt to explain the science behind them. In the novels the only reference I can recall was in ‘The Dark Fleet Crisis’ they were exploring long abandoned ships and malfunctioning grav-plates were a concern because when walking down a hallway stepping and stepping onto a grav-plate that had too high or too gravity could result in injury or death.
For the most part people aren’t looking for realism in their Sci-Fi, so authors don’t need to explain the gravity and it’s easier for people to conceptualize spaceships that have a top and a bottom and are more like giant aircraft people can walk around on. As people mentioned in Star Trek outside forces cause them to get thrown about all the time.
When was the last time you saw a shot of to ships nearing each other that were not oriented so their tops had the same direction. If they have their own gravity systems why would they do this? Is their some sort of space etiquette that even enemies follow that you can’t appear to be upside down to other vessels?
I remember a hard science fiction author (don’t remember who, sorry) noting that readers will typically accept one example of “things we don’t know how to do but we don’t actually know to be impossible” per universe. After that one freebie, readers get twitchier and twitchier until they actually start objecting.
In other sci-fi movies like 2001 wires and cameras attached to moving sets effectively simulated zero gravity. In older films sometimes they just had the actors stand on a elevated platform and moved him up or down with the actors feet below the frame. Also green screen super-imposed figures on separate backgrounds is widely used.
I remember reading what was probably the same author and article. I’ll usually accept one advanced technology for an average story. Two or three if the story is great, and the technologies make sense, and especially if they’re logical extensions of current technology. Anything more than that, and the story has to be extraordinary.
And sometimes even small effects can be used to “sell” zero-g. In 2001 when the stewardess walks down the aisle and picks Dr. Floyd’s floating pen out of the air the actress was simply pretending no gravity and the pen was secured with a tiny piece of tape to a wheel of glass that was invisible to the viewer and being turned slowly by hand (out of frame).
Maybe for a single story or novel that seems about right. But when you get to Universes of stories (I’m looking at you especially, Larry Niven), they build up even if there’s only a new technology every couple of stories. I don’t remember getting twitchy reading all the Known Space stories.
I think that scientific explanations are unnecessary until the fictional situation interferes with the audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief.
Caveats:
Some audience members have higher or lower tolerances of “interference.” For example, a physics major would get bothered by more than a medical major, while a completely different set of things would bother the latter but not the former.
“Critical” errors in the science: imho, the error has to be pretty major to knock the average non-scientist audience member out of suspension of disbelief. For example, the use of the macbook to create a computer virus for the alien ship was not as jarring during the film as after the film in Independence Day.
As people get more educated in science through science fiction, their tolerance decreases. A person who hardly reads scifi may not even register bad science, while someone who has read hundreds of sci fi novels may require more “hard” science to be satisfied. Therefore, the more science fiction you read causes less enjoyment with future science fiction because of the need to “check” the science facts as they are presented.
I never really enjoyed “hard” science fiction. I felt the explanations, however correct or not (there’s no way I could tell, being a Lit major) got in the way of the story.
No, and she’s not layed out correctly to acceleration to simulate gravity. Like nearly every other fictional starship (not counting ones using centrifugal force) the Galactica’s decks are arranged horizontailly*, to use acceleration to simulate gravity they’d need to be layed out vertically**. In the former occupants would consider the ship to be moving forward, in the latter it would always be moving up.