Artificial Gravity: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

Virtually all [[Sci Fi]] space ships have some form of artificial gravity. The technology behind this is [[Hand Wave|never quite explained.]]

In [[Space Opera]], artificial gravity is the ''last'' thing that breaks when a ship is damaged. You might have lost shields, weapons, drive systems, and half the hull, but things will still fall when dropped. This makes a certain degree of sense, as fixing a ship while floating around helplessly would probably take much longer. Artificial gravity is also essential for long-term flights, for if you spend too long in Zero G, then your muscles will become a painful, squishy mush once you get back to regular gravity.

 

 

Also, once you have the knack of making gravity, switching it off shouldn't be that much of a problem, right? Cue the [[Anti Gravity]] hovercraft. Related to [[Gravity Sucks]]. [[No Gravity for You]] is what happens when characters get [[Genre Savvy]] about the [[Fridge Logic]] of this trope. When it's a superpower, you get a [[Gravity Master]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** It was explained in the manga. They seem to use some strange, very high density crystal only found on Mars as gravity source, and send it to parts of the planet where it's needed through pipe networks controlled by organ-like instrument. This might not considered as artificial gravity, though, as mass IS gravity, so it's normal gravity.

* The manga series ''[[Cannon God Exaxxion]]'' does interesting things with this trope. Rather than simply a [[Hand Wave]] for people walking around a spaceship like it was an earthbound movie set, they explore all kinds of neat stuff you can do once you've made gravity & inertia your yours, including, but not limited to:

** In ''[[G Gundam]]'', one of the [[Big Bad]] Prime Minister's schemes involves goading the hero into a fight and disabling him with a cripplingly strong artifical gravity field generator, which is [[Did Not Do the Research|a gigantic horseshoe magnet]] buried underground.

*** [[G Gundam]] is a [[Super Robot]] show dedicated to the [[Rule of Cool]] and awesomely [[Narm|ridiculous fight scenes]], [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|where there's an old guy who destroys giant mechs with a scarf]] and there exists a windmill Gundam and you're worried about a giant magnet?

*** Two unexplainable cases appear as well: trains going upward on the orbital elevator apparently have microgravity when in truth, they should have higher than normal gravity (Earth's gravity + acceleration). At the end of the second season, it is revealed that the lounge Ribbons was usually seen in is actually onboard a humongous spaceship. Aside from that room, the rest of the ship is all weightless, as do every single other ship in the series. Weightless travel is done either by rail-mounted motorized handles on the walls or with thruster units that appear standard-issue for pilot suits.

* Exception: In ''[[Planetes]]'', outside of rotating sections of space stations, the Earth or on the moon, there is no gravity to speak of, and the spacecrafts are designed with this in mind (i.e. Walls are lined with footholds and handholds so that passengers can move around easily). When gravity is generated on a ship (in order to throw a hostage-taker off guard and capture him), it's done so by rotating the entire ship and takes a large amount of effort and planning to do so.

 

== Comic Books ==

** More accurately, the rocket accelerates at a rate equal to Earth's gravity (gravity equalling acceleration and all that). Turning off the rocket motor has the effect of turning off the rocket's ability to keep the passengers on the floor.

* In [[Pre Crisis]] [[Superman]] comics, [[Schizo-Tech|despite all its advanced technology,]] Krypton had no space program until Jor-El perfected anti-gravity. [[Justified Trope|This makes some sense]] when you consider what a monstrous gravity well their rockets had to escape. ([[Pre Crisis]] Krypton was portrayed as enormously massive, so at least part of Superman's powers derived from his being a [[Heavyworlder]].)

== Film ==

* The film version of ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' used the centrifugal method of gravity generation onboard both the space station and the ''Discovery''. It's notable that the non-rotating parts of ''Discovery'' and the famous shuttle sequence near the beginning are as being zero gee, through actors walking strangely in "velcro booties," and dangling props from wires, etc.

*** But even that scene is off because ''only the pens'' are in zero-g. Everyone else is standing around in normal gravity.

* ''[[Destination Moon]]'' (1950), loosely based on the book ''[[Rocketship Galileo]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]] (who was also a technical adviser for the movie), went to great lengths to make the film as accurate as possible, given what was known at the time or theorized to be possible based on existing knowledge, including using wires to simulate a lack of gravity inside the cabin of the rocket while it was on the way to the moon.

* ''[[Event Horizon]]'' was originally supposed to avert this trope as the creators wanted the entire movie to be done in zero gravity. However, doing so would have been too expensive and would have taken them over a decade, as stated in the making-of documentary, and the characters are only in zero gravity when they first enter the Event Horizon, before turning on the artificial gravity drive.

* ''[[Project Moonbase]]'' (1953) had people walking along the corridors of a space station ''upside down'' past people going the other way due to its variable gravity. They avoided floating off the floor because they were wearing "magnetic shoes".

** Rotating in one direction will do nothing to alter a spacecraft's course -- the Apollo missions all rotated slowly on the way to the moon so as to avoid baking one side in direct sunlight for too long. The reason opposite-direction rotating sections is more practical is to avoid having the central hub of your spacecraft rotate in the opposite direction when your one rotating section is "spun up", or rotate in the same direction due to friction in the bearings.

** Although this is probably more to do with [[Rule of Cool|the rule of cool]] of having a zero-G gunfight than any attempt at [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|hard SF]].

*** Not so much a gunfight as two guys in magnetic boots marching through the ship shooting all the Klingons who are floating helplessly in mid-air.

* [[Apollo 13]] depicted zero gravity the hard way: by building spacecraft sets in the NASA zero gravity training aircraft (the Vomit Comet) and filming in it for a month. Far from all of the scenes inside the spacecraft were done this way; a lot of it was done with harnesses and bellyboards and careful framing.

* In [[Pandorum]], the Elysium has artificial gravity throughout; it would be tough to justify the film's [[Bee People]] being able to make traps that utilize gravity otherwise. {{spoiler|[[Tomato Surprise|But then the Elysium is revealed to have crash landed into the planet it was headed for]] over a century before the events of the movie, thus subverting this trope very, very hard as by then the planet's gravity had taken over.}}

* The R.L.S. Legacy in ''[[Treasure Planet]]'' is equipped with artificial gravity. {{spoiler|During the fight with Mr. Scroop, B.E.N. accidentally disengages the A.G. while playing with plugs, and Jim sends Scroop flying through space forever.}}

* ''[[The Black Hole]]'' had this function as one of Dr. Reinhart's impressive inventions: a gravity field astonishingly powerful enough to not only have regular gravity in the ship, but also to keep the entire ship itself in a secure stationary position just beyond the event horizon of a black hole!

 

== Literature ==

* Played straight in [[The Culture]] (for the non rotating structures at least).

* Played with in the ''[[Ender's Game]]'' series. Students on the Battle School space station are told it rotates to provide gravity, with the central axis staying motionless to house the zero-g Battle Room. Some smarter students realize this explanation is ''impossible,'' because the gravity cuts off abruptly at the doorway. The only explanation is a secret source of Artificial Gravity, which Petra speculates was [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum|reverse engineered from captured alien ships]].

** It's actually revealed later by Graff that humans have reverse-engineered artificial gravity generators from {{spoiler|Eros, a Bugger planetoid-turned-space-station at the edge of the Solar System}}.

* In the ''[[Known Space]]'' stories by [[Larry Niven]], human spaceships at first either used inertial (spinning) pseudo-gravity, or learned to do without. At least, until the Man-Kzin Wars (the Kzinti having developed artificial gravity, which humans reverse-engineered).

** The artificial gravity is provided by adjustable "grav plating". But it's difficult to match up the gravity fields of docked ships, so the docking tube (equivalent of a gangplank) is null-''g'', and characters "swing" into the ship's gravity field.

* Taken for granted in the ''[[Perry Rhodan]]'' universe. A portable anti-gravity generator is one of the first few pieces of alien technology that the titular hero brings back home from the moon in the earliest issues, and virtually every civilization (certainly every FTL-capable one) has artificial gravity on its ships and uses anti-gravity in lifts and vehicles. This is handwaved with the idea that working hyperspace physics by default includes some concepts of manipulating 'normal' spacetime, including gravity. Like any technology, however, the systems can't work without a power supply; a suitably wrecked but still existing starship will revert to zero-G conditions once the power cuts out.

* In [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' series, the method of [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|FTL propulsion]] used by most spacefaring races is accomplished by creating an extremely powerful artificial gravity field in front of a spaceship, which then pulls the vessel towards it. This pushes the field further forward, and so forth. As the ship approaches the speed of light, the distortion induced by the field shunts it into [[Subspace or Hyperspace|"space-plus"]]. The field is also used to create artificial gravity for the ship's inhabitants.

* The ''Revelation Space'' series takes a realistic approach; artificial gravity only exists when a spacecraft is under thrust or rotating. {{spoiler|However, there is at least one alien race that can manipulate gravity more easily.}}

* The first [[Doom]] novelization made gravity into something akin to a plot point at one early point in the story. This being a Doom novelization, the plot point was that the marine killed a monster with its help. This is notable considering that the video game didn't even have proper ''height'' let alone gravity.

* ''Coyote'', by Alan Steele, tries and fails to avert this trope, when [[Critical Research Failure|a ship traveling at a constant velocity of .2 C results in an effectively 1 g environment.]]

* Every alien spaceship in ''Animorphs'' fits this trope. When all of the Jahar's energy is taken away by the living asteroids in Andalite Chronicles, they are left floating inside their ship with no gravity. Also, Andalite dome ships have an interesting mechanic wherein it feels and looks as if you're walking off the edge of a cliff when moving from one part of the ship to another, where the new floor is at a ninety degree angle to the old, and each has its own gravity.

* Peter F. Hamilton's ''Night's Dawn'' trilogy has several forms of this: rotational, in the shape of the bitek or asteroid habitats; and more "sci-fi" in the form of the Voidhawks - they manipulate the shape of space-time (and thereby gravity) around them in order to move, then produce a counter-acceleration force for the crew compartments to leave a constant 1G gravitational field for the humans on board. Adamist starships have to make do with thrust acceleration. {{spoiler|In one of the short stories in the associated collection, Marcus Calvert stumbles upon an alien wreck which has actual artificial gravity - but they are forced to destroy the ship, losing the knowledge forever. However, given their eventual evident level of technology, it would be unlikely that the Kiint don't have artgrav of some description.}}

* In [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[The Stars Are Cold Toys|Star Shadow]]'', the Strong races have gravity-manipulation technology (used to lift ships into orbit), implying the use of artificial gravity on their ships. The [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Geo]][[Human Aliens|meters]] have artificial gravity on their ships. When a Russian "Buran" shuttle is docked to a Geometer ship, the latter's computer extends the ship's AG field to the shuttle. When the protagonist then gets into a fight with a more seasoned cosmonaut, he has the advantage, as he'd gotten used to AG, while the other man fights as one would in zero-g (e.g. hit and lightly push off to float to the ceiling).

* Exception: The BBC series ''[[Star Cops]],'' where odd camera angles and very careful movement while clinging onto objects was used to simulate the freefall environments of space stations of the series.

* Author Ben Bova's [[Universe Bible]] for the shortlived series ''[[The Starlost]]'' explicitly invoked [[Artificial Gravity]] for the Ark, but coyly refused to quantify the technology, except to note that gravity generators were likely to be large, massive and completely non-portable devices. The show did not last long enough for the specifics to become important to a story.

** Considering a warp field is essentially a massive graviton field, it stands to reason that any warp-capable civilization also has AG.

** Early in the series the creators put together a tape of intercom chatter to play as background during bridge scenes. At one point one of the voices reports that "Gravity is down to point eight." This tape was used over and over, particularly when the ''Enterprise'' had been attacked, which meant that the artificial gravity went down to eighty percent a fair amount of the time.

** In the novelization of one of the Star Trek movies, Captain Kirk stepped out of an Earthlike-gravity zone into a zone which recreated the much more powerful gravity of the planet Vulcan. There then an amusing scene where Kirk was pushed a few inches or so into the air by this sudden change, and came back down, injuring himself in the process.

** The bigger episodes and the movies sometimes put the characters into zero gravity situations--which also happen to be zero atmosphere situations, meaning they get to wear spacesuits with magnetic boots that somehow allow them to walk almost normally.

** Some of the [[All There in the Manual|Tech Manuals]] published to accompany the various series have tried to [[Hand Wave]] away the reason why the gravity never seems to fail, even if the ship loses power. The reason is that systems generating gravity have to spin up when powered on and keep going for several hours even if the power is cut off meaning that gravity disappears slowly rather than cutting off all at once.

 

 

 

== Video Games ==

* Half explained in the ''[[Halo]]'' universe. Most early human ships had no artificial gravity and the few that did achieved this through cetrifugal force. However, once the UNSC stated salvaging destroyed Covenant ships, the existence of artificial gravity is [[Hand Wave|Hand Waved]] as [[Applied Phlebotinum]].

** In fact ''The Fall of Reach'' has ''The Pillar of Autumn'' generate gravity via centrifugal force. In-game, it's generated by Phlebotinum. Worth noting that it was written before the game came out; it's only one of several errors.

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' is known for its space levels that actually ''reverse'' the gravity, making you walk on the ceiling, or, in the case of [[Gimmick Level|Crazy Gadget]], the walls.

* Averted by the upcoming game ''Shattered Horizon'', which is a multiplayer FPS whose big draw is the complete freedom of movement provided by a zero-gravity environment.

* Gravity manipulation in the ''[[Space Empires]]'' series takes many forms, from ships, to preventing [[Earthshattering Kaboom|pesky planet killing weapons]], to creating [[Dyson Sphere|DysonSpheres]] if your tech level is high enough.

* In ''Roblox'', most levels that are in space have this.

* [[Septerra Core]] presents The Doomsday Weapon which works by creating a gravitational disturbance which causes the target continent to rise up out of its World Shell and crash into the underside of the shell above. {{spoiler|This turns out to be a massive Chekhov's Gun: by raising the proper continents to the upper shells, they form a rune pattern which grants Septerra access to the Kingdom of Heaven.}}

* ''[[Nexus the Jupiter Incident]]'' has the spinning kind and the more traditional artificial graivity field, although none of that is mentioned. The only indication that all but Earth ships (which have spinning sections and very limited maneuverability) have AG is their lack of spinning sections and increased maneuverability and acceleration (suggesting [[Inertial Dampening]]).

 

== Web Comics ==

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', Bun-Bun actually [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20010723 weaponizes a ship's artificial gravity] to make everyone inside fall "up" towards the ceiling, then fall back down to the floor, repeating as necessary.

* In Christopher Baldwin's ''[[Spacetrawler]]'', gravity on space-ships is generated by collecting actual mass (space debris, on-board refuse... [http://spacetrawler.com/2010/03/10/spacetrawler-22/ criminal evidence], etc.) and compacting it using the titular spacetrawler, an incomprehensibly advanced piece of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] (which is also used to manufacture supplies and fuel the engine).

== Web Original ==

* [[Nexus Gate]]

 

 

== Western Animation ==

** In "The Practical Joker", the title character uses its control over the Enterprise computer to turn off the ship's [[Artificial Gravity]] system, causing the characters to float around in zero gravity.

** In "The Jihad" the [[Big Bad]] creates a zero-gravity area inside the building so his opponents can fight him in the air.

* ''[[WALL-E]]'' was rather odd about this - the Axiom apparently had [[Artificial Gravity]], but not [[Inertial Dampening]].

** Also, in the episode "Brannigan Begin Again," the crew is delivering pillows to a world with significantly higher g than earth. Even after they land on the planet, they are unaffected until they step off the platform that lowered them to the surface. At this point Fry's normally upright hair falls, Bender's legs collapse, and Brannigan's girdle fails spectacularly.

* ''[[Ren and Stimpy]]'' - in "Space Madness", Stimpy has Ren take a hot bath to sooth his nerves...he also shuts off the gravity (with a light switch) to help. It only affects Ren and his bath water.

* In ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', Mr Terrific switches off the artificial gravity and then switches it back on again to incapacite Lex Luthor, who's in Flash's body at the time.

* In one multi-part episode of ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'', they encounter a substance called Upsidaisium, which has negative weight.

== Real Life ==

* According to general relativity, it might be possible to induce, through Einstein's general relativity, a spacetime metric that allows for gravity inside a bounded volume, with little effect outside. Evidence points, however, to it taking a ludicrously large amount of negative energy (similar to the quantities required for [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|wormholes and warp drives]], which is several ''Jupiter masses'' for most useful purposes). Fortunately there's actually some wiggle room to [[Hand Wave|wave your hands in]], since the particulars of the relations between gravity and quantum theory are not perfectly understood. A writer can simply say "[[Minovsky Physics|figuring out how M/Superstring/Hologram/The-Turtles-That-Go-All-The-Way-Down Theory worked, revealed an easier way to get artificial gravity (and warp, since they're related)]]". We can, however, in a trivial sense, perfectly simulate Earth's gravity with as little as one Earth mass... just look at [[Shaped Like Itself|Earth]]. This also means that smaller, denser things could have the same gravitational pull as Earth. Compared to the alternative, this is actually more plausible at this time.

* Some hypothetical designs for interplanetary vessels would use steady acceleration to simulate gravity. Such vessels' passenger compartments would rotate 180 degrees halfway through their journey, flipping the floors to correspond with simulated "down" when acceleration is reversed to slow the ship again.

** This also has the advantage of allowing relatively rapid interplanetary travel, taking only days or maybe weeks (if you're traveling out to Pluto or someplace really far), instead of years as it does now. The downside is that the power output from the engine would be gargantuan (meaning that if the engine has any sort of heat leakage, it will likely vaporize from the sheer heat). Real-life engines are generally either hi-thrust/low-exhaust-velocity (like the Space Shuttle) or low-thrust/high-exhaust-velocity (like with ion drives).