Artificial Gravity in Science Fiction - Spacedock Short
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2016
- Spacedock takes a quick look at the various means of artificial/simulated gravity seen in Science Fiction.
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Spacedock does not hold ownership of the copyrighted materiel (Footage, Stills etc) taken from the various works of fiction covered in this series, and uses them within the boundaries of Fair Use for the purpose of Analysis, Discussion and Review. Produced by Daniel Orrett. Owner/Executive Producer at Spacedock. - Розваги
Mass Effect is a good example where gravity manipulation is used for artificial gravity weaponry, propulsion etc. The "mass effect" is really well explained too, if you compare it to other science fiction universes.
Mass Effect overall really explains alot of its tech in a way that at least is logically thought through.
In Honoruniverse it's used for more, like production techniques and installed in super-high buildings
Honorverse's artificial gravity is kind of the defining technology for the setting. Pretty much anything involving moving things around is based on it (chemical propellants and reaction thrusters being the main exceptions that spring to mind). It's also one of the few settings I can think of where the artificial gravity goes out before the ships take fatal damage.
Ya Honorverse is one of the few SciFi setings I've run accross where they had "Magic Gravity" and actualy took that tech to its logical conclusion. Ships use it for propulsion for both ships and missiles. They use it for shielding as a byproduct of the propulsion as anything passing through the area has to go through huge gravitational shear. Several other bits of their tech also indicated gravity control was used in them as well.
Its still a hand wave on how the magic gravity works at all but at least it isnt a situation of we have it for convenience, ignore why were not useing it for all the other cool things the tech implies.
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015WJHYSO/ref=series_rw_dp_sw This new series uses artificial gravity for travel, weapons and shielding using a lot of next gen tech we are starting to build prototypes for today.
There's a really obvious reason why a lot of sci-fi shows use artificial gravity.
It's really hard to simulate zero-G on a stage set on Earth.
+John Thems - Or better said its to expansive to simulate "how are you doing" "so lala" FAKE-Zero-G on a stage set on Earth & real Zero-G is even much worse
Yeah, it's called having a limited budget. it's pretty much that simple.
+David Fourman -
YES, saving much money & looking more advanced at the same time .... less is really more in this case
How about animated sci-fi shows?
Hence why the moon landing couldn't have been faked ;)
Those who have read Schlock Mercenary know just how dangerous artificial gravity (or in their case, manipulated gravity) is. You simply CANNOT board a ship with artificial gravity by force, because the ship AI can lock the doors, turn the A.G. up to 1,000 m/s^2, and crush the hostiles in any given room into paste. Think on that next time you watch a boarding action in Star Trek!
+Barley Sixseventwo - YES, like in the pilot movie of Babylon 5 ("The Gatering") by a Minbari ring
Or Andromeda where in the first episode the AI literally turns on some specific grave plates to pull intruders to the floor.
+Mike Robson - YES ...
not to mention the internal defense system cannons
I ran a Priavteers campaign set in Iron Crown's Spacemaster rules. The artificial gravity was a 'black box' tech that a rather creative character used in ways like you describe, and some sci-fi authors use. He built a ship and included multiple "redundant" layers of artificial gravity in the cargo bay, including gravity pointing in the non-floor cardinal directions. At first, I thought this was just to make cargo handling and vehicle recovery easier. He also turned it into a higher-G training area (including 2G basketball!) and a security asset (a boarding party being slammed into various surfaces before being stranded, stunned, in mid-cargo bay was very effective).
Unless the gravplates work like permanent magnets, as opposed to electromagnets.
The centrifugal gravity also varies depending on how far you are from the center. The Night's Dawn trilogy also has "starscrapers" sticking up outside the spinning cylinder, and non-rotating pads to land on.
Hehe, the mention of gravity railguns made me instantly thing of space engineers and how people use the grav generators in that to make rock-throwers or other nasty weapons. They also do use it for ship propulsion too. Interestingly ,the game devs never intended the propulsion and weaponry aspects, but they havent' been patched out yet to my knowledge.
You can still use gravity cannons, but they have been nerfed quite a bit. Using rocks isn't anywhere near as effective as it used to be, so it is better to use metal projectiles instead. Gravity drives still work as well, but they are not as effective either. Also, artificial gravity cannot be used on planets.
gravity drives were actually the first thing i built with grav generators back then. but it was only possible after they introduced the mass block for weaponry however, rotor bolt action, like the desert eagle are much more useful; especially since just as you can use gravity to propel something, you can use gravity shielding to defend against it - but ejected rotor heads as mechanic allow you to build "non gravi" projectiles, as normal blocks are not affected by it. which also explains how it can be abused in crazier ways than a real gravity generator if it existed.
The Gravity Gun...
Isn't that exactly how Verpine Sniper Rifles work. They were used in the Republic Commando novels.
@@Mark-in8ju No clue, but SE is one of the few games I've seen that let you use the gravity generators to their full potential as a weapon.
I used to do gravity traps, which basically used a sensor looking for non-faction IFFs. If one entered, it would turn on grav generators set to ridiculous levels and slam them into the ceiling.
It was just about the only way to have big hangars and keep enemy players out once upon a time.
Mass Effect is one of the few sci fi universes that actually uses its tech gravity for other purposes. Turian ships use it for propulsion and the codex mentions gravity manipulation is used for advanced material production.
Not to mention that people also use it to throw other people across rooms.
True, Mass Effect does an excellent job of taking science into account.
not only that, but they also use mass effect to throw giant pointy metal pieces from ship to ship at ludicrous speeds, to build the armor of the normandy sr2, landing reapers in planets etc. Pretty much all in mass effect is... mass effect
It's complete BS of course, but Mass Effect does such a good job of explaining the titular mass effect, it's easy to forget how much the core premise doesn't make sense unlike something like Star Trek where the scientific explanations only SOUND smart
ghostbirdofprey they just made up element zero, after that, everything is logic and reasonable.
That's what I was getting at.
Everything they came up with based around the premise of element zero is logical and well thought out, but element zero itself is a grade A magic mineral.
Magic sci-fi gravity has never really bothered me, mostly because, as long as the show/book/movie doesn't try to over explain the gravity, I just mostly just assume "ok there's probably a reason it's more effective to use these kinds of engines, than gravity engines," or something like that. Although after watching The Expanse I agreed that you're right in saying it's possible to have realistic gravity without it subtracting from the story.
I always assumed that ships like the Enterprise from Star Trek used Gravity engines
They sorta do. As far as I can tell, the "Impulse Engine" appears to launch ridiculously low mass particles at 99.9999999% the speed of light using electrically induced gravitational fields.
@@anthonyhovens7488 I know I'm late, but something to note is that electromagnetism and gravity, unlike other forces, produce the same acceleration regardless of the target object's mass (this is why all objects fall at the same speed, regardless of weight). As such, it would make more sense to launch high mass particles at the same speed, as you're using the same amount of energy, but you're accelerating faster because its greater mass pushes you forward more.
The same goes for FTL travel, which is even more far fetched, but equally as common in sci fi. The Expanse eventually went on to feature that, but only through use of the rings. For the most part, the ships travel at sunlight speeds. This sort of thing doesn’t need to detract from the story, as long as it’s not heavily based around interstellar travel. And we’ve had enough of that already.
Easy solution would be to just say that the maximum power of the gravitic field the technology could produce would be around one G so that it would be able to produce an earth like gravity but would be next to useless in weaponry or propulsion systems. It could also provide interesting reason for why different species that have adapted to greater intensities of gravity use other means of artificial gravity.
I’d like to see a spin gravity hab that like articulates, and like adjusts spin speed and the angle of the rooms attached to it and such to work in tandem with thrust gravity. I don’t think I’ve explained it very well, but like what If you had a spin hab, that could seamlessly transition into a thrust hab, slowing down and reorienting the rooms when the engines are fired.
that would be the most comfortable and realistic way of doing artificial gravity, as the ship accelerate, the centrifuge slows down and simultaneously angles it's habitation modules toward the back of the ship, and as it slows down it accelerate the centrifuge and angles the modules more and more horizontally. constantly balancing between spin and thrust gravity.
the big issue is structural weaknesses created by such a complex mechanism, but it's totally possible for a civilian ship, and for a military ship you can make it smaller so that it can fit inside the ship hull.
my personal sci-fi universe as the technology of genetic manipulation that makes most people immune to the side effect of living in zero-g, and for comfort ships are built with thrust gravity in mind.
when not under acceleration, the crew and passengers has magnetic boots that change in strength to stay attached to the floor with relatively the same force as if you were on your home planet (minus the fact that only your feet experience ""gravity"", it's mostly just for practicality), allowing different species used to different gravity to travel together.
a specie used to high gravity will have much more powerful boots so that the effort of detaching your foot to take a step feels the same as on a planet, you can also lower it manually if you want, for fun.
most objects also have simple magnets to not fly off the tables or floor.
Tycho Station from the Expanse is exactly like you said. It's habitat modules are on swivels so the inhabitants can have gravity while the station is repositioning itself inside the solar system
One way I thought that they might 'fake' gravity is to use electromagnetic plating and the crew wear metallic clothing to have a constant pull 'down'. Good video, thank you for sharing.
I like that Enders Game incorporates thinking about artificial gravity into its story, and has the treasured quote "The enemy's gate is down"
really good video - this is the kind of discussion we need to have
I'm a little surprised you didn't sight Mobile Suit Gundam, and the Universal Century as a whole for its fantastic use of centrifugal gravity? Great video nonetheless.
I thought he'd go into O'niell Cylinders.
Thank you for this. Not too many people who discuss things Sci Fi would take this discussion on. I especially appreciate your mentioning how gravity field generating technology would change more than just the internal environments of the spacecraft and should have further far reaching effects on space travel technologies.
Gravity is one reason to why I often like animated / CGI sci-fi movies/series a whole lot more. They're not bound to make everything in "1G".
Those animated movies/shows that do play with gravity, or the lack of, as a small part of the story is often more down to realistic portrayal of everything around. They often introduce "out of the box" thinking and ideas that is otherwise really hard or extremely expensive to make if it wasn't animated or computer generated.
I'm writing a short sci-fi story and I'm using a mix of all 3 types of artificial gravity. in the universe I created Humans are a type 2 civilization we mostly use magic gravity for warships and other ships that would need to makes tons of maneuvers and velocity changes. ship type magic gravity is very expensive so we can't just stick it on every thing. there's also terrestrial magic gravity techniques that are far cheaper to use and maintain but use too much power and wouldn't fit on a ship. spin gravity for starbases and space stations and orbital habitats like O'Neil cylinders since they don't need to move and because magic gravity systems are so expensive. civilian ships like transport ships, space cruise liners, cargo ships etc use linear gravity. since it's cheap and those ships don't usually need to make many unplanned maneuvers or velocity changes.
also the warship's crew have magnetic boots in the event of lost gravity control. I also considered that since humanity can manipulate artificial gravity. we could use it for navigation. pushing and pulling a ship to assist it's engines also they can create gravity anchors to assist with course changing and maneuvering.
brooklyn560 That sounds interesting. Is there any reason why you decided to use magic gravity at all? Did you just want to experiment with limiting the generally cheap as dirt magic in other sci-fi settings?
DonRobo I wanna show a sense of realism but also a sense of progression. We can create shipboard anti gravity systems, but why would we put such an expensive high maintenance system on ships that don't really need them? I wanna show that we've broken some barriers, pushed others and found new ones.
Interesting. In the story I'm writng at the moment I've decided to only use magical and centrifugal (magical gravity is essentially a byproduct of FTL drive so using any other type on FTL ships is redundant, but there is no point to installing the expensive and problematic system on space stations). I've also came up with impressive amount oftechnobabble to justify it's existence and I wonder if I shoud put it in the story
Have you posted the story? I would like to read it.
The Minbari of Babylon 5 have artificial gravity that was developed as a side effect of their Gravametric Drive systems. They actually handle gravity in space very well in that show.
One thing that I think is interesting, is in Star Citizen, in the Starfarer ship, there's a room with a gravity generator roughly in the middle of the ship.
I always liked weird gravity workarounds, like a magnetic field in the floor or ceiling combined with a magnetic harness and boots. I don't mind magic gravity, but, like life, it's more fun when it's weird.
my personnal sci-fi universe as that, ships use linear gravity but since mist people are immune to the side effects of zero g (thanks to genetic manipulation or medical implants) they just use magnetic boots for practicality, most objects also have permanent magnets as to not fly off the tables and ground.
*_"Ludicrous Speed: GO!"_** -- SPACEBALLS [1987]*
😊😊😊
"What have I done? My brains, are going into my feet!"
My god, they've gone straight to plaid!
The Gravity Plating of Star Trek works possibly the best without weird overall implications for science, because it implies that to even reach one G you must be *constantly* above one of the plates - and they can only project a field for that singular deck they're on. I would assumed they generate some kind of mass field, artificially imitating the gravitic pull of a planet but only over a small area.
So alll the ships could have a sort of gravity feild genrator,
In my Sci Fi universe i cme up with my own Gravity Feild Genertor device (not published just a hobby) all ships in MY Universe use a Large spinning sphere in the ships engine room called a Grav sphere, there usually connected and powered by the ships FTL Drive that generates artificial gravity for the ships occupants, Larger the ship the larger the grav sphere and of course larger ships and space stations would have multiple grav spheres but like you said
4:48, *Thinks of that one scene from Knights of Sidonia*. (Evasive maneuvers.)
I guess you can have that "magical gravity" in ways that make it impossible or at least inefficient to be used for other stuff like moving your ship itself.
Very useful to create gravity on ship to compensate all kind of acceleration and no acceleration, so it's installed on every ship, but not useful for anything else? That's highly, highly unlikable.
"God gives us gravity on our spaceships" sounds better.
Given all the episodes where the ship has lost power, still gravity. Or the other trope, hit the environmental systems and everyone instantly starts suffocating instead of having hours of oxygen left in the room to breathe. But then we have the movie where a single torpedo hit to the "gravity generator" on the klingon ship and BOOM everyone is floating. Make up your mind,, Roddenberry!
in one episode of babylon5 Sheridan jumps out of a train and drifted twards "the groungd". they said he is at 0 g, but the ground is moving at 50 miles or so and that is what would kill him. physics rules!
Babylon 5 had so many great things about it, and the realism of "space-physics" was spot-on. Just look at how the Star Furies dogfight. And yes, Sheridan would be ragdolled if he hit the rotating habitat below. If he'd had time to think about it he would have hooked a hand on the doorway on the way out, and jumped out so he was moving in *parallel* with the shuttle's track, staying in the middle where he would have taken longer to fall. Instead he bolts out the door, charging straight toward the ground. Owell, they needed it for the plot to develop.
Although I loved B5, B5 still had some nonsense to it.
The main tube of B5 rotated so they could have artificial gravity, but the command section was in the stationary part of the ship and it also had artificial gravity.
The Earth capital ships also had rotating sections, (apparently for artificial gravity) but most of the ship didn't rotate. I mean, it rotated a little, but it was really close to the central docking bay so it wouldn't be much.
While we're at it, B5 had a central fusion reactor to power it, so why have those big solar panels on the sides?
And why have solar panels on both sides? The sun is going to be in one direction. At least half the solar panels will be useless at any given time.
A good sci-fi work that explores looks into the magic gravity style implications is the webcomic Schlock Mercenary. It's a humorous comic but it lays out a world where, among other things, gravity manipulation is ubiquitous and easy. The characters refer to gravity as a weapon as a "Gravy Gun" for what the aftermath may look like and there are scenes where gravity is used to precisly manipulate single fingers of characters.
Many Gundam shows do a great job of showcasing centrifugal gravity because the space colonies are all O'Neill Cylinders and Stanford toruses.
The nice thing too is that when they are on their ships and at battle, there is no gravity, everyone floats around. When they are in their ships and they are not in combat, they release hab blocks with rotate around the ship, thus giving people a place with gravity.
In the Traveller RPG, I like my lower tech level ships to have linear-propulsion gravity. However, the ships that have "magic gravity" can lose their gravity, *or* if during crazy maneuvers, can't reorient gravity fast, so even if "down is this way", if the ship gets hit and flips, it can't just turn around the "down" and the crew can get hurt.
The other fun thing to do, is to simulate gravity with "magic" but only at a certain thrust. If the crew modifies the ship to go faster, it then pushes more gravity onto the crew members.
gundam, funnily enough, does this extremely well in general. I guess its a benifit of it primarily being an animated series. In fact, it probably helps to avoid the bane that is animated walk cycles!
in the main time line at least, centrafugal gravity is used EVERYWHERE, and where its not, people are floating around. most of outer spaceliving areas used centrifugal colonies. and its neat to see in combat vessels, they have off duty centrifugal areas, and zero g normal operating areas.
The Ender's Game movie's Battle School Space Station, is a good example of "Centrifugal Force Gravity. Where the hab is spinning and the walls are curved.
The enemy's gate is down
Besides the "speed" slip great vid! Can you tackle the theories of interstellar/intergalactic travel? Warp, Hyperspace (stargate and B5), Slipstream ( Andromeda), Stargates, FTL Jumps (BSG) etc. I know there's too many, maybe a two parter's worth that'd be sweet. Also on a side note there's precious little lore and ship details for the Andromeda Ascendant universe out there, a few vids on some of these ship designs would be pretty sweet.
Aaron Slipspace from Halo and Star Wars' version of hyperspace.
basically, there are 4 typical means of FTL drive in sci-fi, usually there is only one in each series, and different series will have different bits on how it works and speeds and gimmicks, etc. but it usually follows a similar model to other series using the same method. The methods are typically Warp, Hyperspace, Wormhole, and 'Jump drive'.
Warp is a method by which you generate a field around your vessel and then bend or pull space instead of directly moving the ship, like instead of going to your destination you are simply bringing your destination to you. the most obvious example of this is in star trek, though theirs does some stuff with subspace dimensions. also, warp is the form of FTL that we are currently closest to achieving, and experiments have been done that prove you can move objects by warping space time. The main problem now is that the amount of energy required to generate a warp field capable of pulling a ship to effectively faster-than-light speeds is ludicrously high. the reason a warp drive is able to move things faster than light is because the fabric of space time is not an object and therefor not affected by the cosmic speed limit for information (all matter and energy): C (the speed of light).
A hyperdrive works by pushing a ship into another dimension where the speed of light is either infinite, much higher, or not a cosmic speed limit. while in this dimension ships are capable of travelling at speeds far greater than the speed of light by either an innate property of the dimension which pulls them, or by conventional propulsion under different laws of physics, depending on the sci-fi universe. It seems to me that hyperdrives of different types are the most common method of FTL in sci-fi. one property that is usually very different between sci-fi series hyperdrives is the method by which the dimension typically known as hyperspace is reached, which can be an interdimensional wormhole or portal (the most common type), a dimensional phase shift, or an interdimensional teleport or jump. in many, but not all sci-fi series, hyperdrives are also restrcited to travel along specific 'hyperlanes' and travel outside of these routes is either extremely dangerous or totally impossible.
a Wormhole is a tunnel through space (and possibly time, but that's not typical in most sci-fi series except Doctor Who). Wormholes in sci-fi can either be naturally occurring phenomena, ancient precursor artifacts, or generated by a device on starships. they typically take large amount of energy to generate, but provide near-instantaneous transportation from one location to another. they are usually the least gimmicky FTL method in sci-fi series, as the only gimmick that they seem to ever have is that in some series they require a separate station or vessel to generate the wormhole for others.
the last method is the 'Jump Drive', which is present when writers didn't feel like bothering with complicated real life astrophysics and stuff. that doesn't mean they don't have any science behind them, it's just typically less complicated than the other ones. basically a jump drive is an interstellar teleporter which instantly transmutes objects(usually starships) from one location to another. technically, this is theoretically possible, but would be extremely difficult. Jump drives in sci-fi are usually characterized by long charge up times, and short ranges. some sci-fi series have their jump drives require calculations to avoid collisions with stellar objects, others just assume that these are avoided by the drive automatically or something. jump drives do often have the coolest CGI for jumping though.
the only series I can think of off the top of my head that doesn't use some version of one of these is Mass Effect, so I'll talk about them.
In Mass Effect, FTL travel is achieved by reducing a ships effective mass using 'Element Zero', a fictional element that somehow has the property of being able to reduce the mass of other objects. they also use this element to generate artificial gravity and build advanced weapons. besides the mass reducing part, it's somewhat unclear how they travel faster than light outside of Mass Relays, which are basically giant cannons that fire ships across huge distances faster than the speed of light somehow. My best guess for their regular FTL drives would be a non-hyperlane-restricted hyperdrive or possibly a warp drive. some people say that the drives work by causing the ship to have a negative mass, which would cause it to travel faster than light, but would cause so many problems that I don't think that's what it is. these problems include severe Cherenkov Radiation, which is generated when objects travel faster than light in certain mediums, ships totally disintegrating due to any vessel lighter than nothing exerting an anti-gravitational field which would tear the ship apart, a huge anti-gravitational shockwave caused by an object with a negative mass which would cause all objects in a vast distance to be pushed away slightly, and the simple fact that it would be almost entirely impossible to reduce an object's mass to less than nothing, even with the space-magic Element Zero.
Please don't take all that as an anti-Mass Effect rant, I love the Mass Effect series and it has some other sciences that are very well explained and the ships and lore are just amazing, but their FTL is just scientifically implausible, and it bugs me.
If you actually read this entire thing, good job, you might now kind of understand things or you might be really confused, but either way you probably just spent around 5-10 minutes reading a reply to a comment on a youtube video, but remember, you're not as bad as me, because I spent around half an hour writing said reply to a comment on a youtube video.
You mean when he said the simulated gravity would stop if the ship stopped moving, instead of the correct *stopped accelerating*? I thought the comments would be full of people pointing this out, but perhaps it's because I'm four years late.
I would love to see you cover some ships from gundam
also their O'Neill cylinder colonies
Dragore Skywing which gundam ?
Keith Holguin the racilume. sorry if I misspelled
Dragore Skywing
I think another simple idea that isn't really explored in sci-fi is magnetic plating paired with magnetic boots/shoes. Or even just iron laced flooring with small earth magnets in the soles of shoes. Just powerful enough to keep you on the floor. They could even run an electrical charge in the floor to power it up or down.
That should be used in small spaceships like fighters or escape pods
The weird thing is, that if you look at Cowboy Bebop, specifically, The Bebop, you can see that it has a Hab ring that's generating gravity. Mind Blown.
I believe the Dropships from Battletech are a nice example of linear artificial gravity too. As Sarna put it (if I remember right, it’s not right in front of me), they leave the FTL “Jumpship” mothership, perform a sustained 1G burn towards the target, then basically rotate and burn 1G retrograde on the way to the planet.
Problem with centrifugal gravity is that the force exerted on your head is different to that of your feet with would create serious balance issues and headaches, tilting even slightly forward or backward would make you fall over and walking would be difficult because the difference of force as you move your body.
Very true, though I expect after generations of living on Centrifugal stations, later generations would adapt to the differences. Still a problem for anyone who is often moving between stations and ships or planets though.
Agreed. It is not only the difference in inertia between your head and feet would mess with blood flow and thus your heart but if you turned on the spot an tried to walk down the length of the cylinder coriolis effect would be constantly messing up your inner ear and your sense of balance. Not to mention if you needed to climb a ladder to a central hub. Once you reached the point of near weightlessness your inner ear would trick you into constantly spinning your body to keep your old balance. Sounds like you'd have motion sickness real bad in a place like that. Kids would adapt quicker because it would be like a constant carnival ride but adults would be throwing up a lot and have dizzy spells to the point of being completely incapacitated.
Wouldn't the difference in force be negligible if the wheel is really big?
Rudy Valle Yes. Really big. That is the problem you have to build large rings or cylinders to make it work properly. Also if you only wanted to have maybe 1/2 gravity you can rotate the ring half as slowly which put less strain on the structure. Big and slow is pretty much how you'd have to build it. Imagine the golden gate bridge linked end to end and spun really fast like a ferris wheel. Small rings wouldn't work. They'd spin too fast and rip apart. Huge rings would take a lot of time and material to build but would be worth it.
Exactly yeah, spherical stations or hollowed out asteroids would work too, use the outer levels for habitation where the Coriolis effect is least nauseating, and use the coreward decks for storage and technological components.
Great video!
Great video! You mentioned using gravity to propel ships. This is used as 'wedges' in the Honor Harrington series. Possibly my favorite book series. Have you read them? And would you be willing to do a video on it?
Good video,Glad someone else understands the implications of artificial gravity. Keep up the good work
I've been working on a Sci-fi setting that makes a lot of use of gravity based technology, specifically the manipulation of gravitons. Gravity based propulsion and weapons also exist, though at the early parts of the setting its explained that those are still in early development since it's a matter of both making the components small enough to fit in ships and fighters (or mecha in this case) but also balancing it with the output of reactors and other power sources. During those early stories the use of artificial gravity in the few ships that have it is on a switch depending on if their in battle due to the limited power supplies. It's switched off in battle to allow more power for weapons and shields. The one mecha with gravity weapons doesn't have AG at all.
The new “Thunderbirds are Go” TV series redesigns Thunderbird 5 for centrifugal artificial gravity and I loved it 😅
Iain M Bank's novel 'Consider Phlebas' featured a tragic intersection of tech and centrifugal gravity. A minor character was wearing an anti-grav harness and jumped off a building; what he failed to realise was that he was on a structure called an orbital, that used centrifugal rotation to simulate gravity. His tech had no effect on this and he fell five stories to his death.
David Weber tries to stay consistent, his "Honorverse" ships do have grav plates, but they use a gravity drive and I believe their grasers are a plasma beam focused by a grav-lense or some such. There is a ton of info on the web, but I've never looked it all up.
I think the grazers are gamma Ray based lasers that are built to larger and heavier specs than the normal lasers. The impeller bands are grav fields that provide propulsion, the side walls are gravity based, the gravity Lance is a weapon for taking out opponent's sidewalls. Lots of gravity based stuff, including some mentions on how it is used in civilian construction.
@@abstracttechnician2750 The ship mounted lasers and grasers use gravity fields as lenses, which allows for extremely fast target switching and aiming and better beam coherence than you could get with a material lens. Their bomb pumped laser warheads likewise use gravity fields to focus the nuclear explosion's energy on the lasing rods to improve efficiency (it's still bad, just not as bad as real life attempts at making bomb pumped lasers).
And I think even their man portable pulser weapons use gravity to throw explosive "darts" at speeds higher than what a current day gun can that chemical propellant.
The first time I got realy aware of that gravity issue was as kid with B5.
Especially the episode when Cpt Sheridan jumped out of one of the Transport vehicles in the center of the tube and slowly hovered to the inner surface of the tube with his initial momentum.
Normaly without gravity he would have only landed slowly, but the rotation of the tube would have shredded him
Okay, I was totally waiting for "use gravity to propel the ship" to be followed with "like in Babylon 5's White Stars." Now I'm a bit disappointed.
The Traveller roleplay game is one where Gravity tech is used from ship propulsion and at the higher tech levels there are even grav weapons.
It's probably easier to genetically engineer away the health impacts of living in free-fall than inventing gravity plates.
hard to say really, we don't have much of a basis for either, most sea creatures either live above or below the simulated 0 g depth and dont spend much time there, there are some true, but also there's the vast physiological differences in play there and ethical concerns when you apply genetic engineering to humans. Where as most of our research into FTL technology has to do with the manipulation of gravity, so the ability to use that internally may be a byproduct.
I think it might be easier to have spin or thrust gravity than either of your options.
@@Voltaic_Fire Oh both of those will happen in the near future but what about a few hundred years from now.
@@deoxal7947 If we ever find a way of generating gravity without spinning stuff then that'll be the best possible solution because I don't think genetic engineering is a good idea. We're not talking about turning off the gene for an allergy or splicing hardiness characteristics into our food here, to implement the scope of changes required to live healthily without gravity would undoubtedly have unforseen and terrible consequences.
@@Voltaic_Fire just for a laugh .... the thought of spinning gravity and then having lakes "i wonder what clouds do in 0 g when they dont have to spin along?" just wonder if they would know the concept of rain in 500 years
4:42 Not “speeds”, but “accelerations” or “rates of change of speed” (actually should be “rates of change of velocity”).
Well I think there are a few ways to answer the questions in this video:
A) Regarding why ships don't propel using artificial gravity:
Well considering the only way in known physics that we know how to break the c-barrier is through the alcubierre drive i.e. bending space-time, it would actually be basing stuff on real science if ftl drives propelled ships using artificial gravity, more so than using some variant of a subspace that we usually see in many sci-fi settings since real science don't have any equivalent to any type of subspace.
B) Regarding why they don't have gravity powered rail-guns:
Two reasons -
1) maybe producing those accelerations through magnetic force is much cheaper than producing them using g-force.
2) gravity affects all matter while magnetic force affects only certain kinds of matter having magnetic properties. This means that it is easier to propel the ammo of a railgun without tearing off the rails and any adjacent ship parts by using magnetic forces rather than by using g-forces.
The vessel in the movie The Martian is a great example of science fact being put into practice with centrifugal gravity.
I like the way that the ISV Venture Star from Avatar combines both thrust gravity as well as spin gravity via hinged hab module arms.
So my headcannon with technological artificial gravity is that a lot of these civilizations have learned to create an alloy material with hyperdense material(like star matter), where when they alter the crystalline structures of the material they can essentially re-create 1G gravity in one direction and only up to the ceiling. Similar to how you can make magnetic fields bigger or smaller based off the crystalline structure of the magnet.
These would require no power, won’t fail, and would still be present in debris fields. It is also one of the big reasons why ships would implode upon being destroyed.
With ship’s advanced inertial dampeners and other shields and fields can counteract the major disruptions that a technology like this would create.
I like the way the Dead Space games used their tech-based artificial gravity, because it's not actually ridiculously reliable
for example, power surges or tampering can overcharge and invert the flow of gravity in a section of plating, making it deadly to walk over that area, as you'd get smashed into the ceiling
Gravity drives: Something that people in Space Engineers have learned to build via exploiting the mechanics of gravity generators+artifical mass blocks. Its actually amazing seeing a ship of any size instantly accelerated to its top speed, or instantly decelerated. Without use of any thrusters.
Amazing!
Schlock Mercenary actually *does* use its gravity manipulation repeatedly. Annie plants work by using artificial gravity to compress stuff somehow, the primary sublight drive is to fall into an artificial gravity field, there's gravy guns which impart absurd gravitational forces on your target (but only at what is, by spacecraft standards, melee range), there's personal flight using it, and there's even gravity manipulation involved in how the teraport works.
there's also three habitats we visit using spin gravity - one as a historic monument, one because it's literally a bunch of people living in the barrel of a really big gun, and one because it's just friggin enormous, like, you could put Mars inside and have room left over enormous.
I generally assume gravity plating, inertial dampeners, and tractor beams all ran on similar technology. Once you have one, you have them all. It helps that they don't explain it, so you can fill in the gaps yourself.
I love that the Halo books describe human ships before the War as having zero artificial gravity. With the bridge having stations on the "floor" and "ceiling" as well the walls, just for the sake of redundancy.
Happy new year
The Perry Rhodan Universe uses gravity manipulation for propulsion, the metagrav engine creates a artificial gravity field in the direction of flight and the spacecraft "falls" toward it.
The biggest problem I have with spin gravity is. That you need an even number of spinning rings or you waste a lot of fellow maintaining the center section stationery.
The gravity plating being battery powered could keep it isolated so that only damaged plates cease functioning.
Love the vid, in the Battletech universe they use a mixture of spin and thrust to simulate gravity. the Warships have a rotating section (or more) and this is active when a ships stationary and otherwise they generate g by moving.
well done.
That is why Mass Effect is the best example of gravity tech being used for weaponry, engines etc etc.
Mass Effect did mention that the Normandy could manoeuvre by projecting a gravity well outside of the ship that the Normandy would then "fall into" instead of/in addition to conventional thrusters.
This is why I loved the approach to gravity The expanse has. Btw: Nice picture of the Donnager !
the gravity plating on star trek is created by accelerating graviton ( the gravity exchange particle) in a centrifuge at the bottom of the saucer section, the reason they don't use it as an ftl system is explained in a tng episode where a species invades barclay and make him super smart, that's where he uses the graviton as medium of ftl, and it nearly kills the crew
I like how the video opens with an inside shot of an O'Neill Island 3.
Good example of both realistic methods is battletech.
Where you travel between planets/jump points at 1G getting gravity. And while waiting at jump points or on stations, you use a rotational section,
Artificial gravity is based on the idea that gravity is a wave function of quantum mechanics. Uses other than grav plating would include, gravitational lenses for distance viewing and beam weapons. Containment for fusion and antimatter reactors. as a focused weapon "grav lance or gravy gun" in reverse as contra gravity lifters and tractor beams. Gravitic space mines and artificial mass. And I'll bet there is a lot I'm missing.
Allegheny500 with artificial gravity, you have railguns, coilguns, mass driver rockets, fusion power, kinetic shields, neutron degenerate matter weapons, black hole weapons, tractor beams, gravity propulsion, telekinesis, time manipulation
Allegheny500 you also have particle beam weapons.
Where did you get the idea of artificial gravity being based on quantum mechanics (in sci-fi)? Right now, gravity is only described by general relativity and it hasn't been possible to link it to quantum mechanics, yet. No theory about quantum gravity could be supported by any kind of experiment (at least i heard of) and besides wishes of physicists, there is no real reason why gravity should be describable by quantum mechanics anyways. The whole idea of combining quantum mechanics and general relativity into one equation that describees everything has been a fruitless endeavor. I have never heard of any piece of sci-fi using quantum gravity as an explaination for artificial gravity. So could you please tell me where you heard that? I would be very interested in reading it.
@@Widur42 look up gravitons and the standard model
Shaquille Nelson in which sci-fi movie or series is the existence of artificial gravity being described or explained with the term gravitons?
Mass Effect is a good example of the first one. With it's use of mass effect fields in everything
I've had to explain it to many ppl as well, often w 'huh' being the answer. Being into physics it's simple to me but then so is frame dragging. B-5 had areas that could rotate at dif speeds to accommodate races used to dif grav levels, some Trek ships supposedly had areas w dif grav for aliens or humans raised on dif worlds. Aside from rotating platforms we may have to wait for synthetic grav but we (humans) discover new shit all the time. Great vid, keep up the good work, love the ch, one of the first I subscribed to when I started subscribing.
My setting uses centrifugal gravity for larger and more expensive ships (sparingly; it's actually a more common feature of space stations), while smaller or cheaper ones employ magnet suits (worse quality gravity is acceptable on ships since travel usually takes a couple days at most, and very rarely exceeds more than a week)
Good vid! Would love to see one about the Red Dwarf ship or in star trek the dominion battle cruiser, something different
Sidonia no Kishi (Knights of Sidonia) depicts this turning-while-generating-gravity effect in a realistic, some might say grizzly, way.
"We're just going to avoid an asteroid, everyone, so make sure you're strapped in...oh."
I won my middle school science fair one year (1982 iirc) with a centripetal force gravity space station I built from an old rock tumbler. I used a large carboard cylinder, built a city inside, the entire cylinder rotated a slow constant speed... it was good. One thing that always bothered me though was the interface between the spinning section and the non spinning section, as you need a non spinning section of the ship for sensors and thrust devices, etc. That may be why it's not used much in science fiction as that adds quite a bit of complication as people move between the non rotating ship control areas and spinning civilian areas. And you would still need some type of artificial gravity for the non spinning areas, though I think some type of metallic infused clothing/rings/bracelets/belts/shoes/headbands could be used with a weak magnetic floor to pull those down for a weak controlled gravity affect so people could walk around those areas with having to float, and that would limit the muscle/bone deterioration from working in those areas.
A sci-fi book by the name of titans (free on play and its not just a sample) mentions a colony ship which uses a combination of linear and centrifugal gravity, using linear gravity for the inital acceleration and then once up to speed transfering the colonists from the linear inner section of the ship to a outer donut shaped(i cant remeber the proper word) habitat rimg which uses centrifugal gravity.
My favorite part of the expanse is that in every scene that takes place in 0g, you will ALWAYS hear the clanking of magboots with every footstep. There's also often external shots showing the ship either under thrust or just floating there before the interior shots too, just to inform you if they're floating or not.
I like one of David Weber's book series (I think) where they not only use technological gravity in ships as normal, but as weapons. They effectively use really strong tractor beams that switch between push and pull numerous times a second and basically shake the target apart.
I'd like to point out that what you mentioned about "gravity rail guns" and "gravity drives" (or essentially bothering to explain and even utilize the technological aspect) is essentially what Mass Effect does. It does the technological route, but it bothers explaining it and actually using it in a reasonable fashion (most of the time), with different strengths and limitations. While it does show any examples of an instance where gravity goes out, it does explain it, and well in the codex/lore.
The web serial The Deathworlders deals with the gravity plating in full. Throughout the series, it is used as a weapon, training device, maneuvering equipment, and even to acclimatize a city on a low gravity planet for human occupation. Its still spacemagic as all hell, but it is never forgotten about. It's explicitly stated that its a low power version of the same technology used in the reactionless ship thrusters, which warp space to move vessels, up to and including FTL travel. Its essentially little baby alcubbiere drives used to adjust gravity.
I have some issues with the writing especially in post chapter 40, with its repeating focus on muscly dudebro space marines, but the imagined tech feels very fleshed out despite it all.
I do wish you would have mentioned Mass Effect for the magic gravity. They go into all the aspects of a gravity based sci-fi universe, hand held guns that use gravity to shear off a small sliver of metal, reduce the mass of the sliver, then launch the sliver at VARY high speeds. Oh, and when the shard exits the barrel it regains its mass further increasing it's destructive potential!
They were quite grounded in science fact a lot of the time, if you accept the way element 0 works. Great example of magic gravity that rules the galaxy.
I like this. Perhaps do a video on the semi-linear progression of sci-fi weapons technology ex. ballistic-->laser-->plasma-->particle
With my RPG group, when we have FTL or grav plating in game we call it "magic space science" or "Laforgeisms". An additional positive to spin gravity is well developed calves since the crew is constantly walking up hill. ( I am aware that walking the length of the vessel is not up hill but I refuse to let facts get in the way of a joke.)
I think the Cylons in BSG actually use Gravity for propultion and manuvering, because their Raiders appear to have no manuvering thrusters and the Basestars appear to have no Thrustars at all.
And if I remember it correcly we even se a Raider hovering over a planets surface once.
The fourth kind is "i don't know how gravity works" gravity, either bc the writers took the gravity too much for granted and included earth like gravity in a setting where it wouldn't exist, or in old sci fi stories where they made inaccurate assumptions about gravity and misapplied it - the best example being perhaps CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet where the small spaceship traveling to Mars/Malacandra was constructed as a sphere so they could walk inside the sphere, with floors facing the center and the ceiling facing the exterior of the sphere, presumably bc Lewis, a scholar of medieval literature, understood that objects with mass had gravity but didn't quite understand how little gravity such a small vessel would produce if it wasnt influenced by earth's gravity. Its a very charming and fantastical detail though
In my sci fi I came up with a third one for small ships. Mag gravity, where people wear iron threads in their suits and magnetic coils in the deck plating pull on it so you have some pull in 0g. The main problem would be that magnetic field a taper off too quickly. You could partner it with inverted fields on the ceiling and magnets in the suits, but either way, nothing made of iron, nickel, or cobalt would be allowed on your ship.
btw my own Sci Fi universe i came up with my own Gravity Feild Genertor device (not published just a hobby) all ships in MY Universe use a Large spinning sphere in the ships engine room called a Grav sphere, there usually connected and powered by the ships FTL Drive that generates artificial gravity for the ships occupants, Larger the ship the larger the grav sphere and of course larger ships and space stations would have multiple grav spheres.
but other races in my work use different artificial Gravity , some Planets in my universe are steampunk type planets and there starships just use magnets and magnetic boots and electromagnets and all that kind of thing.
i should include Centrugal gravity for an alien race close to our level of technology in my universe as well, maybe a an alien race just beginning its journey into space.
just like how i use different artificial gravity for different aliens, different alien races will aso use various forms of FTL depending on that planets technologial level or whatever they stole form other races. (Earth in my univese has its own ships and those ships all use reverse engineered alien tech from downed UFOs)
Love this channel, you do tend to use speed and acceleration interchangeably though
I know sci fi like Star Wars have tractor beams, which I guess are graviton emitters that can either pull or push a ship towards or away from you.
I wonder why they never weaponise it? Using a strong & focused graviton beam that changes from push/push every millisecond or so could theoretically tear a ship apart in a few seconds.... or atleast tear the armour plating off in the case of large ships.
Thanks for making this video, artificial gravity is both a fascinating subject in fiction and real life.
I can see centrifugal working with spaceships too, it would just look like an enormous wheel with thrusters attached seemingly rather flimsily to the sides.
In Babylon 5 there are actuallly vessels that do this (and the ship in The Martian). The only "problem" with this is, everyone onboard would need to be secured when acceleration occurs, but that shouldn't be much of a challenge.
i love this vid because this is the sort of thing that legit keeps me up at night, lol the problems of a first world physics student, and because as to the grav plating, i thought maybe a work around for that could be magnetic, similar to mag boots, but you could have all ship personnel wear magnetic "suits" this would also flow in with if they could give some limited protection from decompression, or you could make the human body full of nanite esq things that could then be drawn down in a way to simulate gravity, as well as then allowing for internal sensors to track and keep health tabs and whatnot, but that's just my 2 cents, please if anyone thinks I'm right or wrong and why please respond, know this is an old video.
Liked the torchwood intro
Whats funny to me is when space engineers first put in gravity projectors and later artificial mass blocks the first two things people did were to use them for more efficient propulsion and as powerful anti station and anti capital weapons. I remember an old mining base some friends and i built which basically was just to collect huge boulders to launch at the other base on the server.
Great vid, I really enjoy your presentations.
I might just quickly point out that some designs for a 'real' starship to travel between solar systems actually use a 'tractor' propulsion system where the 'engine' is at the bow with the thrust slightly deflected to avoid the rest of the hull behind it. This allows the bulk of the vessel to be under tension while accelerating which means a far lighter structure for the same size. Well worth the sacrifice of a few degrees of thrust efficiency.
Of course the acceleration effect perceived as gravity is still the same as option 3.
Good informative video. Even though I was already familiar with each of these concepts and how they work. It's always nice to hear it summarized so succinctly. Very nice. One nit pick I had though, was you said if "speed" was to decrease below 1G you pointed out that there would be a moment of 0G that everyone would need to strap in for, but I'm pretty sure you meant to say if "acceleration" decreased below 1G because G's are a measure of acceleration not speed. Although if the speed itself did increase then that in itself would constitute a likely need to strap in for passengers because a change a speed would mean that an acceleration or deceleration would be occurring.
I love the space stations in Elite Dangerous for their use of realistic artificial gravity.
That is until I'm barreling in full speed with a Type-9 while running dark and misalign slightly. That... that doesn't end well.
A good Thing to mention is that centrifugal gravity will make people sick at anymore than 1 rpm. Because of this centrifugal stations need to be at the very least around 250 meters across.
The other uses for "Technological" gravity are explored by the Yuuhuzan Vong in the Star Wars Legends timeline. They have creatures, named Dovin Basals, who can manipulate gravity, and can, among other things, propel ships, create micro-singularities to use as shields, and can even destroy planets by pulling down their moons.
David Weber's Honor Harrington book series is great at gravity manipulation to go along with the gravity plates.
centrifugal gravity could be much more explored, as it does have a few downsides which are not well known by audiences. like: what happens if you jump, throw, shoot, etc. in such an environment; or other stuff.
Fun thing, you can have "thrust gravity" type of ships, and if you tether 2 ships of the same kind of the same (or close to same) weight, you can redistribute the difference weight, or move the centre of spinning closer to the heavier ship, and spinn the ships, both acting as counterweight to the other ship, like bolas (bolo or how the south american cowboys named the two rocks connected by rope thingy). The direction of the spinn gravity will be according the way the ships are connected to each other - if they are hooked by frontal sections, they can have "spinn" gravity in thrust gravity spaceship. If they do connect in paralel to each other, bows in same direction, back to back, the direction of the gravity will be same as in the airplane. Not to mention, you can use the tethers, to transport fuel, supplies and personnels, from one ship to the other, in crawler bags, or in kinda "lift". The crew and passangers of both ships, will be more than happy to see some unfamiliar faces (wich are not of their line of command, and terefore aviable for closer social interactions... Or simple personal replenishmens after combat encounter.
Alternatively, you can have something, i see as good mothership for smaller thrust gravity constructed vessels. The bigger ship does have ring (or more), with platforms, wich are on the top section clamped on the ring, and holding on it like on a swivel. Therefore if the "mothership" flies to generate gravity, the smaller docked vessles will have it too, and if the "mothership" rotates the ring for generating gravity, on the back of the smaller vessles will be little bit higher than 1 G, and on the front of the ship will be a little less than 1G. One of the pros is, that you may add number of outside modules on the platforms, serving as quite large modular attachment point, wich will have gravity practicaly always, during even a long flight. Other of the pros is, you might use the platforms not only as berths for towing the smaller ships, but also as dry-dock for them, for more extensive refits, repairs and upgrades. And other pro i do see there is, that you can release all your complement of smaller ships AT ONCE, not needing runnaway, hangar, or other extensive interior space demanding changes of the mothership. Con is, you need to have the small ships balanced, another con - the external ring kinda blocks the view to the guns (especially if you do not have any ON the ring), and the last con i see, is, that it will be very hard to try to dock to the "mothership", if it is spinning, and does not have any specialized landing device to compensate it.