That was such a nice touch and just cost some red leds. I'm the books they spend a lot of time on the float (to expensive to burn all the time). The way the TV show got around it all was great
They also made amazing computerized wire rigs for the actors they used in conjunction with motion-controlled cameras. The production of the show was super impressive.
Also - everyone should read the books. They're fantastic.
Ty Frank, one of the authors and the Amos actor Wes Chatham had a really fun podcast ("Ty and That Guy") that did lots of fun deep dives on genre stuff.
Which is fucking cool because it's one of the few space travel things that really does work. Like if we can figure out the fuel/propulsion thing and some kind of equivalent to deflector shields (not for space battles but for all the random shit in space that could destory your ship in a collision, especially if we get up to relativistic speeds), we could have space travel where you can walk around normally on the ship.
Also the gravity increasing ships like Goku used in DBZ, so we could actually have someone doing extreme gravity training while en route to a big fight.
And it works for both acceleration and deceleration, only difference is you're either travelling up or down.
Also loved the special seats they used when doing combat maneuvers. ST didn't just make up artificial gravity (since their ships moved forwards rather than up), they had inertial dampeners, because the evasive maneuvers would have been much more dangerous than the shocks from getting hit.
ST is more rooted in science than SW, but parts of it are just as much fantasy as the force, which was depressing to realize when you're hoping for humanity to eventually go in that direction. The biggest human tech fantasy in the Expanse is an engine upgrade that gives improved thrust and efficiency. Not to light speed, but just by like an order of magnitude. And they've even got a brutally realistic scene about the discovery that was great world building imo.
To be fair; if you could build a fusion torch and fully direct the flow; aneutronic fusion fits the bill; the thrust numbers they are using are not crazy.
You would use stupid amount of fuel to get that much delta-v; but with advanced reactors using readily available fuel sources....maybe not an issue.
Yeah, it's not even that much of a stretch, like that future could be within humanity's reach. Not sure we'd actually want that particular future, but there's just something about realistic sci fi that makes this reality feel cooler.
Or Star Trek: First Contact, when Picard, Worf, and redshirt Neil McDonough test out their zero G combat training, further cementing the fact that Star Trek only remembers that space has no gravity when it's relevant to the plot.
My wife abused star trek of being a soap opera at some point. At first I thought, maybe she's just showing up at the worst possible time?
No. It's all of the time. Every episode has some weird soapy bullshit. Beverly fucking a ghost, LaForge fucking a hologram, Riker fucking anything with genitals INCLUDING a hologram. Everybody be fuckin. That's not even the soapiest thing. Voyager is basically Soaps in space.
I love classic trek, but guys I think it's a soap opera.
Admit it, you wanted to ask which movies and shows have done it. Instead of asking for people to tell you what the correct answer is, it’s far more effective to post the wrong answer, and wait for the flood of answers to arrive.
But there’s more than that to it. I think there’s some strange default setting in the human mind that makes us want to correct mistakes. Maybe it’s all about setting the record straight, being correct or whatever.
Precisely! A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, and two weeks later in Denver, a black cat walks under a ladder while Myrphy is working on some cables.
i think its plating for trek, thats why you can turn it off in some areas and not others. cant say the same for other shows, they likely use a similar mechanism.
This is covered in the Attack Pattern Trunks web comic. If I remember correctly it works even when all power is disabled due to thermal power or some such, I'd have to go searching through all the episodes to cover it.
Gravity is a very dense liquid. Generator makes it in big batches at a time and it just stays there for long even after the generator is gone. After the battle is done and everything is repaired, they just top up the pool and all is good.
On a space station more than a space battle, but Titan AE had a scene that made good use of this. The station is old, and early in the scene the gravity generator goes on the fritz, causing everyone to float until some percussive maintenance gets it working again. When bad guys show up Matt Damon shoots the generator to cause some confusion and let him escape faster by pushing off toward the exit.
Gravity is on a separate subsystem & power supply, because without gravity people couldn’t reasonably move and fix the rest of the ship, so even when compared to general life support, it’s the most critical function and the most isolated.
Doylist explanation: it would be too expensive for the FX department.
As it happens, the same worldbuilding project I mentioned in another post here sort of addresses this. The same aliens mentioned there don’t use artificial gravity at all. Being arboreal creatures they’re well suited to microgravity and can happily live permanently in zero G. Upon meeting humans and learning that we want artificial gravity (specifically centrifugal gravity), they wonder why we spent all the effort to get away from gravity only to spend even more effort to bring it back.
Since human orbital colonies take the form of O’Neil cylinders, you can cut off the gravity by halting the cylinder’s rotation. If stopped abruptly enough this would cause a lot of damage initially as objects go flying. It would also put the terrestrial, bipedal humans at a disadvantage compared to the aliens with five prehensile extremities.
I am a big fan of sci-fi and understand how expensive weightlessness is to film, so combine that with the amount of shows that have been canceled and I completely accept the fact that they try to keep this more fictional than science.
If it were expected to be more than a 1 in 1000 risk, they would probably have handles on the walls and ceilings to help move about during an emergency.
They did in the first episode of Transformers Animated. Granted, that was a cartoon, which made it infinitely easier to have them float in zero gravity than a live action movie.
That's the episode where for some reason the Deception jets turn into triangles and after sleeping for 6 million years Optimus wakes and just says "thanks" and throws Teletran-1 a thumbs up and also Casey Kasem is there right
starships have redundancies most likely, much like the life support systems. its like artificial gravity isnt coming from an actual generator, but the whole ship itself in some unknown mechanism, most scifi genre dont explain how its being created, it looks more like an energy field throughout the whole ship generated from every "system" in the internally.
I find not many things are destroyed unless integral to the plot but there are times where it does because the story wanted it to. I think its more incommon with video games though as it makes a nice alternate gameplay thing to have in.
Production costs!
The expanse did this well because they used acceleration not artificial gravity.
Expanse did it amazingly imo, it also adds some realism into a otherwise very fictional story, which makes it somewhat easier to vibe with it.
Gawwwd, the scene where mid fight there are unsecured wrenches floating around was so beautifully tense.
"Captain, we were hit by a Class IV Photon torpedo in the aft. The production budget exploded!"
And magnetic shoes.
That was such a nice touch and just cost some red leds. I'm the books they spend a lot of time on the float (to expensive to burn all the time). The way the TV show got around it all was great
Don't forget the sound, that clunk with every step is what sold it as real.
Just flip around halfway and start slowing down! Free acceleration / deceleration gravity.
They actually do that in The Expanse.
That would be why I brought it up, yes.
Oh ok, got you
Well, not free. Acceleration usually requires a bunch of energy.
I guess if you have to do it anyway then it's a really convenient side-effect.
They also made amazing computerized wire rigs for the actors they used in conjunction with motion-controlled cameras. The production of the show was super impressive.
Also - everyone should read the books. They're fantastic.
Ty Frank, one of the authors and the Amos actor Wes Chatham had a really fun podcast ("Ty and That Guy") that did lots of fun deep dives on genre stuff.
THE EXPANSE
GO WATCH IT!
No stupid gimmicky "artificial gravity" horseshit, the "gravity" is caused by acceleration and deceleration.
Which is fucking cool because it's one of the few space travel things that really does work. Like if we can figure out the fuel/propulsion thing and some kind of equivalent to deflector shields (not for space battles but for all the random shit in space that could destory your ship in a collision, especially if we get up to relativistic speeds), we could have space travel where you can walk around normally on the ship.
Also the gravity increasing ships like Goku used in DBZ, so we could actually have someone doing extreme gravity training while en route to a big fight.
And it works for both acceleration and deceleration, only difference is you're either travelling up or down.
Also loved the special seats they used when doing combat maneuvers. ST didn't just make up artificial gravity (since their ships moved forwards rather than up), they had inertial dampeners, because the evasive maneuvers would have been much more dangerous than the shocks from getting hit.
ST is more rooted in science than SW, but parts of it are just as much fantasy as the force, which was depressing to realize when you're hoping for humanity to eventually go in that direction. The biggest human tech fantasy in the Expanse is an engine upgrade that gives improved thrust and efficiency. Not to light speed, but just by like an order of magnitude. And they've even got a brutally realistic scene about the discovery that was great world building imo.
the expanse is the only universe where Epstein actually killed himself
I mean, gravity is just acceleration anyway.
Weird fucking acceleration due to the curvature of spacetime and how shit moves through time. But still, just acceleration.
To be fair; if you could build a fusion torch and fully direct the flow; aneutronic fusion fits the bill; the thrust numbers they are using are not crazy.
You would use stupid amount of fuel to get that much delta-v; but with advanced reactors using readily available fuel sources....maybe not an issue.
Matter/antimatter would theoretically be a lot better.
Indeed.
Total energy available is higher, but that reaction produces radiation as the primary product. Radiation is difficulty to properly direct.
Fusion (aneutronic) produces the bulk of the energy as charged particles, which we can direct with magnetic or electric fields.
Yeah, it's not even that much of a stretch, like that future could be within humanity's reach. Not sure we'd actually want that particular future, but there's just something about realistic sci fi that makes this reality feel cooler.
Up until the space magic bullshit, anyway.
So disappointing when the hand waving started.
Well the show didn't finish the story.
E: though, it didn't get less "magical", just more explained in a soft-scifi sense.
I wouldn't know, it got stupid well before the end
Spin up the drum.
Who else is thinking of that one scene near the start of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country?
Or Star Trek: First Contact, when Picard, Worf, and redshirt Neil McDonough test out their zero G combat training, further cementing the fact that Star Trek only remembers that space has no gravity when it's relevant to the plot.
They do throw things out the airlock an awful lot. Though, somehow, Borg don’t have the strength to stop it but Beverly Crusher does.
Beverly Crusher fucked a ghost. She can do anything.
My wife abused star trek of being a soap opera at some point. At first I thought, maybe she's just showing up at the worst possible time?
No. It's all of the time. Every episode has some weird soapy bullshit. Beverly fucking a ghost, LaForge fucking a hologram, Riker fucking anything with genitals INCLUDING a hologram. Everybody be fuckin. That's not even the soapiest thing. Voyager is basically Soaps in space.
I love classic trek, but guys I think it's a soap opera.
It always was, but it was our soap opera with spaceships and laser guns.
Uhm excuse me, it's called a space opera.
Good ol' Blazin Bev
and had her own PERSONAL UNIVERSE she got trapped in.
That was my first thought and I am having trouble thinking of additional examples.
I assume that the Federation has better space OSHA regulations that mandate more reliable artificial gravity than the Klingons.
Admit it, you wanted to ask which movies and shows have done it. Instead of asking for people to tell you what the correct answer is, it’s far more effective to post the wrong answer, and wait for the flood of answers to arrive.
Someone has spent a lot of time on Linux forums
LOL. Got me. 😅
But there’s more than that to it. I think there’s some strange default setting in the human mind that makes us want to correct mistakes. Maybe it’s all about setting the record straight, being correct or whatever.
Perhaps this is related?
Definitely!
Ah, Murphy's Law in action.
Wait how is that murphy's law
Edit: AHA - you couldn't remember what it actually is and wanted a nerd to give you the right answer!
I am very very mildly smart!
Precisely! A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, and two weeks later in Denver, a black cat walks under a ladder while Myrphy is working on some cables.
"Gravity plating!" As long as there is floor, you're good.
Magnetic shoes?
I’m glad somebody else caught this, it always irritated me in Enterprise when they insisted that it was a gravity generator and not just plating.
i think its plating for trek, thats why you can turn it off in some areas and not others. cant say the same for other shows, they likely use a similar mechanism.
This is covered in the Attack Pattern Trunks web comic. If I remember correctly it works even when all power is disabled due to thermal power or some such, I'd have to go searching through all the episodes to cover it.
Gravity is a very dense liquid. Generator makes it in big batches at a time and it just stays there for long even after the generator is gone. After the battle is done and everything is repaired, they just top up the pool and all is good.
Gravy. You're thinking of gravy.
Well, now I am
You mean Bolognese?
The movie with Sandra Bullock trapped in space?
Thanks, Calvin's dad
On a space station more than a space battle, but Titan AE had a scene that made good use of this. The station is old, and early in the scene the gravity generator goes on the fritz, causing everyone to float until some percussive maintenance gets it working again. When bad guys show up Matt Damon shoots the generator to cause some confusion and let him escape faster by pushing off toward the exit.
Moonraker has a similar scene.
In Star Trek IV, The Undiscovered Country, exactly that happened. It is kind of a unique scene, because it had to be a bitch to film.
The Undiscovered Country is VI. Star Trek IV is The Voyage Home. Both are great, anyways.
One is a great Star Trek movie. The other is a beloved comedy starring Star Trek people.
Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales
A go to for sick days in bed for years.
I never know the number, but I know the whales!
Gravity is on a separate subsystem & power supply, because without gravity people couldn’t reasonably move and fix the rest of the ship, so even when compared to general life support, it’s the most critical function and the most isolated.
And production cost.
In David Weber's Honorverse, artificial gravity is based on the drive system, and was routinely considered both in ship design and battle outcomes.
Doylist explanation: it would be too expensive for the FX department.
As it happens, the same worldbuilding project I mentioned in another post here sort of addresses this. The same aliens mentioned there don’t use artificial gravity at all. Being arboreal creatures they’re well suited to microgravity and can happily live permanently in zero G. Upon meeting humans and learning that we want artificial gravity (specifically centrifugal gravity), they wonder why we spent all the effort to get away from gravity only to spend even more effort to bring it back.
Since human orbital colonies take the form of O’Neil cylinders, you can cut off the gravity by halting the cylinder’s rotation. If stopped abruptly enough this would cause a lot of damage initially as objects go flying. It would also put the terrestrial, bipedal humans at a disadvantage compared to the aliens with five prehensile extremities.
Well... Star Trek The Undiscovered Country.
Yep! One of the more rememberable parts... Floating pink Klingon blood droplets everywhere!
I am a big fan of sci-fi and understand how expensive weightlessness is to film, so combine that with the amount of shows that have been canceled and I completely accept the fact that they try to keep this more fictional than science.
It would make sweeping really hard.
I always thought of mini black holes in the floors.
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country did it, even making it a point during the Trial ;-)
What you’re really saying is there aren’t enough big budget sci fi things to watch.
Titan AE
"Just think of it as floaty time!"
I like the movie and atmosphere but damn the villains are whack
I wish there were some spinoff or something similar.
There are a few tie in novels iirc. I read one a long time ago that took place during the time skip after earth blows up.
If it were expected to be more than a 1 in 1000 risk, they would probably have handles on the walls and ceilings to help move about during an emergency.
That's why I prefer hard SciFi like The Expanse books, where science is a main driver to life and motivations to drive the story.
Ive sen some of the show ad liked it a lot. Are the books even better??
Yes, and continue on about 30 years after the show, giving an actual conclusion to the story.
Bet, thank you
Strap in and wait for the juice, the show never really leaves our solar system
They did in the first episode of Transformers Animated. Granted, that was a cartoon, which made it infinitely easier to have them float in zero gravity than a live action movie.
That's the episode where for some reason the Deception jets turn into triangles and after sleeping for 6 million years Optimus wakes and just says "thanks" and throws Teletran-1 a thumbs up and also Casey Kasem is there right
The triangles are supposed to be their cybertronian forms before they disguised themselves as earth vehicles.
But in their robot forms they still looked like jets
Could be an oversight or animation error
It wasn't
Even when the life support systems have completely lost power, everyone is dying, etc. Gravity is the one system too critical to reroute.
Cough, Undiscovered Country.
starships have redundancies most likely, much like the life support systems. its like artificial gravity isnt coming from an actual generator, but the whole ship itself in some unknown mechanism, most scifi genre dont explain how its being created, it looks more like an energy field throughout the whole ship generated from every "system" in the internally.
I find not many things are destroyed unless integral to the plot but there are times where it does because the story wanted it to. I think its more incommon with video games though as it makes a nice alternate gameplay thing to have in.
Adrian Tchaikovsky has some sci-fi books that make use of this idea.
Sounds expensive... what if we just chalked it up to magic?
Not magic. The artificial gravity stabilizers are directly enhanced by the production budget stabilizers, which keep them in check.
I prefer it that way.