A Thing - Artificial Gravity
Entry posted by Channelknight Fadran
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You could say that I'm getting ahead of myself here. You could also say that I haven't posted in months and should get back to my weird context things.
Whatever. This is what I'm thinking about right now, so this is what I'm going to talk about.
Artificial Gravity is a thing that exists. Or... well, rather, it doesn't. Not yet. It shows up time and again in science fiction without any explanation whatsoever, which is honestly fine by me. You don't have to explain to me why Obi-Wan Kenobi can jump into someone's starship wearing nothing but his jedi robes and stay glued to the floor - I'll just accept it as part of the universe. In some films (I'm thinking of Treasure Planet specifically rn) they'll have a generator for it, and I'll just be like "yeah sure that checks out."
But I was thinking about it last night because I've actually been writing a bit of this space opera story recently (yes, you'll be able to read it - eventually. Maybe. Probably. Perhaps). I have artificial gravity on the spaceship everybody's on board rn, but I've been quite the stickler for outer outer space rules (namely the "no sound" thing, so far) so I figured that if people can still float around outside then I should probably have a good reason for them to stay glued to the floor on the inside.
So here's...
Artificial Gravity - How to Do It and Why It's Important
Thing One: Why do we need gravity anyways?
Gravity is important because we've all grown up on planets chock-full of it. We developed our bodies over millenia of evolution to exist in this up-and-down world, evolving bones, muscles, skin, blood systems, organs, etc. They all work in gravity because that's what we've evolved them to be.
In space there's a lot less gravity than normal. When it comes to orbits what that means is that we send things going one direction really fast so that we counteract that gravitational force, meaning without an atmosphere things can kinda just stay up there for however long they want; but when it comes to deep space, there really isn't anything holding anyone down. You could be sitting completely still and still float around like a jellyfish. In many ways this is a good thing: it means we're no longer bound to two-dimensional travel, adding up and down to our repertoire of options.
But, of course, in many ways this is also a bad thing. Like I said, we evolved to exist in a gravity-filled environment, so without gravity our body starts to do some funky things:
- Bones begin to weaken. Without anything to hold up (because you're weightless), they get weaker and weaker over time.
- Same for muscles. They atrophy. There's a treadmill aboard the ISS for this reason.
- Some weird scud happens to our organs. Fluids don't do everything they oughtta in zero-g, leading to all kinds of problems.
Astronauts spending six months aboard the ISS can deal with this. It takes a decent amount of physical therapy and training protocols, but we've engineered our mission lengths to get the most out of each person without getting them permanently damaged. The ISS doesn't need artificial gravity. It's honestly fine.
It's when you get into much longer voyages that you start needing that kind of thing. Spending years in space could be irreversably damaging to your skeletal system, completely throwing your body for a loop. If you're living in my space opera galaxy, for example, and are taking a voyage from one star system to another without any form of >c travel, then dropping yourself off on the next planet could be really bad for your health.
So what're some methods to achieve this sort of thing?
Method Uno: The Halo Ring
The foremost candidate for artificial gravity in more "realistic" science-fictions is centrifugal (that's the one I'm going to use plz don't fight me) force. You live on the inside of a giant spinning ring, and the tangential force of its motion gives you a nice downward force throughout your body. "Gravity" in this sense is a directional force without the same acceleratory properities, but it hits all the main problems of actually creating artificial gravity, such as...
- Actually staying glued to the ground
- Having the force spread throughout your entire body
- Especially having the force spread throughout your fluid systems (in this case, primarily the fluid in your ears that maintain your balance)
Honestly, it's a great choice. Maybe the numbers they give you in the game aren't accurate or even realistic, but the principle holds out. However, this prospect comes with one major problem:
It looks stupid.
Who the heck wants to ride giant wheels careening through space? I sure don't. Imagine trying to have a space battle like that! Wheel versus wheel. People would be laughing their faces off in the theaters, because the most important part of any space opera is that your everything looks awesome.
So let's look at some other ideas:
Method Dos: Linear Acceleration
This one also somewhat speaks for itself. You put the spaceship sideways and have it rocked "upwards" through space towards its destination, pushing everything inside downwards. Simple, but effective. This gives the same effect as the Halo Ring, but without the necessity of making the whole thing just a really big circle.
However, this is a terrible idea, because it's incredible inhibiting to the spacecraft's maneuverability. In order to have a space battle with someong heading towards you, both ships would have to stop and turn off their gravity to shoot at each other. The only way to maintain the artificial gravity during a laser fight would be if both ships were riding parallel to each other, which would make space pirating a lot cooler, but completely defeat the purpose of things like surprise attacks and such.
This is a terrible idea.
Lemme dump some more on you.
Methods Tres through... Cinco, I think. I really should be going with french numbers, not spanish. All my spanish knowledge comes from Dora the Explorer.
- The Magic Generator: It c a u s e s g r a v i t y. Sure, sure.
- The Graviton Generator: Sorry Frustry, I already read your comment. No, I don't believe in gravitons. No, I will never use gravitons in anything I ever write. And no, nothing you could say would convince me that putting a massive particle accelerator in the floor of your spaceship would be cost-efficient enough to be worth having artificial gravity in the first place.
- Put a black hole in the floor: Build a sphere around a black hole. This is a terrible idea.
Kay, time for the idea that I'm electing to go with:
Method Six (but it's said "seez" because french): The magnet suit.
I came up with this out of nowhere last night and immediately began to consult the internet. The thought was simply "what if you just had magnet boots?", and I was somewhat disappointed to find that I was not the first to think of this. There's a whole page on Quora chock-full of the same answers shooting down this idea, kinda dropping my excitement from a hundred to five in about two minutes.
These were the main problems they highlighted:
- Magnet boots would not just keep you glued to the ground, but also make it really difficult to get back off of it. You'd have to awkwardly shuffle around rather than walk about.
- Magnet boots would not subject your entire body to the force of gravity. Your bones and muscles might not atrophy due to the new force, but your internal systems (namely your balance) would be just the same as they'd be in zero-g
- Maget boots would screw with the electronic systems on board.
- Literally everything we have ever put into space is made out of aluminum.
NASA apparently toyed with this idea for awhile, actually, but ran into all these issues and shot it down. Honestly, that's probably for the best: solving problems like those would not be at all feasible given our current level of space-ness.
But I'm doing a sci-fi, and I can do whatever I want.
So here are my solutions!
- To fix the shuffling problem, you'd need to make sure the boots are electromagnets with a computer worked into them. Given the fact that my sci-fi computers could probably run fifteen games of GTA V on a drone's battery screen, the idea that there'd be a way to detect how close your boots are to the "surface" and increase/decrease your magnetic output accordingly is totally feasible (I think). The magnetic force would be strongest while your foot is up off the ground to generate this gravity, and decrease significantly while it's on the ground so that you can pick your foot back up again just fine. Essentially, you'd always be feeling the same amount of force on you at all times.
- Add a whole suit to it! This is a terrible idea for modern astronauts (because who in the world would want to walk around in massive, bulky magnet suits all day?), but works just fine for my hyper-efficient space opera. If a computer can compute your foot's distance from the ground to output magnetic energy accordingly, then a lattice going across some underclothes exerting this force across your entire body is completely feasible. The only problem I can think of here is that your fluids wouldn't change at all, but.......... I'm going to ignore that so I can move on.
- It's a giant spaceship. It's thicc as hecc. All the systems would be feet beneath the floor, and probably shielded by aluminum and lead and everything anyways.
- It's a giant spaceship. It's thicc as hecc. The floor itself would not be made of aluminum.
I dub my new creation the Gravity Suit. Yes, it's a terrible name. Yes, it's incredibly on the nose. Yes, you can shut up now. It'd probably be made of some magical supermaterial like carbon nanofoam (which is, funnily enough, magnetic), and have a built-in computer system to exert gravity across your body without any real margin of error. What's more, this suit could even account for the problem of going from one planet to another with two different gravitational forces by subtly changing your own personal gravity over the course of the trip, and it could also allow you to walk up walls and across the ceiling to most effectively utilize the ship's space.
So... yeah.
That's that. If you hate it then I guess you can yell at me in the comments. I won't care because I'm probably not going to change my mind about this.
Cool luvya bye.
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