Artificial Gravity (fiction) - Field Generators

Field Generators

In many science fiction stories, there are artificial gravity generators that create a gravitational field based on a mass that does not exist. It helps the story by creating a more Earth-like spaceship, and in the case of a movie or television program, it helps the production because it is a lot cheaper than the special effects needed to simulate weightlessness.

In the Star Trek universe, artificial gravity is achieved by the use of "gravity plating" embedded in a starship's deck.

• In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly", the gravity plating of the USS Defiant is used to fend off a Gorn attack by greatly increasing the ship's gravity in one section. The Gorn attacker was forced down to the floor and immobilized, where The "Mirror" Jonathan Archer easily killed him.
• Benjamin Sisko once built a replica of an ancient Bajoran solar-sailer spacecraft. As these craft were not normally equipped with artificial gravity, Sisko added gravity plating to make it easier for him and Jake to pilot the vessel. (DS9 episode "Explorers")

In Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, set thousands of years in the future, gravity field generators not only provide gravity for the people inside the ship, but also reduce inertial mass of ships such as the Andromeda Ascendant to just under a kilogram. This greatly increases the efficiency of their Magneto-Plasma Dynamic Drive, allowing them to go from a stop to percentages of light speed very quickly. It can also be easily manipulated to do things like increase gravity and immobilize intruders (though prepared intruders can use an antigravity harness to prepare for this possibility), and reversed to expel things from the ship.

In the anime Dragon Ball Z, gravity simulation plays a key part in various character's training regime. It is also used to demonstrate the character's increasing strength. For example, when Goku first arrives on King Kai's planet, he is nearly crushed by the gravity, which is ten times that of Earth's. By the end of his visit, nearly a year later, he is able to move at great speed under such conditions. This method of training gradually appears more and more in the universe, and the gravity gets stronger as well. Ten times Earth's gravity goes from a seemingly indomitable level of opposition to nothing, and several hundred times Earth's gravity becomes the standard. Vegeta even had a Gravity Room built into his house.

In the Doctor Who story The Sontaran Experiment, a Sontaran used similar technology to make a bar above a human very heavy, so that his friends had to lift it up with as much force as they could to prevent him being crushed. The Sontaran gradually increased the bar's weight as part of an experiment to study not only their physical strength but also their loyalty, as their friend had recently attempted to betray them.

In the BioWare series Mass Effect, the eponymous "mass effect" is responsible for the manipulation of gravity, caused by subjecting a quantity of fictional "element zero" to an electrical current. A negative current reduces the mass of anything within the field, whereas a positive current increases mass. Mass effect is used in faster than light travel, artificial gravity on spacecraft, weapon technology, and much more. Individuals exposed to element zero are known as "biotics," the nodules of element zero embedded into their nervous systems allow them to use neural impulses to create mass effect fields themselves, granting abilities such as telekinesis.

In the video game Dead Space, artificial gravity plates are used to simulate an Earth-like environment in outer space. In several levels, gravity plating is off and the player has to navigate in weightlessness using 'Zero-Gravity Boots', similar to magnetic boots. Defective gravity plates are also encountered sometimes, which push objects upward rather than downward with great force, killing the player or enemies instantly if they step on them.