Of Gravity-Drives and Inertial Dampers

POSTED BY: PurpleYin
UPDATED: Friday, May 27, 2005 02:41
VIEWED: 7643
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PURPLEYIN

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 10:30 PM

Sorry if this is posted in the wrong place, im new here and have no idea where stuff belongs.
So I was in the middle of answering a really boring exam question today (on a pleasant side note, my exams are finally over! Woo!) When it hit me-
All these tiny niggling questions I had about firefly slotted together and answered each other!

I suppose there were only really three questions, and the unifying solution might not be the one the script writers go with, but it holds true with what I’ve seen of the series.

1)How come all the planets, and even the moons seem to exert a gravity of around 1G even though they must have different masses?

2)How can the firefly accelerate at the rate seen in the CGI clips without turning the crew to smush?

3)How come in ‘Out of Gas’, although the main power grid was offline, the artificial gravity remained online?

The answer would be exotic matter! Exotic matter is a catchall phrase to call any matter that doesn’t follow standard laws of physics. Dark matter is a fine example- 99% of the matter required to hold our galaxy together…isn’t there.

So imagine if in firefly they harvest or create (using gnarly particle accelerators or whatnot) exotic matter that has a much greater gravitational pull than normal matter (heck, it could be dark matter)?

If they settled on a small moon, and wanted a gravity of 1G, they pump the core full of this exotic matter, making it pull like a big planet- its like interstellar plastic surgery!

And now comes the famed ‘gravity drive’ of firefly- it could be both an artificial gravity emitter, and an inertial damper!
Imagine the hull of the ship was filled with a grid of pipes filled with this exotic-matter, and when stationary, it is all pumped to the bottom of the ship, so people can walk around as though on the surface of a planet. There would be no energy drain once the matter is moved to the bottom of the ship, so the gravity would stay ‘on’ even if the engine cut out.
Now imagine you accelerate forward really fast- relative to the ship, you go flying back, right? Its just regular inertia. Now imagine if the gravity drive is programmed to compensate by pumping some of the exotic matter to the front of the ship- inertia pulls you back, but the gravity pulls you forward- TADAA! An inertial damper!

So, what do you think?

SAMURAIX47

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 1:59 AM

I would think that if you start messing with the gravity pull of a moon, which may be planet sized to begin with, then you could very well mess up its orbital mechanics. Mess with one moon and you could mess up the whole satellite configuration around the planet causing collisions and impacts... messy.

I think that with any moon or planetary body with enough mass to hold an atmosphere, say from .7g and up, that you would not really see a significant difference in the way people move about. People living on said locations would get used to the gravity and their bodies would learn to handle it and move about in what would seem like normal motion to anybody.

Smaller moons or satellites with less than .5g then you can have that slow motion, hopping look.

Of course this is for visual purposes only in a fictional 'verse as seen on tv or movies... not the real world as we have not really been to other planets yet to really see what it would look like.

Jaymes

CALHOUN

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 4:55 AM

Quote:
PurpleYin wrote:
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 12:30

1)How come all the planets, and even the moons seem to exert a gravity of around 1G even though they must have different masses?

All the filming was done here on Earth where there is a gravitational constant of 1G.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 5:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SamuraiX47:
I would think that if you start messing with the gravity pull of a moon, which may be planet sized to begin with, then you could very well mess up its orbital mechanics.

Well so long as we take the exotic matter for granted there is no reason to think that changing the apparent gravitational force of the moon would effect it’s orbit. If you are talking about something that already is outside the bounds of physical description you can think up a material that exerts a gravity like force that decays far more quickly with respect to distance.

Sprinkle the right ammount of this pixie-dust over the entire surface of the planet and boom, you have a world that mirrors the gravity of earth, but at a distance great enough to effect nearby bodies that are planetary or stellar in nature there is negligible effect.

Of course it would have to be a lot more complex than that, cant just have it blow away after all, but you can hammer out some set of details that explains changing the gravity of a world without effecting orbits.

The same material could be used on ships.

The only place you have serious problems is when a ship is near a planet, even then you could come up with a solution that does not break the laws of physics any more than this matter already does, I’m just not going to take the headache right now.

-

Obviously this isn’t using the exotic matter proposed in the first post, and it doesn’t cover internal dampening, but it was just to point out the possibility of changing local “gravity” without having to worry about orbits if we already accept at least one material doing things we do not presently understand.

All forces do not decay the same way with respect to distance. So even if the gravity you feel is the same as earth’s surface on a moon’s surface does not mean that the moon has the same mass as the earth (or even the mass that would be predicted by setting f=1g, r=the radius of the moon and solving for mass.) The reason is that the force of attraction need not be made entirely of gravity, and whatever the augmenting force is need not act like gravity.

TJACK

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 6:34 AM

Your explaination of the ship's drive makes as much sense as any I've ever heard, but as far as planetside gravity goes, it's probably easier to assume that the planets terraformed were probably picked because they were within a point or so of "Earth that was" gravity already.

ROBINHOOD

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 11:36 AM

This is the reason I hate Star Trek TNG, Voyager, Enterprise etc so much.

Yep..........................that went well!

OPUS

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 1:05 PM

The exotic material you speak of has been described and used in many other shows...it's technical name is "unobtainium".
If you want some real world sci-fi discoveries, scientist have recently discovered a way of inducing cryo type states in mice, without the freezing. Slows heart down to around 5 to 10 beats a minute and the bodies need for oxygen is severely reduced.
Their plans for using it however are not exactly exotic. Instead of for long term space travel it's for treating heart attack victims, cancer patients, that type of thing.

Opus

PURPLEYIN

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 6:40 PM

I’m sorry for dragging this post back up, but i don’t understand opus' reply.
The material that has been described purely as a plot device would be classified as exotic-matter, not as unobtanium, because if it were used, it would exist. And i fail to see the relevance of the month old news-flash.
I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone, and it saddens me if any of you would wish another to stop watching firefly because they have a different perspective.
I never meant anyone to feel hatred or feel the need for passive aggressiveness. In future I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 7:41 PM

I don't understand either, it says the changed the gravity of the worlds, and we know the ships gravity works without power, so it only makes sense to try to come up with a passive source for the change in gravity, that would need to be a material.

Name for a material that disobeys current understanding of the laws of physics: exotic matter.

-

It’s science fiction people, accept that there will be things that lie outside of the current understanding of the laws of physics (and more than likely outside the real laws of physics) and don’t be an ass when someone tries to define them.

Look at Star Wars, here is a series that is more fantasy than sci-fi by far and yet there are still complex, consistent, and coherent explanations of exactly how a lightsaber works right down to the fact it casts a shadow and movies through different materials at different rates.

If it is acceptable for them to do that why can’t someone come up with an explanation for the artificial gravity?

CHRISISALL

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 8:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by PurpleYin:
In future I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.

That's not something most folk around here do, and that's also why this is such a great site!
I found your stuff totally interesting, keep it coming. And don't mistake debate for passive- agressiveness, Browncoats are just a real lively bunch. And we don't get offended easily (unless we're called piss-pots on U-day).

Keepin' it shiny Chrisisall

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