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In many realistic science fiction movies, ships maintain their inner gravity by placing the living facilities inside a rotating cylinder which would produce gravity as explained by classical laws of physics. In movies where adherence to laws of physics isn't as quite a priority, like Star Wars or Star Trek, ships don't seem to employ any such mechanisms and everyone wanders around happily no matter the shape of the vehicle.

From a scientific standpoint, what alternatives are available or (at least considered to be available one day) for generating gravity ?

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  • $\begingroup$ In Star Trek they have transporters and duplicators, they have a fleet of faster than light ships, they have tractor beams, they have force shields, and you are concerned about a little bit of artificial gravity? $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 18:02

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From a scientific standpoint, the only other way (that we know of) to generate a pull identical to gravity is to accelerate in the opposite direction.

Artificial gravity that doesn't depend on centripetal force or on acceleration is, so far, entirely fictional.

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    $\begingroup$ Don’t forget option C: make your ship really big. Really big. $\endgroup$
    – Obie 2.0
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 21:35
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    $\begingroup$ Can also be small. But it's difficult to maneuver a black hole. $\endgroup$
    – candied_orange
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 21:23
  • $\begingroup$ @CandiedOrange Well, plus it wouldn't be artificial gravity. It would just be gravity. Kind of like adding horsepower to a tractor by attaching horses to it :) And good luck turning it off. $\endgroup$
    – Misha R
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 23:11
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry. Not centripetal force. What you mean is centrifugal force. $\endgroup$
    – a4android
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 23:37
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    $\begingroup$ Obligatory XKCD. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Commented Jan 16, 2017 at 11:47
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Make all of the floors sticky.

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    $\begingroup$ OK. I do get it. The logic is sound. Brevity is the soul of wit. Perhaps, velcro carpets and the soles of shoes. It's just that I'd hate to be cleaner and wash sticky floors. keeping them clean would be murder. Plus one for bringing a smile to my dial. :-) $\endgroup$
    – a4android
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 23:35
  • $\begingroup$ That's what they did in the Space Odyssey $\endgroup$
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Jan 17, 2017 at 21:40
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Does it have to be gravity, or just something that pushes the crew down onto the deck? If the latter, you might be able to get away with a magnetic uniform.

If it must be gravity? Well, some people have untested ideas about how to generate warp fields, which necessarily involves being able to create artificial gravity in General Relativity: [1], [2]

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Fit your space ship with a thousand trillion-tonne keel.

Actually, I've thought of something else. The only current way of creating a gravity-like force that we know of is acceleration (such as the rotating ship). Assuming that you want to go somewhere, and have a fuel upply that can last a long time, and are either subject to the laws of physics then as long as you keep accelerating towards your destination at 10ms-2 then you will have artificial gravity (of course, it will be in a different direction than one would expect. When you get half-way there, spin the ship around and use them as retro-rockets to slow down at the same rate.

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  • $\begingroup$ @kingledion is right, but this answer COULD be an answer if author edits it to explain how the weight would work. (Yes, it's kind of obvious, but explicitness in answers is good.) This could be a useful answer because it does supply gravity to a ship, unlike the sticky floor answer. $\endgroup$
    – SRM
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 20:53
  • $\begingroup$ The problem with constant acceleration is that it won't work in case the ship needs to stay static relative to a planet or something. $\endgroup$
    – Paghillect
    Commented Jan 19, 2017 at 13:23
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I imagined something for that that implicates nanotechnology.

Inoculate every unattached object and every crew member with a solution that contains iron or nickel in a way that the solution remains evenly distributed enough throughout the body and isn't evacuated by it. Also, you need the ship to generate a permanent static magnetic field. And voilà, gravity inside the ship.

Without nanotech this may be possible with surgery. Replace parts of the bones with surgical steel.

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  • $\begingroup$ Just have to make sure not to make the magnetic field too strong, else everyone would be stuck at the same spot. $\endgroup$
    – Mrkvička
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 19:45
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    $\begingroup$ One of the most important aspects of surgical steel is that it isn't magnetic. $\endgroup$
    – Misha R
    Commented Jan 15, 2017 at 23:22
  • $\begingroup$ If you make the magnetic field strong enough then diamagnetism will let you move anything that has enough water (like people) around anyway. There's a couple of videos of frogs being levitated in this manner, which shows that at least 1g of acceleration is possible if you can throw enough power at the problem. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Commented Jan 16, 2017 at 11:43
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Black Holes

Black holes produce a lot of gravitational pull. If you could somehow take a very small one and stabilize it in the center of your ship, you'd have gravitational pull. Unfortunately, this would also have strong tidal forces that would probably outweigh any benefits you can have with gravity (i.e. that space sandwich will be destroyed), as well as the constant risk of being violently sucked into oblivion by the dormant monster residing at the core of your ship.

Come to think of it, you could use the black hole as an element in your plot.

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With lots of small holes in the floor and roof you can have constant airflow between the two, this wouldn't be as strong as an effect as Earth gravity (unless the flow was comparable to that of a wind tunnel used to practice skydiving) but everything unsecured will settle to the floor in a weak gravity-like manner.

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You can do it with a magnetic field, exploiting the fact that humans are diamagnetic - they're repelled by a magnetic field.

http://www.ru.nl/hfml/research/levitation/diamagnetic/

You can generate enough force to make a frog levitate - which, in the other direction, means it can feel 1G of force even in microgravity - but you can't make it, say, wear a wristwatch or use a phone without the latter stopping working, probably quite spectacularly.

The problem is that most technology, and several body mods, react much more strongly to a magnetic field, and to have an useful effect you must employ field intensities that are quite frightening (you'll never find me nearby any field stronger than half a Tesla - levitating a frog takes sixteen. And this is what four Tesla can do).

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