Search the Community

An idea to reconcile a perplexing fact-cluster from the Star Trek franchise in what I think is a new, hard-sci-fi-ish approach: Crews on board starships experience "gravity" (exactly equal to that of southern California), which is rarely explained, discussed, or explored in an interesting way Line of sight with away teams on the surface is never interrupted by the horizon, for comms, sensors, transporters, weapons, or anything else Starships' engines are extremely powerful and efficient, for both FTL and sub light speed travel, able to accelerate extremely quickly and rarely limited by fuel supply "Weightlessness" and "zero G" are not artifacts of being in space, but of being in free fall, i.e. experiencing no forces such as running the engines When other vessels are encountered, they never whiz past at 7–15 km/s, but instead gently cruise by at a leisurely pace What if the sheer power of Starfleet vessels' engines leads to the abandonment of true "orbits" as pertains to starships? When the captain says to enter "orbit" around a planet, the ensigns understand by established Starfleet convention that this means to enter the region of space where a low orbit would be, i.e., 100–2000km altitude They maneuver the starship into that rough altitudinal region, and instead of establishing a proper circular orbital velocity, they bring it to a faux-geocentric "stop" over designated a point of interest; with no further action, it would drop out of the sky, burn up, and crash, so... The ship is oriented so the "bottom" points towards the planet The engines are configured to thrust "upward" exactly equal to the force of the planet's gravity, effectively holding the ship in place over one spot The result for the crew would be just like standing on the top of a ~100–2000-km-tall tower; they'd feel the planet's gravity pulling them down, almost as strongly as at sea level, with no magic "artificial gravity" tech required. Benefits include having your Starfleet-branded iPad not float away and the ability to sip Romulan ale from a glass without spilling it. The energy budget to do this, even for several consecutive days, should be relatively trivial next to that expended in the typical space battle or race to rescue the ambassador or deliver the self-sealing stem bolts. And if all space navies adopt this practice, then enemy ships have a reason to have low relative velocities. Obvious caveats and objections: "Gravity" in deep space remains unexplained The ships are never shown accelerating "upwards", only "forwards" I realize this is not what the canon says, and it doesn't cover everything, but for hard sci fi fans, it may be a serviceable excuse for turning your brain off during some episodes.