History Main / ArtificialGravity

* When the quadjet in ''Film/CaptainMarvel2019'' first enters orbit, we get a few seconds of everybody floating until Carol turns the gravity on. All the alien ships seem to have it in all the time.

* The film version of ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'' used the centrifugal method of gravity generation onboard both the space station and the ''Discovery''. It's notable that the non-rotating parts of ''Discovery'' and the famous shuttle sequence near the beginning are as being zero gee, through actors walking strangely in "velcro booties", and dangling props from wires, etc.
** On the other hand gravity in the Moonbase appears to be Earth-normal without explanation.
* Likewise the ''Alexei Leonov'' in the sequel, ''Film/TwoThousandTenTheYearWeMakeContact'', with a segment of the ship designed to rotate when not under thrust to generate pseudo-gravity. In contrast with ''2001'', less effort is spent to maintain the illusion of zero gee elsewhere, making this a HandWave rather than a serious effort at realism (though there is one scene on the zero-g bridge of the ''Leonov'' where Dr. Floyd demonstrates his proposal for linking the two ships using floating pens.)
** But even that scene is off because ''only the pens'' are in zero-g. Everyone else is standing around in normal gravity.

* ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'' also uses the centrifugal method (except when traveling between modules, apparently) but when the station rotation halts we're treated to the most ambitious (at that time) zero-gee sequence on film.

* ''Film/RedPlanet'' had a ship that used centrifugal sections for gravity. They take it one step closer to realism by having two sections rotating in opposite directions, as rotation in one direction only would throw the ship off course and end up wasting a lot of fuel to correct.
** Rotating in one direction will do nothing to alter a spacecraft's course -- the Apollo missions all rotated slowly on the way to the moon so as to avoid baking one side in direct sunlight for too long. The reason opposite-direction rotating sections is more practical is to avoid having the central hub of your spacecraft rotate in the opposite direction when your one rotating section is "spun up", or rotate in the same direction due to friction in the bearings.
** Also, having two counter-rotating sections means angular momentum is cancelled out, making the ship much easier to maneuver.

* Astronauts that went aboard the once-functioning Skylab satellite wore magnetic shoes during work so they could have a simulated feeling of gravity while doing tasks that zero g would make complicated, however, since the Skylab was taken down, this technique has never been replicated.

*** In "Melora," an alien Starfleet officer from a low-gravity world is able to lower the artificial gravity in her quarters, allowing her to leap about as she is used to, when she normally needs a wheelchair to get around in the Earth/Bajor/Cardassia-standard station gravity. She later takes out a bad guy who had taken her and other crew hostage by turning down the gravity on the runabout they're on, disorienting him long enough for her to beat him up. (She was originally planned as one of the series' leads, but repeated low-gravity scenes would have been prohibitively expensive.)
** In "Explorers," Sisko restores an old Bajoran vessel from their pre-warp age, authentic in every way... except for a gravity generator, because zero-G makes him nauseous. Cheater.

** In an episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', Sisko restores an old Bajoran vessel from their pre-warp age, authentic in every way... except for a gravity generator, because zero-G makes him nauseous. Cheater.

* ''VisualNovel/AoNoKanataFourRhythm'' is based on [=Grav-Shoes=], which let the local citizens fly and play the FictionalSport, Flying Circus. Kind of a cross between baseball and [[Franchise/HarryPotter Quidditch]].

* OlderThanTelevision: In what is probably the UrExample, the Martians in [[Creator/KurdLasswitz Kurd Laßwitz]]' ''Auf zwei Planeten'' ("Literature/OnTwoPlanets", 1897) can create "abaric fields" which allows them to suspend their space station vertically above Earth's North Pole and to move about more easily in Earth's much more powerful gravitational field.

NASA [[WeAllLiveInAmerica and other space programs]] simply weren't willing to design what would essentially be a multi-billion dollar failure-prone space puke bucket.

* 'VideoGame/Prey2017' has artifical gravity over most of the space station with navigating in microgravity as significant gameplay element, weather it's flying around outside the space station or navigating the '''G'''ravity '''U'''tility '''T'''unnel '''S'''ystem.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': While no explanation is given for how artificial gravity is generated aboard Sangtee Empire ships it is noticeably absent from smaller ships and is significantly weaker than earth gravity, allowing people to jump much further.

* ACreator/GordonRDickson's ''Literature/ChildeCycle'': An interesting variant is shown in at least one ship, where the gravity generator is sandwiched between halves of the ship, so one half is upside-down relative to the other half, and you have to dive ''down'' through a hole in the floor of one section to come ''up'' in the other. This actually seems marginally more like something possible than having every deck oriented the same way and ''all with the same gravity''.

* In ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'', Mr Terrific switches off the artificial gravity and then switches it back on again to incapacitate Lex Luthor, who's in Flash's body at the time.

* ACreator/GordonRDickson's ''Literature/ChildeCycle'': n interesting variant is shown in at least one ship, where the gravity generator is sandwiched between halves of the ship, so one half is upside-down relative to the other half, and you have to dive ''down'' through a hole in the floor of one section to come ''up'' in the other. This actually seems marginally more like something possible than having every deck oriented the same way and ''all with the same gravity''.

** "Literature/TheDyingNight": A technology called "grav-plating" is used to make the gravity inside the base on asteroid belt object (UsefulNote/DwarfPlanet) {{UsefulNotes/Ceres}} equal to 80% of Earth-normal.

* OlderThanTelevision: In what is probably the UrExample, the Martians in [[Creator/KurdLasswitz Kurd Laßwitz]]' ''Auf zwei Planeten'' ("On Two Planets", 1897) can create "abaric fields" which allows them to suspend their space station vertically above Earth's North Pole and to move about more easily in Earth's much more powerful gravitational field.
* ''Avengers of the Moon'' by Creator/AllenSteele. After entering a top secret Solar Guard cruiser, Captain Future is told to hold on tight, whereupon Gravity Ensues after the cruiser goes to warp (handwaved as the warp bubble isolating them from the normal conditions of spacetime). The crew can't help smirking at the self-proclaimed Literature/CaptainFuture's surprise. "Welcome to the [=24th=] Century!"

* ''Literature/{{Coyote}}'', by Creator/AllenSteele, tries and fails to avert this trope, when [[CriticalResearchFailure a ship traveling at a constant velocity of .2 C results in an effectively 1 g environment.]]

* Both CentrifugalGravity and the constant one-G variation are played straight in Creator/GregEgan's ''Literature/{{Orthogonal}}'' trilogy. The protagonists fly their GenerationShip to an [[AlternateUniverse Alternate Dimension]] by [[ItMakesSenseInContext accelerating the ship to an infinite velocity]] at a rate of one-G for about a year. When they turn off the engines and stop accelerating, the lack of gravity unexpectedly causes their crops to fail, so they begin spinning the ship to compensate.
* In Creator/NikolayNosov's children's book ''Doono on the Moon'', the first expedition to the Moon brings back some rock samples, one of which turns out to have [[Literature/TheFirstMenInTheMoon cavorite]]-like properties when in close proximity to a magnet. Dubbing the mineral "moonite" (or "lunite"), Doono (the smart shorty) builds a big rocket to carry a second expedition to discover the nature of craters on the Moon (he things they were formed when the Moon was being formed in the manner of bubbles popping on a pancake) and retrieve more moonite for subsequent expeditions. The rocket is spacious and even has a hold full of seeds of the giant fruit and vegetable plants that grow all over Earth (it's implied that these plants are normal-sized but the shorties are ''very'' small). The titular character is excluded from the mission for being clueless about anything and rude to many shorties. He (and another excluded shorty) sneak about the night before take-off but accidentally activate the launch. Since the rocket engine doesn't provide much thrust (most of the lifting power is due to the properties of moonite), no one else hears it take off. The two shorties end up on the Moon and then accidentally find themselves falling through a crack... and find out that the [[HollowEarth Moon is hollow]]. They keep falling with their parachutes until they land on a mini-Earth inside the Moon. When Doono has another rocket built, this one using conventional propulsion, it's much smaller, has a smaller crew, and far less comfort than the "moonite"-powered one.
* Taken for granted in the ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' universe. A portable anti-gravity generator is one of the first few pieces of alien technology that the titular hero brings back home from the moon in the earliest issues, and virtually every civilization (certainly every FTL-capable one) has artificial gravity on its ships and uses anti-gravity in lifts and vehicles. This is handwaved with the idea that working hyperspace physics by default includes some concepts of manipulating 'normal' spacetime, including gravity. Like any technology, however, the systems can't work without a power supply; a suitably wrecked but still existing starship will revert to zero-G conditions once the power cuts out.

* Mentioned as a fairly recent invention in Creator/JackMcDevitt's ''Literature/PriscillaHutchins'' novels (except for in the first book, where [[EncyclopediaExposita newspaper and journal extracts at the end of chapters]] sometimes mentions development of anti-gravity and that this would be a logical development of that).
* The ''Revelation Space'' series takes a realistic approach; artificial gravity only exists when a spacecraft is under thrust or rotating. [[spoiler: However, there is at least one alien race that can manipulate gravity more easily.]]

* In Michael Reaves' ''The Shattered World'' and ''The Burning Realm'', the fragments of a [[EarthShatteringKaboom broken fantasy planet]] are kept in orbit and provided with localized artificial gravity by powerful Runestones, allowing life to continue on each FloatingContinent within an immense magically-preserved air envelope. Smaller Runestones are likewise used to generate normal gravity aboard flying ships that travel from fragment to fragment.

* Creator/JohnRingo plays it absolutely straight, but gets into the background and problems of artificial gravity in ''Literature/TroyRising''. One of the technologies that Tyler Vernon buys from the Glatuns is grav plates, which are capable of producing any level and type of gravity on demand (including negative gravity, ie [[WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle Upsidasium]]). It is used as a space drive, an [[Main/InertialDampening inertial damper]], and a weapon, as well as its more traditional use of providing 1G for shirt sleeve environments. Multiple characters wonder how the first one was produced by the alien race who originally came up with them, because "you need a grav plate to create a grav plate". Also, the controls for grav plates are exceedingly fussy when using them as inertial dampers in high-velocity (up to 400G) maneuvers: a person gets [[Main/ChunkySalsaRule sprayed all over the cabin]] when the grav plate under his seat goes haywire during a fast turn.

* ''Creator/JohnRingo'' plays it absolutely straight, but gets into the background and problems of artificial gravity in ''Literature/TroyRising''. One of the technologies that Tyler Vernon buys from the Glatuns is grav plates, which are capable of producing any level and type of gravity on demand (including negative gravity, ie [[WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle Upsidasium]]). It is used as a space drive, an [[Main/InertialDampening inertial damper]], and a weapon, as well as its more traditional use of providing 1G for shirt sleeve environments. Multiple characters wonder how the first one was produced by the alien race who originally came up with them, because "you need a grav plate to create a grav plate". Also, the controls for grav plates are exceedingly fussy when using them as inertial dampers in high-velocity (up to 400G) maneuvers: a person gets [[Main/ChunkySalsaRule sprayed all over the cabin]] when the grav plate under his seat goes haywire during a fast turn.
* ''Avengers of the Moon'' by Creator/AllenSteele. After entering a top secret Solar Guard cruiser, Captain Future is told to hold on tight, whereupon Gravity Ensues after the cruiser goes to warp (handwaved as the warp bubble isolating them from the normal conditions of spacetime). The crew can't help smirking at the self-proclaimed Literature/CaptainFuture's surprise. "Welcome to the [=24th=] Century!"
* Every spacecraft in ''Literature/ThisAlienShore'' has this, although it doesn't feel quite like the real thing. Even the tiny escape pod that Jamisia uses at the beginning of the story has gravity that can be turned on and off.

* The R.L.S. ''Legacy'' in ''Disney/TreasurePlanet'' is equipped with artificial gravity. [[spoiler:During the fight with Mr. Scroop, B.E.N. accidentally disengages the A.G. while playing with plugs, and Jim sends Scroop flying through space forever.]]