Botany Bay Artificial Gravity

[uniderth]

This topic has probably been talked to death, but I had a though occur to me. A nit for many to pick with "Space Seed" is that when Kirk and co. beam over to the Botany Bay(a ship built in the 1990s), the ship has artificial gravity. Kirk and company stand firmly on the deck and glass and other items fall toward the deck. Based on real history and in universe presentation (see the Ares IV) this seems highly improbable.

Ive heard two primary explanations. Earth had artificial gravity in the 1990s, or the Enterprise somehow transferred gravity over. But those aren't the only ways of causing artificial gravity. What if, after the Enterprise tractored the Botany Bay, they started accelerating to provide artificial gravity inside. This would require the internal layout to be sky scraper style, with the floor towards the rear and the ceiling towards the nose; rather than submarine style. But we did see a picture of the DY-100 launched nose up in "Future's End" (VOY).

I'm sure someone else has already though of this. But I've never heard it presented as a theory before, so there you go.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Perhaps it was the Augments themselves who invented the artificial gravity in use on that particular ship?

Meaning, Earth in general didn't have that technology, but the Augments came up with it on their own and the Botany Bay was the only place it was actually used.

 

[Jedman67]

They beamed the gravity over with the landing party.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I never had a problem with the Botany Bay having artificial gravity, but then I didn't have a problem with the ship existing at all. I think I've always favored the idea that Trek's history diverged from ours in the late 1960's, which really easily explained away a lot of things from the late 20th-Century/early 21st-Century. I do think, though, that the Botany Bay had a slightly cruder form of artificial gravity than that of the Enterprise's, but only an engineer could tell the differences.

I think even Cochrane's Phoenix might have had some sort of artificial gravity as Zefram's beanie cap and neckwear weren't floating around during the flight.

 

[feek61]

Probably the boarding party had gravity boots.

 

[uniderth]

Perhaps it was the Augments themselves who invented the artificial gravity in use on that particular ship?

Meaning, Earth in general didn't have that technology, but the Augments came up with it on their own and the Botany Bay was the only place it was actually used.

Possible.

I never had a problem with the Botany Bay having artificial gravity, but then I didn't have a problem with the ship existing at all. I think I've always favored the idea that Trek's history diverged from ours in the late 1960's, which really easily explained away a lot of things from the late 20th-Century/early 21st-Century. I do think, though, that the Botany Bay had a slightly cruder form of artificial gravity than that of the Enterprise's, but only an engineer could tell the differences.

Agreed. I think many Star Trek fans try too hard for Star Trek to be our future. That's why I disagree with the "Eugenic's wars was a behind the scenes thing" theory. Space Seed presents it as a huge event. And I think it is much more compelling if we could stop shoehorning Star Trek's history into our own and just let Star Trek be presented as it is. "How do we know Jackson Roykirk didn't launch Nomad in 2002? Maybe it was a government coverup. Because, you know, Star Trek HAS to be our real future!"

I think even Cochrane's Phoenix might have had some sort of artificial gravity as Zefram's beanie cap and neckwear weren't floating around during the flight.

Yes but hats of that type are generally not kept on the wearer's head by gravity. It's usually friction. And I don't know that a scarf with ends that short is going to show any floating motion. I guess it depends on how rigid the material is.

Probably the boarding party had gravity boots.

That doesn't explain why both Kirk's phaser and the glass from Khan's chamber fell to the floor. Also smoke rose out of the chamber towards the ceiling.

 

[alensatemybuick1]

After kirk's phaser drops when busting open Khan's cryo unit, DeForest Kelley sees it on the floor and seems to wonder if the take was ruined, even seems to move it out of the way surreptitiously. I believe Allan Asherman mentions this in his Compendium.

 

[Emperor Norton]

They beamed the gravity over with the landing party.

Artificial gravity because of tractor beam/expanded deflector screen coverage/other force field, because science.

 

[Timo]

The important thing is, the interiors of the Botany Bay were designed with gravity in mind. There are no handholds there for free floating, no footholds to allow people to push on those push-buttons without floating away. On the other hand, the sleep chambers have no safety belts for the sleepers, yet Khan nevertheless rests on his back and looks as if he has been doing that for centuries. Heck, he even has a special pillow to support the back of his head.

So that leaves three possibilities: gravity through linear acceleration, gravity through rotation, and gravity through magic.

The first one is obviously problematic: loading up the sleepers would not take place under linear acceleration, say. But a skyscraper layout of the decks, with loading conducted back on the launch pad, would solve that problem. Yet two others remain. The ship is a tad too small to allow for skyscraper decks of the witnessed size, and the ship isn't accelerating when the heroes meet her (indeed, she's slowly spinning in TOS-R, for visual debunking of linear acceleration even if the dialogue didn't suffice) yet Khan still rests in peace.

Also, if the ship really accelerated at one gee for two subjective centuries, she'd be doing lightspeed by now, with all the real-world complications this entails. But this isn't the real world when it comes to Einstein being right.

The second one is problematic in two ways. Once again, the set floor is too expansive to fit within the ship, and again we can see there is no rotation taking place. Or at least the set of containers that could quite possibly rotate (and would feature at least some stretches of level rather than curved "floor", even if not enough) is doing no such thing. Plus there are those missing containers to upset any centrifugal action. And to contradict the idea that there would be an internal carousel somewhere, as the ring of containers is the only place where it could possibly go.

The third one is problematic mainly outside the context of "Space Seed". We don't see appreciable groundside applications of AG in VOY "Future's End", even though spaceflight applications at that point are supposed to be old news. And Ares IV has no onboard gravity when Kelly gets abducted, four decades later. We may argue that the occasional turning off of AG was necessary or desirable in the early days, but how come Khan had his turned on for centuries even earlier on? Also, Ares IV has handholds for zero-gee ops, in contrast with this DY-100, so at least the operational modes of the two appear to be different.

We know that AG in most Trek eras (TAS, TNG, DS9, ENT) is explicitly selective and localized, though. Perhaps most of a regular DY-100 would look like Ares IV from the inside, with handholds for the operators, but the containers of the Botany Bay would be Khan-configured for a specific role and intended for, and only for, the as such exceptional constant one gee?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Wasn't there a mention of Earth getting some sort of advanced technology from a Slavers Box, artificial gravity?

It could be that Botany Bay was an advanced sleeper ship while Ares IV was a short term (relatively) vessel. Ares IV's mass was spent on sensors and arrays, while the Botany Bay was designed, potentially for interstellar colonial efforts and spent the mass on cryogenics and gravity generators.

The Cryogenic satellite seen in "The Neutral Zone" from around the same time period as Botany Bay has gravity. Maybe Cryogenic space systems required gravity generators to keep them functional.

 

[Timo]

Wasn't there a mention of Earth getting some sort of advanced technology from a Slavers Box, artificial gravity?

Not Earth specifically: TAS "Slaver Weapon" only has Spock saying "in one was found a flying belt" that was "key" to AG on "starships". We don't know who found it and when. But humans could have gotten it from Vulcans in the sense that they more or less got their starships from Vulcans, too. Or at least the "key" to them.

Considering the Slavers supposedly were everywhere, it is quite possible the Ares II crew found a Box on Mars, or Jeff S. Christopher stumbled on one on Mimas. But if the tech made its way to spacecraft that were considered antiquated in the 1990s, it would have been a) an earlier finding still, and b) probably making headlines. You can't easily hush up a tech and release it at the same time, yet Earth public in the 1980s and 1990s appears to remain ignorant of space aliens.

It could be that Botany Bay was an advanced sleeper ship while Ares IV was a short term (relatively) vessel. Ares IV's mass was spent on sensors and arrays, while the Botany Bay was designed, potentially for interstellar colonial efforts and spent the mass on cryogenics and gravity generators.

No doubt. And Ares IV certainly was "short term" in that the landing party expected a rescue mission in a matter of weeks - that's very high speed/acceleration, and if the spacecraft could sustain that, it would achieve what the Botany Bay did.

It should be noted that few on Earth suspected the Botany Bay or her ilk of being capable of interstellar ops, and no mention was made of her being proprietary Khan technology (except perhaps for the parts that made her interstellar-capable, that is).

The Cryogenic satellite seen in "The Neutral Zone" from around the same time period as Botany Bay has gravity. Maybe Cryogenic space systems required gravity generators to keep them functional.

Indeed. If Khan had his heart beating four times a minute all through those centuries, this would mean there was plenty of metabolising taking place, and the body might appreciate a down for it to work. Might be Khan was more deeply frozen than that, of course, and already waking up when McCoy measured the heartbeat.

AG is always portrayed as very reliable in Trek, and cheap in power consumption terms. It could well be accepted as a further feature of the Trek universe that AG can easily be discovered and applied by any culture that can produce a working Zippo or a walkie-talkie - and that it has extremely few ground-based applications nevertheless, perhaps because "low power consumption" for spacecraft is something completely different from the Earth-bound definition. The main applications might be in space propulsion (inertia control), with secondary applications in onboard comfort, and tertiary apps in protective fields and whatnot, but you'd have to hook it all up to a massive power plant, and only the Slavers would know how to compact that to belt dimensions.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Idran]

You missed @Mr. Laser Beam's suggestion, I think, Timo: it could be that the Augments themselves invented AG and kept it to themselves, and it was rediscovered by the rest of humanity later. That resolves the Botany Bay/Ares IV problem nicely, I think.

 

[Ronald Held]

IMO the tech in the Botany Bay was special or prototypes. I cannot see the Augments having the mentation to plan an escape. Maybe the movies implying it came from the Aegis(indirectly) may be valid. Not certain about the cryostat having it but the Ares did not.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Yes but hats of that type are generally not kept on the wearer's head by gravity. It's usually friction.

It was actually a baseball cap worn backward. I don't think it was ever on all that tightly.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lyGp4HlY-Tw/T645esTo7XI/AAAAAAAABJU/Neo1vCld5Ok/s1600/sweet-jesus.gif

And I don't know that a scarf with ends that short is going to show any floating motion. I guess it depends on how rigid the material is.

It seemed to be just a regular handkerchief.

 

[uniderth]

It was actually a baseball cap worn backward. I don't think it was ever on all that tightly.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lyGp4HlY-Tw/T645esTo7XI/AAAAAAAABJU/Neo1vCld5Ok/s1600/sweet-jesus.gif
Most hats I've worn don't fall off when I look down or lean all the way back. I'm not saying that no hat could ever come off someone's head. Just that a hat on the head would tend to stay on the head. But I'm not an astronaut so I have no first hand evidence.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lyGp4HlY-Tw/T645esTo7XI/AAAAAAAABJU/Neo1vCld5Ok/s1600/sweet-jesus.gif

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lyGp4HlY-Tw/T645esTo7XI/AAAAAAAABJU/Neo1vCld5Ok/s1600/sweet-jesus.gif

Haha. So awesome.

It seemed to be just a regular handkerchief.

True. But if you notice the ends of the scarf in the gif aren't weighed down by gravity(even though we know gravity was affecting the scarf when they filmed it.). Instead they move with the motion of his neck. Meaning a short piece of material that is stiff enough not to get dragged down by gravity at the time of filming, probably wouldn't exhibit a floating motion when in space.

 

[Tenacity]

And Ares IV has no onboard gravity when Kelly gets abducted, four decades later.

If the DY series of spacecraft were a product of India (giving Khan easy access), and possessed artificial gravity in the mid-1990's, that does not mean that the International Space Agency (Ares IV) in the 2030's would have had access to AG.

The ability to manufacture AG could have been lost as a consequence of the Eugenics Wars.

India retain the ability to make AG devices, but it's covered by patent and trademark protections and the ISS didn't want to (or couldn't) pony up the cash.

 

[Mytran]

The satellite with the cryo-pods in TNG's The Neutral Zone had AG in it as well and is from the same time period. Therefore, I tend to believe that in the ST timeline, AG is a well established (if expensive) technology. I read somewhere that the Slaver Box could have been discovered on the Moon on the Apollo 18 mission (which was cancelled in real-world history).
That's also why we were supposed to have flying cars and hoverboards by 2015!

 

[Timo]

Tellingly, our heroes find nothing odd about the ship having artificial gravity. This after Kirk and Spock had their pissing contest about who knows more about obscure Earth spacecraft; after Kirk summoned a specialist on the very issue to round out the boarding party; and just before Scotty rattles off technical specs that suggest he knows his way around such antiquities blindfolded....

If AG were a trademark Khan technology, our heroes should immediately go "Oh, Augments! Scotty, abort their thawing routine, now! Bones, quick, what are the Secret Weaknesses of these supermen? McIvers... Umm, look pretty. And scared. Perhaps hug me out of fright?".

In all fairness, though, it's evident that Kirk knows little about the era or its technology. Spock might have gotten quite a few things wrong, too, and in any case he isn't there. And Scotty is always boasting on his knowledge of ancient spacecraft in a most dubious fashion. Only McGivers might know for real, and clearly she's not telling everything to his superior officer.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Clearly, since the Jupiter II had AG in 1997, there was no reason not to expect it.

 

[Tenacity]

Apollo 18 mission (which was cancelled in real-world history).

Or was it ?