Lydia Conwell
Seb@seb321 The danger would be if your artificial gravity fails.
@lydiaconwell it’s the one thing which is completely reliable, even when all other ship’s systems are failing. I’m thinking it’s got to be an actual ‘thing’ rather than a process. Maybe a trapped black hole somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Some kind of lensing to line up the field to work with flat floors?
Kara Goldfinch@seb321 @lydiaconwell There's a lovely bit in one of Becky Chambers' novels where kids are playing in a park on a colony ship which has a structure with no artificial gravity.
David Cohen@seb321 @lydiaconwell It failed on the Klingon ship in Star Trek VI. Its reliability is entirely dependent on the production budget.
@davidbcohen @lydiaconwell yes, I remember that because it was a first (I think). Even now, SFX struggle to do convincing zero g interior scenes. Expanse had some of the best space FX, but they had difficulty with real actors doing real things in zero g inside spaceships.
@seb321 @lydiaconwell Apollo 13 did in in real zero g (using filming on NASA’s ‘Vomit Comet’. Gravity did it with *masses* of CGI removal of harnesses and gimbals. But you are right, it is hard (and big money) to do convincingly.
lp0 on fire 
@seb321 @lydiaconwell, if it were to do with singularities, it'd have to be something like Romulan warbirds' power systems (in which case why not just use it as a general power source?) else… well, you wouldn't want it to escape containment.
Also, a quick bit of searching led to https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/2b7poz/why_artificial_gravity_never_goes_offline/ where there's some interesting discussion of this. Some failures are mentioned.
Sam Stephens@lydiaconwell I mean, we have an open top planet
Piper@chopsstephens Just need to make sure your spaceship is a convertible 👍
Jules she/her@lydiaconwell I think the roof is to stop the photon torpedoes
StarkRG@lydiaconwell You'd need really tall walls to keep the pressure in, though.
Full Metal Archaeopteryx@StarkRG What would happen without tall walls? Would the air rush out the sides?
@lydiaconwell Pretty much. Humans need atmospheric pressure somewhere above 356 millibars (5.16 psi, the so-called "death zone" above 8000 m), we get this by having about 10,000 km of atmosphere above us (three-quarters of which is below 11km, but if you only build walls to that height then you'll be losing atmosphere over the edge, you could probably get away with only going to 150km and replenish it slowly). We can also get this by pressurizing a sealed container, which is a lot easier.
@StarkRG Hmm. Something to think about ...
@lydiaconwell I second the recommendation from @DelilahTech regarding Larry Niven's Ringworld which takes place on the interior surface of a a ring surrounding a star. Its radius is about the same as the distance from Earth to the Sun (with a star in the middle), 1.6 million km wide, with walls 1,600 km tall.
@StarkRG There's also the concept of a Dyson sphere built around a star and an episode of Next Generation featured it and it was an episode where Scottie was rescued from being stuck in a transporter for years.
@lydiaconwell @DelilahTech Yeah, it's similar, but very slightly more realistic (no need for artificial gravity)
@StarkRG A Dyson sphere would need artificial gravity? ... That makes sense.
Now I'm imagining people tumbling around the inside of a sphere like they are in a washing machine.
@lydiaconwell
The Ringworld rotates fast enough to create centrifugal gravity. If you did that to a sphere it would collapse from the poles. Even if you had super strong material that would hold a sphere, you'd still only have gravity pointing outward along the equator and it would drop off as you got closer to the axis of rotation until there's no gravity at the poles.
@lydiaconwell
Yes, though the Bobiverse books (in For We are Many) by Dennis E Taylor address the unrealistic material requirements and absolutely insane surface area a Dyson Sphere would represent
Later, in Heaven's River, he runs a riff on the ringworld in the form of a topopolis—a torus knot which wraps around itself and the star three times
Lots of space, a bit more stable that Niven's construct, and self-contained
@StarkRG
⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe@lydiaconwell not sure about that. my planet has gravity, and the air still goes up for *miles*
@fishidwardrobe Yes, but isn't that air sitting on top of more air?
But now you mention that, the open-top ship might be a pillar of air going through space.
Thomas Karcher@lydiaconwell Both the cold and the radiation would be unbearable, though.
Adrian W@tkarcher @lydiaconwell That was my first thought - cold, radiation and the danger of being obliterated by some unexpected microscopic lump of galactic/interstellar dust or debris while travelling at Ludicrous Speed(tm).
@tkarcher Well, you'd obviously have your fur coat and shades on too -- to complete the cool look.
Nils Hammer@lydiaconwell Would be nice to see an Enterprise convertible.
@nshr Yeah!
@lydiaconwell I don't do a lot of writing in sci-fi, but when I do, I have a dark "shielded" observation deck for stargazing. The "shield" is just a gravity field dome a few feet think that pushes inward hard enough to make the air density drop to 0 over a few feet.
The quality of the stargazing on spaceships is maybe something I think about too much 🤔
@piper Interesting. By 'field' do you mean it's some kind of energy barrier rather than a solid substance?
And what's the bit about air density? Does that create gravity?
Luka Rubinjoni@lydiaconwell Maybe an open top space station, or something with constant speed. Inertia of the gas patch would cause problems when accelerating/decelerating/changing direction...
Brian Burton@lydiaconwell you could, but imagine the occasional solar wind whistling across the top like breath over a bottle, or maybe a warp-speed version of having one window of your car rolled down. Maybe they just don't do it because the noise is too annoying. Picard (at the top of his voice): "I SAID MAKE IT SO! WILL SOMEBODY CLOSE THE ROOF!"
@lydiaconwell I nearly had Picard swearing in that last post, but actually he'd still keep his cool, wouldn't he...
@brian_burton That's how Picard lost his hair. He was on the maiden voyage.
@brian_burton Although, 'breath over a bottle' kinda sounds like it would be a pleasant sound.
It's could be a singing open-top ship.
Greg Burrell 
🦞🚴🥔@lydiaconwell @brian_burton My dad used to tell kids he lost his hair because he didn't wear a helmet riding his bike. It was effective propaganda.
@ivanvector That was to show how cool he was/is. @brian_burton
Dr David Mills@lydiaconwell that's similar to how the culture ships are described. Just open parks with engines and enough firepower to win.