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From: barnett@ut-sally.UUCP (Lewis Barnett)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Enterprise Gravity
Message-ID: <2672@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 17:30:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.2672
Posted: Tue Aug 13 17:30:50 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Aug-85 22:53:23 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 26

I'm sitting here watching "Where No Man Has Gone Before," and 
something Kirk said during the encounter brought to mind a point
that has bothered (or maybe amused) me for a long time.
Just as they moved into the barrier, he said, "Gravitation on
automatic."  A bit later, one of the damage reports was, "Gravitation
down to 0.8."  Now, the folks who gave us Star Trek seemed pretty
eager to show us all the wonderful gadgets they had come up with
in the 23rd century, such as phasers, transporters, warp drive,
etc.  Now why wouldn't they talk about something as mind boggling
as gravity control?  And, even better, in all the times we've
seen the Enterprise badly damaged isn't it funny that the
gravity never goes out?  That'd be a scene of quite some
visual impact -- everyone floating about the bridge and corridors.
And practically speaking, you'd expect such a failure to be
inevitable;  if so, you'd also expect the Enterprise's designers
to have planned for the possibility.  But, to the contrary, the
design of the Enterprise seems to have completely ignored the fact
that the crew might at times have to deal with zero G.

Anyone have any speculations on the subject?


Lewis Barnett,CS Dept, Painter Hall 3.28, Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX 78712

-- barnett@ut-sally.ARPA, barnett@ut-sally.UUCP,
      {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!barnett