Artificial Gravity

"Why humans cling to their spinning tin cans, quark-bending towers, and floor-plates that groan under the weight of bosons is beyond me. I gave them Pressors—sunlight and gravity woven in orbital harmony—and still they insist on courting nausea, cascade failures, and haunted echoes. Perhaps this is what they mean by tradition."

— CAELUS the Omnikron, Technocrat of Uranus

Centrifugal Simulated Gravity

The oldest and most archaic form of artificial gravity still in use, centrifugal simulated gravity (CSG) is generated by spinning a habitat around a central hub. The outward pull mimics gravity, forcing inhabitants against the outer wall of the spinning structure. Originally developed on pre-Imperial Earth, it was cheap, low-tech, and effective enough for early colonists or migrants making one-way trips. Generations of desperate settlers have relied on it to survive when no other technology was available, and even in the Age of Convergence, small frontier colonies or budget-strapped ventures still fall back on this primitive method.

The flaws are well known. The Coriolis effect plays havoc with the inner ear, leading to vertigo, nausea, and psychological strain over long exposures. Air density varies in disconcerting ways, creating subconscious clustering of activity on one side of a cabin. In large rooms, “jumping” can break the illusion entirely, sending enhanced crewmen flying at lethal speeds into bulkheads. Worse, CSG is notoriously fragile: a single strike to its spinning section or a fault in its bearings can end an entire habitat in seconds. It is archaic, unreliable, and labor-intensive to maintain—yet it persists, mostly as the poor man’s gravity.

Durien Towers

Invented during the Great Timocracy of Mankind by Professor Zelma Durien, these massive machines rise like steel sentinels, 100 stories tall, linked in a visible web across a planetary surface. By manipulating quark density between atoms, they simulate the gravitational pull of a much larger planetary body without the need for actual mass. Functionally, they create a “gravity basin” stretching roughly half their height and below, effectively normalizing ground-level gravity over broad terrain. Entire worlds have been made habitable by the glittering latticework of Durien Towers, their tops blinking at one another in lines of sight like cathedral spires in a prayer circle.

But the system is precarious. Durien Towers operate on a zero-fail principle: if one goes down, the whole web collapses, leading to anything from amusing pratfalls to catastrophic collapses of entire city districts. Alignment drift requires constant recalibration, and their quark-density manipulation sometimes distorts soil, leading to brittle zones or oddly buoyant patches of farmland. Settlers swear by them as affordable and large-scale solutions, but veterans know that living beneath a forest of towers means gambling every day that the lights won’t wink out all at once.

Gravity Plates

An innovation of the Solar Commonwealth Era, gravity plates are the workhorse of Starships and colony habitats alike. These nanoconstruct meshes cycle boson-2 particles through embedded circuits, creating highly localized zones of artificial gravity just above the plate. Their simplicity and modularity make them a favorite for habitat floors, starship decks, and colony domes. When paired with Fitch-Fennig Engines, they allow spacecraft to carry Earthlike comfort with them across the void, stabilizing crews during long voyages.

The drawback lies in their scale and in their memory. Gravity plates only project about three meters above their surface, making them impractical for planetary coverage. Worse, they sometimes retain echoes of journeys through paraspace, hyperspace, or subspace. Ships that linger too long in exotic branes report “haunted plates”: floors that hold pockets of inertia arrest, lingering echoes of footsteps days old, or patches of reversed pull. Engineers scrub these anomalies, but veterans still tap their boots twice before trusting a floor that’s crossed Redspace. Plates are reliable, power-hungry, and occasionally uncanny.

Fitch-Fennig Fields

Born from the genius collaboration of John Fitch and Aeli Fennig, the Fitch-Fennig Engine is the crown jewel of Reformed Solar Commonwealth technology. It creates a warp bubble by pulling quarks and fermions into a spiral, then looping them in a cycle that projects ahead of the ship and collapses behind it. This manipulation of space-time allows a ship to “fall” in the desired direction, effectively turning gravity and inertia into navigational tools. For interstellar travel, the Fitch-Fennig is indispensable: without it, Whitespace jumps and hyperspace descents would be impossible.

Yet, its quirks are legendary. Inertial arrest malfunctions can stop momentum cold: a sprinting crewman might suddenly freeze mid-stride, held by an unseen hand until the anomaly passes. More benign but unnerving are the minor distortions—footsteps that echo in padded rooms, voices replaying minutes or days later, or time stutters where a room feels seconds out of sync. Even when working perfectly, minor fouling or amplification of movements can make daily life subtly wrong. Crews learn to adapt, but it is no coincidence that the Fitch-Fennig is as feared as it is respected.

Pressors

Pressors are the late Reformed Solar Commonwealth’s gift to Terraforming—and to CAELUS, their pinnacle achievement. Orbiting satellites project beams of boson-2s, creating cones of gravity that overlap across a planetary surface. When arranged in constellations, these cones create Earth-standard gravity while doubling as artificial sunlight projectors. Two orbital rings—one equatorial, one polar—turn barren rocks into viable habitats, interlocking like celestial gears. Pressors are elegant, reliable, and versatile, suitable for shaping atmospheres, stabilizing climates, and keeping entire worlds habitable.

But even perfection has its flaws. A downed satellite creates “dead cones” where gravity weakens or vanishes, leaving towns tethering furniture to the floor until a replacement arrives. Overlapping cones can shear valleys apart or snap livestock in two. Soil interactions sometimes make sand feel like molasses while stone fields stay normal. And the polar extras, if they desync, can double local gravity for days. For all their elegance, pressors are costly, and maintaining their orbital ballet requires constant vigilance. They are the safest form of artificial gravity—but they are also the most demanding of infrastructure.