Gravity Sucks: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}
{{quote|''You win again, gravity!''|'''Zapp Brannigan''', ''[[Futurama]]''}}
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When it is mentioned at all, the force of gravity is often portrayed as a sort of cosmic quicksand, an intractable mire that can yank spacecraft out of the sky without any consideration of inertia. Frequently accompanied by exclamations like, "We're caught in the planet's gravitational field!" or "We're being sucked in!"
[[Black Holes]] are particular offenders of this nature, not only in fiction but also in many people's perceptions in the real world. Few people seem to understand that a black hole will exert (roughly) the same amount of gravitational force as the star it was formed from.<ref>When you're at the same distance from the center of the black hole as you were from the center of the original star, that is, assuming that distance is greater than the radius of the original star itself. If you go to a spot near the black hole that would have been inside the radius of the original star, the gravitational force will exceed that for the star at the same distance. And if you pass the black hole's event horizon, you can only go inwards, no matter how hard you try not to.</ref>
The trope stems from a naive Aristotelian view of gravity, coupled with [[Space Friction]]. After all, a baseball falls to the ground; why shouldn't a spaceship? The answer, of course, is that the ship ''is'' falling, it's simply missing. If the ship is moving at any significant speed relative to the planet, in a direction other than straight up or straight down, its momentum will carry it past and it won't actually hit. This, boys and girls, is called an "orbit". Unless something like a gas cloud acts on the ship to slow it down, it will continue to miss the planet until slight variations in the path happen to bring it into the planet itself, which can take quite a long time.
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* ''The Astronaut Farmer'' has loads of horrible physics, but one shining example is the eponymous character's reentry. After a de-orbit burn lasting less than a few seconds, the craft appears to stop, and just drops straight down.
* ''Supernova'' has one scene where the medical ship Nightingale drops like a rock toward a moon as soon as it completes its FTL jump. Most of the movie's physics are accurate, but the ship would have retained the velocity and momentum it had before the jump. Even if the ship's velocity relative to the moon was below the moon's escape velocity, it would not have plummeted straight down.
* The logical (illogical) extension of this occurs in ''[[Treasure Planet]]''. The absence of gravity is the presence of antigravity. When the ship's gravity generators fail, everything falls up
== Literature ==
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* As in the Film examples, Star Destroyers in the ''Star Wars [[Rogue Squadron]]'' series are prone to make sudden vertical 90-degree turns as soon as they're critically damaged; Rogue Leaders who aren't careful during the Battle of Endor will suddenly find the Star Destroyer they'd disabled [[Yet Another Stupid Death|swooping forward to crash into them]].
* ''[[Touhou]]'' has Suika and her ability to manipulate density. As this includes the creation of Black Holes, this trope is naturally present in the games she appears in.
** Also Utsuho and her last spell card in [[TH 11]]. Koishi of the same game has a similar spellcard, but it pushes you away
* ''[[Recca]]'' has [https://web.archive.org/web/20131125195204/http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/recca/recca-15.png this boss] who fires out two kinds of gravity wells, blue ones which suck your ship towards them and white ones that repel your ship. Note that this is an NES game...
* In [[Halo]], Pelican dropships are shown dropping like a stone the second they are released from the ship suspending them above the surface of the planet below. Possibly justified if the parent ship deliberately flies low enough before releasing its cargo, but that's certainly not how it looks in the game. Notable because, like a lot of ''Halo'', it is cribbed from [[Alien
** Justified in that the dropships aren't just released, there is a minor propulsive force to put distance between the Pelican and the ship. Even then, they don't fall - they drift along until they engage their own propulsion. A more extreme mechanism is used for the ODST drop pods - they aren't dropped, they're literally shot out of the ship.
* In ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'', the ''Ishimura'' ends up in a decaying orbit, and you have to restart the engines, and later {{spoiler|Kendra tries to kill you by [[Colony Drop|dropping a piece of the planet on you]].}}
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== Web Original ==
* This trope is mentioned several times in the following 'Cracked' article: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130518085253/http://www.cracked.com/funny-6051-6-awesome-facts-about-black-holes/ 6 Awesome Facts About Black Holes]
{{reflist}}
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