Thunderbirds & Star Trek

[Rharris9585]

Why don't either of the characters in these programmes experience weightlessness in space?!?

[fo3nix]

First of all the idea that you're weightless in space is a common misconception. Gravity gives you weight, and gravity doesn't just stop anywhere. It keeps going forever, getting weaker and weaker pretty rapidly. The weightlessness you see with astronauts is from the fact that they're free falling down to earth in their space shuttle, but just enough so that it's perfectly in sync with the turning of the earth. Hence you can experience this same effect yourself by just jumping on the spot: it just won't last as long.

In star trek etc. they probably have some compensator or other for gravity, so that a gravitational force equal to the earth's is created while on the ship.

[Loosehead]

Sci Fi dear boy, fiction, writers had to invent various systems to make their lives easier and the stories vaguely plausible. Artificial gravity is one. in the case of star trek Gene Rodenberry found he was spending so much time getting to planets etc that he came up with the transporter beam out of necessity. Now later on in the next Gen the writers had discovered that the transporter could not work, mainly because of the heisenberg uncertainty principle so it was necessary to invent the "Heisenberg compensator"!

Getting around was so slow that warp drive was needed but to accellerate to light speed+ would tear apart the ship and all aboard, I know we'll invent an intertial damper!

In Sci Fi more than anywhere else, necessity is indeed the mother of invention!

[camioneur]

Because they're marionettes silly! Hence..filmed in Super Marionation...blimey, some people !!!

[camioneur]

Ooops, forgot to mention that you can't see the strings in Star Trek because modern technology enabls the director to use a much finer wire that's coloured green and the whole show is filmed on a green back-drop thus making them invisible.

Thought everyone knew that though