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How does artificial gravity on the Ascension work?


Within the generation ship Ascension, there appears to be normal Earth-like gravity. Yes, I know about the twist from the end of episode 1x02,



that they are not really in space.




Nonetheless, there must be some explanation from the point of view of the people on board the ship (some of which even seem to be scientifically minded).


My impression was that it's generated through constant acceleration along the direction of flight. This seems to match up with the visuals, in that decks are stacked along the length of the ship, so "down" as seen by the crew points to the aft of the ship in the direction of flight.


This would require a constant acceleration of 1G (or at least something sufficiently close to it), which brings some mathematical problems.


On the other hand, this answer swiftly assumes that the acceleration of the vessel might be a lot lower than 1G:



Of course, we could use a lower rate of acceleration. For making a 100 years journey to Alpha Centauri, the slowest rate you can have would be to continuously accelerate at 0.00175g



This might point to some alternative means of creating the artificial gravity aboard the ship that I did not consider.


Thus, is gravity indeed supposed to be generated by acceleration, or is there some other source?




To the downvoter: Note that I am not asking for an explanation of a fictitious future technology here. The series this refers to is, by its premise, based on today's technology (or rather, even upon that of the 1960s). Given that it is, in a way, a part of the very premise of the series that there are no "obvious plot-holes" in the setting, one can expect that this feature of the ship is supposed to make sense either based upon some existing concept, or hand-waved in-universe towards the protagonists at some point.




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