The Physics of Magnetic Boots from “The Expanse”

Would we act as naturally inside a spacecraft immobile in space as in the series?

Whenever I watch “The Expanse,” I pay attention to the physics. As the production is meticulous — if you notice the scenes where whiskey is served on the Moon this last season, you will see that the liquid falls according to lunar gravity's acceleration — I always have some good surprises. Unfortunately, the series is taped on Earth, so some things would be too expensive to reproduce convincingly.

One is the physics of magnetic boots.

The spaceships in “The Expanse” simulate gravity in two ways. One, accelerating the ship to 1G. The “roof” of the vessel is in its front, that is, the floor is at its rear, and if the engines accelerate the ship to 1G, the floor accelerates below your feet at the same speed, similarly simulating gravity as terraplanists imagine it to be real gravity.

While the spacecraft is accelerating (or decelerating, when they pass the middle of the path they invert the spacecraft and decelerate at 1G, causing the same artificial gravity effect to astronauts until they reach their destination), internal physics acts just like Earth physics, that is, no special effects are needed in these scenes.

The problem is that they can’t show ships in motion all the time. There are scenes in which they are stopped at space stations, and in these scenes, the physics would be similar to…