Gravity
Names: Gravitygravitational wave shipspaceship Gravity
First appears in Book 3: Death's End, chapter 15 (Deterrence Era, Year 12 Bronze Age)
Appearances
What you know
Book 3: Death's End
- Ch 15Gravity was the first stellar-class warship built after the Doomsday Battle, a perfectly regular white cylinder unlike modular Deterrence-Era ships.
- Ch 15Gravity's entire hull is a gravitational wave antenna able to broadcast messages across the universe, like the antennas on Earth.
- Ch 16Only Solar System ship capable of interstellar flight, with a gravitational wave antenna; it pursues Blue Space with two droplets as escorts, needing fifty years to catch it.
- Ch 22Gravity has pursued Blue Space for about fifty years and by Deterrence Era year 62 has closed to three AU of its target.
- Ch 22Gravity carries over one hundred officers and crew, most of whom spent the pursuit in hibernation; only five to ten are on duty during routine cruising.
- Ch 22Gravity's fuel is split into four equal parts: leaving, decelerating at destination, returning, and decelerating at Earth. Only one quarter is available for pursuit acceleration.
- Ch 22Gravity repeatedly urged Blue Space to surrender and promised a fair trial on Earth, but Blue Space ignored these appeals.
- Ch 22Gravity and its two droplets entered a region where the sophons lose their quantum link to home, ending real-time communication with Earth.
- Ch 23Sophons accompanied Gravity and encountered the closest blind region.
- Ch 24Gravity lost sophon surveillance of Blue Space, so Blue Space now appears as a sealed box, and its droplets lost real-time contact with Trisolaris.
- Ch 24Gravity's captain ordered further acceleration, and the crew awoke from hibernation and readied for combat.
- Ch 24Gravity's crew rejected Blue Space's proposal to send two-thirds of its crew in pinnaces while the rest flew on; the whole crew must be tried.
- Ch 24Gravity and Blue Space are about 100,000 km apart, coasting at similar speed, and their leaders are negotiating docking details.
- Ch 30Gravity was the only spaceship built as a gravitational wave transmitter; its antenna served as its hull, and it cost nearly as much as all twenty-three ground transmitters.
- Ch 30Several scattered gravitational wave ships would likely have let at least one escape a droplet attack, making deterrence independent of the Swordholder and making the Trisolarans more restrained.
- Ch 31Gravity was destroyed an hour earlier by two droplets at the handover a light-year away, on orders set months before.
- Ch 36Gravity was captured by Blue Space marines; Captain Morovich ordered his officers to surrender their weapons. Its self-destruct module had been dismantled.
- Ch 37Gravity initiated the universal broadcast, exposing Trisolaris' location and therefore the Solar System's.
- Ch 38Gravity had fewer crew and stricter psychological monitoring, so those who encountered warped points dared not discuss them. Its rear third once warped into four-dimensional space for minutes.
- Ch 38Equipped with a neutrino communication system, which it used to beam the Rosetta System to the Ring.
- Ch 38Together with Blue Space, it plans to divert around the four-dimensional fragment and aim for a new target star system.
- Ch 39Gravity and its crew were revered as salvation ships after the gravitational wave broadcast.
- Ch 42Gravity was about three light-years from Trisolaris when it made the gravitational wave broadcast.
Connections
- member ofSolar Fleet
- part ofdark forest deterrence system
- enemy ofBlue SpaceGravity pursues Blue Space
- ally ofTrisolaran probefly in formation with Gravity
- member ofEarthGravity is an Earth ship, sent from Earth
- has memberthe psychologist
- has memberCommander Devon
- has memberGuan Yifancivilian astronomer aboard
- related togravitational-wave antennaGravity carries one of the four remaining transmitters
- has memberJames Hunter
- led byJoseph Morovich
- createdGravitational wave universal broadcastGravity initiated the broadcast
- related toGravitational wave universal broadcastGravity made the broadcast
Key moments
- Book 3 · Ch 15Bronze Age returns to Earth
After eleven years, Bronze Age is escorted by Gravity into the orbital spaceport, where a crowd welcomes the crew with flowers.
- Book 3 · Ch 16Blue Space flees and Gravity pursues
Blue Space begins full acceleration away. Earth and Trisolaris see it as a shared enemy. Earth refuses a droplet strike, and Gravity with two droplet escorts pursues, fifty years from catching it.
- Book 3 · Ch 22Gravity closes in on Blue Space
After fifty years of pursuit across 1.5 light-years, Gravity approaches within three AU of Blue Space, having maintained a higher speed and outplayed it on fuel knowledge.
- Book 3 · Ch 22Loss of real-time communication with Earth
A year earlier, with the ships thirty AU apart, Gravity and its droplets entered a region where sophons lost their quantum ties to home, forcing slow neutrino and radio communication with Earth.
- Book 3 · Ch 24Blue Space surrenders
Gravity refuses Blue Space's partial surrender offer; at fifteen AU, Blue Space announces surrender and decelerates, so Gravity's crew wakes and prepares for combat.
- Book 3 · Ch 24Strange anomalies aboard Gravity
Devon sees Park Ui-gun in a passageway, Ivantsov finds micrometeoroid damage deep in the ship, Ike sees a bubble cutting through his cabin, and Liu sees the ship's tail missing.
- Book 3 · Ch 24Droplet attack on Gravity and Blue Space
Battle alarms sound as two droplets accelerate, one toward each ship. With no time to evade, Guan and West calmly accept imminent death.
- Book 3 · Ch 30Analysis of deterrence failure
The author argues the failure stemmed less from the number of transmitters than from their vulnerable placement. Gravitational wave ships were never built in numbers because of extremist threats, cost, and a deep fear of their power.
- Book 3 · Ch 31Sophon confronts Cheng Xin at the crater
Sophon reveals Cheng Xin was kept alive as a safety shield, that Gravity was destroyed, and that Wade would have been feared. She then leaves, telling them to prepare for Australia.
- Book 3 · Ch 36Hunter's self-destruct fails
As the droplet attack alarm sounds then stops with the transmitter intact, Hunter presses his watch button to destroy the controller, but the self-destruct module has been dismantled.
- Book 3 · Ch 36Droplets miss and are found dead
Both droplets narrowly miss Gravity and Blue Space. Replays show them rusted and lifeless, deflected and slowed by a Blue Space shuttle, implying Blue Space knows how to disable droplets.
- Book 3 · Ch 36Blue Space marines capture Gravity
Hunter shoots infiltrator Park Ui-gun at the transmission control room; Blue Space marines then storm in, Hunter's heart is extracted, and Morovich's officers surrender.
- Book 3 · Ch 36Referendum on the universal broadcast
Chu Yan presents the lightspeed Trisolaran fleet and calls a vote of 1,415 people; with 943 ayes, Morovich and others add the deciding vote and the broadcast of Trisolaris's location begins.
- Book 3 · Ch 37Announcement of the universal broadcast
Sophon announces over the information window that Gravity broadcast Trisolaris' location. The Trisolarans flee, the droplets vanish, and the crowd in Australia erupts in cheers as the refugees prepare to return home.
- Book 3 · Ch 38Discovery of the Ring and other objects
Telescopes inserted through warped points reveal a sealed, artificial ring and about a hundred other inactive four-dimensional objects. This is the first observation of another civilization besides Earth and Trisolaris.
- Book 3 · Ch 38Retreat from the fragment
After repeated micrometeoroid strikes, including one that nearly destroys Blue Space's reactor, Chu Yan orders both ships to decelerate and leave the fragment.
- Book 3 · Ch 38The Ring decays into three-dimensional space
The fragment shrinks and the ships exit. After twenty-two days the Ring enters three-dimensional space and decays into a one-AU line of light that becomes a dust belt. The ships collect some resources, and a council offers crews a choice to continue or return.
- Book 3 · Ch 38Hibernation ark and the two ships part ways
Only about two hundred people chose to return to the Solar System. A month later the hibernation ark set off for home while Blue Space and Gravity continued into deep space, and the fusion glow lit the dust belt as they departed.
- Book 3 · Ch 42Destruction of Trisolaris
A photoid launched from a nearby spacecraft almost instantly after the broadcast struck one of Trisolaris's three stars, and the explosion annihilated the planet.