Dialogue > visuals.Although we hear many times these ships move at "high point c", when do we actually see this happen?
Relative to camera, that is. But we usually don't have any static reference points, and when we do, ship is likely to move slower (1 c is 300 000 km/s. 0.8 c - full impulse, according to Voyager - is 240 000 c. Earth's diameter is around 13 000 km. Meaning that ship will traverse more than one Earth's diameter every 0.05 seconds - or 20 diameters per second. Standard framerate for flash movies is 24 fps.). Also, we see them moving at few meters per second (again, relative to camera) in warp, but this time there is difference in the fact that during warp, velocity of ship is large enough for stars to serve as reference points. Also, if you remember TNG, there are some shots throught windows where we do see stars moving, but very slowly.When we see ships moving at "Full Impulse", we can actually see them move onscreen, and it's usually a couple hundred meters per second...
I think that negative gravity might be better term, since it works only between ship and ground - we don't see either ship or ground falling apart. But it is similar to constant that Einstein put into his gravitational equation when it became apparent that static universe (which he, at the time, strongly believed in) is bound to collapse. It actually showed anti-gravitational effects that worked over large distance, but not when two objects were close to one another, thus allowing static universe with physical world as we see it. Also, it just (while writing this) occured to me that Star Trek antigravity might be just a variation on warp field - and warp drive itself is (I think I have written this somewhere) some kind of gravitational drive, where large spacetime distortion (similar to black hole) sits in front of ship's bubble and tows it.It's not like most sci-fi doesn't have some sort of variant upon these technologies. If your ship can lift off without scorching the ground under it, chances are you're using MLT or anti-gravity. Probably both.
