Stuff we think will be

I've been mulling over the various things about space that most of us might think of if we thought about what spaceflight in the future would involve. Gravity on board a spaceship, for instance, is a big one. Because it is costly and difficult to film in zero gravity, there are very few movies that do (Apollo 13 is one, but when it comes to Sci-Fi, everyone assumes that in the future we will have figured out artificial gravity).
What is interesting, of course, is that artificial gravity is, I would guess, rather low on our list of technologies to work on. I am sure we will be exploring space and doing all manner of amazing things before we try to create gravity. Achieving gravity in space would be a great benefit to astronauts, but it might be easier to fix the problems that zero G presents in ways other than simulating gravity.
But the assumption that in the future there will be artificial gravity exists because filmmakers can't film without it. This article is about a Robert Heinlein story, the movie based on it, and how it influenced future Sci-Fi writers and film makers. We saw this kind of thing happen with the whole Martian canal idea and the long belief that there was life on Mars. The idea may come from anywhere, but once it becomes a norm in science fiction, it shapes how we look at spaceflight and the future.