Gyrosphere

Gyrosphere

Tucker using the gyrosphere

A gyrosphere was a type of exercise device. It mainly consisted of three large purple rings that whirled, in a seemingly random sequence, when the machine was active. To begin a gyro-workout, a person had to strap themselves into or be strapped into the center of the apparatus, standing on a platform, while the surrounding rings started to spin. Exiting the machine involved reaching down to the platform and waiting for the machine to come to a halt. (ENT: "Vanishing Point")

In 2152, a gyrosphere was in the gym aboard Enterprise NX-01, deactive, while Captain Jonathan Archer and Sub-Commander T'Pol were exercising on treadmills. (ENT: "A Night In Sickbay")

In an hallucination experienced by Ensign Hoshi Sato later the same year, she imagined Commander Charles Tucker III using Enterprise's gyrosphere to exercise and remarking, when she entered the gym, that she was upside down. Sato felt reluctant to try the machine because she frequently experienced motion sickness. After she apparently told Tucker she had recently been feeling like the laws of physics had been seeming "a little off" to her, he apparently joked that she was perhaps right not to go on the gyrosphere, as "the laws of physics don't apply in here either." (ENT: "Vanishing Point")

This machine is unnamed on screen. Despite first appearing in "A Night in Sickbay", the gyrosphere was omitted from the final draft script of that episode. Its name therefore originates from the final draft script of "Vanishing Point". The term "gyro-workout" comes from that same script.
The rings from the gyrosphere which appears in Star Trek: Enterprise were later reused for the core of the Xindi weapon in ENT Season 3. ("Countdown" text commentary, ENT Season 3 DVD)
The Star Trek Encyclopedia, 4th ed., vol. 2, p. 59 identified this device as the "multiaxis exercise trainer." It noted that the model used in "Vanishing Point" was a commercially-produced exercise device modified for the episode and that this device was based on NASA's multiaxis space test inertia facility, used to train early astronauts.
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