Hanging three feet above the ground, looking down, and not falling down, is simply a weird sensation. Today, over 25 years later, it is still one of the nicest experiences of my life. Space shuttle pilot Scott Horowitz once told me ‘you keep expecting to fall down, and it just doesn’t happen’. Nothing more true about it. Now imagine being in space and simply not being able to fall down for half a year! Would you miss it?
I certainly didn’t miss it during the parabolic flight above the North Sea in NASA’s ‘vomit comet’ KC-135. I got first introduced to the concept of parabolic flights during my study inside the faculty’s experimental plane. According to [ref] “Parabolic flights reproduce gravity-free conditions in an aircraft by alternating upward and downward arcs interspersed with level flight. They provide a microgravity environment for scientists to conduct research without going into space”, and “During a parabolic or zero-gravity flight, pilots make a specific manoeuvre, the parabolic manoeuvre, several times to recreate a state of weightlessness inside the aircraft for 22 seconds”.
During that flight in my student time, I was strapped to the chair so I could only watch as my pencil, that I let loose, kept floating in front of me. I couldn’t wait to experience this myself with my whole body, and in 1995 Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels asked me to join a committee to select student proposals for experiments in a parabolic flight, with the primary goal to educate students. It was part of a number of student educational activities by ESA, as a prequel to what later turned into ESA’s Education Office. 23 proposals were selected, with 55 students from 11 countries allowed to fly.
But first…the medical test! As participant of this parabolic flight we had to undergo several medical tests such as the hypoxia simulation, in order to determine if you are fit to fly and do not need supplemental oxygen, similar to what jet pilots and air crew members need to undergo. You are basically put into a simulation chamber where pressure is decreased to a level at for example 25,000 feet. Then, masks have to be removed, and you are asked to keep writing your name on a piece of paper. A typical reaction of the human body is to get somewhat euphoric, and start acting almost as if you were drunk. You can imagine the scene with four students inside a chamber, starting to get euphoric. One of my friends suddenly said, after taking off his mask at low air pressure, ‘It is warm here, no?’. Since it was actually cold, we replied ‘No it isn’t.’ Ten seconds later… ‘It is quite warm here, no?’. ‘No, it still isn’t..’. Many ‘It is warm here’ remarks later you could find the other three students on the floor laughing their heads of. As for myself, I started writing my name down, then again, and again. And after a while I suddenly stopped. ‘What is my last name’ I was thinking.. I remembered, but only after a while of good thinking. Next line. ‘What’s my first name again?’. It was then that the instructor decided to put my mask back on.
The result was that we were all fit to fly! In November 1995, NASA’s KC-135 plane, used to train many astronauts who were about to fly on the International Space Station (and used as well to record the Apollo 13 movie). We boarded the plane with the NASA crew, Wubbo Ockels, as well as current ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers, and took off to do our experiments. When the first parabola started, I stood up and launched my head into the ceiling of the plane, and realised that I still had to get used to microgravity: every tiny force will make you move. Our experiment was a flying one, and one could notice the disturbance from being in microgravity and not exactly zero-g: our experiment started to slowly drift away, giving us only a very limited timeframe to do our experiments. We succeeded though, and 31 parabola’s later we landed back on Valkenburg airport in The Netherlands. A debriefing and several TV interviews later, we realised it was over.
The student sitting on the bottom left of the right picture is a good indication of why the plane is called Vomit Comet
Several commercial companies offer parabolic flights now. Alternatively you can propose microgravity experiments to a national or international agency (e.g. ESA) and I would highly recommend it. It is an experience of a lifetime!
Ciao!
Robin
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