Monday, October 4, 2010

Zero G Movie

Here is a 10 minute movie of me flying in the Zero G airplane - also known as the vomit comet. The plane starts at about 25,000 ft and pulls the nose up to 45 degrees causing about 1.8 times the force of gravity. You can see me tossing the little cube and how fast it falls. The video is real time. Once the airplane is at about 45 degrees nose up the pilots start to pitch the plane over in such a way that inside there everyone is in free fall and it feels like zero gravity. We got only 20 to 30 seconds of zero gravity before the plane is 45 degrees nose down and they have to start pulling up again. The plane reaches about 35,000 ft at the top of the parabola. It is very odd to look out of a plane window and see the horizon at a 45 degree angle!

This video is from the first 10 minutes of my second day of flying. You can see me still getting comfortable to weightlessness and tossing the cube around. Keeping busy kept me from getting too sick. Turning my head during the 1.8 g pull out caused a lot of disorientation so you can see me holding my head very still when sitting on the ground. During my first day the zero g time made me instantly feel like I was upside down. On the second day it was much more fun and it was an interesting and new experience. It was fun to float around, but hard to control myself. I was afraid of kicking other people on the plane.

I hope to gather a couple of better videos during the next few weeks.