The flight that brings space weightlessness to earth

By Sue Nelson
6 February 2018
“Five, four, three, two, one…”

Not many aircraft captains give their passengers a rocket launch-style countdown before take-off, but this is no ordinary plane. For starters, everyone on board, apart from the crew, is a scientist and has passed a full medical check – including a heart assessment. This is not a trip for nervous fliers.

“Pull up. Thirty, 40…”

The captain’s instructions refer to a manoeuvre so challenging it requires three pilots to be in the cockpit. The aircraft pulls up from a level flight into an incline at increasingly steep angles of 30, then 40 degrees.

In the middle section, where the windows are blocked by a padded wall, everyone is either standing, sitting on the floor or lying down because the seats in this Airbus A310 have all been removed.

Several scientists are wearing caps covered in electrodes. Others, weirdly, have their arms inside open-ended boxes, and they appear to have three hands (more on this later). Many are staring intently at washing machine-sized metal contraptions with switches and screens. I am lying on an area of floor cordoned off by netting.

Scientists on the flight

The scientists on board are taking part in a dozen different experiments (Credit: Sue Nelson)
Everyone is perfectly still because it feels as if a weight is pressing down, harder and harder, on every part of our bodies. Fortunately, in a few seconds, we will all experience something extraordinary.

“… 50. Injection.”

At 50 degrees the magic begins. The plane is injected into a parabolic arc. The noise level suddenly drops and the tone of the engine shifts higher as the aircraft free falls up and over the top of the arc. My body’s heaviness, increased by gravitational forces of 1.8G on the way up so it felt almost twice its normal weight, disappears. I am being drawn inexplicably upwards. Weightless.

Read more at : http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180206-the-flight-that-brings-space-weightlessness-to-earth