Talk:Vomit Comet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Parabolic or elliptic?
I have always thought that a parabolic orbit occurs when the free moving body has precisely the escape velocity. An airplane cannot reach that speed, so the orbit should be elliptic in order to produce weightlessness. Who can comment? −Woodstone 10:15:12, 2005-08-29 (UTC)
- You dont have an orbit at all, you're not applying satllite theories. What you need to feel weightless is to accelerate towards the earth with 9.81m/s^2 = 1g. If you do this with an elevator, you'll have a straight line flight. If you take a plane, and have constant velocity forewards, and add constant acceleration downwards, you'll end up flying a parabola. See Trajectory for more info. demo 11:09, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
You get a parabolic trajectory in a homogeneous force field. The Earth's gravity is directed towards the center of Earth and diminishes with distance, so both size and direction vary. For a feeling of weightlessness, the movement must follow this acceleration at every point of its trajectory. It should be indeed a (fraction of) an orbit (that would intersect Earth if prolonged). −Woodstone 17:12:48, 2005-08-30 (UTC)
- The Weightless Wonder falls only about eight thousand feet at a time. Earth's gravitational acceleration does not vary substantially over such a short distance, so you do get a parabola. The tiny amount of variance is lost in the noise, since the Weightless Wonder's trajectory is also disrupted by air turbulence, the flexion of the plane's body, and other factors.
- Free fall occurs when an object experiences only one force: its own weight. So an object in orbit is in free fall, but so is an object that has been dropped and is falling toward the Earth in a vacuum. Not all free-falling objects are in orbits. The Weightless Wonder is in free fall, but it is not in an orbit.
- "Orbit" is defined, as 'the path an object makes around another object while under the influence of a source of centripetal force'. The Weightless Wonder is not going "around" Earth during its trajectories in any meaningful way; it's just falling toward earth (and continuing forward by momentum), like a thrown ball. Tossing a ball forward and upwards would also gives you a parabolic trajectory. -Corvi 00:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] end date
The opening paragraph says the Vomic Comet flew from 1973 to 1995, and then later in the article it mentions events in the 2000s. Which is correct? -- nae'blis (talk) 19:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] changed aircraft to airplane
I changed aircraft to airplane throughout, because the Vomit Comets have always had wings.--Jtir 15:03, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Why is it called the Vomit Comet?
As this anon noticed, the article never explicitly says why these airplanes are called the Vomit Comet. --Jtir 03:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
-
- Uhhh, well, many, many people have a physical reaction to their first freefall experience. Need I go on? Fan-1967 03:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Moon Missions?
It says that astronauts trained for the moon, but also that it started in 1973. Isn't that too late for the moon missions, wasn't the last landing in 72?
[edit] I think this doesn't have the right title
This should be called "weightless flight" or something like that and the "vomit comet" name just mentioned as an alternative name.. Also vomit comet should redirect to this article with its new name. Perhaps an article with the proper name already exists and must be linked or merged? One of the disadvantages of this naming is that other languages will have a hard time linking to this page (as only in english does it have such an "alternative" name... perhaps only in certain limited english-speaking regions). Also.. It's not the "official" name, and it makes a duplicate article more likely. --Guruclef 13:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
- I agree that the article should be renamed, because it also describes the ESA's A300 Zero-G Program. Thus the subject of the article is broader than the NASA airplane. The article could also be expanded to mention commercial operators of reduced gravity aircraft, such as Zero-Gravity Corporation and "ATLAS aerospace", which is a Russian company that offers reduced gravity flights in an "IL-76 MDK" wide-body airplane. [1]
- NASA uses the term "Reduced gravity aircraft", so I will nominate that for the new name. [2]
- BTW, Weightlessness already links to this article. --Jtir 20:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
- I think it's important to figure out what the topic of this article is. Is it to explain just the nickname "Vomit Comet", or NASA's zero-G flight program, or zero-G flight programs in general? The article Weightlessness has a summary of zero-G flight programs, which says that it's redundant for this article to try to do the same thing. I'd suggest a separate article on Zero-G flight programs, to cover all such programs. Then this article can become just a short explanation of the "Vomit Comet" nickname, or perhaps link to an article describing the history of NASA zero-G flight programs. The Weightlessness article could also link to the zero-G flight programs article. --Jdlh | Talk 20:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
