Vomit Comet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vomit Comet is a nickname for any NASA airplane that briefly provides a nearly weightless environment in which to train astronauts, conduct research, and film motion pictures. Versions of this airplane have been operated by NASA's Reduced Gravity Research Program since 1973. NASA prefers the nickname Weightless Wonder for public relations reasons.
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[edit] Explanation
The airplane makes parabolic flight paths, thus allowing the occupants to experience weightlessness during the parabola. In general it is used to train astronauts in zero-g maneuvers, giving them about 25 seconds of weightlessness out of 65 seconds of flight. This often produces nausea due to airsickness, especially in novices, giving the plane its nickname. Astronauts training for the Moon missions practiced walking with 1/6 of their weight to simulate the level of gravity on the Moon.
[edit] History
Twin KC-135 Stratotankers were used until December 2004 and have since been retired. One, a converted Boeing 707 known as NASA 930 was also used by Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment for filming scenes involving weightlessness in the movie Apollo 13; that airplane was retired in 2000 and is now on display at Ellington Field, near the Johnson Space Center. It's estimated to have flown over 58,000 parabolas. The other made its final flight on October 29, 2004, and is permanently stored in the AMARC storage facility in Arizona.
In 2005, NASA replaced the airplane with a McDonnell Douglas C-9B Skytrain II that was formerly owned by KLM Airlines and the United States Navy [1]. The same year, the Zero-Gravity Corporation, a commercial parabolic flight operator which offers parabolic flight to both researchers and adventure tourists, began flying parabolic flights for NASA with Boeing 727 jets.
Since 1984, the ESA and the CNES have flown similar reduced-gravity missions in a variety of airplanes, including NASA's KC-135, a Caravelle, an Ilyushin IL-76 MDK, and, most recently, an Airbus A300 known as the Zero-G, which is flown out of the Bordeaux-Mérignac airport in France.[1]
[edit] Airsickness
According to Reduced Gravity Research Program director John Yaniec, anxiety contributes most to passenger's airsickness. Yaniec gives a rough estimate that of passengers, "one third [become] violently ill, the next third moderately ill, and the final third not at all."
[edit] External links
- Reduced Gravity Research Program
- Interview with John Yaniec
- About the NASA Reduced Gravity Research Program
- "ATLAS aerospace" is a Russian company that offers reduced gravity flights in an "IL-76 MDK" wide-body airplane.
- Virtual tour of the Airbus A-300 Zero-G
[edit] References
- Easton, Pam (Oct. 30, 2004). NASA's weightless aircraft is retired. Associated Press.
- Glen Golightly (May. 15, 2000). Vomit Comet finds a home. Space.com Houston Bureau.
