Is there a place that can simulate weightlessness?

hi there, i've always been fascinated by the feeling of weightlessness. is there a place that can simulate it for humans? do we have the technology to do it? if we do, is it open to the public?

 

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no there isnt, at leaste not yet. they do and a anti-grav machine that will float objeccts as large asa frog of quarter. though there is only one- a few int he world.
it is possible to make one large enough to float a human, though it would be very expencive. but till then, go swimming!

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thanks, dexter ... i guess that was far-fetched wishful thinking on my part =)

yeah, i do love swimming, that's da closest thing for me ...

 

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Hi Odette, Dexter,

Actually there are two "places" on earth where weightlessness can be experienced:

• NASA rebuilt an airplane (I believe it was a B-17 or some other B-xx series airplance) that allows you to simulate weightlessness for about 40 seconds. The airplane climbs up to a high altitude, and then commences a parabolic dive. During this dive, you float inside the airplane, simulating weightlessness. This plane is nicknamed the "Vomit Comet" for .. ehr... you know.
  
• I'm not sure if this one already exists, but I once heard/read that the Japanese were planning to convert an old mine-shaft to a weightlessness-simulator. An elevator would simply drop down the shaft, once again giving a zero-g experience. Ofcourse the elevator brakes when it nears the bottom of the shaft.

I don't believe any of the two are publicly accessible. It's interesting to note however, that the Vomit Comet was used to shoot the spacescenes from the "Apollo 13" movie (starring Tom Hanks). I guess if you have some $10.000 to spare that you can take a ride on the Vomit Comet -- I wouldn't recommend it though, given the plane's nickname

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Bye!

Crisp


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heey .... das cool! now for da $10,000 ... hmmm ... where's my wallet ... *sigh* ... i think i'll just dream for free =)

 

"Vomit Comet" (it's a KC-135, by the way) is often loaned for college and sometimes high school student teams to perform weightless experiments, but NASA won't sel/i> rides for money. However, Russian Space Agency has a much more capitalist spirit. Here is where you can book your ride:
http://www.spaceadventures.com/adventures/zerog/

Space Adventures is a company which sells rides on high performance Russian military planes.

 

Dang, I messed up my HTML codes. Anyway, zero-gravity ride is $5400. I think that includes hotel in Moscow, but not the plane ticket there.

 

There is another alternative. A company based in Austria, Paul's Parabelflug, will take people up for less than $1,000.00. May be slightly more now depending on how the euro is doing. They were out of action for a while because their plane broke down, but they have just resumed flights.

 

It wasn't so much an antigravity device as it was a powerful magnetic field. It evokes non ferromagnetic objects (water, frogs olives ect...) to become magnets if the strength of the magnet is high enough. If we had a very powerful sustainable magnetic field focused in a human sized chamber, we could float too. Too bad its too hard to make at this point.

 

Rollercoasters and elevators

 

there are actually quite a few versions of a ride I know as "the drop of doom" in parks all over north america. It basically drops you from a height in what is essentially a standing roller coaster cart. The longer the drop the longer the sensation of weightlessness but it amounts to a few seconds at most. It's really cool though and probably the closest you'll get to it any time soon. If you live near a big city there's a good chance a ride like this can be found there.

BTW - if you ever try these rides make sure to have a penny, rubber ball, bean bag (anything sufficiently heavy that won't blow away and light enough that it won't hurt anyone) in your hand and just as the ride starts to fall, open your hand at chest height. If you time it just right the object will float in front of you for a couple of seconds, it's pretty neat.

 

There are now zero-g labs that operate on the same principle as the "drop of doom" rides - they're using them to make pure forms of glass.

 

DAMN! they must have a seriously long drop available if they actually have the time to manufacture something during the fall. Are they in old mine shafts or something?

do you have any links? I haven't heard of these before, sounds interesting.

 

http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/zero-g/index.html

There's a really tall one they were using for the glass manufacture that was in the news recently, but I can't remember where/what it is.

 

Skydiving would be a way to get the effects of being weightless as you plummet to earth at over 160 MPH if you want to "feel" that condition on the cheap.

Going scuba diving is a close way to also "feel' that sort of sensation as you float around underwater.

Whenever I take certain prescribed medications I feel as though I'm floating in my mind, so drugs can simulate that "feeling" also.

 

at the peak of the swing on a kids playground swing, you are weightless for a fraction of a second. And its cheap!

 

i thought the termanal volocity for a human was like 120 MPH

 

depends wether your arms and legs are out or in but that's about right, what's your point tho? you don't actually have to be falling that fast to experience weightlessness, just 9.8 m/s/s. Terminal velocity is just the point you that stop accelerating.

 

With arms / legs outstretched 120 mph is terminal velocity.

However, speeds of over 200-300 mph have been reached.

(http://hypertextbook.com/facts/JianHuang.shtml)

 

While testing pressure suits for prodject Mercury, a US airforce test pilot/nutter hurled himself towards earth from 102,800 feet. Still the world record i belive. his terminal velocity was emense due to the rarified atmosphere. Anybody know how fast? i heard that he broke the sound barrier!!

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