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Zero Gravity Flights for the Rest of Us
waynegoode writes "Zero G Corporation, whose motto is "Question Gravity", is now offering zero gravity flights to the general public. For $3000 you get training and a 90 minute ride with 15 periods of 25 seconds of low or zero-gravity: 3 1/3 Mars gravity, 3 1/6 Lunar gravity, and 9 zero gravity. Peter Diamandis, the man behind the Ansari X Prize, worked 11 years to get FAA approval. Previously, such flights were available only to astronauts, researchers, and Tom Hanks; although recently flights for the public began Russia for about twice the price. Story also here."
The porn industry would do it first!
Come to think about it, maybe they'll start using this as well, though 25 seconds isn't very long.
Simply take a bottle full of Ipecac and save yourself a few thousand dollars.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
...I just drink copious amounts of Jagermeister. Works like a charm, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper.
"Gravity isn't just a good idea, it's the law" - Author Unknown
Now, to gravitate to the story...
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Consider that sky-diving can also offer you zero-g styled environment and it almost seems like a ripoff. If you were doing serious research it would be worth the cash but just for the sensation of free fall you can do better for less.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Xeni Jardin, over at Boingboing.net has a ticket and is blogging the experience.
Warning! Keep Out of Eyes! Wash Out with Water! Don't Drink Soap! Dilute! Dilute!
That's relatively affordable for the uniqueness of the experience. And hey, maybe even more affordable. Since I write science fiction novels with such low-gravity and free-fall environments, I bet I could write this off! Whoo hoo!
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Just find a road with some small hills and go fast enough to just become airborne. Always got a kick out of that as a kid in the back of my parents station wagon. May be short lived, but it's cheep!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In case anyone's interested, skydiving is a cheaper way of obtaining a similar experience. The primary difference with skydiving is the lack of walls.
That and the big flat thing rushing towards you at ~140 mph.
Remain calm! All is well!
All orbit is is free fall with enough horizontal velocity to match. Orbit simply is fast free fall. Zero-g exists in orbit. How is this different?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Actually this would be quite a different experience than skydiving due to atmospheric drag felt during a dive. Inside the plane all of the air is moving along with you and so there are no drag effects.
The secret to flying is to hurl yourself at the ground and miss. (one of the more amusing ideas from HHGG)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wouldnt you get a similar effect on some of the larger roller coasters? You could ride one 25 times for a days admission to a theme park.
Flying The Vomit Comet Has Its Ups And Downs. NOTE: article deserves props for it's title alone, but it's also very revealing about what getting to Zero G is like. Not sure if I'd want to do it, but it must be a crazy feeling.
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It would be great, the Free Fall flights traveling, make the trips way more enjoyable. It would kick any in-flight movie's ass and I bet no one would complain about the lack of meals.
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You can do this with a single prop plane, it'd be hard to beat 25sec but you can get a good 10sec 0 gravity in one.
Shit, that's about all most of us nerds need :)
Hmmm.
Goddamn, who rated this informative?
:)
1) "anti-gravity space ship", what kind of rubbish is that?
2) Actually according to relativity, there is no way of distguishing between acceleration and gravity. Therefore if I put you in a sealed box and either a) leave you floating in deep space or b) put you in free fall then there is no way of you telling the difference (ok, there is as there will be slight air resistance slowing you down, and you could measure the very tiny difference in gravity between the top and bottom of the box, etc.).
There is always "c) you hit the ground" too of course
but seriously, this really is zero-G for all intents and purposes foras long as they can accalerate you downwards at 9.8m/s
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Well, try to remember (I know this is hard sometimes) that this company is trying to make money. I'm sure they understand the physics of their airplane rides, but to the general public "Zero Gravity" sounds a lot more exotic and exciting than "Free Falling." You can't blame them for trying to market their product.
That should read "Free-Fall Flights for the Rest of Us". Zero Gravity has a very different meaning, and hasn't been an acceptable substitute for "free-fall" in 20+ years.
Bah. This is pedantry. (on slashdot!?)
Astronauts floating in the space shuttle are experiencing 'free fall' rather than 'zero gravity'. But not many people would quibble with using the term 'zero gravity' in that instance.
The zero G experienced on this plane is the same zero G experienced by astronauts in orbiting vehicles.
And skydiving isnt very similar at all - you'll reach terminal velocity quickly and will 'feel' the force of gravity thereafter. Not to mention it's a lot windier. Skydiving on the moon on the other hand... just dont come crying to me when your parachute doesnt work.
Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller rode the Comet. I was even posted on Slashdot: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115312 &cid=9770946
In Penn's article, he mentions another noteworthy Vomit Comet expedition: The filming of the Pr0n movie, "The Uranus Experiment."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I've never gone skydiving before, but I have always imagined that it feels an awful lot like falling- something which I have done. I can tell you that the feeling of weightlessness is very different from the sensation of falling. Maybe falling for quite a while makes all the difference but somehow I just don't see that it would.
Finally, if you have that $3k to spend, why not invest it in a Private Pilot Certificate so you can go out and experience it for yourself whenever you have the hankering?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Don't worry about that. No matter what happens, NASA technicians will most likely be able to recover some useful mission data.
To avoid the possibility any other responders to this thread demonstrate a critical need to be cracked with a cluestick:
What a person experiences in this case is *identical* to what you'd experience in Space.
You don't suddenly leave the Earths gravitational field in orbit and start floating around. You just fall in a parabola that happens to miss the ground.
One would think this was common knowledge, but from the posts on here, its clearly not.
I'm sure you'll call me a heretic, but I'd have to say it's a big *spherical* thing rushing towards you at ~140 mph.
do not read this line twice.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
You have a profoundly flawed understanding of physics. The only difference falling in a plane and falling in an orbiting spacecraft is the air friction. The orbiting spacecraft misses the Earth thanks to it's velocity. The aircraft in this case counterracts the forces on air friction *nothing else*. So you're as weightless as you would be in space, and in fact it is *exactly* like an orbit in a physical sense when you're inside the plane.
The reason the occupants of the plane experience this as a zero-G condition is because they are in freefall. They are moving precisely as they would be moving if they were falling toward the earth without air resistance. You need a plane to accomplish this, because in reality you cannot neglect the air resistance.
You can experience the same condition briefly, simply by jumping in the air. During the time you are in the air, you are in a weighless condition.
If I want to experience a few seconds of 0 gravity ill just fly southwestern airlines again.
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I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
It's a little hard fly like superman on a roller coaster, even if the roller coaster is called "fly like superman roller coaster".
You probably can fly like superman for a little bit if you wiggle out of your harness, it's just the landing would be very unsuperman-like.
I worked for a charter airline, and we were approached by someone wanting to do something like this... probably 1997ish. They wanted to take some of our cargo planes, slap some FedEx PeoplePaks in them, and have them fly these sorts of flights during the day (when cargo planes are normally idle).
The scary thing is that most cargo planes are cargo planes because they're too freakin' OLD for sane passengers to fly in.
Now, okay, I'm no aeronautical engineer, but I can't imagine taking those creaky old (many older than I am; see sig) birds and doing *anything* weird with them. The whole time I was in freefall, I'd be thinking, "okay, is this going to stop, or did the wings fall off?"
Okay, so the things would be all but unloaded, compared to hauling cargo, but still... seems like the stresses would be *different*. (Their FAQ doesn't exactly answer this straightforwardly, either.)
Hmm. Nowhere on their website am I finding the tail number for their bird. Could be one of our 727-200's, but the airline I worked for hasn't updated its website since, well, about the time I left in 1998. Oh, wait. Nope, looks like it's Amerijet N994AJ.
Heh. The reason the Zero-G website only shows the left side of the plane is because the right side is a Diet Rite ad.
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The Zero group has been offering 0-g flights in Kiruna, Sweden, using a special built russian air-plane since last year, and made their first "space-tourist"-flights this year in April (at least they were supposed to but I couldn't find a source actually confirming it with my 5 minutes of googling...). One of the people from there made a presentation at my university in December and said they charged ~$/4000 for it. They are also supposed to used special equipment and lighting inside the cabin to make the flight even more interesting than just having low gravity.
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