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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.
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!
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!
Sky-diving offers a very very windy free-fall experience that I can't imagine is really comparable at all. Maybe it's close enough at just under 1/10 the price (locally sky diving costs about $200 in Colorado for a first-time thing).
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
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
Consider that sky-diving can also offer you zero-g styled environment
Not really, because in skydiving the local atmosphere is not falling at the same rate as you. I would expect the sensations to be very different.
Kill, Tux, kill!
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.
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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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.
Yes you can, and I find it quite fun. But there is even more fun in watching the faces of your passengers while they dodge the various pieces of debris that is laying on the cabin floor of most rental planes (chewing gum wrappers, old pencils and pens, loose change and the occasional condom package from someone's mile high club attempt). These formally forgotten items once relived of the burden of gravity that is keeping them out of sight and out of mind under feet suddenly fill the cabin of the plane like the cloud of debris around a tornado. Your passengers now overloaded with experiences totally outside of anything they have ever experienced before become totally convinced in those few seconds that the aircraft is going to pieces around them, and most become total quivering blobs of jelly while calling out loudly to their deity to save them.
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.
"pardon me son, did we land or were we shot down?"
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
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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