Exploding Water Balloons In Zero G

ArchAngel21x writes "Experimenters burst water balloons in the low-gravity environment produced aboard a NASA DC 9 aircraft. There are 3 videos available in QuickTime or MPEG." From the site: "The tests were conducted in part to develop the ability to rapidly deploy large liquid drops by rupturing an enclosing membrane. As can be seen from the experiment footage, the initial rupture process is nearly ideal, but the finite size of the balloon material eventually ejects a spray from the drop surface. Then, when the balloon material leaves the drop entirely, it causes a large deformation of the drop (blob) which oscillates throughout the remainder of the test. Calculations suggest that such oscillations will continue for hours before the drop eventually becomes spherical."

Comments

Re:Don't miss these high-speed videos

[putko]

Wow.

Here it is:
http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/uranus_ experiment_000516.html

"Whether it wins the Nebula on Saturday or not, the series will retain a unique place in cinematic history thanks to the first installment, which boasts the first explicit sex scene shot in zero gravity conditions.

The scene was filmed by flying an airplane to an altitude of 11,000 feet. The plane, containing performers Sylvia Saint and Nick Lang, then went into a steep dive, creating the momentary illusion of weightlessness.

Insiders described the filming process as particularly messy from a technical and logistical standpoint.

Budgeting constraints allowed Saint and Lang, who portray astronauts, only one shot at a perfect zero-G take, leaving the actors with only a narrow 20-second window of time in which to launch themselves toward one another and complete the scene. "

Commercial zero-gravity flights

[FleaPlus]

This reminds me of the ZERO-G company, which offers commercial weightless flights on a specially-modified Boeing 727. Folks like Buzz Aldrin and Burt Rutan have flown on it, as well as everyone's favorite slashdotter John Carmack. Carmack posted a description of the flight, along with photos and a video.

I'd love to go myself, but I think it's still a little too rich for my poor grad-student blood.

An Experiment I Would Like to See

[Ed Almos]

I wrote NASA about this but no reply was received.

As we all know, cats always land on their feet when dropped. This task is achieved by rotating the tail in freefall and making use of Newton's third law, as the tail rotates in one direction the cat rotates in the other until its feet are pointing downwards.

How would a cat behave in a zero-g environment?

I suspect that the cat would spin its tail continuously in an effort to reach the right way up, but without access to either the space shuttle or an aircraft that can create zero-g I cannot prove this.

Any takers?

Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary