NASA Offering Free Zero Gravity Flights

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that NASA is offering free zero-g flight time for anyone with a viable proposal for emerging space technologies. While NASA will provide the flight time, approved projects will be responsible for all other expenses. "NASA's Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training, or FAST, program helps emerging technologies mature through testing in a reduced gravity environment. To prepare technologies for space applications, it is important to demonstrate they work in a zero-gravity environment. This unique testing environment can be provided in an aircraft flying repeated parabolic trajectories which create brief periods of zero gravity. The aircraft also can simulate reduced-gravity levels similar to those found on the surface of the moon or Mars."

Comments

Fights?

[HetMes]

Immediately, Chinese action movie images went through my head. But alas, no Crouching Tiger in space just yet. Would be cool, though, Zero-G Fights.

Re:Fights?

[MichaelSmith]

This unique testing environment can be provided in an aircraft flying repeated parabolic trajectories which create brief periods of zero gravity.

Speaking of mental images, I cracked up imagining them trying to choreograph a fight sequence in such a parabolic flight: What happens as gravity returns and they are still floating in the air?

Exactly the same thing as when gravity is there all the time.

Re:Fights?

[feyhunde]

I was extremely lucky to be involved in the NASA SOAR program the last year the KC-135 was used. (Now it's a DC-9) SOAR is the free program for undergraduate research to be involved with Microgravity experiments. Something like 32 student groups a year get to use it in 2 week periods. NASA is also good at about getting multiple schools involved. Everyone from MIT to WVU and Oregon State is involved. Back to the topic. What happens isn't a sharp fall, it takes a small amount of time to pull out of it, so you don't quite fall normally. And then once you get up to 1G you then go up to 2G in a short time. The first and last sets of parabolas are also a different type designed to replicate Lunar and Martian gravity.

"Zero gravity"

[julesh]

I wish people would stop referring to this as zero gravity, which is a totally ridiculous name for it. As is the name "microgravity" I've seen used. Let's call it what it is: freefall.

Re:"Zero gravity"

[Opportunist]

Isn't microgravity what makes people participate in American Idol?

Snideness aside, you know that things need a catchy term. "Zero Gravity", while not technically correct (because there IS gravity and if the plane wasn't there you'd notice it as soon as the contact with the object exhibiting this gravity effect on the object that is you (the former object being the planet Earth) is reestablished, people understand what is meant when "zero gravity" is mentioned. Basically the "zero gravity" experienced in space flights is not really zero gravity either, it's just that the gravity of the planet you circle around is in balance with the velocity of the space craft. Essentially, you're falling around the planet.

But do you want to write such a paragraph every time you want to explain the phenomenon? Because it ain't really "freefall" either.

Re:"Zero gravity"

[mrfrostee]

"Microgravity" is the correct term for the background acceleration levels present on the International Space Station, and is commonly used by researchers who care about the exact levels of disturbance on their experiments (even researchers on the Vomit Comet).

Gravity gradients and small disturbances (hard drive motors, astronauts bumping the walls, etc.) make the broad spectrum acceleration noise floor on the ISS about 10 micro-Gs. Peaks caused by refrigerator pumps, maneuvering jets, Soyuz and Shuttle dockings, etc. are much higher.

More information is at NASA Principal Investigator Microgravity Services: http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/MSD/MSD_htmls/pims_products.html

Re:"Zero gravity"

[mbone]

In orbit, the preferred term is "microgravity". Manned space flights are notoriously prone to bursts of acceleration, but no spacecraft is acceleration free, and they all tend to vibrate a lot (causing acceleration to the pieces, if not the whole).

Basically, every panel, every antenna, every boom, has one or more resonance frequencies. Every time something shakes the spacecraft (such as going from dark to sunlight, or vice-versa, or a thruster burst, or a piece of equipment being moved), every one of those spacecraft components will be excited somewhat, and each will vibrate at its resonance frequency, maybe for weeks. These motions can be clearly seen in RF carrier phase from spacecraft; and for most spacecraft they are always present (shaking occurs more frequently than their damping time). Theis has to be considered anytime you have an experiment that does require micro-gravity.

Will they also swallow the cost...

[Peet42]

...of fitting proper lighting to the plane and painting the inside of the hull green so I can shoot some "proper" space footage in there and CGI the backgrounds in at a later date?

Quite a generous offer

[gmueckl]

We are participating in one of ESA's scientific parbolic flight campaigns and I therefore had the chance to get some insight about the costs involved. The participation fee alone is about 60.000 Euros and more than twice the costs we had for building the experiments. For this we get 90 parabolas with 20 seconds of microgravity for experimenting.

Assuming that the cost structure for NASA's campaign participants is similar, NASA's offer to let these teams participate for free seems to be quite generous. Is there anyone here with more details?

Re:Well, nothing much happens

[cyberworm]

In your view the OP's experiment isn't complete until he gets to whack you with a stick. That should be worth a few million.