Last Thursday, I got to fly on the Vomit Comet for the 5th time. As far as I can figure, I’ve flown 170 parabolas in total, spread across three different airplanes — the NASA KC-135, the NASA C-9, and the Zero G Corporation’s 727. This time around, I was helping a team of teachers from California. They were doing simple experiments that their fourth and fifth grade students developed.
One of them involved two balloon rocket cars. They tested them on the ground, then tested it in zero gravity to see if it behaved differently or moved down the track faster. The balloon proved challenging to inflate on the plane, since using the bellows was hard to do without the “equal and opposite reaction” forcing you in the other direction. I was the timer, and that was a much easier job. I just had to hang on to the glove box to stabilize myself, and press start and stop!
We finished working on the experiment with a few parabolas still to go, and I was able to take time to enjoy it for a moment. The parabolas go by SO fast that if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself back on the ground and barely remember what it was really like! One thing I made sure to do this time around was float in the air, completely on my own. As a technical mentor, I’m always mindful of my role — I don’t let myself go bouncing off the walls of the airplane because I’m supposed to be the responsible one, helping the team ensure that their science gets done. Because of that, I’ve almost always got a hand or a foot braced against something, or snaked through a cargo strap to keep me in place. It’s hard to feel truly weightless when you’re still holding on to something. This time, I pulled my arms and legs towards me, let go of everything else, and just floated for a moment. The sensation is almost impossible to really describe. It’s like floating in the middle of a pool, and yet there’s no pressure from the water or sensation of moving through fluid. You’re just…weightless. Like the name says. No weight.
Heidi, Ashley and I all work in the same division and were all technical mentors that happened to be flying with our teams that day, so we made sure to get a group photo during one of the parabolas towards the end of the flight.
