Sunday, March 26, 2000
Weightless ride churns reporter's stomach, but thrill is worth it
BY TIM BONFIELD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
In the months leading up to the flight, many people asked me, “Why would a sane person volunteer to ride something nicknamed the "Vomit Comet?' ” My answer: How could a person pass up the chance?
At the invitation of the University of Kentucky, I followed a group of engineering students as they prepared and flew an experiment aboard NASA's KC-135A zero-gravity training plane. As a result, I felt the unforgettable sensation of 10 minutes in orbit, 25 seconds on the moon and 25 seconds on Mars.
Yes, I now know exactly why they call it the Vomit Comet. But throwing up was a tiny price to pay to experience, however briefly, what it feels like to be an astronaut.
The NASA people told us that no amusement park ride comes close to the intensity of this trip. They weren't kidding.
Flight day began at 7 a.m. March 17 with heavily overcast skies. Our team included 20 passengers, two each from eight schools plus four journalists.
Getting to this point required passing a NASA flight physical, attending a day-long course on aerospace physiology (which included an open-book test), and spending about an hour inside a test chamber that simulates the loss of cabin pressure at high altitude.
The fliers gathered at a small office next to the runway for pre-flight safety briefings, to be fitted for our olive green flight suits and to be issued anti-nausea medication called Scop-dex.
This stuff is supposedly the best anti-nausea drug out there. Ha!
The plane is a modified Boeing 707 painted white with a blue stripe and a NASA logo on the tail. Its official name is the “Weightless Wonder.” Everybody else calls it the Vomit Comet.
Inside, the jet has been emptied of all its seats except a few rows in the tail section. The student experiments, loaded the day before, are strapped to the floor. The long, windowless cabin area features a spongy white floor and white padding on the walls and ceiling.
We took off at about 9:15 a.m. for a two-hour flight over the Gulf of Mexico.
With a deep roar of the engines, the plane began the first of 32 rollercoaster-like arcs at angles as steep as 45 degrees. Oddly, from the inside it felt like the plane was still flying straight and level.
There was no sensation of going up or down hill. With the steep angles, one might think passengers would tumble toward the ends of the plane. But we didn't. The plane's acceleration kept us pushed against the floor.
Cameras easily capture the weightless part, but that's only half the story. Pictures can't show the intensity of feeling the plane pull through the bottom of the parabolic arc at 1.8 G.
Your body feels twice as heavy as normal. Your arms get noticeably harder to lift, and any sort of rapid head movement can make you feel very dizzy, very fast.
The crew keeps the interior lights dim during the high-G part of the flight. Then, at the peak of the parabola, the interior lights come up ... and whoop! All that weight just goes away.
Everybody grins in absolute amazement as their bodies rise off the floor. This is it. This is zero G.
The long cabin that looked mostly empty during high-G suddenly fills with writhing arms and legs. Bodies bounce off the walls, off the ceiling, off each other.
In zero G, a mere toe lift or finger push will push you right up to the ceiling. Even though I tried to limit my motions, I found myself flipping heels over head without even trying.
Most space movies I've seen show weightlessness in extreme slow motion as if everything is happening underwater. But floating in zero G isn't slow at all.
If you push hard, you go fast. When you hit something, you hit it with full force.
The weightless time lasts a scant 25 seconds. You know an arc is nearly over when the lead test director John Yaniec, yells “Coming out! Feet down!”
Less than three seconds later, you drop to the floor whether your feet are down or not. Then you immediately feel the power of another 1.8 G pull.
The shifting sensations were so extreme I couldn't concentrate on the things I planned to do. I brought a pocket-sized camera and a slinky to play with, but forgot about both after the first parabola.
Soon enough, I learned first-hand why this plane has a nickname. By the fifth parabola, I had become “stomach aware.” By parabola six, I was sweating a lot.
By parabola seven, I knew I was going to get sick. By parabola eight, I was a “kill,” one of 14 for the flight, a tie for the highest number during the two-week trip.
The crew moved me to the seats at the back of the plane to join the other casualties. But being strapped in didn't help escape the churning feeling. By parabola 13, I was thinking, "My God, there's 32 of these!'
It got better, though.
For many of the remaining parabolas I felt well enough to observe and enjoy the flight. Even strapped in, just letting my legs and arms float around felt pretty wild.
After 30 zero G parabolas, we did one lunar run at one-sixth gravity and one Martian run at one-third gravity. On the moon, some students did pushups with others piled on their backs.
Not me. I thought the transitions to partial gravity were even more stomach-churning than flipping to zero gravity.
It was rough, but how many people can say they threw up on Mars?
Photo gallery
Zero G is the ride of a lifetime
InfoGraphic: How plane gets Zero G
Weightless ride churns reporter's stomach, but thrill is worth it
As the oxygen runs out, the mind runs slower
NASA needs to go boldly, hero of moon program says
Students get a look behind the scenes
How to be an astronaut
