Not about India: My "Zero-G Experience"

This is not about India; however it is, in a way, about adventurous travel, so I guess it is not entirely out of place.

Many of you who know me realize that I have ALWAYS been interested in space. I followed all the Mercury flights, Gemini and Apollo. I was finally an adult for the space shuttle and I applied to be a mission specialist astronaut (no luck) and went to Florida to see the very first shuttle launch. I ran to 2001 A Space Odyssey when it first came out, and assumed I would be visiting a hotel in orbit (if not the moon) during my life. Well, it does not look like that is going to happen. But I can experience weightlessness, or Zero-G. I decided to give myself a Zero-G flight as a 60th birthday present.

The company that sells these is also called “ZeroG”, but it is a division of Space Adventures, the company that sends “Space Tourists” to the space station. How cool is that? Not being a .COM billionaire, I can't afford the $millions it would take for an orbital flight, though.

They call my flight “A Zero G Experience”. I signed up a few months ago. ZeroG (the company) used to fly from the shuttle landing facility at Kennedy Space Center, and I would have gone to Florida for that experience. However, they stopped using the SLF, and I saw no reason to travel to Florida in the summer to fly from some random airport. They have occasional flights from elsewhere and I chose one flying from Boston, only an hour or so from home.

Brief physics lesson to explain the words I use: Any large mass (say the earth) attracts things to it, and that is called gravity. Gravity does not stop. It can't be "shielded". It just gets less and less the further from the source you get. People in orbit are not outside the earth's gravity. In fact, it is the earth's gravity that pulls them around into a circle. So Zero Gravity is a totally wrong name, although it has caught on. What astronauts really experience is weightlessness. What is weight? It is what you feel when gravity pulls you one way, but something resists it. Like the ground, or the floor of an airplane in level flight. In orbit, astronauts and the space shuttle and the space station are all doing exactly what gravity is trying to make them do…they are not resisting. Thus, they are "weightless". In a flight like mine, you take off and when you want to be weightless, you follow a course that is exactly what gravity is trying to make you do. What is that? Go down! So what we do is fly level, then nose up and follow an arc (technically a parabola or a tiny section of an ellipse). Throw a ball up into the air, and it follows a parabola, and an ant on the ball feels weightless while it is flying. We do the same. Of course we pull out of the arc before we hit the ground :-) We get about 30 seconds of weightlessness. If we follow a more shallow arc, we get lighter weight. Ok? So I'm going to try to call the company (and sometimes the terms they use) ZeroG and the actual experience weightlessness.

The time finally came on June 26th. The day before my experience I was freaking out a bit: What if they have lost my medical form? What if I need this, what if I need that? I finally found copies of everything that I had already sent and put them in my car. Since we have to go through a normal security routine, I also brought my passport (NH driver licenses do not conform to RealID, meaning that the TSA might not accept them…I’m not sure if that is a real worry, but no sense taking chances…)

I started out the day eating fairly lightly (coffee, toast, a very little peanut butter), then left for the Boston Courtyard Marriott near Logan airport around 9AM. Of course I got to the hotel around 10:15 when I had to be there by noon. I sat around in the lobby reading the paper and watching people who were walking and sitting around, trying to decide if they were members of my group. I was right on the two that I guessed yes on. Both were my age-ish. One guy I heard on the phone talking a bit so I was pretty sure. The other somehow looked military…crew-cut, tall, thin, powerful, no-nonsense seeming.

I went to the meeting room at 11:30 and a lot of people were already there. Let me mention a few, although I met/learned about some of them later:

1) The coaches: Kristin and (???? Male).

2) Krysta who may sometimes coach, but this time stayed on the ground and did t

he organizing. I had talked to her on the phone also.

3) The photographer

4) A security person who ch

ecked IDs, etc. They seemed to be part of the ZeroG group; she knew something about it anyway.

And for fellow passengers:

1) An Egyptian TV star (or maybe host) with his entourage (mostly film crew). If you have ever seen NESN’s “Outdoors with Charlie Moore” or even an ad for it, picture Charlie with an accent and looking way more middle-eastern but doing his normal antics. I imagined this guy and the crew were going to be trouble, kind of taking over. For the most part the ZeroG people seemed to handle them ok, although another flyer in the same group as this guy (see later) said they took away from the experience.

2) A couple who (I think together) organize “events”. They were both very friendly; he had a pair of things like weighted socks that he does sort of flipping around tricks with (bolos?). She was dressed in a shiny silver gown with gray leather highlights. One of the events she regularly organizes is “Yuri’s Day” to commemorate Yuri Gagarin’s first human orbital flight. Apparently one of the events they had was a futuristic clothing design contest, and she was wearing the winner. She got special dispensation to wear it rather than the standard flight suits. Unfortunately she was not in my group, so I did not get to pay much attention to how it and she reacted to ZeroG, if you catch my drift.

3) A man, older than I am, who worked for Cessna Aircraft out of Witchita. He and I rode the bus together, but we were in different groups so we did not get to sit together or fly together on the plane.

4) A couple, of which the man was having his birthday today. She gave him the flight for a present and he only found out THIS MORNING!

5) A woman named Carly who works for the Boston Herald. Her official job editing, headline writing, etc but she also free-lances some stories and that is what she was doing here.

We each were given a pack with our name that contained our flight suits, a T-shirt, socks, and a wristband. The idea of the socks is that you take off your shoes and socks during the experience and wear theirs; the socks and wrist band are color-coded for your group so (the coaches said) if you drift away in weightlessness, they’ll know where to throw you back to. The flight suits go on over our clothes, and we all put them on pretty quickly. I felt pretty cool in mine! Eventually, I took nearly everything out of my pockets and left it in the pack, which stayed in the hotel under guard. The flight suits had pre-installed name tags. When I got my suit on, I noticed it was upside down, so I fixed. I soon realized that it was intentional. Tradition says (? how old a tradition?) that you wear your tag upside-down until you have actually been weightless.

They had a spread of “zero-g friendly” snacks for us. The spread consisted of a big bowl of cut banana pieces, a big pile of toast (with jelly and butter available), and surprisingly to me, a basket of croissants, rolls, etc. (No big sticky cinnamon buns). Also water, what looked like cranberry juice and one other, not orange. In fact they specifically recommended against orange in the written instructions (acid). I was amazed at the things that had fat, but they said they were reducing protein for quicker digestion. Whatever…I had a bunch of dry toasts, some water, and a (small) bowl of banana pieces.

We had a 30-minute training (which included a semi-normal FAA safety lecture) video before we left. There were a few special rules: No jumping (you’ll crash into the ceiling) no swimming motions (you’ll hit someone). Lie down flat on the deck when they pull out of the parabola (you get about twice your weight at that point). Follow the instructions of the employees and the captain. And they especially pointed out that the oxygen masks were in a different place than usual and because of this, the FAA made them emphasize how serious it was if the plane looses pressure and that you really REALLY have to find a mask. There are even special places in the “flying” area where they have masks.

They wanted us to leave most of our stuff in the hotel (guarded) so I asked if I had to read anything…answer was no, so I left my reading glasses (which I normally have hanging around my neck). This

was a pretty good decision, although there were some materials in the seat back that I might have read if I could. I was happy enoug

h not to have them floating up around my face later!

Then we got on the bus and headed for the airport. We did not go to one of the standard airline gates…we went to the Logan FBO (Fixed Base Operator…where most non-airline flights go). Here the FBO people did another (serious) security check. X-ray, metal detector, the whole deal. All except that for some reason we did not have to take off our shoes. ?????

We were put onto ANOTHER bus to ride the 50 meters to the plane, pictures were taken, and then we boarded via the tail stairs. That was pretty cool! I’m not sure if I have ever used the tail stairs on a 727. You walk under the big pipe that brings air from the intake at the base of the tail to engine number 2 at the very back.

The plane is a pretty normal 727--it was been modified slightly; they said something about modifying the hydraulics to make them work better in weightlessness. My friend from Cessna said that even Cessnas are already certified to work between a range of something like +3 and -1 Gs, so the 0 to +2 Gs that we do are well within a normal plane’s capabilities.

Actually the “slightly” modified applies to mechanical changes. The interior is very different from a normal airliner. First, they must have started with a freighter because there were no windows except at the emergency exits. Next, there were only about 6 or 7 rows of seats at the back. The rest of the plane was all open and covered with bumpers like you see around the walls in a gym or something. In the seating area, there was none of the plastic walls and partitions that make the interior of passenger planes look as it does. It looked like it would have been bare metal except maybe someone taped/glued some white sheet plastic around the interior, and an extra strip of white tape over the rivets. So no little air vents to reach up and turn on, no oxygen masks to drop, no call buttons, no PA system (they used a bullhorn). Also the lighting was kind of crude. In the seating area, there were little bulbs behind some metal screens. In the “flying” (or floating) area there were some tubes that looked like they had bright LEDs in them up against the padding. Also in the flying area were a couple of ropes, one on each side near the ceiling and some mounts (at the same location…maybe 2 or 3 on each side) for video cameras.

Takeoff was completely normal, except that (1) the A/C did not really kick in until we took off. It was warm but tolerable before that. And (2) noise! Apparently they removed some of the noise insulation in a commercial

airliner. The engines and air noise seemed louder than usual.

After we were up and level, they came by to take our shoes (and socks) and had us put on our official socks. Of course we already had on our flight suits.

Then out to the flying area, and of course a group photo:

Once we got there we could see the empty area was actually divided by colored tape into Gold, Silver, and Blue zones to match our socks. We divided into our areas and sat on the floor to wait. When the time came we got a 3, 2, 1 minute warning and then the command to “get down”.

We lay on our back and sure enough our weight seemed to increase. Not really uncomfortable, but more than an elevator. Imagine a carnival ride like the Tilt-a-Whirl without the tilting or spinning; just the pressure (and it was smooth). Then suddenly the pressure decreased (slowly) but it clearly went back through “normal” and back to “light”. This was the “martian gravity (about 1/3rd weight) parabola. It was a little odd; yep, I could do pushups easily! Before we knew it, we heard “feet down”, and back on the floor and back to 2G.

Next time when the pressure let up, it was clearly even less! This time, it was lunar gravity (about 1/6th). Now this was cool. There were two of these parabolas. The first time, I just messed around. The second one, rather than do the silly pushups with one finger, that they suggested, I pushed myself up to my feet (yes, just a hard push with the arms swung me right up) and tried walking. Cool! It looks just like the lunar astronauts (I imagined). You could not really walk in the normal way. I can’t imagine having dozens of kilograms of life support machinery on my back too like they had!)

Now the big moment: Back on the floor. 2G (was it higher? I don’t know). And then…weight peels away, back to 1.5, back to 1, back to Mars, back to lunar and kept going back to …ZERO! I started to push up and was disappointed that I went back to the floor. Then realized we just hadn’t reached 0 yet. The change was very gentle. When we were at 0, the feeling was just amazing! No weird stomach feeling…just pure comfort and joy. I’ve been thinking how to describe it, and the closest I can come is that it feels as though it should be the result of something violent…but it’s NOT violent. It seems a bit like going over a sharp drop in the road quickly in a car, or over the top of a big wave in a boat, but those are so momentary and you have such a feeling of motion. With ZeroG, there was none of that speed and violent motion feeling. In fact, no motion feeling at all! It was just gentle!

Each weightless segment was said to be 30 seconds. It actually seemed shorter, sometimes. I really should have had a better plan about what I wanted to do with several of them. I actually did have a few ideas; I wanted to try to feel what sleeping might feel like. I wanted to close my eyes and stay still. It turns out to be difficult to stay still with your eyes closed. That is largely because there are lots of other people sailing around. What I ended up doing was getting up near the ceiling and holding onto the guide rope near the wall. I still had a few people hit me, but that was minor. It was very peaceful and comfortable. But when I opened my eyes, I found that I had rotated around the point where I was holding on without noticing. I could not imagine why the floor

was UP. I was so totally disoriented! That was fun too, mainly because it is so unusual!

During another segment, I tried to test out a standard science-fiction aphorism: Everyone who reads Robert Heinlein knows that if you are in space and pointing one way and want to turn around 180 degrees pointing the other way, you curl up bringing your knees to your chin. That makes you rotate. Then to stop rotating, you straighten out. Hmm. I could not make that work so well. For one thing I felt nervous about venturing into the middle of the “cabin”, i.e. being in mid-air. When the feet-down call came, there was not much time and I wanted to be able to grab the rope and pull myself around. For another I did not want to be flailing around and hitting anyone. Plus I suspect it probably is not quite that simple. I also wanted to try out the ice-skater conservation-of-momentum thing; if you are spinning around raise arms and you slow down; bring them down you speed up. But again, there was not much space and it was hard to get spinning in the first place. Kristin said before the flight that she would help me spin but I never quite found her at the right time. Some people (in another section) played "humanball", with one person curling into a ball and two other people "throwing" her back and forth. That's looked pretty cool on the video!

So how does it work at the end of the parabola (or as I like to think of it, when they leave the small section of orbit that we are in)? The flying-master calls “Feet down” a couple seconds ahead of time. (Usually…I think he missed it once). We all scramble to at least get our feet pointed more or less downward, and very quickly the floor rises to meet us. You very quickly lie down because over the course of a few seconds you transition from weightlessness to +2G. On the one hand it is a fairly smooth and gentle change. On the other hand it is fast enough to be a little worrisome. It is especially a problem if you happen to touchdown in the middle of a group. You are supposed to face fore-and-aft (feet toward the front or back of the plane) but I could not always find a space. I imagine it would not be deadly, but we were warned not to have body-parts crossed (so someone’s leg, say, is holding twice the weight of some part of you). In fact, the 2-G segment is not too worrisome EXCEPT that you don’t want to be caught with your head not on the floor. The one time it happened to me, my neck muscles were not ready for the extra weight and I kind of slammed down the last few inches. Luckily the floor is padded like everything else. I think the fore-and-aft thing ma be to reduce the likelihood of dizziness (just a guess), but I absolutely never had any such problem no matter what direction I was pointing.

About twice between some of the 12 weightless segments we paused for a couple minutes. I’m not sure if there is an operational reason (turning the plane around for example) or if reduces sickness, but the photographer also used it for a couple groups (including mine) to set up for a photo shoot. What he wanted us to do was to have our feet against the seats in the back of the flying area with arms forward. Then as we became weightless, push forward so we look like a bunch of flying super-heros. I did not get it so I did not have my legs bent in a way to push off. Ah well. But we did take one of the 2G segments on our stomachs. (No problem.)

On one weightless segment, the coaches released a bunch of M&Ms for us to catch. Funny! I should have grabbed one and let it float in front of me rather than trying to catch them as they were thrown. And on another, they released some water, so we could see it form into little spheres (and try to drink it). Not much of it was caught, so when weight came back we got soaked! Again, pretty funny!

Finally the last parabola was announced and it was totally free for us to enjoy. I just tried my best to pay attention to the sensation; nothing fancy. Then there was one last 2G segment. The funniest thing: after the last 2G segment, I was not sure when we were back to normal and it was ok to sit up and move around. As people started getting up we all just kind of looked around at each other in wonder, as if we were looking for confirmation from everyone that we had really experienced this wonderful thing!

It was then that I noticed that one guy was not well at all. The coaches were kind of hovering over him. It was the birthday boy who just found out about his ZeroG present today. I felt really sorry…like me, he must be a real fan of things like this for his S.O. to be so sure as to give it to him for a present. Yet, he got sick. How sad. I hope he feels ok about himself. I couldn’t help but wonder if it related at all to having so little time to think about what was coming! (A bit later: They have released the pictures, and I see a lot of pictures of him having a good time, so I think the whole thing was not a loss. I’m really happy for him about that!) There were a couple other people who said they did not feel well toward the end. At least one had eaten a big breakfast too. No one except the birthday boy had actually vomited.

They have us a while to just walk around and talk to each other in the big open section, but then started shooing us back to our seats. We made our way back, our shoes were returned, and the rest of the flight proceeded pretty much like any other flight including buckle up, all electronic gear off, etc etc. And then a normal landing and exit out the back again. There was a guy there to meet us, shake our hands, and turn our name tag right-side up (complete with photographer).

On the way back to the hotel I got to sit with my friend from Cessna again and I had fun talking about the experience and the technical aspects of the plane etc. And finally when we got back, there was a more standard spread…deli meat, cheese, and glasses of what looked like champagne, but turned out to be ginger-ale. (They said so many people turned down actual champagne that they stopped bothering). Then they handed out certificates (again with a photographer). The certificates are pretty nice…they are in a folder with a picture of the group in front of the plane on one side, and a declaration that I had "defied gravity, communed with floating objects, levitated, and otherwise successfully completed the Zero-G weightless experience)."

Eventually people slowly left, either to head back to their normal lives, and perhaps, like me, wishing that they could do it again.