Fly on Zero- g!
By CEP College Student Zaida Hernandez
Firstly, yea! I got to fly on the Microgravity Aircraft! (Weightless Wonder/ Vomit Comet) I can’t even begin to describe what it’s like because like the motto says, “it’s like nothing on Earth!” You really do experience weightlessness! It is something your body has never been exposed to and you have about 30 seconds to adapt (the amount of time the plane is descending 10,000 feet at a 45 degree angle).
Just a little background info about the Zero-g: the official name of the program is the Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program (RGO). There are different weeks for different subprograms within RGO and they all have separate flight weeks. There is SEED, NASA Explorer Schools, Undergraduate, and NSTA/TFS Flight Weeks. Teams write proposals and the best are selected to test their experiments in microgravity! The August flight week was the NSTA/TFS (National Science Teachers Association/ Teaching from Space). Teams of teachers (mostly STEM) from different parts of the U.S. came to test the experiments that their students had worked on in the classroom.
During my CEP-Tier 1 experience, I was in the Office of Education so I helped out with the many education programs, one of those being Reduced Gravity. I helped with the previous flight weeks at Ellington Field and helped with proposals and letters of declination. I was given the opportunity to fly since I had worked the program.
It was a great experience! The plane did 34 parabolas over the Gulf of Mexico. The plane starts off at about 24,000 feet and then goes up to a 45 degree angle getting to over 34,000 feet. At this point we almost reach 2Gs which makes you feel like you weigh twice your actual weight. Then the plane goes nose down 45 degrees and that’s the zero-g part of the flight - freefall! It lasts about 20-30 seconds and everything in the plane is weightless. One thing I did learn was why it has the nickname “Vomit Comet,” and you can imagine. Seven people (including myself) got sick on that flight! But I can speak for everyone and say that we all had a fun time. I never imagined I was going to get to fly this year .I want to thank the Reduced Gravity Office especially my mentor Veronica for allowing me to fly. My goal is now to fly again but with an experiment. I would definitely do it again knowing that even the veteran astronauts encounter a little sickness now and then too!