How does a zero gravity simulator used to train astronauts actually work?
In: 90
I guess you mean the aircraft? If so, basically they fly downwards at a speed that is about equivalent to what gravity would be, so you would be in freefall, and can experience brief weightlessness.
Astronauts do a little testing in this, but the bigger thing they test for is g-force because those tend to cause more trouble than weightlessness.
I guess you mean the aircraft? If so, basically they fly downwards at a speed that is about equivalent to what gravity would be, so you would be in freefall, and can experience brief weightlessness.
Astronauts do a little testing in this, but the bigger thing they test for is g-force because those tend to cause more trouble than weightlessness.
They use something called the vomit comet also known as the parabolic flight or reduced gravity flight. How the trajectory of the aircraft produces the apparent feeling of weightlessness, which is an aeroplane with an open padded interior that has an unusual flight path of steep climbs and sharp drops. https://youtu.be/8rSw-jbnlag
“Zero gravity” is really just free fall. Everything in orbit is falling, it is just moving so fast sideways it never hits the ground it just falls in a circle.
If you fly a plane up and then let it dive down everyone inside is in free fall and will experience zero g, until the plane pulls up and slams them all into the floor.
It mimics zero gravity by flying in parabolic arcs. The so-called “Vomit Comet” plane takes off like a regular plane and then climbs at a steep angle. At the top of the arc, the plane basically nosedives for a bit, and during that freefall period, you get the sensation of zero gravity. The plane has padded walls so you can float around without hurting yourself.
So, the basic physics behind it is pretty much the same as when you feel weightless going over the top of a roller coaster hill, just way more intense. The pilots have to be really skilled, because they’re doing these maneuvers at pretty high speeds and altitudes, and they gotta keep it super smooth to maintain that weightless environment inside.
It’s not 100% like being in space ’cause you’re still within Earth’s atmosphere and all that, but it gets astronauts accustomed to the feeling of not having any weight, which helps with their training and preps them for the real deal in space. You only get short bursts of weightlessness though, like 20-30 seconds each, before the plane has to level out and climb again to set up for the next arc.
They fly [this flight path](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced-gravity_aircraft#/media/File:Zero_gravity_flight_trajectory_C9-565_vector.svg).
Pull up, nose over, pull up on the back side so you don’t hit the ground.
Pushing the nose over in the middle of this maneuver *makes your momentum cancel out gravity.*
Gravity is still pulling on you. Hell, *it’s pulling on the moon 250,000 miles away.*
Weightlessness is NOT a lack of gravity. It’s CANCELING OUT the pull of gravity with your momentum. That’s the same thing in space. Orbiting the planet is just experiencing the middle part of that parabola for the entire path around the planet.
The trainees ride in an airplane that flies in parabolic arcs. A parabola is a special curve that models a relationship between a quantity and its square. For example, if you were to plot the height of a ball thrown into the air against time, the resulting curve would be parabolic; gravity on earth accelerates objects at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared. What the plane does to simulate zero gravity is it flies in arcs that trace out that same shape. It flies up at 9.8 meters per second squared, which doubles the apparent force of gravity inside the cabin; and then it flies down at 9.8 meters per second squared, which effectively cancels out the pull of gravity and allows objects to float weightless relative to the cabin. You can do the same thing at home with an empty soda bottle, some tape, and something like a ladder or a balcony. Punch some holes in the bottle, maybe a quarter of the way up, halfway up and three quarters of the way to the top. Place a strip of tape over the holes, and fill the bottle with water. Take the full bottle up to a high place where you can drop it safely and then pull the tape off. Water will start pouring out the holes, like you would expect. Then drop the bottle and watch what happens. While the bottle is falling, the water will stop coming out the holes because the water and the bottle are falling together; relative to the bottle, the water becomes weightless and their is no force pulling it down and out the holes
Edit: [Here’s a video of Brian Greene doing the same experiment](https://youtu.be/0jjFjC30-4A?si=3M_Epgt0_N4ZAINS)
Everyone here is talking about the plane – the other, more practical version includes training astronauts in a giant pool – being in space suits under water simulates being weightless, and teaches them how, for example, they need to counter the force of turning a bolt by holding onto the structure
There’s three main methods to achieve this. Back in the 60s in preparation for the lunar landings they had a machine, much like the “Gravitrons” in carnivals where the astronauts were suspended from the sides by wires and stood on the walls of the spinning wheel. This didn’t simulate zero gravity but it could simulate reduced gravity, since depending on how fast it spun the centrifugal force changed. It didn’t have to spin too fast since the goal was to simulate the reduced gravity on the Moon and not stick them to the walls completely with 1G.
The second main method is the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. It’s a facility with a large [swimming pool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_buoyancy_pool) which contains mockups of the International Space Station modules. The water makeup is controlled and the submerged astronauts are wearing space suits. As the name suggests, the conditions of the pool and the space suit are adjusted so that the astronaut has “neutral buoyancy”, which means that while submerged they are in an equillibrium where they do not float up or sink to the bottom. The result is a fairly accurate simulation of microgravity, which is what the proper term is for what we call “zero gravity” which is a bit of a misnomer.
The last and most prominent method is the Vomit Comet. The Vomit Comet is an airplane that’s completely emptied out inside and padded to minimize injury. The plane goes fairly high and then starts flying in paraboliv arcs, meaning they dive and then go up sharply and try to lower the nose of the aircraft slowly. Due to the built up speed if the maneuver is executed correctly then the people inside the plane experience microgravity. The maneuver is difficult to execute and each parabola in the maneuver takes about 65 seconds to complete, out of which only roughly 25 are actually in microgravity. It’s the closest we can get to simulating it but as you can understand the time windows are fairly short. Fun fact, the same technique was used for the filming of the movie Apollo 13, which posed a great challenge in terms of shooting and editing the film but the results speak for themselves. When watching the movie you’re seeing the actors in true microgravity.
5 year old answer: orbit is basically throwing yourself at the ground and missing. In orbit everything is falling towards the ground but the ground moves before whatever is in orbit hits it.
The zero G simulator (Aka “the vomit comet”) is basically a big empty airplane that the pilots fly really high and then dive at the ground and pull up. During the dive everything is moving at the same speed so it’s like being in orbit
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