BY KATE EVERSON You lie on a padded mat, trying to follow the 20-minute training video instructions: Stare at a single point on the ceiling. Do not read, as much as your eyes might be drawn to the red all-caps tags on the ceiling: “NO HAND HOLD.” Nope, no hand to hold as you prepare to experience weightlessness on one of Zero G Corp.’s passenger flights. Everyone here is a stranger—unless you count recognizing Joey Fatone of the 1990s-era boy band ’N Sync, chuckling 12 feet (nearly 4 meters) away across the floor of Zero G Corp.’s Boeing 727. Apart from some seats in the back, the plane, based in Arlington, Va., is empty so that paying passengers and scientific experiments alike can freely experience short microgravity and zero-gravity weightlessness. When you hear the crew yell “On the pull!” you already feel it: The plane starts climbing so fast you experience 1.8 times Earth’s gravitational pull, pinning you to the mat. Then—release. As the pilot pushes over into a dive, you float off the floor, and your nose taps the N in “HAND.” The lightest push off the ceiling propels you into the throng of strangers also learning to function without gravity. It’s a liberating paralysis, if there is such a thing. Although you can move, writhing around doesn’t make a difference in zero gravity, unless you make contact with a wall or another passenger—something that happens a lot. A foot in the face is par for the course. An Australian businessman laughs as he careens into you. A sweepstakes winner’s ponytail fans out like an exploded cigar. Fatone cheers louder than the crowds at his concerts 15 years ago. The only stationary thing in the cabin is the smile on your face. After 23 impossibly fast seconds, the crew shouts that the plane is pulling out of its dive. As your body sinks to the floor, your heart sinks at the ending sensation. But the smile stays firmly on your face. • modified Boeing KC-135 tanker to train the first U.S. astronauts for the weightless effects of spaceflight, in much the same way that Zero G uses the 727. When the space shuttles came along, two modified 747s known as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft ferried the shuttles back to Kennedy Space Center from their secondary landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California. One of those NASA 747s was even used as a “launch” vehicle. The first shuttle, Enterprise, was never meant to go into space, but needed to be tested in flight from a high altitude. Using a piggyback configuration, one of the modified 747s carried DON’T TAKE WEIGHTLESSNESS Photos: (Far left) The author, center, experiences weightlessness aboard the Zero G 727. STEVE BOXALL | ZERO GRAVITY CORP. (Above) A modified Boeing 747 releases the Space Shuttle Enterprise, top, in 1977. NASA (Far right) A stage of the Saturn I rocket for the Apollo program is loaded onto a Super Guppy in the 1960s. BOEING 34 | BOEING FRONTIERS
Frontiers April 2016 Issue
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