No Intel Inside - the Vomit Comet
Doc Searls and a few other acolytes of flight were guests of Intel for a ride on the Zero-G flight experience. Here’s Doc, presumably praying to Saint Spew, the patron Saint of Puke, before the flight:
I never knew a military aviator who enjoyed zero or negative G forces. In fact, most engines’ oil pumps are not specified for more than 1 negative G. Not that it kept us from trying zero Gs in a C-130, while otherwise bored, flying from one place in Vietnam to a similar-looking other place. In those halcyon days, each aircraft dashboard sported a quaint plexiglass map holder, about 6″ by 9″. Meant to hold a Jeppesen approach plate book, it was one half of a terrific Zero-G indicator. The other half was a pencil. I kid you not.
The trick was to drop the pencil into the map holder and start the one maneuver that’s obvious after a few moments’ reflection. In order to attain the maximum weightless time, you want to spend as much time as possible pushing the controls forward into the zero G range. You could do this starting from a high altitude and just push the controls forward, but you’ll get more weightless time if you start at a medium altitude at high speed and then pull the aircraft up at a couple of positive Gs to set up for the negative G phase. From the nose-up position, the pilot pushes the controls forward until the Zero G state is reached. That’s where the pencil in its lucite cage came in.
I’m sure the folks at Zero-G Corp have more sophisticated instruments, but none more direct or accurate; or more analogue. But some subtlety is required. Surely unlike the Zero G 727’s instruments, as the pencil rises from the bottom of the holder, one must gently release a bit of the forward pressure, since it obviously required a slightly negative G force to move the pencil off the bottom of the map holder. I describe this distinction so my pilot friends don’t point out my oversights.
That’s it. Just keep the pencil in the center of the map holder as long as possible. In the Zero Gravity Corp’s Boeing 727, that lasts about 30 seconds. In the C-130, we probably pushed the limits a little further, though we did not have the range of airspeed available to their 727. Here’s how the profile looks using their 727:
It’s really a matter of the airspeed and altitude available to you. In an SR-71, I’ll bet you could get close to a minute of weightlessness, by starting at 60,000 feet and Mach 2.5, arcing up to 85,000 feet or so and pulling it out when pointed straight down at about 35,000 feet, which is where most real men would be staining their tutu.
So that’s it. 2/3 of the people “lose it”, literally, on the Vomit Comet. And that’s why I never want to experience Zero Gs again. Few smart people do it twice.
January 10th, 2008 at 3:15 am
It was easy, gentle and fun. Nobody puked. One woman got a little woozy on the 14th and 15th parabola, but that was it. Any roller-coaster is rougher. So is riding on a swing. The highest G-forces you feel are 1.8G, which isn’t enough to keep you on the side of a centrifuge.
The main problem for me was watching my camera float away and not being able to retrieve it from the back of the plane until after the flight. That and crawling out from under other people’s bodies when positive G-forces returned.
The biggest surprise was the nearly complete lack of control. if you’re not holding on to something, you’re actually kind of helpless, just floating there among a bunch of other bodies, mostly helpless too.
But helpless in a fun way.
You’d enjoy it. Trust me.
January 12th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
I float corrected, Doc. I accepted a statement on a web site as true, probably because it reinforced my own preconceptions. I’m prone to motion sickness, despite 5,000± hours of military flying time. This is never the case when I’m at the controls, and rarely in large aircraft: Proof that I’m a control freak.
And perhaps they have not always dispensed the super dramamine they give you. We couldn’t be on any medications while flying. There was an exception, though, and that was the Lomotil that was mission-critical in Vietnam. Without that, Ho Chi Minh would have had his revenge a lot sooner.