- (laughing) Wow!
Wow, there's nothing like this.
I've been surrounded by space flight my whole life.
But the only real way to know what space is like
is to go there.
Unfortunately, NASA hasn't picked me for its
next astronaut class, but I've got a ticket
for the next best thing.
Meet the "vomit comet."
Well, that's just its nickname.
It's a plane that does parabolic flight
to simulate zero g.
But first I wanted to know what to expect.
So, I turned to an expert for help, my mom!
- [Joyce] First time when my boss
Brian Vorce told me he wanted me to do it I said no.
(Joyce laughing)
- [Loren] She got to fly on an old plane
that NASA used to own that did zero g
in order to test out new technologies for space.
- [Joyce] Don't suddenly try to do a whole
bunch of jumping around and swinging around
right away, get yourself acclimated, keep your head still.
- Okay, so what were the name of the drugs they gave you?
- [Joyce] That I don't know, but I can tell you what
they gave me was this really large capsule that had
basically, it's an upper and a downer is what it is.
I think the downer is for the stomach, you know,
to settle you down, and the upper
is so you don't go to sleep.
- Alright, well thank you for your advice
and terrifying forecasting, mom.
Love you, bye. - [Joyce] Buh-bye, love you.
- [Loren] Well, that was helpful.
At that point there wasn't much more to do, but--
We are headed to the place where we're gonna make
all of my astronaut dreams come true, Newark Airport.
I've been thinking about it for so long, and we're getting
so close but I haven't put two and two together
that we're actually going to do this today.
I think once we're on the plane than the
butterflies will start to set in.
Parabolic flights have been used in the past
to prepare astronauts for what microgravity will feel like.
And these days it's also used to give civilians
a taste of that astronaut life.
Now that we're on the bus I'm starting to freak out.
Just mildly freak out, not like. (fake scream)
Although I hope I don't throw up.
I'm not going to throw up, I'm not.
Alright, it's time for us to board.
Sorry, it's a plane, so it's loud.
I'm not sure how to describe how I feel.
We'll see when we get up there.
The flight breakdown was like this.
They're starting us off easy.
We start off with Martian gravity,
which is only a third of your weight,
then we'll go to lunar gravity, which is 1/6th,
and then it's zero g.
Can you tell I was really excited?
We're about to become Martian!
Oh my god!
Martian gravity just made everything feel so easy.
So, of course, the first thing to do is something
that sucks here on Earth.
I can't even do a one-armed push up!
I promise I do actually work out.
(laughing and giggling)
- [Flight Assistant] Welcome to the moon!
- [Loren] So now we're at 1/6th gravity,
or lunar gravity, and it really felt
like the plane was slipping away from me.
(laughing and giggling)
I can't believe we're gonna get more weightless than that!
(laughing)
That's pretty sick!
Okay, so before we go fully zero g you gotta understand
how this all works.
The plane is flying in these parabolas,
or basically, it does a series of peaks and valleys.
As the plane climbs it starts to slow down
before reaching the top of the peak.
The entire plane and everyone inside
shift into free fall.
That's when you experience zero g.
It's a bit like the floating feeling
you get when you're on a roller coaster that's zooming
over a large hill.
Here we go, we're ready!
I can feel it! (squealing)
Oh, my god!
No kicking, no kicking, no flailing.
(megaphone chatter)
That is unreal, I can't,
I don't even know how to describe it!
I can tell why people become astronauts now
that's for sure!
Just imagine when you float to the top of a pool
except without the water, and you move just
slightly and the floor immediately becomes the ceiling.
The entire room is changing perspective all the time.
You can feel when it's about to happen.
It's coming I know it.
Here we go!
At first it's really disorienting,
and if you get going in one direction
it's hard to recover.
Really can't control where I'm going!
I'm sorry!
Luckily there were some ropes to grab onto.
Heck, even the astronauts on the space station
have to learn to get a grip just to do their jobs.
There are foot restraints all over the ISS
so that the crew doesn't float away
while performing delicate lab work.
My job was just to not crash into the back of the plane.
I'm just surrendering to it.
I-I don't have a dire-- okay.
- [Flight Assistant] feet down, come on, feet down!
- [Loren] So, you may be wondering
why they keep yelling feet down.
I kind of want to ground on that one.
Well, these weightless experiences only last
around twenty two seconds, and you got to get
on the floor as the plane starts to speed
up on its descent, as the plane does a valley
you then pull extra g's, 1.8 to be exact.
Just to hold this little GoPro is actually pretty hard.
At 1.8 g's.
Imagine feeling like someone is pressing down
on all the parts of your body.
This may seem like the boring part of the trip,
but being able to sustain extra g's
is another part of being an astronaut.
When you ride on the Soyuz you pull about
three to four g's during launch, and then
five g's, maybe even eight during the descent
back to Earth.
But of course the fun part is the floating,
and after I got the hang of it
I tried to do some tricks!
I was weirdly obsessed with flipping.
I'm gonna do a flip.
I'm gonna try and spin this turn.
Let's do like a legit spin.
(yelling)
Thanks to my preparation, though, I didn't get sick.
But that was not the case for the rest of the flight.
Somebody threw up again, I think.
Getting sick in space is a very real problem, too.
When astronauts first get to orbit
many deal with something called Space Adaptation Syndrome
as the body's sense of balance adapts to microgravity.
After fifteen parabolas the experience
definitely started to take its toll,
and when the pilot said we were done I was kind of relieved.
The amount that we did I think is the perfect amount,
I don't think I could handle much more of that.
Definitely feeling some bad mojo in the stomach,
but I think I'm okay, we're leveled out now,
now I just gotta go sit down and get back on solid ground.
And I couldn't wait to tell my mom
that I'm better at space than she is.
I'm so glad I finally got a taste of what
being in zero gravity really feels like,
even if it was for just twenty-two seconds at a time.
But maybe that's enough to send me into orbit now?
Hey, everyone, we originally premiered this episode
of my show Spacecraft on our Verge YouTube channel,
but we brought it here to our Verge Science YouTube channel
so all you science lovers could enjoy it.
Be sure to hit subscribe and check out all the
other videos on our channel, thanks.