All Aboard To Experience ‘Zero G’! ✈
Feel Weightless Just Like In Space!
If you love that brief feeling of weightlessness you get when riding on a roller coaster, then you’ll love taking a ride aboard a Zero-G flight! Zero-G flights replicate the free-floating sensation you get when in space! For periods of 20–30 seconds long, you can float about inside the plane while everyone else floats around you too!
Experience Weightlessness Without Having To Go To Space!
Gravity exists everywhere on Earth and even in space close to Earth. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are still being affected by Earth’s gravity, but they are travelling so fast around the Earth (28,000 kph) that they are in constant free-fall around the Earth. This is how they experience ‘weightlessness’ (also referred to as ‘microgravity’ in low Earth orbit).
Unfortunately for those of us still on Earth, if we want to experience the feeling of weightlessness we can’t just flick a switch and turn it off! The only way for us to get away from the effects of Earth’s gravity is to trick it – well for up to 30 seconds at a time...
Aboard special aeroplanes, which fly parabolic arcs in the sky (like riding up and down on a big roller coaster), can replicate the effects of ‘no gravity’. This allows passengers to 'freefall' inside the aircraft which generates a sensation of weightlessness! These planes typically fly 15 of these parabolic arcs, giving passengers a total of about 7 minutes experiencing weightlessness.
The aircraft can also fly slightly different arcs which replicate the strength of gravity on the Moon (1/6th Earth’s) and what you would experience on the Planet Mars (1/3rd Earths!). NASA along with other space agencies uses these types of flights to train astronauts to prepare for their missions into space.
Unfortunately, these special zero-gravity flights aren’t cheap (between $3,500 and $5,000 USD) and there aren’t very many places you can do them. The companies GoZeroG and Starcity-Tours offer these special zero-gravity flights. Alternatively, if you can afford the $250,000 USD price tag then you could take a ride with Virgin Galactic to space where you’ll also experience at least 5 minutes of weightlessness!
Be warned though, weightlessness is an exciting but unusual experience which makes some people feel sick! These planes don’t have the nickname ‘Vomit Comets’ for nothing!
