14 DAY TRIAL // Since 1973, special airplanes dubbed “Vomit comets” (easy to figure out why) or, more nicely and officially, “Weightless wonders” help science by providing zero gravitation environments identical to those inside spacecraft. This is achieved via a special flight cycle comprised of abrupt 45° climbs and shallow 30° dives, the start of each creating the illusion of complete weightlessness. More comprehensively, the aircraft follows a vertical parabolic path similar to any object during a free fall state, annihilating the gravity force exerted on its content (the crew, in this case).
Usually, this kind of flights is used for astronaut training programs, zero-G research or in the movie industry. But the European Space Agency (ESA) thought it could be a good way to provide bits of fun science to the large public, while also boosting up their research funds in the process. As such, they intend to use an adapted Airbus A300 craft of the French space agency (CNES) that would subject its passengers to 11 minutes of zero gravity.
These will occur during the 30 parabolas during the flight, each providing a 22 second period of weightlessness, for a price of €3,000 ($3,869). The collected money would not come as a profit, but instead would be used in order to support scientific projects taking place within the plane, easing the pressure on ESA's budget of €3-billion ($3.8 billion) which is five times less than NASA's. The agency's plans were announced during a demonstrative flight for European officials and media representatives, which also carried an ongoing experiment involving blood pressure in zero-G conditions.
"Today there are no regulations that authorize this, but a few times a year we could have exceptional authorization where we mix science and demonstrations for observers," shared the French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, head of the CNES department operating the flight, cited by NewScientist. Similar flights are already provided in the US by the Florida-based Zero Gravity Corp., which offers 15 parabolas for a $4,950 (€3,838) price tag, and who took Stephen Hawking for such a ride in 2007.