8 ms·
Weightless: Parabolic flight on an A310
- smackay 4y agoThe Portuguese Space Agency (yes, there is one, Go Portugal) recently ran a competition for teens to fly with Air Zero G. Thirty kids, including my son (majority were girls), shipped out today for the Air Force base at Beja. They fly on Friday.
- Napsty 4y agoThat's awesome!
- qwertox 4y agoCongratulations for him and his peers for having the opportunity to experience this. I can imagine that this will have a long lasting effect on their minds. It would be great to know what it did with him and the others in 10 years.
- Handytinge 4y agoHow did he find it?
- rbanffy 4y agoI wonder if there isn't an easy way to automate the parabolic flight - the autopilot should be clever enough to do it by itself without needing human intervention.
- mromanuk 4y agoIt baffles me that they need five pilots to accomplish this.
- rbanffy 4y agoI imagine it's for an abundance of caution, as they are flying these planes way outside what their normal operations manual recommends. I assume a 320 NEO or a 737 MAX would slap the hand of the pilot if they attempted to go for a +50 degree climb and scream expletives in the voice alert system.
- 6stringmerc 4y agoOkay you just gave me a mental image of an Airbus autopilot system so angry at you it starts swearing in French. Totally agree with safety and ‘normal use case this is not’ situation.
- rbanffy 4y agoI thought about a cartoon robot articulated arm with a white glove trying to wrestle the control column from the pilot.
- a4isms 4y agoOr the autopilot computer ejects by itself with a small parachute. Very Looney Tunes!
- UI_at_80x24 4y agoDefaulting back to it's `native` language (of the programmers). That would be hilarious and should be on the next AirPlane spoof. Mel Brooks, where are you!
- a4isms 4y agoBombardiers will issue a stream of Québec sacres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profanity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profanity
- HPsquared 4y agoIt kind of does already: https://youtu.be/vmbzKsqKQoI#t=30s https://youtu.be/vmbzKsqKQoI#t=30s
- severine 4y ago"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
- Sohcahtoa82 4y agoWell...in MS Flight Simulator, I know the voice alerts will yell at you to warn you about terrain, of if your AoA is too great ("Sink rate!"). But they don't care about high climb angles until you eventually stall.
- nvusuvu 4y agoFTA "To fly a parabola takes 3 pilots working in concert. Two pilots sit in front of the control columns and a third sits in the center jump seat to manage the engines. When flying a parabola, one pilot is responsible for the pitch of the aircraft and the other for the roll. The pilot responsible for the roll of the aircraft actually has a modified control column in order to put as little pressure on the yoke as possible, allowing the pitch pilot to focus on the correct parabola timing." I think precise timing requires many pilots. Lots to keep track of in the name of science.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah doing a parabola is relatively easy. Doing a nearly perfect one to maximize weightlessness without overstressing something is harder, so having one pilot for each aspect makes sense. Another for radio and another for “general everything watching; the captain” makes sense.
- 6stringmerc 4y agoMy aviation family has a long history all the way back to training pilots for WWII (already highly experienced - too much so for combat) so my hunch is accuracy and redundancy. Under normal conditions, sure it’s a one time maneuver, within limits, etc. This is much more of a risk-laden undertaking with the repeated stress on the airframe, the human body, and so having individual attention on important individual tasks - with experience and brain computing speed machines still can’t match for a brilliant stick and yoke pilot in unexpected conditions - this is for safety. Also considering my background with French culture, I imagine the discussion went something like “we could do it with fewer personnel, but why? This works.”
- lm28469 4y agoYeah let's put Musk's autopilot in it and lose 20 people every few years when the plane get scared by the shadow of a cloud. That'll save money
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- laverya 4y agoThe real question is "does it cost more to certify the autopilot to do this than it does to pay for an extra two pilots", and with my understanding of aerospace costs that answer would be "very, very much yes".
- rbanffy 4y ago> "does it cost more to certify the autopilot to do this than it does to pay for an extra two pilots" I bet it does. Parabolic flights aren't really a huge market.
- londons_explore 4y agoI could imagine the autopilot could do a much better job. In the ideal 'zero-g' flight, you can release a ball at the start, and it should stay stationary (relative to the cabin) for the whole flight. That means the plane body must be to within a few inches of the exact perfect location in the sky 30 seconds later. I haven't flown planes, but I imagine that making sure they follow precisely a path with an accuracy of an inch in all three dimensions while travelling at 600 mph is no easy feat. But an autopilot with a fast control loop might be able to do it.
- throwaway744678 4y agoI guess even a supercomputer would not be able to compensate for wind gust, turbulence, etc.
- HPsquared 4y agoThere isn't much turbulence, wind gusts etc. at altitude - these are more of an effect of the bumpy and uneven, alternative hot and cold surface at ground level - the bumps are usually all smoothed out by the time you are high up in the air. (besides large storms, of course) EDIT: Turns out there is sometimes some turbulence at altitude, caused by large mountains, storms and the jet stream - but these are all predictable and avoidable.
- groby_b 4y ago
- ilogik 4y agoit's a lot more complicated than it sounds: https://youtu.be/M67YP-f-LyI?t=592 https://youtu.be/M67YP-f-LyI?t=592
- mellavora 4y ago"Wow, this is hard. Therefore, AI must be the cheaper solution!"
- rbanffy 4y agoThis doesn’t need AI. The physics are very well understood. All that’s needed is a better autopilot with better awareness of surrounding conditions and more precise control of the aircraft.
- segfaultbuserr 4y agoIt's plain old Control Theory, no AI needed.
- gilded-lilly 4y agoThe “vomit comet” (American equivalent of this) has autopilot for yaw and roll only.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- futile-systems 4y ago"Mom, can I visit the ISS?" "We have the ISS at home." The ISS at home:
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoThere's some scary videos from the cockpit in an A300 and (I think an) A310 doing parabolas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty5B-7CinB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty5B-7CinB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-pMLZP6HL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-pMLZP6HL8
- wil421 4y agoWow that last one was pretty crazy to see. I guess they had some camera rig that would keep the camera level with the horizon.
- majou 4y ago> Both shots are from the GoPro Fusion camera. > The cockpit footage is stabilised in post using Adobe After Effects and the telemetry from the plane's sensors.
- scrumper 4y agoAmazing video. I’d guess not mechanical? Look at the dashboard top, lower left over the first minute or so: There’s a screw head that keeps popping in and out of existence which suggests some kind of heavy software correction to me.
- iamjackg 4y agoYeah that looks like the kind of artifacting you might get from a 360° camera that's trying to hide itself from the footage.
- ape4 4y agoMaybe the pilots should wear helmets.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoSemi off topic- I'm seeing a Global Hawk and Rivet Joint doing God's work over the Black Sea. Outstanding!
- phreeza 4y agoHow is this related at all?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoRelated to flightradar24. Not related to parabolic flight.
- raverbashing 4y agoYes, it seems it's been non-stop since the beginning
- mellavora 4y agoyes, see i.e. https://mil.in.ua/en/news/three-british-and-american-surveillance-aircraft-are-in-the-air-over-ukraine/ https://mil.in.ua/en/news/three-british-and-american-surveil... 23 feb 2022 the surprise would be if this was NOT happening.
- bjkchoy 4y agoOne of my preferred video clip ever was filmed entirely during a parabolic flight: OK Go, Upside Down & Inside Out https://youtu.be/LWGJA9i18Co https://youtu.be/LWGJA9i18Co
- CharlesW 4y ago"How We Did It" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnTqZ68fI7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnTqZ68fI7Q "In the course of 21 flights, we had about 58 unscheduled regurgitations."
- SwiftyBug 4y agoThis is unbelievably cool. I can't even imagine how they prepared and rehearsed for that!
- toss1 4y agoWhat an insane lot of fun that must have been — so much fun just to watch them having fun!
- divbzero 4y agoThe weightless chain reminds me of the latter half of Seveneves.
- qwertox 4y agoWow, that was wild.
- ultrahax 4y agoI did one of these with https://www.gozerog.com/ https://www.gozerog.com/ a few years back. Not cheap, but memories that'll last a life-time. Started with lunar and mars gravity, before going full zero g. Like the article says, just make sure you have your ass pointed at the ground before they bottom out!
- segfaultbuserr 4y agoI didn't know it's possible using an unmodified airplane. My first thought was: wouldn't this maneuver simultaneously set off all the alarms bells in the cockpit, as if the plane is crashing to the ground? After a quick search on YouTube, it indeed does, but not really a big deal... > 2:43 - This parabolic manoeuvre isn't the normal kind of thing that you do in an Airbus, and the software in this plane hasn't been modified because to do so would be a huge effort to re-qualify it. With the normal software, you have the normal alarm saying, "This doesn't seem like a very good idea, guys," and one of the pilots that isn't too busy on the other two axes is turning off the alarms that we don't need to worry about and keeping track of the ones we might need to worry about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO_Ox_dH0M8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO_Ox_dH0M8
- rootbear 4y agoMy pilot friend did this maneuver in a light plane (Cesena 172?) with me once or twice. It was cool to see my camera floating in front of my face for a few moments.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]