Veteran parabolic flight pilot Eric Delesallet talks with Space.com's Tereza Pultarova about what it takes to create weightlessness and lunar gravity in a plane.
Credit: Space.comn | footage courtesy: ESA & Novespace | edited by Tereza Pultarova and Steve Spaleta
Credit: Space.comn | footage courtesy: ESA & Novespace | edited by Tereza Pultarova and Steve Spaleta
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TechTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm Teresa from space.com. Would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?
00:07I will be on the flight tomorrow and I'm quite nervous about the whole thing.
00:10No, it's absolutely no problem. It's a great pleasure. Please have a seat, Teresa.
00:14Careful with your head. So, I'm Erik Delsal. I will be the captain for the flight tomorrow.
00:21And I'm checking that the aircraft is all equipped to be ready for tomorrow morning.
00:26Wonderful. So, can you tell me a little bit what's going to happen tomorrow?
00:30Where are we going to fly and what are we going to do?
00:33Okay. So, tomorrow we will fly abroad near the Atlantic coast, far from Bordeaux and the Atlantic.
00:46So, there is not too much traffic in the altitude that we are flying between flightable 200 and 300.
00:55It is quite comfortable. And if we need more space, we go a little far to Brittany over the Atlantic.
01:03We will be flying flights that simulate lunar and Martian gravity. Is that true?
01:10Yes. It will not be a simulation. It will be a real apparent gravity that we have on Moon or on Mars.
01:20How do you do that?
01:22We will fly this aircraft in such a way, like the aircraft is falling down, but not too much to keep just the gravity we need.
01:35I mean 0.16 G for Moon gravity or 0.38 G for Mars.
01:43So, what makes a difference between a parabola that gives you the lunar gravity and the Martian gravity or no gravity at all?
01:50It is just a matter of how much we push on the stick. I will begin with the 0. It will be more simple.
01:58And we try to have the 0 gravity phases as long as possible. So, if I give you a ball and please throw it in such a way it will stay as long as possible in the air.
02:14So, you will throw it up. And then from the time you release the ball, it will become to fall even if still climbing at the beginning.
02:25Yeah, understand? And then we have the 0. For 0.16, we just push so that the aircraft will pull up first.
02:40And then when we reach a given attitude, we push on the stick so that the aircraft will do that as if it was falling down in the vacuum.
02:50That is for the 0. And to keep lunar, it will be a little less sharp and march even less.
03:00And we just push a little less to keep some gravity.
03:04How difficult it is to fly such flights?
03:07I have actually heard that there will be four pilots on board the flight tomorrow.
03:12And I believe that on that EasyJet flight that I arrived on, there are only two.
03:17So, that's twice as many pilots on a normal flight. Why is that?
03:21You're right. So, we fly this aircraft in a very unusual way. On a normal aircraft flying for an airline, you are right, there are two pilots.
03:37And they share the four activities. One, we have to fly, we have to navigate, we have to speak with the control and we have to monitor the systems.
03:46That's the four tasks of the crew. And we share them. But normally, there is only one flying the aircraft and having the hands on the controls.
03:56To be very accurate for this maneuver because you asked me if it was difficult. Well, it's like every flight. But the difficulty is to be very accurate.
04:09And that's our objective. So, we share the three axis and the aircraft between the three pilots.
04:16So, one is flying the pitch and it is the making the zero G or the moon or Mars gravity. And we use this kind of thing here that we put here like that.
04:31I plug that to have the radio. And then so, from now on, this pilot can only act on the pitch and I cannot do that with that.
04:45You see, this one, you can do both pitch and roll. And with this one, I can only use pitch. And during that time, the other pilot will use a very technical equipment.
05:04These two things here. And it can act on the roll without pulling or pushing.
05:14So that the two pilots are flying the aircraft at the same time. And the third pilot is acting on the throttle to act on the power because as soon as everybody is flying in the cabin, if you have a little acceleration lateral on longitudinal, we will find everybody in the cockpit or in the aft toilet that we don't need.
05:39So that's three. What about the fourth one?
05:42And the fourth one is a spare one because it's very, it's quite difficult to do. It's very nervous, nervous activity. And we try to be very accurate. And we fly all manually. And we even disconnect some device to help the pilots.
06:02So, uh, we are turning, uh, the only one relaxing in the cabin, uh, speaking with, uh, with the experimenters to see how it works. Uh, and, uh, each, uh, we, we are turning the, during the flight.
06:17Taking turns. Yes. Yeah.
06:18How does one become a parabolic flight, uh, pilot or can any pilot that is flying around Europe do that? Do you need special training?
06:27Do you need special training?
06:28Well, not, uh, any. We are all, uh, at the beginning, uh, very experimented pilots, either test pilots or, uh, military, uh, uh, transport pilots.
06:39And then we, we, from some, some of them, uh, selected, we do a specific training, uh, simulator, a theory, the first simulator, and, and then flights to train this specific, uh, maneuver.
06:57How many people in Europe can do that?
06:59Uh, we are eight. Eight pilots.
07:02In Europe?
07:03Yes.
07:04In Europe.
07:05No.
07:06No.
07:07No.
07:08No.
07:09No.
07:10No.
07:11No.
07:12No.
07:13No.
07:14No.