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
00:00 Hello, I'm Teresa from space.com.
00:04 Would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?
00:07 I will be on the flight tomorrow and I'm quite nervous about the whole thing.
00:10 No, it's absolutely no problem.
00:11 It's a great pleasure.
00:12 Please have a seat, Teresa.
00:14 Careful with your head.
00:17 So I'm Eric Delsalle, I will be the captain for the flight tomorrow and I'm checking that
00:22 the aircraft is all equipped, be ready for tomorrow morning.
00:26 Wonderful.
00:27 So can you tell me a little bit what's going to happen tomorrow?
00:29 Where are we going to fly and what are we going to do?
00:33 Okay, so tomorrow we will fly abroad, near the coast, near the Atlantic coast, far from
00:43 Bordeaux and the Atlantic.
00:46 So there is not too much traffic in the altitude that we are flying, between flight level 200
00:54 and 300.
00:55 So it is quite comfortable and if we need more space, we go a little far to Brittany
01:01 over the Atlantic.
01:02 We will be flying flights that simulate lunar and Martian gravity.
01:08 Is that true?
01:10 Yes, it will not be a simulation.
01:13 It will be a real apparent gravity that we have on Moon or on Mars.
01:20 How do you do that?
01:22 We will fly this aircraft in such a way like the aircraft is falling down, but not too
01:31 much to keep just the gravity we need.
01:34 I mean 0.16 g for Moon gravity or 0.38 g for Mars.
01:43 So what makes a difference between a parabola that gives you the lunar gravity and the Martian
01:48 gravity or no gravity at all?
01:50 It's just a matter of how much we push on the stick.
01:55 I will begin with the zero.
01:56 It will be more simple.
01:58 We try to have the zero gravity phases as long as possible.
02:07 So if I give you a ball, please throw it in such a way it will stay as long as possible
02:13 in the air.
02:14 So you will throw it up and then from the time you release the ball, it will become
02:21 to fall even if still climbing at the beginning.
02:26 And then we have the zero.
02:30 For 0.16, we just push so that the aircraft will pull up first and then when we reach
02:41 a given attitude, we push on the stick so that the aircraft will do that as if it was
02:47 falling down in the vacuum.
02:50 That is for the zero.
02:51 And to keep lunar, it will be a little less sharp and much even less.
03:00 And we just push a little less to keep some gravity.
03:04 How difficult it is to fly such flights?
03:07 I have actually heard that there will be four pilots on board the flight tomorrow.
03:12 And I believe that on that easyJet flight that I arrived on, there are only two.
03:17 So that's twice as many pilots on a normal flight.
03:20 Why is that?
03:21 You're right.
03:23 So we fly this aircraft with a very unusual way.
03:29 On normal aircraft flying for airline, you're right, there are two pilots and they share
03:38 the four activities.
03:40 We have to fly, we have to navigate, we have to speak with the control and we have to monitor
03:45 the systems.
03:46 That's the four tasks of the crew.
03:49 And we share them but normally there is only one flying the aircraft and having the hands
03:55 on the controls.
03:57 To be very accurate for this maneuver, because you asked me if it was difficult.
04:02 Well, it's like every flight, but the difficulty is to be very accurate.
04:09 And that's our objective.
04:11 So we share the three axis on the aircraft between the three pilots.
04:16 So one is flying the pitch and it is making the zero G or the moon or much gravity.
04:25 And we use this kind of thing here that we put here like that.
04:32 I plug that to the radio.
04:36 And then so from now on, this pilot can only act on the pitch and I cannot do that with
04:44 that.
04:45 You see this one, you can do both pitch and roll.
04:49 And with this one, I can only use pitch.
04:54 And during that time, the other pilot will use a very technical equipment.
05:04 These two things here.
05:08 And it can act on the roll without pulling or pushing.
05:14 So that the two pilots are flying the aircraft at the same time.
05:18 And the third pilot is acting on the throttle to act on the power, because as soon as everybody
05:26 is flying in the cabin, if you have a little acceleration, let's roll on longitudinal,
05:34 we will find everybody in the cockpit or in the aft toilet that we don't need.
05:40 So that's three.
05:41 What about the fourth one?
05:42 The fourth one is a spare one, because it's very, it's quite difficult to do.
05:49 It's very nervous, nervous activity.
05:53 And we try to be very accurate and we fly all manually.
05:57 And we even disconnect some device to help the pilots.
06:03 So we are turning and there are only one relaxing in the cabin, speaking with the experimenters
06:11 to see how it works.
06:13 And we are turning.
06:18 How does one become a parabolic flight pilot?
06:23 Or can any pilot that is flying around Europe do that?
06:26 Do you need special training?
06:28 Not any.
06:29 We are all at the beginning, very experimented pilots, either test pilots or military transport
06:38 pilots.
06:40 And then we, from some of them selected, we do a specific training, simulator, a theory
06:50 first, simulator and then flights to train this specific maneuver.
06:57 How many people in Europe can do that?
06:59 We are eight pilots.
07:02 In Europe?
07:03 Yes.
07:04 We are eight pilots.