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? I
00:07will 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. Careful
00:14with your head. So, I'm Eric Delsalles, I will be the captain for the flight tomorrow
00:22and 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? Where are
00:30we going to fly and what are we going to do?
00:33Okay, so tomorrow we will fly 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 flight level 2.0.0
00:54and 3.0.0. It is quite comfortable and if we need more space, we go a little far to
01:00Brittany over the Atlantic.
01:03We will be flying flights that simulate lunar and Martian gravity. Is that true?
01:11Yes, it will not be a simulation. It will be a real apparent gravity that we have on
01:19Moon or on Mars.
01:21How do you do that?
01:22We will fly this aircraft in such a way like the aircraft is falling down, but not too
01:31much to keep just the gravity we need. I mean 0.16g for Moon gravity or 0.38g for Mars.
01:43So what makes a difference between a parabola that gives you the lunar gravity and the Martian
01:48gravity or no gravity at all?
01:51It's just a matter of how much we push on the stick. I will begin with the zero. It
01:57will be more simple. We try to have the zero gravity phases as long as possible. So if
02:08I give you a ball, please throw it in such a way it will stay as long as possible in
02:14the air. So you will throw it up and then from the time you release the ball, it will
02:21become to fall even if still climbing at the beginning. Then we have the zero. For 0.16,
02:34we just push so that the aircraft will pull up first and then when we reach a given altitude,
02:43we push on the stick so that the aircraft will do that as if it was falling down in
02:49the vacuum. That is for the zero. And to keep lunar, it will be a little less sharp and
02:58much even less. And we just push a little less to keep some gravity.
03:04How difficult it is to fly such flights? I've actually heard that there will be four pilots
03:10on board the flight tomorrow. And I believe that on that easyJet flight that I arrived
03:15on, there are only two. So that's twice as many pilots on a normal flight. Why is that?
03:21You're right. We fly this aircraft with a very unusual way. On normal aircraft flying
03:34for an airline, you're right, there are two pilots and they share the four activities.
03:40We have to fly, we have to navigate, we have to speak with the control and we have to monitor
03:45the systems. That's the four tasks of the crew. And we share them, but normally there
03:51is only one flying the aircraft and having the hands on the controls. To be very accurate
03:59for this manual, because you asked me if it was difficult. Well, it's like every flight,
04:05but the difficulty is to be very accurate. And that's our objective. So we share the
04:12three axis on the aircraft between the three pilots. So one is flying the pitch and it
04:20is making the zero G or the moon or Mars gravity. And we use this kind of thing here
04:29that we put here like that. I plug that to the radio. And then so from now on, this pilot
04:40can only act on the pitch and I cannot do that with that. You see this one, you can
04:47do both pitch and roll. And with this one, I can only use pitch. And during that time,
04:56the other pilot will use a very technical equipment, these two things here. And he can
05:08act on the roll without pulling or pushing. So that the two pilots are flying the aircraft
05:17at the same time. And the third pilot is acting on the throttle to act on the power, because
05:25as soon as everybody is flying in the cabin, if you have a little acceleration lateral
05:32on longitudinal, we will find everybody in the cockpit or in the aft toilets that we
05:38don't need. So that's three. What about the fourth one? And the fourth one is a spare
05:43one because it's quite difficult to do. And it's a very nervous activity. And we try to
05:54be very accurate and we fly all manually. And we even disconnect some device to help
06:01the pilots. So we are turning and there are only one relaxing in the cabin, speaking with
06:10the experimenters to see how it works. And we are turning. Taking turns. Yes. How does
06:19one become a parabolic flight pilot or can any pilot that is flying around Europe do that?
06:26Do you need special training? Not any. We are all at the beginning, very experimented pilots,
06:33either test pilots or military transport pilots. And then we, from some of them selected,
06:45we do a specific training, simulator, theory first, simulator and then flights to train
06:55this specific maneuver. How many people in Europe can do that? We are eight pilots. In Europe? Yes.