Look ma, no gravity!

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. Space, in addition to being the final frontier, will also be forever awesome. If ever, by some weird turn of events, we got to interview Buzz Aldrin, there is no way — no matter how obvious or trite or downright infantile the question is — that we’d be able to stop ourselves from blurting out, “Ohmygodwhat’sitlikeontheMOON?SeriouslyyouwereontheMOONhowcoolisthat?”

This is why we’ll never get to be Stone Phillips.

But, before NASA could load ‘em up and blast ‘em off, they used parabolic flights — wherein an aircraft was brought to altitude, then pointed down to drop 10,000 feet or so — to help train astronauts for weightlessness.

Zero G — founded by entrepreneur X-Prize chairman Peter Diamandis, former space shuttle astronaut and X-Prize co-founder Byron K. Lichtenberg, and NASA engineer Ray Cronise — offers parabolic weightless flights around the country — for about $5,000 per seat. They’re flying tomorrow out of McCarran. We talked to the company’s Edwin Lorse about the flights, space tourism and who’s gettin’ it on without gravity to slow them down.

How often do you fly?

We don’t have a schedule with pinpoint dates. I would say we do around 100 flights a year. They go out of either Las Vegas or the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We do also NASA research flights.

You consider yourself space tourism. The plane doesn’t actually reach the limit of the atmosphere, though, does it?

No. The plane travels on the same altitude a normal airliner travels, around 34,000 feet.

How is something like that doing in this economy?

We feel that too, at the moment. Probably a lot of business, especially in Vegas, like helicopter rides and so on. We see a small decline, but we are so diversified with our target group. We do research flights. We do incentive programs. We sell to the general public. We have our NASA business in place. We do also education flights for teachers and students sponsored by government contractors like Nothrop-Grumman.

What sort of people take part in this sort of thing?

I’d say they come from all fields and all communities. A lot of them are thrill-seekers. A lot of them are interested in space, or space travel. We have these groups, but we have other groups like normal people like you and me. They want to try it. They want to get weightless once in their life. They consider it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

How many times have you been up yourself?

I’ve been up there about 120 times.

Describe the experience.

It’s like a five-hour program where we have a facility in Las Vegas very close to the airport. We do the check-in there. Everybody gets a flight suit, and of course we have refreshments. Then we move on to a brief training session in the form of a DVD we show the clients on a big screen. The DVD contains subjects like what’s going to happen today, FAA subjects as well, security subjects and how to maximize on the fun. After the training is conducted we do our TSA security screening at our facility. We drive on a bus to our airplane. We do not use the main terminal. We drive with our bus directly to our airplane, which is a Boeing 727 cargo configuration. We have space for 35 clients on that flight. We board the airplane. We go to our airspace, which we very often get from Nellis Air Force Base. Since we are flying a lot on weekends, they are not using the airspace so they are willing to give the space to us, which is great, because otherwise, our space might be much further away.

Around 10 to 15 minutes after takeoff, we reach our airspace, and here we conduct the so-called parabolas. The plane the profile of parabolic arcs where we climb to 34,000 feet and put the engine in idle speed, and the airplane sinks like a slow elevator to 24,000 feet. Once we reach that we that, we go up again to 34,000 feet and we conduct it around 15 times. Each parabola gives you around 30 seconds weightlessness. We also conduct parabolas that create the gravitation on the moon and on Mars as well. The moon is one-sixth your weight, and Mars is one-third your weight. We do around 12 parabolas in total zero G where people are floating in a cabin like when you see a picture of the space shuttle or footage from the International Space Station where the astronauts float around, that’s exactly what’s happening in our airplane.

Can you describe the experience of being weightless, having done it so much?

Every time, even for me, it’s amazing. The experience is just the ultimate freedom. It’s amazing. For a few seconds you leave the boundaries of Earth behind. You forget about gravitation, which holds us on the ground 24 hours a day. It’s very sensational.

Can you compare it to skydiving?

I’ve been skydiving many years ago, but you cannot compare it for one important subject: You don’t feel the wind or anything like that. You don’t feel the earth’s environment up in the airplane. When you jump out of an airplane and you just drop down, you have the wind and you have noises in your ear and all the crazy things. Then of course you have the thrill of seeing the ground in front of you, hoping your parachute opens. You don’t have these sensations up there. Up there it’s a Zen-like feeling. It’s not at all like a roller coaster or a thrill ride like you have in amusement parks. The parabolas are very gentle. It’s a big airplane – the floating spaces are around 70 feet. These are big airplanes. They move very gentle and very smooth up in the air. This is how the experience is, as well.

A 727 cargo plane you don’t think of as a real maneuverable aircraft. Do you have people who have concerns about flight safety, or the ability of the plane to execute those kinds of maneuvers?

We chose the 727 years ago when we started applying for the certification. The plane made a lot of sense for us since there are three engines in the back and there’s a middle engine, they can steer the airplane with these engines. Which only the tri-star jets can do. Plus, NASA has flown over 40 years in an airplane they call the KC-135, which is actually in commercial airline business the Boeing 707. Both the 707 and the 727 have the same hull. That was one of the main reasons we chose the 727. There has never been an incident. NASA has thrown thousands, probably millions of parabolas and there was never any incident. The same with us: we’ve never had any problems.

What do you think about Virgin Galactic and the future of this sort of business?

I think it has a future because more and more people want something extraordinary. Virgin is showing it can be down. The carrier airplane which is ready, White Knight 2. And Spaceship 2 is about to do its first test flights. The only thing that concerns me is the price tag. It is $200,000 for maybe a two-and-a-half, three-hour ride. I’m not sure how many people, especially right now, would have that extra change to experience a few minutes of weightlessness. But out of these vehicles, you see the curvature of the Earth, you see the black of space and of course you are weightless for around four minutes.

Do you ever get high rollers who hit it big and decide to do it on the spur of the moment?

You know, actually, I think we have never had one who decided on the spot, however we have had a lot of inquiries from the concierges and so on.

Have you ever had a couple charter a flight to go up to join the Really Mile High Club?

No, not the Really Mile High Club, but funny enough, we have coming up a birthday that’s just a couple flying.

By Jason Scavone

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