How can they simulate an anti-gravity room for training ?

Question

how can they create an anti-gravity room in Nasa for training purposes ( is it some kind of machine ? ) & can this be reversible
like creating gravity on a spaceship to make things much easier for the astronauts ?

Answer 1

The simulation of zero gravity is done in an airplane. The airplane gets to altitude, gains a specific velocity, and then flies an arcing line up and then over and downward. The arc that it flies is calculated to mimic the path that a free-body would take were it to be launched from a slingshot at that velocity and that angle. The occupants inside the airplane are "falling" at exactly the rate and in exactly the same direction as the plane. They float in space within the aircraft.

The situation is analagous to the imaginary situation of being in an elevator when the cable breaks. The elevator falls. You fall. The experience inside the elevator is of weightlessness.

At 30,000 feet in a specially designed jet aircraft, this is a safe thing to do. Please do not try it in an elevator.

Answer 2

An anti gravity room can be created in an airplane which flies in a parabolic pattern. Basically, the plane flies up and then dips down. It's the same feeling you get at the top of a roller coaster, but the flight pattern is large enough so that the zero gravity can be felt for 30 seconds. NASA does this and the plane is affectionately called the vomit comet.

Gravity can be mimicked in space by rotating the spaceship at such a speed that the centrifugal forces felt by the astronauts are the same as gravity on earth. This is similar to the spinning ride at the amusement park where the floor drops out and you are stuck to the wall as the ride spins. The difference being that instead of being stuck to the wall, you only feel a force that is similar to earth gravity and you can walk around. I'm not aware that this is actually being used in practice, yet.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

There is currently no technology that can create an anti-gravity room. NASA uses swimming pools to train astronauts (very low-tech, and the best we can do to get anywhere near weightlessness for extended periods of time). The only way to create weightlessness is to use the jet called the "Vomit Comet" which flies really high, then "falls" down so that the plane and everything in it is in free-fall, and so everything appears weightless. This can't last for long, of course, before the plane has to pull back up.

Answer 4

That airplane is old news. Obviously the easiest way to simulate zero-gravity is to fall with it... and to simulate gravity is to use centripetal forces equal to that of earth's G pull. However, I'm looking to the future!

Boeing is working on a technology utilizing porcelain super-conductors at a high rate of rotation. They've found that at the right temperatures, rate of rotation and opposing configurations, the gravitational fields can be BLOCKED, much like super-conductors can block magnetic fields. The idea is to create a gravitational battery that can literally float on top of the earths gravity field. Like a lead plate blocks X-rays, these batteries would allow you to build a true antigrav chamber... among many other useful purposes such as avionics. No kidding.

Answer 5

Well, they do not actually simulate "anti-gravity", which would be a force that repels bodies rather than attract them.

What NASA does is to actually recreate an environment of zero gravity by free falling.

Einstein taught us that a body in free fall experiences no gravitational field, and that is why people training inside the "vomit comet" are in zero g.

In fact, the reason Space Shuttle astronauts are in zero g is NOT because "there is no gravity in space", but because they are IN ORBIT, which is to say they are constantly in free-fall around the Earth.

Imagine a gun pointed horizontally. You shoot the bullet and it soon hits the ground at some distance from you because it is pulled down to Earth by gravity.

Now, imagine you shoot the bullet SO FAST that it goes over the horizon and even though gravity pulls it down to Earth, it never touches ground because of the curvature of the Earth. That bullet is in a constant free fall around the Earth... it is in ORBIT.

Same thing with the Shuttle, you shoot the rocket up about 200 miles above the Earth, (Outside the atmosphere to avoid air resistance) turn the Shuttle horizontally and accelerate to approximately 17,500 MPH... voila! You are in orbit, free falling around the earth and in zero g!

Again, the reason astronauts are in zero g is not because there is no gravity in space, it is because they are in free fall.

In fact, the magnitude of the gravitational force is given by Newtown's equation F = G*m1*m2/r^2. if you could build a stationary tower 200 miles high and stand on top of it, you would weight about 90% of your weight at sea level while your fellow astronauts pass you by on the shuttle at 17,500 MPH and at zero g.

Answer 6

They take a plane and decend at a rate that counteracts gravity. They are actually in a controlled fall inside a plane that is a simulation of the lack of gravity.

Answer 7

ok first you have to understand gravity. you cant create anti-gravity on earth because earth is creating the gravity [unless simulated w/ aforementioned vomit comet which creates what is refered to as "weightlessness"] gravity is attraction between all objects with mass. objects that are closer to you or greater in mass have greater gravitational pull. there is no way to not have gravity! gravity in space is just lessened. there already is gravity on a spaceship just not that much. the spaceship itself creates some gravity because of its greater size. in order to create more they would have to add major amounts of mass.

Answer 8

They do it in an airplane nicknamed "The Vomit Comet."

The airplane flies in a parabolic path that essentially puts the airplane itself in freefall on the down side of the curve. Folks inside the plane experience "weightlessness" (freefall) for about 30 seconds. Many scenes in the movie Apollo 13 were actually filmed in The Vomit Comet in order to accurately portray weightlessness.

Answer 9

they can take people by an aircraft to an higher altitude and drop the plane to a certain lower height.during the calculated fall of the aircraft persons inside the aircraft feel zero gravity.

Answer 10

they use a large jet plane and they go up to high altitude and put the plane into a fast dive like free falling that is how they simulate zero gravity in the videos we see.