It takes a long time to really know how to move in zero-g

Apologies for the super boring video. I was attempting to spin but this was early on the 3rd day--the previous two days had been extremely taxing. On the first day I threw up 9 times. Quite a record really. Second day, I got better--only 7. Of course, these are research flights and the particular study I was participating in required that I NOT take anti-nausea medication. The commercial flights you see that have people bounding around and goofing off actually provide their paying participants with lots o' drugs--provided of course, so they enjoy their flights. This particular set of experiments required that we not be affected by drugs. Many other researchers on these flights are conducting engineering studies that do not require them to be sans drugs--therefore lots of them were having a heck of a lot better time than I was the first few days of flights. These research flights funded by nasa run 12 parabolas in sequence. Currently on the DC-9 Boeing aircraft, the periods of zero-g range from 25-30 seconds tops. Previously on the Kc-135 you could obtain close to 40 seconds of weightlessness. Why the reduction? The DC-9 is a much smaller plane. Enjoy the videos. It is an amazing experience and one I will never forget. Though I say amazing I mean to say that feels completely natural to be doing this--must be a pre-consciousness memory of floating in the womb or something, it is a lovely feeling--that is, lovely when you don't feel sick. The white bags in my jumpsuit are barf bags in case you were wondering. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer.

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• dc-9
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