“Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.” – Terry Pratchett
Definition
Short-term weightlessness created by allowing an airplane to perform a “free fall” during a parabolic trajectory.
Weightlessness can be defined as absence of any external mechanical contact forces. Accordingly, an object in a free-fall condition is weightless when exclusively affected by gravity. Therefore, short-term real weightlessness is created within Earth’s atmosphere by flying an airplane along a parabolic trajectory correcting for air resistance. The parabolic flight platform has been used to study immediate effects of weightlessness on human physiology, physical, or combustion science, as well as astronaut training since the late 1950s (Haber and Haber 2009). Depending on the aircraft and flight pattern, anywhere from 10 to 45 s of weightlessness is generated, which is preceded and followed by an acceleration and a...
Abbreviations
- CNES:
-
Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales
- CO:
-
Cardiac output
- CVP:
-
Central venous pressure
- ESA:
-
European Space Agency
- G:
-
unit of gravitational force; 1G = acceleration due to gravity at the Earth’s surface = 9.80665 m/s2
- HR:
-
Heart rate
- ICP:
-
Intra cerebral pressure
- NASA:
-
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- SV:
-
Stroke volume
- TPR:
-
Total peripheral resistance
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Petersen, J.C.G., Hargens, A.R., Petersen, L.G. (2020). Parabolic Flight. In: Young, L., Sutton, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Bioastronautics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10152-1_62-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10152-1_62-1
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Parabolic Flight- Published:
- 30 November 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10152-1_62-2
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Parabolic Flight- Published:
- 04 February 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10152-1_62-1