The ESA has a stripped-out Airbus A310, strictly for use as a weightless training aircraft that rivals NASA’s “vomit comet”, a hollowed out McDonnell Douglas C-9B Skytrain II.
Brief periods of weightlessness are created by pilots flying high, topping out, then diving at 50-degree angles.
This exercise, specifically the top-out, allows the forces on the passengers and pilots to cancel each other out and perform a variety of training stunts.
The all-white interior is simply a product of padded walls to ensure that the people on board have as nice an experience as one could in zero-gravity training.
The brutal part of experiencing zero weightlessness at the top of the climb is twice the normal gravity at the bottom.
But let’s be honest… I’d definitely want to try it out!
