An Inside Look at How Zero Gravity Airplanes Work

In a heavy episode of Built for Science, host Tom Scott joined up with the European Space Agency (ESA) on their Airbus A310 to demonstrate and explain how zero gravity airplanes work.

The European Space Agency offered me a seat on their zero-g plane: it’s an Airbus A310 that flies parabolic maneuvers, pulling up into the sky and then arcing back down, giving its passengers about 20 seconds of weightlessness (or “microgravity”) at a time. Here’s how it works. Some people would have filmed their script on the ground, and just messed about while floating. I decided to go for something a bit more challenging.

A post shared by Tom Scott (@tomscottgo) on Dec 10, 2017 at 12:11pm PST