How does an astronaut get prepared for the long period of antigravity that he is going to be put on? — ASB, Chiapas, Mexico
When an astronaut is orbiting the earth, he isn’t really weightless. The earth’s gravity is still pulling him toward the center of the earth and his weight is almost as large as it would be on the earth’s surface. What makes him feel weightless is the fact that he is in free fall all the time! He is falling just as he would be if he had jumped off a diving board or a cliff. If it weren’t for the astronaut’s enormous sideways velocity, he would plunge toward the earth faster and faster and soon crash into the earth’s surface. But his sideways velocity carries him past the horizon so fast that he keeps missing the earth as he falls. Instead of crashing into the earth, he orbits it.
During his orbit, the astronaut feels weightless because all of his “pieces” are falling together. Those pieces don’t need to push on one another to keep their relative positions as they fall, so he feels none of the internal forces that he interprets as weight when he stands on the ground. A falling astronaut can’t feel his weight.
To prepare for this weightless feeling, the astronaut needs to fall. Jumping off a diving board or riding a roller coaster will help, but the classic training technique is a ride on the “Vomit Comet”—an airplane that follows a parabolic arc through the air that allows everything inside it to fall freely. The airplane’s arc is just that of a freely falling object and everything inside it floats around in free fall, too—including the astronaut trainee. The plane starts the arc heading upward. It slows its rise until it reaches a peak height and then continues arcing downward faster and faster. The whole trip lasts at most 20 seconds, during which everyone inside the plane feels weightless.