On a quiet, cool fall morning, two buses pull up to an airplane sitting on the tarmac at Washington Dulles International Airport, in Northern Virginia. Thirty people file off the buses, hand the flight attendant their boarding pass, walk up the steps and take their seats.

About 45 minutes later, as the plane approaches the New Jersey coast, another flight attendant motions for everyone on board to get up and move quickly toward the front of the aircraft.

“Two minutes!” he shouts and the passengers scramble to find a spot on the floor to lie down.

The plane begins to dive, then pulls up and ascends, and as it levels off and begins to dive again, the passengers suddenly begin to float.

For 30 seconds, they are suspended in midair, giggling endlessly as they return to a state of childhood giddiness.

Welcome to G-Force One.



Owned by the Zero G Corp., G-Force One appears to be an everyday Boeing 727. But inside, it’s a different story.

The bulk of the jet’s inside is covered with padding and as the plane simulates zero-gravity, its passengers take the phrase, “You are now free to move about the cabin,” to a whole new level.

‘Flights of Discovery’

On Oct. 2, the jet was rented by the Northrop Grumman Foundation as part of its Weightless Flights of Discovery program.

Almost 30 teachers, including three who live or work in Howard County, took to the skies for a two-hour flight to experience weightlessness and to perform experiments in a zero-gravity environment for their students.

Cheryl Horn, director for Weightless Flights of Discovery, the program was started about four years ago to stimulate interest in math and science in the nation’s youth.

“We felt this would actually inspire teachers and give them a hands-on experience they could take back to their classrooms to motivate their students and help them realize math and science is cool,” she said.
 
Howard County was well-represented during the Oct. 2 flight out of Dulles: Two of the teachers aboard live in Columbia while a third teaches at Hammond High School.

All three couldn’t have been more excited.

“I’ve wanted to be an astronaut since the fourth grade,” said Alexia Couch, a Columbia resident who teaches at Banneker Middle School, in Burtonsville. “We’re going up there to do experiments, but I’m just going to enjoy the moment since this is as close as I can get to space.”

Catherine Bloedorn, the Hammond High teacher, said she remembered being amazed by astronauts as a child.

Bloedorn was hoping to perform two experiments: one testing how various gravitational pulls would affect an object’s speed of descent, another testing how static works in space.

“Underneath it all, you have a hard time believing two objects of different mass will fall at the same speed,” she said. “Today, I get to test it first-hand and silence that disbelief.”

Couch was testing how oil and water separate in different gravity environments.

Parabolic flight path

Horn said the program operates four times a year in different locations around the country. Teachers are able to fly for free as Northrop Grumman covers the costs of the jet and experiments.

The usual cost to fly on G-Force One is $4,950 per ticket — plus tax.

She said teachers applied in the spring and after being accepted, took part in a workshop in early September where they were briefed on what to expect in flight and planned their experiments.

On Oct. 2, the teachers received a final flight briefing, went through security screening and then boarded the plane.

The plane takes a parabolic flight path, consistently diving to an altitude as low as 24,000 feet before climbing as high as 32,000 feet. The parabolas create an environment inside the plane that alternates between zero-gravity and just under two times the force of gravity.

The flight path is the same method used to film some of the space scenes in the 1995 Ron Howard film, “Apollo 13,” aboard a NASA aircraft affectionately called the “vomit comet.”

And, it’s easy to see how the flight got the name. At lease three teachers on this flight got sick.

John Hendrix, a Columbia resident who teaches at John F. Kennedy High School, in Silver Spring, said he did not get sick but understood how a person could.

“It’s a little disconcerting at first. Left and right got switched around and you don’t know which way is which, so it’s difficult to get oriented,” he said.

But once he did get oriented, “In a word, it was exhilarating. You have preconceived notions about what it would be like, but it still blows your mind to see those notions come to reality.”

Couch and Bloedorn agreed. Unfortunately, only Couch got her experiment done.

But Bloedorn hopes the experience can still be a learning opportunity for her students.

“It’s difficult to do any experiments because it’s just so fun,” she said. “Hopefully, this will let the kids see that science can be pretty darn amazing and that it inspires them.”

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