Reduced gravity aircraft
Aeronave de gravedad reducida
- Date
- c. 1950 · confidence low
- Place
- San Antonio, Texas, United States
- Credited to
- Heinz Haber
- Field
- Movement
What it is
A modified aircraft that flies parabolic arcs to produce brief periods of weightlessness, used to train astronauts and run microgravity experiments; the concept was developed by Heinz Haber at the USAF's aerospace medicine school.
What it led to
- NASA's reduced-gravity program (the 'vomit comet')
- Astronaut training for the US space program
- Filming of weightlessness scenes and commercial microgravity experiments