• Question: What's it like taking off in a spacecraft?

    Asked by Milly and Emily to Anne, Beth, COLFlight, Jon, Tom on 4 Oct 2015.
    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 4 Oct 2015:

      Sergio:
      Dear Milly and Emily, I think you can compare that to a rollercoaster ride, you feel accelerations and vibrations in all directions and you are probably also a bit scared (at least I would, if I was there!).
      But then you arrive into space, the engines stop and you find yourself floating in zero gravity. After feeling 5 times heavier than normal during the lift off, you suddenly feel weightless like when you are underwater. This is for sure something that nobody can understand unless having experienced it

    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 5 Oct 2015:

      I agree with Sergio! Like a rollercoaster 🙂

    • Photo: Jonathan Scott

      Jonathan Scott answered on 7 Oct 2015:

      I’ve never tried it myself, but I have experienced up to 9 times the force of Earth’s gravity on a human centrifuge, which spin around in a small circle to create acceleration (or G forces). Centrifuges are very smooth and quiet, so you do not experience the noise and vibration of a space launch, but the G forces are the same. In a space rocket, the G force acts in the opposite direction to the direction of acceleration, so (as the rocket accelerates upwards and forwards) the G force presses you backwards and downwards – just like when your parents accelerate the car forwards, you are pressed backwards into your seat.

      On a space rocket, we position astronauts facing upwards (face towards the sky) in the same direction as the acceleration, so that they are also pushed back into their seats, but the G force is much greater than you experience in a car (and it lasts for several minutes). G force in this direction, makes it hard to breathe, as the force presses on your chest – like someone sitting on you – but this is a discomfort we have to accept. If you position astronauts sitting normally (like a chair on Earth) and accelerate them upwards, the G force pushes their blood down into their feet and, at 5 G, this would cause them to faint because not enough blood would reach their brain. This is the same problem that fighter pilots have when they fly, because they sit upright in their planes and when they turn very quickly, the plane acts like a centrifuge and creates acceleration and forces the blood into their feet – our knowledge of this effect has helped us design safer space vehicles.

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