00:01Hello, I'm Teresa from space.com. Would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?
00:07I will be on the flight tomorrow and I'm quite nervous about the whole thing.
00:10No, it's absolutely no problem. It's a great pleasure. Please have a seat, Teresa.
00:14Careful with your head. So, I'm Erik Delsal. I will be the captain for the flight tomorrow.
00:22And I'm checking that the aircraft is all equipped to be ready for tomorrow morning.
00:26Wonderful. So, can you tell me a little bit what's going to happen tomorrow?
00:29Where are we going to fly and what are we going to do?
00:33Okay, so, tomorrow we will fly abroad near the coast, the Atlantic coast, far from Bordeaux and the Atlantic.
00:46So, there is not too much traffic in the altitude that we are flying between flightable 200 and 300.
00:55It is quite comfortable. And if we need more space, we go a little far to Brittany over the Atlantic.
01:03We will be flying flights that simulate lunar and Martian gravity. Is that true?
01:11Yes, it will not be a simulation. It will be a real apparent gravity that we have on Moon or
01:20on Mars.
01:21How do you do that?
01:22We will fly this aircraft in such a way like the aircraft is falling down, but not too much to
01:32keep just the gravity we need.
01:34I mean 0.16 G for Moon gravity or 0.38 G for Mars.
01:42So, what makes a difference between a parabola that gives you the lunar gravity and the Martian gravity or no
01:49gravity at all?
01:50It's just a matter of how much we push on the stick. I will begin with the 0. It will
01:57be more simple.
01:58And we try to have the 0 gravity phases as long as possible. So, if I give you a ball
02:09and please throw it in such a way it will stay as long as possible in the air.
02:14So, you will throw it up. And then from the time you release the ball, it will become to fall
02:22even if still climbing at the beginning. Yeah? Understand?
02:25So, if I give you a ball, it will be more simple. And then we have the 0. For 0
02:32.16, we just push so that the aircraft will pull up first.
02:40And then when we reach a given attitude, we push on the stick so that the aircraft will do that
02:46as if it was falling down in the vacuum. That is for the 0.
02:51So, and for, to keep Luna, it will be a little less jump and much even less. And we just
03:01push a little less to keep some gravity.
03:04How difficult it is to fly such flights? I have actually heard that there will be 4 pilots on board
03:10the flight tomorrow.
03:12And I believe that on that EasyJet flight, the flight that I arrived on, there are only 2. So, that's
03:17twice as many pilots on a normal flight. Why is that?
03:21You are right. So, we fly this aircraft in a very unusual way. On a normal aircraft flying for an
03:35airline, you are right, there are 2 pilots and they share the 4 activities.
03:39We have to fly, we have to navigate, we have to speak with the control and we have to monitor
03:45the systems. That's the 4 tasks of the crew.
03:48And we share them, but normally, there is only one flying the aircraft and having the hands on the controls.
03:56To be very accurate for this maneuver, because you asked me if it was difficult. Well, it's like every flight,
04:05but the difficulty is to be very accurate.
04:08And that's, that's our objective. So, we share the 3 axes and the aircraft between the 3 pilots.
04:16So, one is flying the pitch and it is the making the zero G or the moon or Mars gravity.
04:25And we use this kind of thing here, that we put here like that.
04:32I plug that towards the radio. And then, so, from now on, this pilot can only act on the pitch
04:42and I cannot do that with that.
04:44You see, this one, you can do both pitch and roll. And with this one, I can only use pitch.
04:53And during that time, the other pilot will use a very technical equipment.
05:03So, we use this 1st of 2-1. And this 2-1. And the 2-1. And the 3rd pilot
05:20is acting on the throttle to act on the power, because as soon as everybody is flying in the cabin,
05:29if you have a little acceleration lateral on longitudinal we will find
05:34everybody in the cockpit or in the aft toilet that we don't we don't need so
05:40that's three what about the fourth one and the first one is a spare one because
05:44it's very it's quite difficult to do it's very nervous
05:51there was activity and we try to be very accurate and we fly all manually and we
05:57even disconnect some some device to help the pilots so we are turning only one
06:07relaxing in the cabin speaking with the with the experimenters to see how it
06:12works and each we are turning how does one become a parabolic flight pilot or
06:23can any pilot that is flying around Europe do that you need special training
06:27not any we are all at the beginning very experimented pilots either test pilots or
06:35military transport pilots and then we we from some some of them selected we do a
06:46specific training simulator or theory the first simulator and and then flights to
06:55train this specific maneuver how many people in Europe can do that
06:59we are eight eight pilots in Europe yes
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