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 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.
01:20How 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.
02:51And to keep the lunar, it will be a little less sharp and much even less. And we just push
03:01a 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.
03:46That's the 4 tasks of the crew. And we share them, but normally there is only one flying the aircraft
03:53and 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.
04:09And 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 to have the radio. And then so, from now on, this pilot can only act on the
04:41pitch and 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 put these two things here. And it can act on the roll without pulling or pushing. So that
05:15the two pilots are flying the aircraft at the same time.
05:18And the third pilot is acting on the throttle to act on the power, because as soon as everybody is
05:27flying in the cabin, if you have a little acceleration lateral on longitudinal,
05:33we will find everybody in the cockpit or in the aft toilet that we don't need.
05:40So, that's three. What about the fourth one?
05:42And the fourth one is a spare one, because it's very, it's quite difficult to do. It's very nervous activity.
05:53And we try to be very accurate.
05:55And we fly all manually. And we even disconnect some device to help the pilots. So, we are turning. And
06:05there are only one relaxing in the cabin,
06:09speaking with the experimenters to see how it works. And we are turning during the flight.
06:18How does one become a parabolic flight pilot? Or can any pilot that is flying around Europe do that? Do
06:27you need special training?
06:28Not any. We are all, at the beginning, very experimented pilots, either test pilots or military transport pilots.
06:39And then we, from some of them selected, we do a specific training, simulator, a theory first, simulator, and then
06:53flights to train this specific manoeuvre.
06:57How many people in Europe can do that?
06:59We are eight pilots.
07:02In Europe?
07:03Yes.
07:09With that?
07:09Yes.
07:09You've allowed no Ding negotiate at all.
07:09The third one will be made in Europe from the United States.
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