Today I had my first encounter with the POGO – the Partial Gravity Simulator here at Johnson Space Center.
Simulating weightlessness in training is not easy and all the different ways we use have their pros and cons. Of course, we can not just switch off gravity. And we don’t know of any way of shielding the gravitational field, like we can do with the electromagnetic field. So, we’re stuck with it.
In parabolic flights we can have about 22 seconds of free fall inside the airplane cabin and we typically repeat that for about 30 parabolas per flight. As far as a human being is concerned, that’s true weightlessness, since we can not perceive the residual acceleration that does exist. However, those 22 seconds are very limiting when you’re trying to train complex tasks.
As you know, we train for spacewalks under water by establishing neutral buoyancy of the pressure suit. In many ways, training under water can be harder than working on orbit, because the suit can not be neutral with respect to rotation on all axes and because every time we move we have to displace the water. However, water can also make some things easier because of its stabilization effect.
Let’s say that you’re driving a bolt. When you reach the hard stop you need to be able to react the torque you’re applying by having a solid attachment point to structure, otherwise you’ll go spinning the other way. But it’s hard to feel that full effect in the pool because of the stabilization effect of the water.
So here’s where the POGO (Partial Gravity Simulator) comes in. The suspension system compensates the body weight so that we can move up and down, rotate and, to a degree, move in the horizontal plane in conditions similar to actual weightlessness.
(Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui:
https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/
(Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí:
https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/
(Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici:
https://anne.cpamoa.free.fr/blog/index.php/category/logbook-samantha
30/10/2013