Flight IL-76 MDK Bashny.Net

Under the deafening howl four turbojet engines in the company of several people I blyuyuschih nesus meet all the boys dream of the USSR - space (well, almost) zero gravity. Before you report from the board of the unique IL-76 MDK.
13 Photo © Anton Ivanov

I was waiting for the unknown. Of course, my lack of knowledge can not be compared with the ignorance of my ancestors: even seventy years ago thought that without gravity the heart can not pump blood, eyes focused, saliva and food ingested, and the urine flow. But I still have no idea how my body would react, deprived of the usual G. Maybe I like Antaeus from Greek mythology, draw strength from the earth, and costs me off her, as I had finished? About such thoughts swirled in my head while I was in the company of a dozen adventurers went on a small bus to the airfield Chkalovsky.

Fenced concrete fence huge field two kilometers from the Star City, where among aircraft hangars and the wind howled, - Chief of Russian Air Force airfield. Can not be removed, but in general, and nothing: small aircraft and most of the ones that catch your eye, might please some Aviation Museum. For example, IL-18, which is not less than half a century, here it is worth quite a ready to fly. Against this background, our IL-76 - almost a visitor from the future.

Inside the plane looks somehow gutted - no seats, windows, too, the floor is covered with thick mats of khaki, which bogged down feet. I stand with the heaviest parachute and listen to instructions. If something goes wrong, we should quickly leave the board "on all four sides," four streams: two through the side door and two through the cargo hatch in the tail.

"While you fly on a parachute, to see where the plane will fall, - says the instructor as if a disaster has just scheduled. - As you land, go to the place of his fall, there you will find. "

Even more so, I never jumped from the sinking aircraft, I am concerned about this discrepancy: on my stomach hanging 20-pound parachute detach himself I can not (at least, putting it, I could not let go tight carbines without outside assistance), as we will fly over the water - for the safety of flights in an arc Kepler Pleshcheev pass over the lake. What happens? And what if the drive and the whole of the lake since this is not exactly get out ballast.

I am assured that in decades of flight parachute to evacuate more use was not necessary, and we'll take them at all, when the plane attains the desired height. I'm glad.

With the package for a weightlessness

If parachute flying this level of complexity is put under the statute, then the necessity of paper bags says experience. Even astronauts do not always do without them: some become ill from one type of colleagues walking on the wall.

The whole thing in a small area of the brain - the so-called vomitoxin. Which for some irony makes us the same reaction and in case of poisoning, when you need to rid the body of harmful food, and roll.

Changes in body position capture small crystals of sodium carbonate, located on the hair receptor cells of the inner ear (this is the famous vestibular system). Now the plane takes off and the hairs are going down, and when to create weightlessness he will dive nose to the ground - they pull up.

The problem is that when the information from these "sensors" begins to diverge from the data received from the eyes (which see ourselves not prancing horizon, and outwardly unmoved cabin), the body begins to panic. That is why those who are swayed in the ship easier on the deck where you can see what's going on, and not in the cabin, where like peace and quiet.

The plane of the deck is not, therefore, sit, wait and look around. My thoughts are interrupted by the roar of engines notable efforts and overloading.

Promised 2G, then now I weigh somewhere 160 kg - yeah-ah, if people with weight really feel so myself, I do not envy them: sitting against the wall, I can hardly lift potyazhelevshy leg. It is strange that my heart (which is now, apparently, instead of the three hundred grams weighs six hundred), continues as much pounding. But then I though I fail to swing down and instinctively stronger seizes wooden beam at the wall and straining his hand, pressing his body into a mat on the floor.

I see my neighbors are flying upside down. And I? To me that is not the effect of weightlessness? "Relax Hand" - I hear advice instructor and immediately see how my running shoes (with feet inside, of course) also rises to the ceiling.

FIRST TIME

Unlike weightless "airplane" of space that you do not just hang in the air, the inhabitants of the ISS, and strive upward - aircraft that actually falls. But this last thought, which takes me - it is more important that I experience their first moments of weightlessness, which account for handsfree is one of the instructors. Every five seconds, we are told how long it has been going on "mode" (not bloody, and the "weightless") - 20 seconds of it is necessary to get to the mat again, if you are, of course, do not want to weightlessness stopped when you head down you are hanging from the ceiling. "Twenty," - said the voice, and I again presses itself in the floor.

Impressions from the first time mixed - it is certainly fun, but it is so unusual that I do not understand what to do with your body. It seems razozhmesh hand holding board, and, like a balloon, fly up to the ceiling. Control your body does not work at all. Fortunately, for this in the cabin there are instructors (one for two newcomers). They cling to the legs of the lines in the gaps between the mats for the stability and twist tourists in the air, they play in the "basketball" (throw each other through the interior) and give advice.

I, for example, advises for a second time to try to get up and jump. After the command "mode" I honestly doing the job, but the result is the same: I find myself upside down.

This helplessness confuses me. The only possibility to somehow control their position in space - is to hold on to something. It is necessary to release the hand, I have to fly somewhere and nervous that by the end of weightlessness find myself somewhere over treacherous solid tables scientists. But the instructor grabbed me and put on a mat in time for the end of the second mode.

Human losses

After the third approach Kepler parabola in the cabin becoming less happy faces. For a girl who after the first "hill" went to the nose of the aircraft to fill the bags, joined by other ukachennye.

My neighbor asks to change places to sit closer to the instructor. Perhaps he wants to know how best to fly in zero gravity? I'm going to join the conversation, but I see only that he has parted with his breakfast. Well, that's no accident aircraft operating such flights in America called Vomit Comet («Blevalnaya comet»).

Generally, it is believed (and it is even proved by experiments) that can cope with motion sickness with nausea, fixing the mind on extraneous thoughts or actions (for example, doing something monotonous or trying to solve a puzzle). But it is hardly possible in the plane, which is every 5-10 minutes jumping up and down. There probably would help the training of the vestibular apparatus. Regularly irritating machine, you reduce the sensitivity of its cells, but to me it should have been done before - it is better to 15 years when he finally ends its development. Now, for those whose unit is not withstand the test of a parabola Kepler mission of adventure turned into a torture. Imagine how in this state to know that you'll get another 6 "slides».

But, well, that "live" people have less - more space for flight. That someone is on the wall, and the newly-born flies past him Superman (the instructor says that no flight is complete without someone tried to fly to pose a superhero - some even come on board in costume). But the three synchronously somersault in the air - the instructor joked that if he did unleash them in the opposite direction, all three of them are guaranteed to join the ranks of replenishing paper bags.

I listened, smiled, but I feel that I have in my throat rises. In fact, motion sickness - it is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation, but now I envy monkeys, seals, sheep and cats who are not swayed at all. Among the people, too, there are those who never swayed, but they do not take the astronauts - people with damage to the inner ear, the deaf. There are also their antipodes - they sharply enough to turn his head in the car to feel nauseous.

While I was absorbed in thought about it, the attack retreated.

BACK TO G

Finally, I more or less accustomed to how the regime: quietly hanging upside down and dream about his moment of glory as supermenskogo flight through the cabin during the next slide, but ... At the end of the fifth mode, we are told that more weightlessness will not be - people with bags already so bad that the decision on the route of flight is now accepting physician.

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am very sad that when I sold it all over and done with. And there's no guarantee that I have once in your life survive this feeling again. On the other - I've already had a bout of nausea, possibly through one or two "slides" I would have dreamed of early planting.

After landing of the IL-76 MDK people came out in identical blue overalls, but with colored persons: flushed those who rolled in a rush, and green for those who not so long ago vomit. I went to some middle stage: pale and happy. From what it was in my life, and the fact that it has ended.