by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
Most people wouldn’t willingly hop aboard an airplane nicknamed the “vomit comet.” Jacksonville high school teacher Jeffrey Cumber, however, can hardly wait.
“I am really looking forward to this experience,” he said. “This should be really neat.”
Though he usually prefers flights with little or no turbulence, Cumber, an engineering technology teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, and Fletcher High School physics teacher Mike Levine have been chosen to take a wild ride aboard G-Force One, a modified Boeing 727-200 used specifically to give its passengers the sensation of weightlessness.
Though “vomit comet” is actually the nickname for NASA’s KC-135 aircraft used to train astronauts for the weightlessness of space, G-Force One is a privately operated aircraft owned by Zero Gravity Corporation that basically does the same thing.
Passengers on board get to experience weightlessness due to the airplane’s special flight plan, which consists of a series of extended up-and-down, wave-like parabolic cycles.
According to Zero Gravity’s Web site, the aircraft will climb to about 34,000 feet where it will level off. Then the pilot will point the nose down 30 degrees and dive to 24,000 feet. During this drop period, which can last up to 30 seconds, passengers will be able to float around a padded, specially designed portion of the aircraft as if they were astronauts in space. A “normal” flight will consist of about 15 of the up-an-down cycles, giving the passengers several total minutes of weightlessness.
On Nov. 5 and 6 Cumber and Levine will join several other Florida educators picked for the “special mission” at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The flight, which is sponsored by the Florida Space Research Institute, is designed to help prepare the selected Florida teachers to teach math, science and technology using aerospace themes and resources.
Cumber was picked for the flight from among the participants at the 2005 Summer Industrial Fellowship for Teachers program. Over the summer, Cumber worked as a liaison engineer at Northrop Grumman’s St. Augustine manufacturing facility where he worked on the development team for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, the next generation of the U.S. Navy’s AWACS aircraft.
Levine participated in a similar summer program two years ago that enabled him to take the upcoming trip on G-Force One. He took part in Teach Space, a program sponsored by NASA and Embry-Riddle University. The week-long program took place in Daytona Beach and Levine learned how to integrate space projects into the class room.
Both teachers were selected for the gravity-free flight after submitting lesson plans to their respective summer program organizers telling how they could integrate what they learned at the programs into their classrooms.
Though both say they are ready for the upcoming experience, Levine said he isn’t the best with airplane turbulence.
“I have to admit that I am not even a good roller coaster rider,” Levine said. “But this is the opportunity of a lifetime. I grew up during the astronaut and space age and have always had that space thing. This is a great opportunity to try it.”