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Space It's funny. Laugh. Science

Exploding Water Balloons In Zero G 142

Posted by Zonk from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.
ArchAngel21x writes "Experimenters burst water balloons in the low-gravity environment produced aboard a NASA DC 9 aircraft. There are 3 videos available in QuickTime or MPEG." From the site: "The tests were conducted in part to develop the ability to rapidly deploy large liquid drops by rupturing an enclosing membrane. As can be seen from the experiment footage, the initial rupture process is nearly ideal, but the finite size of the balloon material eventually ejects a spray from the drop surface. Then, when the balloon material leaves the drop entirely, it causes a large deformation of the drop (blob) which oscillates throughout the remainder of the test. Calculations suggest that such oscillations will continue for hours before the drop eventually becomes spherical."
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Exploding Water Balloons In Zero G More

Exploding Water Balloons In Zero G

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  • This is quite old (Score:4, Funny)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @03:32AM (#13142941) Journal
    and i'm 98.7% sure it's been posted here on /. somewhere before
  • You'd think NASA would have something a little less obsolete...
    • Well considering the article is from 2002 . .. no

    • Re:DC9? (Score:2)

      by tsa ( 15680 )
      Have you never heard the story about the old Intel processors used in the Space Shuttle?

    • Re:DC9? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Regardless of all the sturm und drang you see in Congress over the NASA budget, it's not that big, and has shrunk continuously over the years (in absolute dollars it's about the same size now as 15 years ago when I first worked with them, never mind inflation). They get research planes when everyone else is finished with them. They have a beat to hell F/A-18 that they use for the HARV program, they have the only remaining operational SR-71, and lots of other aircraft that nobody else has use for, but NASA

    • Re:DC9? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ocelotbob ( 173602 )
      Sometimes, it's the best course to use proven technology, rather than something new. The DC-9 is a proven airframe for this sort of work, and does its job quite well. Moving to a different sort of craft would require a lot of money and effort for frankly fairly little gains.
    • The really sad thing is they just recently upgraded to the dc9.... link [wikipedia.org]

  • Don't miss these high-speed videos (Score:3, Funny)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @03:37AM (#13142954) Homepage Journal
    http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/balloon/HS.HTM [nasa.gov]

    Has anyone done porn in zero-G? I'm thinking bukkake could be big in zero G or super-high speed format.

  • Damn it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @03:37AM (#13142955)
    I want a bong and a budget too.
    • I would say they made this experiment up as an excuse to f*** around in zero-g with water ballons and how it's a waste of tax payer's money but we all know I'd just be saying it cause I'm jealous. They need to publish the videos from their follow up study "The effect of Zero-G water ballons on Women's Tee-shirts."

  • You may laugh now but (Score:5, Funny)

    by The 13th Duke ( 753107 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @03:44AM (#13142968)
    Soon our daily lives will be improved by new, exciting products based on Zero G Water Balloon Bursting technology.
    • I can envision it now.... some smart aleck is gonna slap "NASA TECHNOLOGY" on a $.99 store pack of water balloons and charge $5.99, and sell a few hundred thousand...... hold that thought.

  • Important Discovery (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrRay720 ( 874710 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @03:50AM (#13142977)
    The tests were conducted in part to develop the ability to rapidly deploy large liquid drops by rupturing an enclosing membrane.

    All I can say is THANK GOD someone has finally researched this. I've lost count of the number of times I've wanted to rapidly deploy large liquid drops is a low/no-G environment.

    Now can they please start with th research of the effects of pepper spray on penguins. That's the real science goldmine.

  • This is not THAT stupid (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gr8dude ( 832945 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @04:08AM (#13143016) Homepage
    In fact, it is not stupid at all.
    I am sure that the gathered knowledge can be used in many situations. One of them could be "Dealing with leaking liquids in space missions".

    Of course, the old problem is still there - the time when this knowledge will be implemented into something useful might be very far away from now.
    • I agree with you, but not with the possible application. First wouldn't you need to capture the leaking liquids in a balloon? That seems like it would be more difficult than releasing the water without rupturing the enormous droplet.

      These experiments might reveal some of the default behaviors of liquids which might in turn reveal something about their behavior in gravity. Without gravity (or G - whatever), water and oil might mix. This is kind of the basis for the perfect metal crystals experiments they d

  • Commercial zero-gravity flights (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @04:12AM (#13143021) Journal
    This reminds me of the ZERO-G [zerogcorp.com] company, which offers commercial weightless flights on a specially-modified Boeing 727. Folks like Buzz Aldrin and Burt Rutan have flown on it, as well as everyone's favorite slashdotter John Carmack [wikipedia.org]. Carmack posted a description [armadilloaerospace.com] of the flight, along with photos and a video.

    I'd love to go myself, but I think it's still a little too rich for my poor grad-student blood.

  • the abyss (Score:5, Funny)

    by pintomp3 ( 882811 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @04:28AM (#13143052)
    was i the only one reminded of the movie "the abysss" while watching the clips?

  • Old News!! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Agret ( 752467 ) <alias.zero2097@g ... inus threevowels> on Saturday July 23, 2005 @04:33AM (#13143066) Homepage Journal
    From the bottom of the page:

    This page was last updated on
    Monday, 12 August, 2002 12:22 PM

  • just in case... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Three years to forget what a herd of nerds feels like... just in case the server groans, here's the coral caches:

    http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov.nyud.net:8090/bal loon/balloo01.mpg [nyud.net]
    http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov.nyud.net:8090/bal loon/balloo02.mpg [nyud.net]
    http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov.nyud.net:8090/bal loon/balloo03.mpg [nyud.net]

  • I still wanna see... (Score:5, Funny)

    by speights_pride! ( 898232 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @05:20AM (#13143140)
    ..what happens when potato chips are released in Zero G. Then I'll be able to make up my mind as to whether the Simpsons is real or pure fiction.
    • The Imax film about the International Space Station has an astronaut describing and partially showing what happens when popcorn is released in near Zero G. It floats around the cabin for a while and then gets sucked onto the air recirculation grills. It is very much like what happens when small particles are released into a closed room that has an air circulation system.
  • Did anyone take a close look at the QT and MPEG videos? Look at the first one, the "balloo01.mov". The codec listed is simply "video", and I think that means zero compression. It's 160x120, and 15 fps, 1040 kbps. The MPEG is 320x240, 24 fps, and 700kbps. So not only is the MPEG much much better quality, it is about 1/6th the bit rate (after taking into consideration the frame size). Why didn't NASA use some kind of good compression for the QT clip? (Like Sorenson for instance - this was way too early for h

  • not "low gravity" (Score:3, Informative)

    by Blitzenn ( 554788 ) * on Saturday July 23, 2005 @07:03AM (#13143347) Homepage Journal
    This is not a low gravity experiment. Technically the best you could call it is a virtual low gravity. The water is actually within the same gravity well as the plane is and is falling to the earth at the same speed. The difference is that it is enclosed in an atmosphere that is also falling at the same speed, or being forced to fall at the same speed. This does not necessarily remove all of the effects of gravity upon the fluid. The results might be similar in a real low gravity environment, but not the same. All this experiment shows is what happens if you fall to the earth at the same speed as the water and air is not whipping around the the water blob to cause deformation. It is important to remember the difference here.

    If you are falling into a Black hole and all of the material around you is falling in at the same speed, does that mean you have negated the effects of the Black hole?

    • This does not necessarily remove all of the effects of gravity upon the fluid.

      In more extreme gravity wells there might be effects caused by things like the curvature of the gravity well, gravity waves. There may also be factors like aircraft vibration that are beyond the control of the people doing the experiment. However given the somewhat unprecise scope of this 'experiment' I doubt they're worth worrying about.

    • Re:not "low gravity" (Score:5, Informative)

      by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear@p[ ]ell.net ['acb' in gap]> on Saturday July 23, 2005 @10:06AM (#13143967) Homepage
      What would you call the space shuttle or space station, then, if not a "low gravity" environment, where everything is falling towards the earth at the same speed?

      The only difference is that they are moving so fast sideways that then always "miss", so they keep falling. It's call "orbit".
      • There is one more difference: The plane is moving farther into the earth's gravitational field, whereas the space station remains at the same potential energy (at least due to the earth's gravity).
        • If the shuttle or space station is not in a perfectly circular orbit, then its potential energy DOES change. Most orbital objects are not in circular orbits.
          The technical word for this type of experiment is microgravity research. The same term is used on the shuttle/space station. Space station and shuttle are better for the sole reason that they don't have as many vibrational modes. (although with people aboard the shuttle/station it isn't much better... experiments that need true zero-g conditions are of
      • Perhaps I would make my case better if I argued that is is not Zero G as the Slashdot article title states. I would consider a typical space shuttle orbit as Low G, but that is an opinion, not a fact and it's a matter of perspective. The fact is, as others here have stated, there is no such thing as Zero G (that we know about). Gravity is an influence at any distance, in every corner of the universe. Simply wrapping an object in a blanket of air that moves at the same speed as the object is not zero G
    • Umm... this is exactly like orbital zero gravity. The only difference is the orbit always misses the planet, whereas if the airplane left its engines off the period of weightlessness would be substantially limited. In fact, there is no place in the universe with true zero gravity - even if you could find a point where all gravitational forces are balanced, only one particle could be there at a time.

      As for a black hole, no, it won't be negated, as the gravitational field will differ so much between two near

      • In fact, there is no place in the universe with true zero gravity - even if you could find a point where all gravitational forces are balanced, only one particle could be there at a time.

        Which I've always wondered about - if you went into space where there was practically nothing influencing you, and could bring in a constant source of particles (water, dirt, whatever), could you make a small planet, and would it have it's own gravity?

        I'm guessing yes because of that whole whatever has mass has grav

        • Idle answers:

          When water is exposed to vaccuum, the water gives up energy by boiling, until it is frozen. As you add more and more water, eventually the water in the center is compressed back into a liquid. Further adding water may eventually make the center into a supercritical fluid (sort of half water, half gas), but I am virtually certain it would not get back to a gas. As you add more water, the water in the core would probably break down chemically, and the hydrogen would separate out. Adding more

    • This is not a low gravity experiment. Technically the best you could call it is a virtual low gravity. The water is actually within the same gravity well as the plane is and is falling to the earth at the same speed. The difference is that it is enclosed in an atmosphere that is also falling at the same speed, or being forced to fall at the same speed. This does not necessarily remove all of the effects of gravity upon the fluid. The results might be similar in a real low gravity environment, but not the s

      • "there is no observable difference in results from the experiment performed in a DC-9 in free fall and the experiment performed in an orbiting chamber"

        I almost choked on my coffee laughing at that one. I thought you got the point up until that sentence. But, perhaps you didn't watch the videos? Have you ever seen seen video from the space station or the shuttle with fluid released? I think not, if that is your stance. Perhaps a blind man could make that statement, but certainly not a sighted one and

  • fish-dream (Score:2, Funny)

    by antiaktiv ( 848995 )
    I've been thinking a lot about this stuff in my brief life.
    I once had a dream where i was a fish in a "blob" of water floating around in microgravity. I kept seeing how close i could get to the edge, until i finally got too close and was sent out of the bubble and lost control completely. At that point i woke up.

    Anyway, I would love to see that done in the same manner as these experiments.

  • An Experiment I Would Like to See (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ed Almos ( 584864 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @07:28AM (#13143401)
    I wrote NASA about this but no reply was received.

    As we all know, cats always land on their feet when dropped. This task is achieved by rotating the tail in freefall and making use of Newton's third law, as the tail rotates in one direction the cat rotates in the other until its feet are pointing downwards.

    How would a cat behave in a zero-g environment?

    I suspect that the cat would spin its tail continuously in an effort to reach the right way up, but without access to either the space shuttle or an aircraft that can create zero-g I cannot prove this.

    Any takers?

    Ed Almos
    Budapest, Hungary
  • They were throwing other liquids into the blobs too. Imagine their disappointment (and mess) they experienced when gravity returned.
  • well i would like to piss in Zero G
  • Looks like it can be one of the applications...

  • Patent it! (Score:3, Funny)

    by fbg111 ( 529550 ) on Saturday July 23, 2005 @01:26PM (#13144928)
    ... the ability to rapidly deploy large liquid drops by rupturing an enclosing membrane.

    Quick, somebody patent that! They were even nice enough to work out the lawlerly language for us!
  • It's nice to finally see this. It was written about, years ago, by Spider Robinson in his terrific novel, Stardance.
  • Hello all. My name is Mark Weislogel, the now old guy who did the water balloon stuff on the NASA low-g aircraft. Sorry to be clueing in to this conversation so late, but I received too many emails over the weekend to be able to respond one by one, and I just want to tell the story a little more completely. We were performing unrelated experiments on the NASA airplane related to liquid fuel tanks on spacecraft. But we could only utilize 15 of the 50 trajectories that the plane made due to our experimental

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