Blue Origin mimics moon gravity on 1st-of-its-kind New Shepard suborbital research flight (video)

[Admin]

Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company Blue Origin simulated lunar gravity conditions today (Feb. 4) during the 29th launch of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle.

Blue Origin mimics moon gravity on 1st-of-its-kind New Shepard suborbital research flight (video) : Read more

 

[orsobubu]

i would really like hear from someone - gifted with a strong and athletic physique - who was aloft the simulated lunar environment if he tried to jump with a backpack weighing as himself, pushing with his legs as much as he could, and the max height he achieved over the spacecraft floor: is it more or less than 50cm?

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I don't think Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle is going to give you the info you asked for. It was uncrewed, so nobody to jump. More importantly, the simulation of lunar gravity was created by rotating the craft, so it was a centrifugal force effect that changes with distance from the side wall of the craft to the center axis, where it is zero. Because the vehicle is only 12.5 feet in diameter, your astronaut's head would be approximately in the middle of the capsule, with little artificial gravity force, with body extending to the wall experiencing a gradient of force from about zero to about 1/6 G. So, the jump, starting from a crouch and probably bouncing off the far wall, would be hard to assign a proper resisting gravity-like force.

However, it should be possible to calculate an estimate for a person with doubled body weight jumping against a gravitational force that is 1/6 G. But, you would need to measure from the person + pack center of mass.