Brian Mackenwells: A Ride on the Vomit Comet

Science communicator Brian Mackenwells tries to smuggle an unauthorized piece of whimsy onto a zero-gravity spaceflight.

Brian Mackenwells currently works at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics as the Public Engagement Officer. For the seven years before that he worked at "Science Oxford," an Oxford-based science communication charity, developing and delivering science shows and workshops to all ages of young people. In his spare time he acts and directs as part of an amateur dramatics group, and co-writes the monthly audio-drama podcast "Action Science Theatre". He has also derived E=MC^2 live on stage in the back room of a pub, floated in zero gravity, and has only made two children cry in the course of his public engagement career to date.

This story originally aired on our podcast Jan. 13. 2017.

Story Transcript

Thank you very much. I was pretty nervous before the flight because I didn’t want to be one of the people who threw up and this flight had a bit of a reputation for that. Its nickname was "The Vomit Comet," although NASA, who run the flights, they don’t like you to call it that. They did however give us three top tips for getting sick on this flight.

The first tip is to remember that NASA is a publicly funded organization so it has to get its supplies from the lowest bidder so it is very, very important that you double-check that your sick bag has a bottom before you need to use it.

The second thing that they warned us about had to do with why this flight was special. NASA used this plane to create short periods of weightlessness for research and training purposes. It does that by going up and down and up and down and up and down. At the up bits, the peaks of this, basically everyone in the plane gets flung upwards and it simulates what it’s like to be in space and you get about fifteen seconds of that.

If you get sick during that bit, the thing to remember is that the vomit doesn’t come out and float there. The surface tension will make it stick to your face like the world’s most disgusting beard. So it’s very important that you hold the bag all the way around your mouth if you do want to get sick.

The third part, the third tip of getting sick on this flight has to do with the bits where it pulls up because it goes up and then down. When it goes down, it has to pull back up and in that pull-up phase, you get about two Gs so you feel twice the weight. If you decide to get sick during that bit, it’s very important that you remember the vomit is going to fall at twice the force as you were used to so you have to hold the bag very tightly. You can imagine how they came to learn all of these facts.

But by the time I go out to the physical plane, I wasn’t nervous anymore. That’s mostly because they give you an anti-nausea shot, which makes you feel real weird. You're kind of light-headed, and [it's] a bit like being drunk but the level where you are quite good at pool. The thing is, once the plane takes off, then the adrenaline kicks in and then all of a sudden those side effects go away and you can go back to worrying about getting sick again.

The next bit of my talk is pretty good. I wonder what it is. Hmm. Oh, yeah... That wasn’t the most nerve-wracking part of the whole experience for me. That had actually happened the day before on the ground and it was the inspection, and I want to be clear on capitalizing the T and the I in that.

This was when the pilots got a chance to look at all the equipment that was being brought onto their plane because there were eight different teams. A hundred different research scientists of one kind or another wanting to do experiments in zero gravity and so there was all sorts of weird and wonderful equipment. And these two guys were responsible for the safety of everyone on that plane so they had complete veto over everything that got brought on there and so you had to show them that you were taking this seriously. "Taking it seriously" was the general theme of the whole week. The NASA flight operations crew who run the plane are fantastic, but they're very clear that you’re not on a jolly. You’re not supposed to go up there and have fun. These flights are actually quite expensive, and all of us to a greater or lesser extent were there on U.S. tax payer dollars. So, basically, they didn’t want to hear anybody saying, “Whee!” when we were up there. These two pilots... the inspection was sort of like that feeling times about a million.

All of the teams, the eight teams, we all... the inspection happened in this roped-off part of an aircraft hanger. Each of the teams had two trestle tables, and we had to lay out every single thing that we were going to bring onto the plane. Then we all stood around the edge, all hundred people, and waited for the pilots to turn up.

Then, when the pilots did turn up, I was actually quite pleased because they are exactly how you would like U.S. Air Force pilots to look. They were wearing jumpsuits and they had close-cropped hair and they were wearing sunglasses indoors, but they had clipboards and they were serious.

They came over to our team, at this long table, the far end of the table. They started at that end and were like, “What’s that? What’s that?” Our team leader, Tom, had to stand up in front of all these hundred people and justify every single nut and bolt that we brought with us.

It was around then that my stomach dropped because I realized what I had done. I was standing at the far end, and right in front of me on the table was the thing I had added to the inventory, which was a Rubik’s Cube. And I did that for no reason.

I liked the Rubik’s Cube and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to get a picture of it floating in zero gravity? Maybe get a retweet from the official account?” That would be cool, but I didn’t in that moment think that those two guys would value that the same way I was valuing it.

As they were working their way through, I had to desperately try and think of an explanation that wasn’t stupid. I thought, "Well, we were allowed to have a mascot," so maybe I thought, “Oh, maybe I could justify this. This is our mascot. It’s a mascot. It’s a mascot, a Rubik’s Cube, a very common mascot.”

But at that point, they had just finished interrogating the cuddly Peppa Pig that was our actual mascot, and so I realized that my Rubik’s Cube didn’t have a justification. This was a completely unauthorized piece of whimsy that I was bringing onto this plane.

They got closer to it and closer and I got into a cold panic sweat. I felt like I was going to get sick, rather appropriately. They got closer and closer and closer, and then they got to the Rubik’s Cube and then... they didn’t mention it, and I don’t know why. Looking back, I suspect it’s because NASA is so full of nerds there’s probably Rubik’s Cubes all over the place and they probably don’t even notice it anymore. It’s like furniture is my best guess.

By the time I was actually on the plane, the difficult part was over for me. When we got out above the Gulf of Mexico, we had a short period of time to get into position, into our different areas of the Vomit Comet plane flight. In order to indicate to all of the flight operation crew how seriously we were taking it, as soon as we were given the okay, we took off our seat belts, those standard airplane seat-belt things as quickly and efficiently as we could. Stood up as quickly and efficiently as we could and walked in really efficient straight lines to our different areas, because we were taking it seriously.

I think that’s one of the reasons actually I was so worried about being sick. Not just because getting sick is the worst thing your body can do as part of its normal operations, but because getting sick seemed sort of frivolous, I guess? Like emotional or something? It’s certainly not rational. It’s the physiological equivalent of going, “Whee!” 

But we went over to our area and we had a reasonably simple setup. One of us lay on the ground, the other team members sat around them reading off numbers from the tissue oximeters that we were testing so I was laying down the first time I experienced weightlessness.

It’s a bit of a weird experience to explain. The closest I can get is that it’s a bit like floating under water except there’s no water, but this means there’s sort of no resistance the same way you get in water. So when you thrash around or move, you don’t really move around that much, but if you do happen to hit something, you will ping off in a crazy direction. It’s very easy to completely lose control of where you are going.

I didn’t get sick, you will be glad to know. Thank you. Oh, thank you, thank you. There’s not many rooms you’ll get an applause for that. So I didn’t sick. One of our team did, but I won’t embarrass Nick by telling you it was him. But it wasn’t even a big deal when that happened because apparently it happens all the time.

But a more interesting physiological response happened during the flight. That was, as soon as the first peak hit, everybody started laughing. Then, throughout the rest of the flight, everybody was giggling and having fun and catching each other’s eyes and going, “Oh my God, there’s more floating.”  It’s impossible not to have fun.

The flight operations crew were sort of... I expect they knew that would happen because they got slightly relaxed about it once we were up there. The thing is, even though we all had fun, the work still got done, and I think that’s a mistake we often make especially in science, is in confusing seriousness with solemnity. Like you couldn’t possibly be doing good work if you are having a nice time or getting sick.

That’s not true and we all know it’s not true. If you asked anyone, they would say it’s not true, but we all still act like it’s true, like you have to be stony-faced in order to be serious about something. If that experience taught me anything, it was how to throw up in zero gravity, but if it taught me a second thing, it’s that we should probably try and switch off the gravity a little bit more often. Thank you.