Feb 132011
Another video has appeared on YouTube showing cats in microgravity… in this case, USAF experiments using a Convair C-131 doing parabolas to produce 15 seconds of freefall. Mostly it looks like good clean fun, until one of those jackholes kicks one of the cats. Feh. This sequence starts at about 3:10.
[youtube HwRdcv8azvk]
It’s followed by a sequence of pigeons in the same aircraft. During freefall, the birds have *no* clue to to orient themselves and fly in any stable manner.
4 Responses to “Zero-G Cats”
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There was a video from a few years back of a cat being tossed around in the NASA “Vomit Comet”, and it obviously wasn’t enjoying that one bit either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvU9GZjBTzs
First thought I had on seeing that was “I sure hope it’s declawed, or somebody is about to get their face torn off.”
You could possibly see some reason to do that, considering that cats are supposed to always land on their feet, but why you would be tossing birds around is a bit beyond me.
One thing about the woman in the blue uniform in the video is that she is _really_ good at moving around in zero g, able to keep her center of mass aligned with the propulsion her feet provide so that she stays upright as she moves around in the cabin.
Easy enough to do if you had flown a Shuttle mission, but learning it during the short periods of weightlessness that the Vomit Comet provides must have taken a lot of flights.
I’m not exactly sure why they had to use cats? Just what were they trying to learn?
> why they had to use cats?
Because it’s cool.
Or because cats, unlike dogs, “always land on their feet.” A cat might stand some chance of figuring out how to cope with zero-g, and by grabbing the walls with claws might be able to move about; but a dog will almost certainly permanently remain a flailing ball of ineffective terror.
In watching the video, it looks like he had just nudged the cat with his foot,
not kicked him.