The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 1, 2006

Official News - page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: SURGERY ON THE VOMIT COMET

by Hazed

French surgeons have carried out the world's first weightless surgery on a human. During a three hour flight over France, the plane flew in parabolic curves - that's going up and down a lot, to you and me - and the doctors used the 20 second periods of weightlessness when the plane was on the downward part of the curve to remove a benign tumor from the arm of a very brave volunteer.

The surgeons were secured by straps to the fuselage of the aircraft, and the patient held inside a plastic tent. The metal operating table provided a fixing point for the surgical instruments which were fitted with magnets. They had all rehearsed the operation thoroughly on the ground and in the plane, so the minor complication of being weightless was presumably no big deal. Let's hope they took their air sickness pills before the flight!

The purpose of this peculiar operation was not just to get into the record books, but was part of a long-term project to study the possibility of carrying out surgery during long-distance space flights.

This kind of flight has long been used to train astronauts and conduct research. More recently, it's also been one way to film movies that are supposed to take place in zero-gravity. NASA's version is officially called the Weightless Wonder, which sounds a lot better for PR purposes than what everyone calls it unofficially - the vomit comet!


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