![French acrobatic artist [Bastien Dausse] flies around on an impressive anti-gravity device he created.](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/anti-gravity-thingy-800.jpg?w=800)
With US astronauts scheduled to return to the Moon in 2026, it might be nice for them to really and truly know ahead of time what the gravity situation is going to be like. At 1/6th Earth’s gravity, the difference can be difficult to simulate.
But not anymore. French acrobatic artist [Bastien Dausse] has created a contraption that does exactly that. [Dausse] straps himself in, and is instantly able to slowly sproing about, up and down and all around in semi-slow motion, using this device which is calibrated to the Moon’s gravity. [Dausse]’s troupe’s performances center on the idea of gravity and of subverting it.
In order to achieve this effect, the swooping sculpture uses a pair of large counterweights. Check out the video below to see how they too become part of the action during a captivating duet performance. Although not attached, part of the device is a disk on which it smoothly moves around. It looks really fun, and more than a little bit dangerous. But mostly fun.
Colin Furze did something similar a while ago, without the arty-ness
And Furze’s setup was much bigger and better…
Wasn’t Colin canceled?
There was something like this at my local town’s fair. Kids could pay a few bucks to jump around like they were on the moon. It was a simple counterweight with a long boom and a harness, like this one, but made up to be safer for public use.
It’s very cool, but not new and not invented by Bastien.
> But not anymore. French acrobatic artist [Bastien Dausse] has created a contraption that does exactly that.
I could’ve sworn I’ve seen pretty much exactly those contraptions years earlier.
And I don’t mean [Colin Furze]’s WEIGHTLESS Machine[1]
But my google-fu is not enough: low gravity simulator balance/seesaw circle jump
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDtNkKPiDg
It’s not this one either
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tP-6QVJo6Y (7 months old now)
But close…
Watch until the end of the video. French one was first published in 2021.
Bit of a different contraption but also fun to watch is a cyr wheel.
Also heavily depending on the curves, skill, moves, etc. of the operator of course.
… And those 20 meter long aerial silk things…
That’s seems cool to practice or learn doing flips.
Pity. First thought was of Doc-Ock.
It can simulate low gravity in a static sense, but the counter weights add a great deal of angular inertia/momentum making the force needed to jump or change direction quite exaggerated, do they not? The small moment arm plus the way it changes as the fulcrum rolls makes this a reduced gravity effect – not at all. Colin Furze got much closer.
This thing looks like it is fun to use. Whenever I see adults trying to look artsy or like acrobatic dance on these things it is completely cancelled by a sudden vision of the caveman in the mouth of a dinosaur in History of the World Part 1.
I think a lot of inertia makes the contraption more safe and therefore a much better toy than anything with realistic responses to acceleration inputs. Obviously its not suitable for austronaut training unless its on a theater stage. but imagine a playground had such a thing!
My first thought on seeing this was that it could have been the opening scene in Heinlein’s “Waldo”
Hmm. Not quite a low gravity simulator, what with those mid-air suspensions.
Yeah. Very beautiful dance work, and ingenious use of the counterbalance thingy, but not a simulation of low gravity, and I suspect training astronauts might give them dangerous misunderstandings of what’s possible.
A similar thing was done more than a hundred years ago by suspending folks from buoyant balloons which didn’t quite zero out their weight.
But this would have less chance of it’s users blowing away in a high wind.
NASA already did something similar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whl9icOO7gU
The entire situation, the people, the aesthetic are quintessentially French. It’s beautiful and I want one
That thing looks as if it would be perfect for a Peter Pan Play. Also I want one!
Wouldn’t a lazy suzan platform be better and allow for reduced friction?
But it takes up a lot of space in the closet after you are done playing with it.