French Acrobatic Artist’s Low-Gravity Invention | Hacker News Reader

French Acrobatic Artist’s Low-Gravity Invention

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110 pointshalfdaft25 comments

NASA has a much lower tech solution at Cape Kennedy: it's a wall that is slightly off vertical. You are strapped into a harness and lifted off the ground so your body is horizontal and your feet rest on the wall. The angles are calculated so the force of your feet against the wall is the same as the gravity on the moon, while the strictly vertical component of your weight is supported by the harness. The net effect is that walking and jumping on the wall is the same as walking or jumping on the moon.

Yeah, like this (Russian narration, oddly): https://youtu.be/17vY8r84NCA

Also: https://youtu.be/MoRMOtMfd_E

I mean, that sounds cool and would allow more freedom of motion for a more realistic moon walk, but I don't know if I'd call that lower tech. This thing seems to be a small elegant and easy to transport counterweight. I suspect moving the NASA setup would be difficult :)

It's usually harder to take a wall with you for performances and what not?

I looked up the thing you're talking about, the artist's device is way cooler IMO.

> “The net effect is that walking and jumping on the wall is the same as walking or jumping on the moon.”

Anyone try it after actually being on the moon?

I assume the more typical use case was trying it before being on the moon... :-)

You don’t believe in feedback? Huh.

Colin Furze did it a year ago. https://youtu.be/gSDtNkKPiDg

And wires with counter weights have been used in movies since forever.

Great video. OP's is something that many people can make and much faster, given the low tech of it, so I appreciate that too.

This French dude has been doing it for years. At least 2021.

As annacappa noted, this predates Colin Furze's (which was awesome and totally worth a watch), but it's a much simpler design than Furze's or movie wire walking. 'course, you can't go as high. But good for a small performance. And actually, I think comparing it to Furze's there's more potential for freedom of movement in various directions, although Furze did have that retraction mechanism in his arm, this one seems like it allows moving the entire piece around the room due to the simplicity of it.

This is something a performer could take pretty much anywhere. Versus a massive 40 foot long crane or complicated wire setup, this is a big improvement.

Rotation around the vertical axis has too much friction. It should be designed such that his motion around this axis doesn't bleed away so fast.

Yes, I felt the same. While the TFA highlights the "low tech" approach, and it is is undeniably cool, it looks to me more like a successful proof of concept, duct tape and all. The second video shows more detail on the attachment mechanism and my first thought was there are impressively low-friction sleeved bearing mechs which would likely broaden the performance envelope substantially. Also, I thought it would be good to have a snap-in bearing detente with a safety interlock.

The body harness isn't shown but it looks jury-rigged and bulky. There are a variety of low profile harnesses designed for stunt performers doing wire work which could be adapted. I also wondered about reducing friction at the ground plate through flattening the bottom side of the pipes and polishing both surfaces. Applying teflon sheet and/or a light coat of lubricant might further enable substantial rotational velocity to be built up. Perhaps giving the top of the ground plate a slight bowl shape would help keep the pivot point centered at higher speeds.

I think there's a lot of interesting potential with the concept and I hope this artist or others continue to explore it.

I can't imagine why it would not just run of that plate after a trivial amount of movement.

It does look like it would be pretty easy to make with just some bent metal and exercise weights. Colin Furze's one worked well too, maybe this 'invention' was influenced by his. There are many of these on youtube, some years old.

You can see it so just that at the very end. If you look closely the plate itself is also spinning.

I don't think this is correct. The plate is moving atop whatever padding that is below it, yes, but none of the scratch marks visible on the surface of the platter appear to be rotating as the person moves about it.

I looked at the youtube video closely, it's only 1080 though, I also don't think it is spinning. You can hear the tubes grinding against the plate.

everybody's gangsta until you jump over the central axis

Man, this is cool. I don't think it's exactly like a lower gravity environment (the counter-force to gravity exerted by the counterweight will never be linear - the "gravitational" force will change with the pivoting angle of the counterweight).

Can someone speculate on/explain this curvature? Is it just parabolic?

Let's club together to buy Dang one of these for his birthday?

This could do wonder for medical rehab / training too.

I'm a fan of novel, fun, full-body exercise approaches like this and I've found them surprisingly rigorous. Even one of those circle-within-a-circle gimbal body rotator things at a carnival usually leaves me quite sore the next day due to working muscle groups in unusual ways.

Ah, I expected this to allow for gradual increase of effort and more range of movements than body weight exercises.

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