Geometric curves

Usage examples of parabolas.

When the boys went to Edwards for their briefings on the X-15 program and their weightless parabolas—riding backseat with Edwards pilots—they picked up a whiff of… contempt… It hadn't helped any that Scott Carpenter and a couple of the others had taken over the controls on the F-100Fs and tried to fly the weightless parabolas from the front seat… and had failed.

Chuck Yeager himself had flown the first weightless parabolas for the Air Force, and then Crossfield had flown them for NASA.

The training included all the things that had gone into the training for the first suborbital flight, the centrifuge runs, the weightless parabolas, the procedures-trainer sessions, the heat-chamber and altitude-chamber sessions, plus some intelligence tests.

But those gray, slowly collapsing parabolas were not snow, and the lamp that lit their trajectory was the planet Earth.

Despite the turmoil of the spinning fans, and the slow, silent fall of the dust parabolas behind them, they seemed to be motionless.

From the cabin behind him came the “Oh’s” and “Ah’s” of the thirty-two passengers, as the gray parabolas of dust soared against the sun like monochrome rainbows.

Approaching voidhawks performed frantic fifteen-gee parabolas, curving clear then swallowing away.

T'Kreng's attention had been sucked back to the sensor screen in front of her, intent on the fire-blue parabolas intersecting and expanding across the screen.

She tapped one slender finger against the parabolas twining across her monitor screen.