Drop tower

From Freepedia

A drop tower is a tower which has an evacuated tube in its interior in which fall experiments can be made to achieve weightlessness for a short period of time. The capsule which falls down in a drop tower is caught by soft materials in order to avoid damage. Sometimes there is a catapult installed, which allows weightlessness to last twice as long.

Shot

Drop towers were once useful for making lead shot. The short period of weighlessness allows the molten lead to solidified into perfect sphere by the time they reached the bottom.

Drop Towers

• Fallturm Bremen
• NASA Glenn Research Center 2.2 second drop tower
• Zero Gravity Research Facility
• Marshall Space Flight Center Drop Tube Facility