BORDEAUX, FRANCE - Parabolic flight pilots are a rare breed. There are only eight of them in Europe capable of sharing the aircraft's controls during these nerve-wracking series of up-and-down maneuvers that create brief spells of weightlessness and reduced gravity conditions. These aviators include the cream of the crop of Europe's military and test pilots and even one active astronaut. Probably the most experienced of these magnificent eight is Eric Delesalle, the head pilot at Bordeaux-based company Novespace, a spin-off from French space agency CNES and Europe's only provider of parabolic flights for scientific, and sometimes entertainment purposes.
