In order to achieve reduced gravity, the C9 flies parabolas. The accent and decent are about 45 degrees to the Earth's surface. Here is the view from the window during my flight (I hope my labels are right).....Flight 1: Micro Gravity

Amy, Tyler, and Dustin were the first to go up....
Here Nebraska can be seen leading the first group to fly. They're trying to look serious for the cameras but I see some smiles of excitement.

Amy, Dustin, and part of Tyler (he was cut off in all the pictures) are reacting to their first micro gravity parabola.





























Everyone doing their part to get the experiment done.

Dustin, Amy, and Tyler coming off the plane like they just had the best time of their lives.


Flight 2: Micro Gravity

Here are Lee and Stephen doing their thing...Lee (middle) and Stephen (right) are all smiles as they board the C9.

Stephen and Lee sit by our experiment waiting for the micro gravity parabolas to start.






























Stephen and Lee are working hard, scanning with the hand held RFID scanner and spinning the Pantry CTB (crew transport bag).
Stephen is back from the flight. I couldn't find a picture of Lee coming back from the flight.


Flight 3: Lunar Gravity

I was an alternate for my team and since my group flyers were clear to fly, I was not able to fly during our experiments for lack of space on the C9. Don't fret... the program director arranged for me to assist another team with their experiment during flight 3. This flight was for experiments that needed Lunar Gravity (1/6th of the Earth's). At the end of your experimental parabolas the crew let us experience three zero-G (weightless) parabolas and one Martian (1/3rd of the Earth's) parabola.

Here I am boarding the C9. I'm very excited..

In this picture, I am experiencing my first Lunar parabola. My hair has more volume all the sudden.
We got down to business quickly once we got used to Lunar gravity. My responsibility during the experiment, was to raise and drop an accelerometer.Towards the end of our parabolas, my group had some time to see how we were responding to the Lunar gravity. In this picture I'm successfully doing the spits in the air.

This is me getting off the C9. As you can tell, I'm even more excited than when I boarded the plane. I had a fantastic, one-in-a-life-time experiences that day.

Today, flight day 1 was scheduled but due to technical reasons the plane and experiments were grounded and the groups from today will fly tomorrow morning and the groups scheduled for flight day 2 will fly tomorrow afternoon.

In the mean time we were treated with an oppertunity to meat Clayton C. Anderson, the Nebraska astronaut that spent a five month tour of duty on board the International Space Station in 2007.

Link to Clayton C. Anderson's NASA Bio....

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/anderson-c.html

Here are some great pictures from today...

Left to Right: Dustin, Amy, Stephen, Lee, Clay, Tyler, Dana, Olga

We're meeting Clay Anderson for the first time and got a picture with all of us in our flight suits.

Left to Right: Dana, Tyler, Clay, Amy, Stephen, Olga, Lee, Dustin

We're taking a photo opp. while showing Clay Anderson our Microgravity RFID Experiment. This is on the C-9 aircraft, you can see seats behind Dana and Clay where the experimenters and crew will sit during take-off and landing and the white floor where the experiments are secured to the floor of the plane.



Left to Right: Dustin, Dana, Tyler, Olga, Lee, Stephen

The team is standing in front of the retired Weightless Wonder IV on display at Ellington Field. The Weightless Wonder IV precedes the C-9 our experiment will be flying in.

Amy and Olga "holding up" the Weightless Wonder IV.

Our command center at the hotel












The entire team after the distinguished alumni dinner at Babin's along the Kemah Boardwalk

Olga and Lee after their thrill ride where the hyperbaric chamber simulated the atmospheric conditions at FL250 (flight level two five zero means 25,000 feet above sea level)







The 6.2 million gallon pool where experiments and training are done to simulate zero gravity










Tyler and Prof. Perez in front of the C-9 "Weightless Wonder"











Dustin gets fitted with his equipment for the hyperbaric chamber.

We're in Houston and it's going great. After spending our spring break in the lab this is a much welcome break from the all to familiar surroundings of Nebraska Hall and the campus of UNL. Not that I don't thoroughly love the sights of Lincoln, but everyone needs an escape. With half our team abroad, Lee, Dustin and I were definitely looking forward to our 17 hour road trip down to Houston.

When we got here there was no time wasted getting acquainted with the equipment and procedures for our experiment. Thursday we spent a very productive day at Ellington Field with our mentor, Amy Schellhase, and our advisor, Lance Perez. It was an amazing experience to be on site at Ellington Field working on a project that would be flown in zero gravity. We also got to see the Super Guppy plane before it took off, which was an altogether unorthodox experience in and of itself. If you know what the Super Guppy is, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Friday was an interesting ride. We spent the morning learning about gas expansion and human physiological changed in de-pressurized environments. After a morning of seminars and a tour of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab facilities (that's the place with the big swimming pool), we got to go in the hyperbaric chamber. I'll save that story for another post.

On February 26th, Lee and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few items used for testing...about 133 items!
That sounds like alot of items, but I'm counting the Huggies wipes and rubber gloves individually so the number of items we'll have to tag will be significantly less. Probably around 60-70. Anyway, we spent about an hour and a half looking for things like no-rinse shampoo and body-bath rinse pouches. For the most part, the items were normal items like cotton t-shirts, toothbrushes, and AA batteries. In the end, we settled for a bottle of Suave instead of astronaut shampoo.
Now, everything is piled up on the desk up in Dr. Perez's lab awaiting the tags.

While most college kids were hitting the beaches of Padre or the slopes of Aspen, Dustin and I were working on finding foam for our box. We had an aluminum box made in the Metal Shop at UNL in Nebraska Hall. It is about 40"x10"x16" (I'm not sure of the exact dimensions, but it looks like a horse trough). Inside the box, there are two crossbars separating the 40" span into roughly three equal compartments inside the box. Each of the two end compartments are meant to hold a mock CTB (16"x9"x9" duffel bag) which will hold all the tagged items, and the middle compartment will be lined with foam so we can hold our reader and any other equipment we need to take up on the flight (hopefully just the reader though).
Dustin and I spent a few days during spring break finding the right kind of foam to pad the middle compartment with. We went to hardware stores to look and department stores and we couldn't find what we were looking for. At each place we would say, "Hey, do you guys have some foam? Like the kind of stuff you see in movies where they open up a gun case and there is a foam cutout for the gun...that kind of foam." Everyone enthusiastically said, "Oh yeah, the grayish blackish kind of stuff, right?" Then they would inevitably follow that up with a heart breaking "No, sorry, we don't carry anything like that."
We ended up going to a guitar store and getting just what we needed there. They came in 2'x4' sheets that were 2" thick. At one of the hardware stores we did find some pipe insulation that would come in handy for padding the corners and edges of the box. Once we got all this back to the lab, I took a T-square and a utility knife and went to town on the guitar/gun foam, cutting it to fit our middle compartment while Dustin padded every single edge and corner of that box.
Lee had the handles and straps made so we can carry our box and so we can strap things in. This will make it so no bags or foam or readers float away while we're inside the plane in zero-gravity. They box is basically done, it just doesn't have anything in it...which will change soon!