Astroprof’s Page

Zero G and feeling fine

Published on Jan 14, 2009 at 5:01 pm. 3 Comments.
Filed under NASA, microgravity flight.

I grew up during the height of the space race. I wanted to be an astronaut. I had astronaut play sets. I built spaceships for them. I built Lego spaceships. I had a space helmet. I was going to be an astronaut. Things didn’t work out that way. But, when I got the call that NASA was looking for college teams to do microgravity research, I realized that this was my opportunity to come extremely close to a lifelong dream. Well, yesterday was our flight. Afterwards we had more briefings and work to do, and the team went out to eat, so I didn’t get a chance to blog last night. I’m making up for that, today, though, and writing about yesterday.

The day started out with a series of briefings. We had a technical briefing, a medical briefing, and a flight briefing. Half of the team flew, and the other half served as ground crew. Today, the personnel are reversed in their roles. For the next two days, I am just ground support. Still, it is amazing just being part of all this.

We loaded the aircraft with our experiment on Monday afternoon. As I said in an earlier posting, the aircraft was not NASA’s C-9B that we had been expecting. Rather it was a contracted aircraft. We were flying in a Boeing 727 operated by Amerijet for Zero Gravity Corporation. The 727 is larger than the C-9, and that is nice. Of course, that means that more teams were flying, so it was probably just about as crowded. For our experiment, it worked well because the 727 is wider, and that gave us room to set up cross-ways in the aircraft.

Our experiment was one of the lightest and easiest to load. It was one of only two that could be hand carried on board instead of using the forklift. Most of the aircraft is an empty padded tube. There are a few rows of seats at the rear of the aircraft, and all fliers enter and exit through the rear stairs. There are no windows where I was sitting, and very few on board at all. Of course, they warned us not to look out the windows during the parabolas, since that could trigger motion sickness. Thankfully, I was not one of the ones to get sick. But, even the NASA personnel themselves carried motion sickness bags, and not just to hand out to others. They admitted that even seasoned veterans can sometimes get sick. This aircraft was simply doing things that was putting humans into an environment that we were not designed for. That we can learn to adapt to zero g at all is pretty amazing.

They cautioned us to be careful what we ate and drank. They gave us a briefing on how to avoid motion sickness, and then they gave us some medication before the flight (for all who asked for it). Almost everyone took the drugs. After all, you wouldn’t want to be sick and miss the fun of what may be for most people a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We took off right on time, and flew out over the Gulf of Mexico. There the aircraft performed the maneuvers that I wrote about a few days ago. We got a few minutes after takeoff until the parabolas started to get things out of take-off storage and ready to go. We had hand-holds and leg straps positioned around the experiment and cameras strategically aimed to record what we were trying to do. NASA personnel came around to each experiment to make sure that we were ready to go. Then, they gave the signal to brace ourselves for the beginning. As the aircraft pulled up, we experienced hypergravity. You had to be careful to be sitting or laying down so as not to risk injury. Then, the aircraft went into freefall, and we were in zero g! We didn’t really plan any experimentation the first two or three parabolas. We wanted to get acclimated to the flight. That was a good plan. We were in no shape to do anything the first few parabolas. As expected, we floated up off the ground. It is hard to describe the experience. All through our briefings, we were told that there was no good way to describe it. There are a lot of things that it is sort of like, but it is not completely like any of them. I can, for sure, agree with that statement! There is nothing like weightlessness. No amount of briefing can fully prepare you for the wonder of the feeling. I had been afraid that it would feel like falling (since that is basically what it is), but it did not feel that way at all to me. But, it felt wonderful!!!!! I am afraid that on the video I wasn’t smiling as much on the outside as I was feeling on the inside. I was concentrating too much on the experiment, and I wish that I had spent more time just enjoying the fun of the experience. I would love to experience this again. It is very close to a lifelong dream come true. I would not have missed it for the world!

Below is a team photo beside the jet. Our team was particularly large, since it include an embedded journalist. Besides the researchers and journalist, there was also our NASA point of contact and a engineer acting as mentor. Most of us had never met before, and it is amazing that the team gelled so well and worked so well with one another. This was a wonderful experience.

But, it was not all fun and games. We had an experiment to perform. That was the whole reason for the flight. The experiment that we performed will be used in our introductory physics labs. Thus, a large number of students for the next several years will get to benefit from the flight. Hopefully, it will get some interested in working towards their own experiments. Maybe we’ll get a student team to fly in the future. I would like that very much. And, just maybe, we can motivate some students to continue with their studies to be engineers, scientists, or astronauts. Again, that would make me very happy.

I experienced zero g, and I felt fine.

-Astroprof