Friday, March 16: Flyin' Lions wrap up, prepare for long journey home

The team slept in, yet I was awoken early by my phone ringing with birthday wishes. Today I turned 20.

We drove to Ellington for the last time this morning, hoping we would be in time to watch the day’s microgravity flight land. I was overcome by a wave of shock and sadness as we entered the near-deserted hangar. The end felt nearer than ever, and that upset me. I looked at our bare table, that only a day ago was cluttered with tools, foam, and other parts to our experiment.

I also remembered the problems that arose that we debate the solutions to over that table. Several days our dejected bodies lay slumped in the surrounding seats, fiercely pondering the science and possible solutions to the problems.

Proceeding outside, a cool, unwelcoming breeze darted across the flight line as we watched F-15's land. The sun periodically fought its way through the clouds.

The plane’s lights against the grey clouds signaled their return. We welcomed back our USC friends who had flown. While USC was unloading their experiment from the plane and packing it up, our NASA mentor took us on a little trip.

A friend of our mentor showed us around the hanger that houses the T-38’s, the planes astronauts fly. Even mission specialist astronauts undergo training to learn how to fly these planes. The training is effective exposure to stressful situations as encountered on the shuttle.

We then went to the hangar that houses the planes used for the pilot astronauts to practice landing maneuvers in a shuttle-like environment. These planes are unique because they are outfitted with controls like those on the shuttle and those on planes. There is also the equipment used to induce shuttle-like behavior.

After our amazing tour we said goodbye to the people in the Reduced Gravity Office. Walking out of that hangar was painful. With each step, the memories and the pain weighed heavy on my eyes; I had all I could do to hold back tears.

USC and our NASA mentor joined us for lunch at a seafood restaurant near Ellington. We enjoyed just relaxing at lunch together. After lunch, the Flyin’ Lion returned to our hotel for a bit.

We then drove to JSC to see the rocket park. Having been to the Air and Space Museum and to Space Academy in Huntsville, Ala., I knew that this was the third and only remaining Saturn V rocket that I had not seen. I had seen two, but the awe was still there when I stepped into the building, dwarfed by the rocket.

It’s hard for me to fathom the labor required for such an incredible structure as the Saturn V rocket. The sheer size is enough to drop my jaw in amazement. There were a couple other rockets outside the Saturn V building. We walked around and took pictures for a while. Finally we left, becoming trapped in a large amount of traffic on our way back to the hotel.

We headed out to Boondoggles restaurant to meet the USC team and our NASA mentor. The atmosphere was relaxing, with scattered lighting on the deck beginning to compensate for the setting sun.

My friend who graduated last year from Penn State aerospace engineering and now works for Boeing in Houston met me at the restaurant. We caught up on events and reminisced some. Not long after he left, we said goodbye to our NASA mentor and his wife.

I realized that I could not verbalize my thanks for all of the advice he offered us over the past week. He and his wife were so kind to us, and in such a position you aren’t sure what could suffice to convey the amount of appreciation we have gained for him. Needless to say, it was a sad goodbye for everyone. We really felt that the end had arrived.

The USC team came over to our hotel; we just relaxed, talked, played some card games and enjoyed our last night together. Finally we Flyin’ Lions told them it was time to go because we had to get up for a long day of driving the next day. There were more bittersweet goodbyes.

This was so upsetting; I really hoped there weren’t anymore. Tomorrow we wake up early, pack our things and begin the journey back to State College.

I feel as if I learned a lot about teamwork, leadership and conducting science experiments. None of us will ever forget this amazing experience, thankfully captured in many photos.

I know I will probably bore my friends to death with stories from this trip back in State College, but it is one of those instances where you don’t understand how important the event has become to people if you haven’t participated.

We all have many assignments to complete for our classes, experimental data to analyze, outreach to perform and a final report to write, but nobody on the Flyin’ Lions would disagree when I say that it was worth it.

This has been Jessica Tramaglini, Penn State aerospace engineering sophomore, chronicling an intense two weeks for seven Nittany Lions: mission accomplished.

Thursday, March 15: Visiting Mission Control, looking in on the space station

Today, for maybe the second time during the whole trip, the Flyin’ Lions slept in.

We gathered up our flight suits and headed to Ellington about 10:45 a.m. While taking pictures with the KC-135 at the entrance to Ellington, we saw the day’s zero-G flight take off.

It was a warm, sunny day, so we stood outside watching all of the planes and helicopters taking off. e even saw one of the WB-57’s that had been worked on in our hangar take off. As it turned to taxi out to the runway we felt the force from its thrust. After a while, the flight returned and we greeted our USC friends who had flown.

They told us that they felt fine and had a good flight. We returned our flight suits—it was painful pulling apart the Velcro of my nametag and dropping my flight suit in the hamper. It was just one more moment signaling the end of an amazing trip.

We got our extra power supply for USC to use when prepping their experiment for a second flight, and headed to lunch with our NASA mentor. Traffic was horrible and the lights were not timed correctly. We had to stop by the hotel because I had forgotten my nametag, and ended up eating at a Mexican restaurant near our hotel.

Then we headed to meet the rest of the teams for our tour of Johnson Space Center (JSC). First we were taken to Hangar X, where they have a vertical habitation module, a prototype for a lunar outpost. They also had a rover in the hangar, and a test field behind the hangar.

Next, we headed to Mission Control. First we saw Mission Control, where shuttle missions are conducted from. There was a simulation in progress when we arrived in the room separated from the control room by glass. Since I was twelve, I have wanted to work in Mission Control, so seeing it was just amazing to me.

The huge screens posted orbiter data and a world map charting the course of the orbit. It was incredible seeing all of the different consoles and the groups that have to work together to conduct a successful mission.

Next we headed over to Space Station Control. This room looked similar to Mission Control. On one giant screen there was a live feed of part of the station as seen from outside of the structure. There was a clock counting down until crew sleep time, with about 20 minutes to go.

Flight Director Heather Rarick spoke to us about the room. She graduated from my high school, Mount Lebanon, and from Penn State aerospace engineering.

We then continued to historic Mission Control of the Apollo era. I was awed, just thinking about the incredible people who had walked through this room before me. I sat at the flight director’s console and observed the relatively archaic technology in the console controls.

The last stop on our tour was the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. There are various structures scaled to that of the shuttle and various space station modules that the astronauts use for training. They even have a Russian Soyuz spacecraft mockup!

The various mockups give the astronauts a sense for what it’s like to work with these structures full-scale. The tour guides were very knowledgeable, and it was very interesting to catch a glimpse of the sort of training that astronauts experience.

After the tour we returned to our hotel for a brief period of time. We then headed to the food store to buy hamburgers and hot dogs before heading over to a party for the reduced gravity teams hosted by the co-ops.

I learned a lot talking to the co-ops about their work. I was fascinated and jealous, because I want to work at JSC so much. We enjoyed ourselves with our new friends in the reduced gravity program. It’s really going to be hard to leave all of this.

Wednesday, March 14: More thunder, glass miracles, Lions battle Trojans in bowling

We woke up to booming thunder that set off car alarms and lightning that briefly dispelled the early morning darkness.

Everyone but today’s flyers departed at 6 a.m. to pick up the portion of the glass chamber that had been broken.

We ran into traffic on the highway, all because people stopped to look at an accident as they drove by. We finally reached the glass blower’s shop. He was extremely nice, and by some miracle had managed to fix our chamber.

We drove off to Ellington Field, eager to begin preparations for the day’s flight. The flyers were in and out of briefings while the rest of the team vacuumed the chamber and backfilled it with argon. Finally we were allowed onto the plane to finish preparations.

We installed the chamber into its clamps and hooked up the wires. When we tested the Langmuir probe and source meter they surprisingly gave us perfect data. After making last minute notes on the clipboard and procedure sheets, we stowed all necessary equipment in the overhead compartments above the seats. After watching the plane take off, one of the men who works at the hangar allowed us to see the super guppy plane.

He talked to us a little about its history and present usage. That has to be the most oddly shaped plane I have ever seen, but it does its job of transporting huge cargo, including other planes like the Osprey.

I just marveled at its size. After that mini-tour, the four of us left on the ground went to pick up food and bring back some for the flyer boys, since we flyers from yesterday were starving upon return.

More thunderstorms descended upon Ellington, so when the flight returned they pulled the plane directly into the hanger and everyone then left the plane. Our boys came off with huge smiles.

Chad, who had never been on a plane at all before, said he felt fine and that it was cool. Once the flyers had time to recuperate we unloaded our experiment from the plane. That was an extremely sad moment. It was the first signal that the trip was coming to an end.

At the same time we have become excited for our friends on the USC team, who loaded their experiment today, and will begin flying tomorrow. After many pictures in our flight suits we drove back to the hotel in the pouring rain. Side streets along the highway were completely flooded!

After a nap we departed the hotel for a souvenir shop we had spotted. It had lots of NASA and Texas memorabilia. Then we went to Abe’s for dinner. It was a Cajun restaurant, and we all tried foods we had never eaten before, like seafood gumbo. They also seasoned their chicken in a special way that was unfamiliar to us.

After a quick stop at home several of us headed to the bowling alley to meet the USC team. Penn State, unfortunately, was not up to par, and we lost to USC. After a couple games it was getting late, so we wished tomorrow’s flyers good luck and headed back to the hotel.

Tuesday, March 13: Flight time, weightless footballs and glass crisis

Through impenetrable fog we made our way to Ellington Field at 7 a.m., today’s flyers suited up in green flight suits.

Shannon (Kolensky), Matt, and myself, the alternate lucky enough to have landed a seat on the plane, were nervous and excited. We all ate bagels for breakfast, a pretty safe choice for our stomachs.

The team immediately began preparations upon arrival. We had placed the particles in the chamber last night, and now we began pumping out the air left in the chamber and replacing it with argon.

We flyers were tied up most of the early hours with briefings on the day’s events and such. After all flyers were called to the office to receive medication we were sent away again because fog was delaying takeoff.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team was hard at work in the plane with our adviser and NASA mentor, making last minute adjustments to the experiment. Finally the flyers received medication, a combination of a depressant that suppresses motion sickness and a stimulant to counteract the other drug’s tiring effects.

Several people then briefed us, including the flight surgeon and test directors. I was getting pretty dizzy from the medicine, and actually had to concentrate on walking normally. Then we all walked outside to meet the rest of our teams for departure.

The flyers walked single-file out to the plane, past the camera crew. We stowed any items we had brought on the plane in the compartments above our heads and then took our seats. The flight surgeon came around with candy because the medicine causes dryness in the mouth.

Several minutes after takeoff we were allowed out of our seats, so we began preparations on the experiment, powering up the RF generator and turning on cameras. The test directors counted the minutes to the first parabola, and we positioned ourselves against the walls for the first 1.8-g segment of the flight.

The engine roared louder than ever, and then all of a sudden went quiet. My stomach leaped into my chest like when cresting the hill on a roller coaster. Then the feeling went away and we found ourselves slowly drifting upwards.

I pushed off the ground, way too hard, and hit the padded ceiling quickly. This was microgravity. I looked at my teammates in awe, Shannon’s hair flying everywhere.

Before we knew it, the directors called “feet down, coming out” and we felt ourselves pulled to the ground. The heaviness ensued once again as we rounded out the bottom of the flight path.

Again the familiar rumble followed by silence, a heart leap and we were weightless once more. I kicked my legs and they began traveling in directions I did not intend for them to go. Only the straps on the walls prevented me from flying off into our experiment or that of another team.

On the third parabola we began our experiment. I held the clipboard to keep track of parabolas and record the pressure in the chamber. Matt worked the computer software for the Langmuir probe, and Shannon manned the generator.

So caught up in my work on the clipboard, I did not notice when the problems began. The power had been accidentally changed on the generator, which was easily fixable. More significant, however, was the malfunctioning Langmuir probe. It stopped collecting data. As long as the cameras were on getting visual data on the particles in the plasma, though, our experiment was fine.

After ten parabolas we had a five minute break as the plane turned around. The camera crew was constantly floating around from team to team during zero G. During the next set, my teammates began to feel a bit queasy. They didn’t move around as much during 1.8 g, when people feel sick if at all.

I have always loved roller coasters and such, so I loved every minute and felt fine. I’m sure the medicine helped too. After the second turnaround Shannon went back to our seats to get the outreach material.

Over the next ten parabolas we threw around a football signed by Joe Paterno, and played with a Slinky. These will be used for outreach in middle school classroom activities. The videographer came by and put a microphone on Matt. In zero G he spoke about our experiment to the camera. Shannon and Matt played with the football for the camera and I showed the slinky in zero G for the camera.

Next we moved on to a lunar gravity parabola (1/6 Earth gravity), and then a Martian parabola (1/3 Earth gravity). It was fun to do push ups and jump around in these environments. You were aware of your weight, but not nearly as inhibited by it as on Earth.

Before we knew it the parabolas were over and we had to return to our seats. I was extremely sad. No words could ever really describe what I had just felt, but I knew just how special an opportunity it was.

Nearly everyone slept on the short flight back to Ellington. Still high on excitement, I was wide awake. The camera crew left first and positioned themselves at the bottom of the plane to capture us as we descended the steps to cheers from our fellow team members. At the nose of the plane the whole flight group posed for a picture.

We had to go inside for a quick debriefing, and new flyers had to fill out a form for the flight surgeon. Ours was the seventeenth “no kill” flight for the program, meaning nobody threw up, so we got to sign a copy of our flight picture for the office. Matt, Shannon, and I then met up with the rest of our team and returned to the hangar.

The plane was brought back in and we went inside to work on the experiment. The source meter was still giving us problems, and we decided to secure it outside of the experiment structure for tomorrow’s flight.

It performed better, but still did not give the desired data. We took out the chamber and other pieces we would need to bring with us to prepare the chamber for the next flight.

After packing it all up, we headed home, stopping at Subway for the famished flyers. Trials and tribulations were not over yet, however.

After watching the video taken by the camera we set up, nearly everyone was relaxing. Then I heard the bad news—in an effort to clean out the chamber, the glass had been cracked on an end piece, right up to the threading. Panicking, we called everyone we knew who could possibly help us, and we began frantically searching online for places in the area that could help us.

Finally Shannon found a glass blower, who agreed to wait in his shop for us. We drove there as fast as we could, running into traffic. It pained us to hear the cracking of glass as he examined the piece and pulled the metal rod out of the glass.

He said he would make a new piece if it couldn’t be fixed. We stopped at Lowe’s on our way back, to gather supplies for a plan B, should the glass blower not work out.

After returning home, the team went to T.G.I. Friday’s for dinner to just unwind after all the stress. Some of us are leaving at 6a.m. to pick up the piece from the glassblower tomorrow and others are flying, so it’s an early night for everyone.

Monday, March 12: More troubleshooting, visiting the NASA gift shop

We woke up to an incredible storm and drove to base in pouring rain and lightening that illuminated the sky.

After working on the experiment over the weekend we had to carry it into the hangar. The team was under stress and we tried to work fast to put together the experiment. We pumped down the chamber and backfilled it with argon. It held a pretty consistent vacuum. The circuit still tripped when Val’s new wiring system was hooked up. Several NASA personnel were debating the problem, which was finally attributed to a difference in amperage that tripped the safety device on the power source provided by NASA.

Despite this continuing problem we assembled the experiment and prepared for the test readiness review. As the group of NASA officials descended upon our experiment, Kel (Elkins) explained everything and several team members answered questions. In the end they were satisfied with the experiment, only suggesting additional padding of sharp pieces.

We had to weigh our experiment then, and it topped a whopping 341 lbs. A decision was made to fashion a special adapter for our RF generator, and we had to get a specific plug.

The team and our NASA mentor went to lunch and bought the necessary piece. We returned to the hangar and loaded our experiment into the plane via a forklift. The structure had to be bolted to the floor of the plane and the electrical system hooked up. The flyers got fitted with flight suits and had a briefing on motion sickness while the other members were able to strike a plasma in the chamber. Then it was time to leave the hanger.

After a quick stop at the hotel we went to the gift shop at Space Center Houston. It was absolutely huge. Then we stopped at Target on the way back to get a Slinky for outreach.

We met our adviser and the USC team for dinner at an Italian restaurant next to our hotel. The food was delicious. Afterwards we said goodbye to the USC team and went back to our rooms.

Sunday, March 11: Work, church and pool

Exhausted, we slept in a little and went to breakfast at the International House of Pancakes.

We dropped the boys off at the hotel, and while Val worked on the electrical system the other girls went to church.

We relaxed in the hotel that afternoon, even checking out the hotel pool. The water was cold, though.

We went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant and nearly everyone had some sushi.

Matt and Chad dropped the rest of us at the hotel and then went to get our adviser at the airport. They returned for a quick team meeting before bed.

Saturday, March 10: Rest and relaxation

Today, being Saturday, was the first day with any relaxation.

Several of the team members went out searching for parts to redo the circuitry in the morning. Then the team headed to the beach in Galveston where we met up with NASA co-ops and other teams in our flight week.

The weather was beautiful, and we played volleyball. In the evening we headed to our NASA mentor’s house for dinner with the USC team. We met two astronauts and a flight surgeon!

They were fascinating to talk to and offered a wealth of information. Overall it was an enjoyable day.