Tuesday, Feb. 06, 2007 Flight Week Day 2
We left the hotel again at 6:50 AM. The morning briefing was attended by Ms. Frick and Mrs. Donovan. The purpose of the meeting was to go over the timetable of the flight. At 8:10 AM Mrs. Donovan and Ms. Nash received anti-nausea medicine, to help them to not get sick during the flight.
Ms. Frick and Mr. Delventhal went on board the plane with one of the flight directors to check the condition of the duct tape holding up the posters and securing the measuring tape for our experiments . All of Barrett's items were holding well, but some posters of other teams were pulling away from the walls.
At 8:50 Ms.Golden, Ms. Frick and Mr. Delventhal went out to the runway area to watch them get the plane ready for takeoff. There were quite a few people checking out the plane to make sure everything was safe and good to go.
At 9:15 Mrs. Donovan and Ms. Nash appeared from their pre-flight briefing. Along with all of the other fliers, they were led in single file out onto the tarmac to board the back of the plane.
The plane took off at 9:35 AM.
Andrea Donovan
A few minutes after takeoff, Sally Nash and I, along with the other flyers, were allowed to leave the seats and go to the workspace area to set up the experiment equipment. Then we used the first few parabolas to adjust to the feeling of weightlessness and practice sitting still during the hyper g periods. For 20 + seconds, we were glued to the floor and then we had 20 + seconds to practice moving in microgravity. It was an incredible feeling. My stomach was in pretty good shape from the beginning. Our experiment trials were pretty challenging. We had to learn to control our bodies before we could make the playground hoop and the flying disc do what they were supposed to do. The video that we took really shows how hard it was to make the objects move without moving our bodies too much. It also shows our zero-g bear moving up and down a zip line when the Gs changed. We zoomed through 40 parabolas, experienced lunar Gs and Mars Gs, and really didn't want it to be over. I am ready to fly again!
The plane landed at 11:35 AM.
Sally Nash and I met with the team on the plane and we walked them through our experience. We talked about what was difficult to do and gave strategies to try tomorrow to make the trials run more smoothly.
We also had a great tour of the WB57F, a plane that can fly and 60,000 feet. Very Cool!
