While many Brown students may have spent their summers relaxing on the beach or interning in stuffy offices, five members of the Brown Space Club took a 10-day break in July to ride the "vomit comet." The group flew to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and took two trips on NASA's C-9 aircraft - or "vomit comet" - which simulates spaceflight.
What did being weightless feel like? "You just have this huge smile on your face, and you can't get over the fact this is real," said Lillian Ostrach '07, the space club's president.
Ostrach and fellow club members Adam Weinstein '07, Kellie DiPalma '07, Carla Thacker '07 and Corynn Brodsky '08 traveled to Houston to take part in the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program. Through the program, they were able to tour facilities not open to the public and participate in intensive physiological training, which ensured they could identify and react to any problems they might encounter in flight.
The purpose of their trip was to perform four fluid dynamics experiments, each of which tested how liquids behave in microgravity. One of them was a weightless rendition of a common elementary school experiment referred to as "the volcano," which involves mixing vinegar and baking soda to generate an eruption. The team filmed the microgravity environment and each of the four experiments, which took place during two 90-minute flights.
The C-9 simulates low or zero gravity during these flights by performing a series of parabolic maneuvers. Just after the apex of these moves, riders experience the sensation of weightlessness. Each flight consists of roughly 40 parabolic maneuvers, which last between 15 and 40 seconds, according to the reduced gravity program's Web site.
A key component of the NASA program is bringing scientific research to communities, and the fluid dynamics experiment performed in Houston was specifically designed to advance this goal, according to Ostrach.
Since their return, team members have visited Vartan Gregorian Elementary School, located at 455 Wickenden St., to explain their experiments in the "vomit comet" to students and teach them scientific methodology. By exposing elementary school students to a scientific way of thinking about the world around them, they hope to get kids excited about science, said Joey Borson '07, a Herald opinions columnist and member of the club.
As part of the preparation for flight, students were required to undergo intensive physiological training, ground tests and a safety inspection of their experiment by NASA officials. They were put in a hypobaric chamber, lifted to a simulated altitude of 25,000 feet and then instructed to take off their oxygen masks for five minutes so that their bodies became hypoxic, or suffered from temporary oxygen deficiency, Ostrach said.
The group's work started well before Houston. Ostrach, Weinstein, Thacker and team members Borson and Ailish Kress '08 - both of whom missed the Houston trip due to other commitments - spent the 2004-2005 school year developing their experiment and gearing up for a future flight to succeed the club's trip to Johnson Space Center in 2004.
In October of last year, the team submitted a research proposal to NASA with a technical description of the experiment and how they would conduct it in the C-9. Their proposal also included an outreach plan and scientific references. Once they were accepted into the program, the team submitted a second proposal detailing the experiments, Borson said. Funding came from the NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium, a group of academic and public education institutions linked to Brown's Department of Geological Sciences, which supports undergraduate and graduate NASA-related research.
