Our time in Houston was over. It had been a good trip, but it was time for us to head back to Ann Arbor. We planned on leaving around 8am, however we needed to make sure 3 of our team members got to the airports. One of them was flying out of the airport near the hotel so we drove him over there. The other two however were flying out of the airport on the opposite side of Houston. It was too far to drive them there so we ended up getting them a taxi. The taxi took about an hour to get there. We left shortly after they were all sent on their way.
It was already hot outside. The AC felt great. I drove the first shift out of Houston. We rotated drivers as we did on the way down to Houston. Everything went smoothly until about noon when we missed our exit. I noticed the exit as we passed it but it wasn't clear if that was the right way to go. We kept driving as I pulled out the map to figure out what to do. The map wasn't much help so we decided we may be on the right road after all. About 15 minutes later we were back in the same place where we missed the exit. It turned out the highway looped back around. Fortunately it worked out that the chicken place we had wanted to stop at was right there so we stopped for lunch. After lunch we switched out drivers.
We charged on. The trip did not go perfect though. Later on we discovered we had missed another exit and were 40 miles off course. We were able to get back on course though without losing much time. We drove through the night and arrived back in Ann Arbor early Sunday morning. We unpacked the van and went home. It had been 23 hours in the car driving straight. We were all ready for a little sleep. We would need to start working on our papers for the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference which were due in a week.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Day off
Our last day in Houston had no scheduled activities. It was meant to be a back-up flight day in case one of the flights was canceled. We spent most of the day just hanging out in the hotel. A few of the guys decided to go to Galveston beach in the afternoon. We watched a few of the Eurocup games and then dove right into our flight videos. Since we would only have a week before our conference papers were due we wanted to get a head start at analyzing the data.
In the evening I was able to meet up with a friend from Michigan who was working at Boeing in Houston. We first went to a British pub ("Sherlock's Pub") where a bunch of NASA co-ops liked to hang out. We played several games of darts and then were treated to a free appetizer buffet. They had all sorts of excellent appetizers available. After our appetizers we headed off to a burger place for dinner where we met some other NASA co-ops. Dinner was great. They made their own homemade onion rings there so I tried those. After dinner we all went outside and watched the ISS and shuttle streak across the sky. The sun had just gone down but it was still somewhat light outside. It was exciting watching them cross the sky knowing we had watched it being tracked on the screen in Mission Control the day before.
Once the shuttle disappeared from view we headed out to Kemah for fireworks. It was the same sort of show as last week, but enjoyable as the last time. It was a very patriotic moment as there was patriotic music playing in the background. Once the fireworks were over we hung out around the bay for a while before heading back to the hotel. It had been a fun night. It turned out that some of the co-ops I met happened to know one of the girls I went to France with last summer. It was quite a coincidence.
In the evening I was able to meet up with a friend from Michigan who was working at Boeing in Houston. We first went to a British pub ("Sherlock's Pub") where a bunch of NASA co-ops liked to hang out. We played several games of darts and then were treated to a free appetizer buffet. They had all sorts of excellent appetizers available. After our appetizers we headed off to a burger place for dinner where we met some other NASA co-ops. Dinner was great. They made their own homemade onion rings there so I tried those. After dinner we all went outside and watched the ISS and shuttle streak across the sky. The sun had just gone down but it was still somewhat light outside. It was exciting watching them cross the sky knowing we had watched it being tracked on the screen in Mission Control the day before.
Once the shuttle disappeared from view we headed out to Kemah for fireworks. It was the same sort of show as last week, but enjoyable as the last time. It was a very patriotic moment as there was patriotic music playing in the background. Once the fireworks were over we hung out around the bay for a while before heading back to the hotel. It had been a fun night. It turned out that some of the co-ops I met happened to know one of the girls I went to France with last summer. It was quite a coincidence.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Check-out and Tours
This morning we returned to Ellington Field one last time to unload our experiment and get everything packed up. We were able to get on the plane shortly after the morning briefing and quickly got all the experiments unloaded. We packed up all our boxes as we waited for our guide from AD Astra to show up and see our experiment. When he got there I explained how the system worked and we all talked to him for a while. Once we were all checked out and packed we headed back to the hotel for a while. We all relaxed until early afternoon when we went over to Rocket Park to meet buses for a tour. The buses had to wait a little while for people to show up so I went inside the building where the Saturn V is now housed.
I still can't believe how massive that rocket is. It's amazing that they were able to build such an impressive machine with the technology available back then.
Outside the Saturn V building there was a Redstone and an Atlas rocket. The Redstone looks tiny compared to the Saturn V.
We loaded the buses and headed first to a building where they housed two of the large vacuum chambers that Apollo and other spacecraft were tested in. The smaller of the two chambers was 25 ft. in diameter whereas the large one was 50 ft. in diameter and around 90 feet tall.
It was enormous! The chamber is pumped down using liquid helium panels behind the chamber walls along with several cryogenic pumps which both cool the chamber dropping the pressure. The door on the chamber weighs 4 tons but can be moved by a single person since it's so well balanced. Generally, however they use hydrolics to move the door.
After the vacuum chambers the buses took us over to Mission Control. We first saw the Mission Control Center where the shuttle is controlled.
There is a mission currently going on right now so everyone was in working. We were very fortunate to get to see it since they usually do not allow people in when there is a mission in progress. The shuttle is on it's way back to Earth as it undocked from the ISS yesterday. You could see the shuttle crossing the screen and we saw it pass over Michigan while we sat there. Next we went to the ISS Mission Control Center. We were also very fortunate to see them switching shifts. Generally there is an hour overlap between controllers when there are two people on the same station. We arrived at the end of this hour as some of the controllers were leaving for the day. The room was set up very similarly to the shuttle Mission Control, however we noticed it was better lit. Some of the consoles are different in this room, but generally everything else is the same.
Finally we went to the historic mission control were we were able to sit at the actual consoles the Apollo mission controllers sat at.
On the wall there was a mirror given to mission control by Apollo 13 that was meant to symbolize the reflection of all the controllers that helped to get them all home.
On the wall in all the control centers, the patch of each mission controlled from that room was displayed. Our guide, who was a main room FIDO (Flight Dynamics Officer), also showed us the pneumatic messaging tubes that were used to send messages between rooms during those days.
The tour ended with us visiting the mock-up facility where they had models of all the ISS modules, Soyuz and the shuttle.
This is an area where astronauts can train on mock-ups that are almost identical to the actual module in space.
At the very end of the room there were several robotic mechanisms that are used. We again got lucky and were able to see the mechanical arm in action.
The guide said she's only ever seen that twice. It was definitely an exciting tour. Our guide pointed out where the WETF and centrifugal training facilities were along with some of the other facilities as we drove back to rocket park. It's quite impressive all the facilities that are available here down in Houston.
I still can't believe how massive that rocket is. It's amazing that they were able to build such an impressive machine with the technology available back then.
Outside the Saturn V building there was a Redstone and an Atlas rocket. The Redstone looks tiny compared to the Saturn V.
We loaded the buses and headed first to a building where they housed two of the large vacuum chambers that Apollo and other spacecraft were tested in. The smaller of the two chambers was 25 ft. in diameter whereas the large one was 50 ft. in diameter and around 90 feet tall.
It was enormous! The chamber is pumped down using liquid helium panels behind the chamber walls along with several cryogenic pumps which both cool the chamber dropping the pressure. The door on the chamber weighs 4 tons but can be moved by a single person since it's so well balanced. Generally, however they use hydrolics to move the door.
After the vacuum chambers the buses took us over to Mission Control. We first saw the Mission Control Center where the shuttle is controlled.
There is a mission currently going on right now so everyone was in working. We were very fortunate to get to see it since they usually do not allow people in when there is a mission in progress. The shuttle is on it's way back to Earth as it undocked from the ISS yesterday. You could see the shuttle crossing the screen and we saw it pass over Michigan while we sat there. Next we went to the ISS Mission Control Center. We were also very fortunate to see them switching shifts. Generally there is an hour overlap between controllers when there are two people on the same station. We arrived at the end of this hour as some of the controllers were leaving for the day. The room was set up very similarly to the shuttle Mission Control, however we noticed it was better lit. Some of the consoles are different in this room, but generally everything else is the same.
Finally we went to the historic mission control were we were able to sit at the actual consoles the Apollo mission controllers sat at.
On the wall there was a mirror given to mission control by Apollo 13 that was meant to symbolize the reflection of all the controllers that helped to get them all home.
On the wall in all the control centers, the patch of each mission controlled from that room was displayed. Our guide, who was a main room FIDO (Flight Dynamics Officer), also showed us the pneumatic messaging tubes that were used to send messages between rooms during those days.
The tour ended with us visiting the mock-up facility where they had models of all the ISS modules, Soyuz and the shuttle.
This is an area where astronauts can train on mock-ups that are almost identical to the actual module in space.
At the very end of the room there were several robotic mechanisms that are used. We again got lucky and were able to see the mechanical arm in action.
The guide said she's only ever seen that twice. It was definitely an exciting tour. Our guide pointed out where the WETF and centrifugal training facilities were along with some of the other facilities as we drove back to rocket park. It's quite impressive all the facilities that are available here down in Houston.
Flight Day!
Wednesday turned out to be a hectic day as we had both flights almost back to back. The proficiency flight still hadn't occurred but was already out on the runway ready to go when we arrived at Ellington around 7:30am. I attended the morning briefing where we were given the schedule for the day. We were assured we would have enough time to get everything loaded and that we'd have about 20 minutes to talk to the first flight flyers before we needed to load the plane.
The C-9 arrived back around 9am or so and we were allowed on at about 9:30am. The flyers went into their pre-flight briefing at 9:10am and we carefully moved all our cells out to the tarmac for quick loading onto the plane. As soon as the aircraft was open, we slowly carried each cell on-board and placed them on our structure.
They each were wired in and the back panel put on for flight. It took us about 45 minutes to get everything on board. The flyers all boarded the aircraft before we were able to get off. Michigan Tech had to load their experiment during this time as well since they had specific power needs. They had a lot of difficulty getting it bolted down, but eventually everything was set and they were good to go.
We hung out in the high bay next to the Reduced Gravity Office for a while until the plane was ready to take off. At this point we headed outside and watch the C-9 taxi out to the runway and takeoff towards the Gulf of Mexico.
We had about 2 hours before the flight would be back so a couple of us went to the store to purchase a few more camera tapes for the second flight. When we got back we ate lunch and waited. The plane landed and we again brought out the second flight day cells so they'd be ready to load. We all went out to the plane to greet the flyers as they came off. They went immediately into debriefing after a picture and then we were able to talk to them.
It turned out that most of our particles extracted which was very exciting news. The liquid cells however had a few issues. The larger size orifice cells had some of the liquid spill over during take-off. Some of the liquid was recovered during the 1.8-G period but there was still some that remained above the knife-edge. The biggest issue though was that there was a large dip in the meniscus during microgravity. This meant there wasn't a level surface for Taylor cones to form. The flyers said they did think they saw some cones though. Other than what they told us we didn't have time to really look at videos and data to make changes. We decided to drain a little bit of the liquid out of the cells to hopefully prevent spill over during take-off.
I set up a station in the high bay where I was able to drain the liquid and then take the cells up to the aircraft. The new cells were installed the same way on the structure once the old cells had been removed. It took a bit longer to fix everything this time but we got everything set. The flight took off late again. The weather was beautiful and a great day to fly. I drained cells and saved all the liquid for later analysis. Eventually the plane landed and we got the second shift flyer's account. They said there was a lot of arcing going on, but they did see Taylor cones. Fortunately they were able to get through all the tests.
We left Ellington field shortly after the flyers landed. We all went to Kroger and bought food. Most of us got steaks and grilled them back at the hotel. We ate outside as the sun went down. Before and after dinner we took a look at the flight videos from the front view camera. The lighting wasn't great so it was hard to tell what was going on, but you could see the bubble/dipping issue the flyers were talking about. We're not really sure why that occurred since that seems like it would be something that would happen in the 1.8-G period rather than microgravity. It will be interesting to see what kind of results we can pull from our data.
The C-9 arrived back around 9am or so and we were allowed on at about 9:30am. The flyers went into their pre-flight briefing at 9:10am and we carefully moved all our cells out to the tarmac for quick loading onto the plane. As soon as the aircraft was open, we slowly carried each cell on-board and placed them on our structure.
They each were wired in and the back panel put on for flight. It took us about 45 minutes to get everything on board. The flyers all boarded the aircraft before we were able to get off. Michigan Tech had to load their experiment during this time as well since they had specific power needs. They had a lot of difficulty getting it bolted down, but eventually everything was set and they were good to go.
We hung out in the high bay next to the Reduced Gravity Office for a while until the plane was ready to take off. At this point we headed outside and watch the C-9 taxi out to the runway and takeoff towards the Gulf of Mexico.
We had about 2 hours before the flight would be back so a couple of us went to the store to purchase a few more camera tapes for the second flight. When we got back we ate lunch and waited. The plane landed and we again brought out the second flight day cells so they'd be ready to load. We all went out to the plane to greet the flyers as they came off. They went immediately into debriefing after a picture and then we were able to talk to them.
It turned out that most of our particles extracted which was very exciting news. The liquid cells however had a few issues. The larger size orifice cells had some of the liquid spill over during take-off. Some of the liquid was recovered during the 1.8-G period but there was still some that remained above the knife-edge. The biggest issue though was that there was a large dip in the meniscus during microgravity. This meant there wasn't a level surface for Taylor cones to form. The flyers said they did think they saw some cones though. Other than what they told us we didn't have time to really look at videos and data to make changes. We decided to drain a little bit of the liquid out of the cells to hopefully prevent spill over during take-off.
I set up a station in the high bay where I was able to drain the liquid and then take the cells up to the aircraft. The new cells were installed the same way on the structure once the old cells had been removed. It took a bit longer to fix everything this time but we got everything set. The flight took off late again. The weather was beautiful and a great day to fly. I drained cells and saved all the liquid for later analysis. Eventually the plane landed and we got the second shift flyer's account. They said there was a lot of arcing going on, but they did see Taylor cones. Fortunately they were able to get through all the tests.
We left Ellington field shortly after the flyers landed. We all went to Kroger and bought food. Most of us got steaks and grilled them back at the hotel. We ate outside as the sun went down. Before and after dinner we took a look at the flight videos from the front view camera. The lighting wasn't great so it was hard to tell what was going on, but you could see the bubble/dipping issue the flyers were talking about. We're not really sure why that occurred since that seems like it would be something that would happen in the 1.8-G period rather than microgravity. It will be interesting to see what kind of results we can pull from our data.
Preparing for Flight
The day was filled with more preparation for flight. The day's flight had been pushed back until the afternoon due to problems with other projects and the aircraft slats. They had to wait for a switch to come in before the aircraft would be cleared for flight. It's a routine procedure to trade out the switch, but they don't keep all parts on-site. Ground crew spent the morning preparing the day 2 cells which included filling them all with liquid. A few of the day 1 cells would be repeated on the second flight so those would have to be filled later. The rest of the team hung out and awaited the point when we could load the aircraft.
It turned out that there were still issues with the plane all morning so it was unable to get the proficiency flight in. About mid-morning or so they told us the flight would be pushed back to the next morning and that both flights would be the same day. This would make loading our cells and getting everything set a challenge since it would take quite a bit of time to do. They told us the proficiency flight was going to still try to get off today and that we needed to stick around for the briefings in the afternoon.
Most of the team headed off to Space Center Houston to buy some souvenirs around noon. While we were there, there was a huge downpour. We were fortunate enough to leave just after it, but about half way back to Ellington field the rain started up again. On the way back we made a wrong turn and ended up several miles out of town. We eventually figured out where exactly we were and made our way back. We pulled into Ellington about 5 minutes before our briefing was scheduled to begin. The briefing was on employment at NASA. The speaker was not good at all. The briefing lasted around half an hour which gave us another half hour before the next briefing. I fixed the remaining particle accelerator cell and then we all headed back into a briefing on Constellation (the new program to go back to the moon and Mars). This speaker was very enthusiastic but definitely more of a PR person than an engineer. The briefing went over time by almost half an hour.
Once the briefings were over we packed up and went to AD Astra Rocket Company, which is a newer company working on building an electric propulsion rocket. The rocket engine that they're working on was conceived at NASA by a former astronaut. His vision was that this Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) would be used to shorten the transit time between the moon and other planets. We were given a tour of the facility which included seeing the large vacuum chamber (14 ft. dia., 30 ft. long) and the two prototypes of the rocket. The site in Houston has only been home to AD Astra for about 6 months so everything there was nice and new.
After the tour, a few of us along with the guy giving us the tour headed over to the Gilruth center where there was an AIAA conference being held. When we got there we met a Michigan alumni who is now working at NASA. We talked to her a bit about our project and she told us she'd try to make it out to see it. There first was a dinner served, which included a fish main course salad and dessert. After dinner one of the directors of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum gave a talk about turning points in space history. I thought it was interesting that there was a point where they considered making the Apollo program an international effort. I'd never heard of that before.
Tomorrow would be another crazy day trying to get two flights in and hopefully get a chance to look at data and adjust in between.
It turned out that there were still issues with the plane all morning so it was unable to get the proficiency flight in. About mid-morning or so they told us the flight would be pushed back to the next morning and that both flights would be the same day. This would make loading our cells and getting everything set a challenge since it would take quite a bit of time to do. They told us the proficiency flight was going to still try to get off today and that we needed to stick around for the briefings in the afternoon.
Most of the team headed off to Space Center Houston to buy some souvenirs around noon. While we were there, there was a huge downpour. We were fortunate enough to leave just after it, but about half way back to Ellington field the rain started up again. On the way back we made a wrong turn and ended up several miles out of town. We eventually figured out where exactly we were and made our way back. We pulled into Ellington about 5 minutes before our briefing was scheduled to begin. The briefing was on employment at NASA. The speaker was not good at all. The briefing lasted around half an hour which gave us another half hour before the next briefing. I fixed the remaining particle accelerator cell and then we all headed back into a briefing on Constellation (the new program to go back to the moon and Mars). This speaker was very enthusiastic but definitely more of a PR person than an engineer. The briefing went over time by almost half an hour.
Once the briefings were over we packed up and went to AD Astra Rocket Company, which is a newer company working on building an electric propulsion rocket. The rocket engine that they're working on was conceived at NASA by a former astronaut. His vision was that this Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) would be used to shorten the transit time between the moon and other planets. We were given a tour of the facility which included seeing the large vacuum chamber (14 ft. dia., 30 ft. long) and the two prototypes of the rocket. The site in Houston has only been home to AD Astra for about 6 months so everything there was nice and new.
After the tour, a few of us along with the guy giving us the tour headed over to the Gilruth center where there was an AIAA conference being held. When we got there we met a Michigan alumni who is now working at NASA. We talked to her a bit about our project and she told us she'd try to make it out to see it. There first was a dinner served, which included a fish main course salad and dessert. After dinner one of the directors of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum gave a talk about turning points in space history. I thought it was interesting that there was a point where they considered making the Apollo program an international effort. I'd never heard of that before.
Tomorrow would be another crazy day trying to get two flights in and hopefully get a chance to look at data and adjust in between.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Aircraft Integration
Today we arrived at Ellington Field around 7:15am to begin setting up for our Test Readiness Review. There was a morning briefing that two of my team members attended, while I helped get things set up and tested. We had about 2.5 hrs before our review in which we spent finishing preparing everything for flight.
The Test Readiness Review went very smoothly. I gave a brief presentation that introduced our team and went into a general overview of the experiment and how it worked. There was a large panel of NASA reviewers who asked us a few questions. Most of their questions were surprisingly structures related rather than electrical which we would have expected. There were a few minor changes they suggested but other than that everything checked out.
After the TRR we fixed a few things and waited until we could integrate our experiment onto the aircraft. The experiment was then loaded onto a forklift and lifted up to the C-9.
We were placed in the back of the plane by the seats so that we could be as far away from the arc welding experiment as possible. That experiment had to be in the front since they were using gas tanks.
We were able to easily bolt our structure to the floor of the plane unlike several of the teams there. Kansas had a lot of difficulty getting their experiment bolted down. The program director ended up spending over half an hour inside their box trying to get everything to fit. Once everything was bolted down we were able to hook up our accelerometer cable into the planes system and test it. We were getting some odd results but the z-acceleration seemed to be accurate, which is the axis we really care about.
As the experiment was integrated onto the aircraft the ground crew all worked to help fill the unit cells for day 1. Once we had them all filled and ready to be taken onto the plane, we found out that the aircraft still had to go out and fly a proficiency flight for the crew. This meant we couldn't load our cells until the morning of flight. We were a bit nervous about that since we knew it would take us at least an hour to load and we had been told there would be very minimal time before flight. The program director was great though and assured us we would be given the time we needed.
By the end of the day we were told the morning flight would be pushed back to the afternoon since there were some aircraft issues and a few of the teams had things break or not working so they still weren't integrated yet. This meant the proficiency flight was going to go in the morning and then we'd be able to load and fly in the afternoon. Since our experiment was all ready to go, we had the rest of the evening off. A few of us went to Red Lobster for dinner with the adviser from the Michigan Tech team. The food was delicious. After dinner we had a quick meeting to get the flyers prepared for the next day. Our experiment was looking to be in the best shape of anyones at this point.
The Test Readiness Review went very smoothly. I gave a brief presentation that introduced our team and went into a general overview of the experiment and how it worked. There was a large panel of NASA reviewers who asked us a few questions. Most of their questions were surprisingly structures related rather than electrical which we would have expected. There were a few minor changes they suggested but other than that everything checked out.
After the TRR we fixed a few things and waited until we could integrate our experiment onto the aircraft. The experiment was then loaded onto a forklift and lifted up to the C-9.
We were placed in the back of the plane by the seats so that we could be as far away from the arc welding experiment as possible. That experiment had to be in the front since they were using gas tanks.
We were able to easily bolt our structure to the floor of the plane unlike several of the teams there. Kansas had a lot of difficulty getting their experiment bolted down. The program director ended up spending over half an hour inside their box trying to get everything to fit. Once everything was bolted down we were able to hook up our accelerometer cable into the planes system and test it. We were getting some odd results but the z-acceleration seemed to be accurate, which is the axis we really care about.
As the experiment was integrated onto the aircraft the ground crew all worked to help fill the unit cells for day 1. Once we had them all filled and ready to be taken onto the plane, we found out that the aircraft still had to go out and fly a proficiency flight for the crew. This meant we couldn't load our cells until the morning of flight. We were a bit nervous about that since we knew it would take us at least an hour to load and we had been told there would be very minimal time before flight. The program director was great though and assured us we would be given the time we needed.
By the end of the day we were told the morning flight would be pushed back to the afternoon since there were some aircraft issues and a few of the teams had things break or not working so they still weren't integrated yet. This meant the proficiency flight was going to go in the morning and then we'd be able to load and fly in the afternoon. Since our experiment was all ready to go, we had the rest of the evening off. A few of us went to Red Lobster for dinner with the adviser from the Michigan Tech team. The food was delicious. After dinner we had a quick meeting to get the flyers prepared for the next day. Our experiment was looking to be in the best shape of anyones at this point.
Weekend of Testing
The weekend was spent fixing problems, tying up loose ends and conducting integrated systems tests. The whole team basically spent the weekend in our hotel room working on whatever needed to be done and testing. The flyers were able to get through two full test runs to get them prepared and allow us to get ground test data as well. Since our Joint Propulsion Conference paper is due one week after we get back, it was good to get some data now. The flyers should also be much more prepared. Not much else happened this weekend. We were able to get the system functioning with only a few minor things to be done before the structure was loaded onto the aircraft. We should have some good flights.
Sunday night we all watched a new Discovery Channel series "When we left Earth". It consisted of two 1 hour episodes that walked through events starting with the Mercury flights. Astronauts during that time gave their recollections along with actual videos from that time. The series continues next week.
Sunday night we all watched a new Discovery Channel series "When we left Earth". It consisted of two 1 hour episodes that walked through events starting with the Mercury flights. Astronauts during that time gave their recollections along with actual videos from that time. The series continues next week.
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