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.