I mentioned yesterday that although NASA refers to the plane as the Weightless Wonder, it is most commonly known as the Vomit Comet.  In our first video conference with our flight team, our flight mentor answered the question that we were all dying to know: How many people actually get sick on the flight?  His answer was that if three people were to board right now and fly, one would become violently sick, one would be mildly sick, and one would be fine.  My first thought is that I'm going to be in a lot of trouble.  Then he reassures us by saying that before we go they will give us medicine that reduces the likelihood of becoming sick.  So now if 10 people were to fly with the medication, only one would become mildly sick.  I think I can handle being mildly sick in zero gravity...
In order to help us prepare as a team, we have video conferences every two weeks since we are spread over different states.  I'll be honest with you, I do use my video conferences as a bragging point, but who wouldn't?  "Oh, sorry.  I have need to be on my way.  I have a video conference with NASA."  We have only had one so far, but we have another tag-up this Thursday.  We use these times to ask questions or talk about things that are pertinent to our assignments.  These past two weeks, our team had to edit some intense paperwork for approval to fly.  It is probably fairly easy for those who have done the paperwork before, but we had quite a few emails between the five of us trying to edit an existing copy.  This was the easy part to understand...there were pictures and simple words...

The cool part of our video conferences, though, is seeing what we'll be doing in less than two months:

Those boxes are what our experiments are going to be in.  They have little arm holes like they have for babies in NICU.  If our experiments weren't inside those clear boxes, then we would spend our entire flight time floating around trying to catch all the pieces.  This is what we'll be spending a lot of our parabolas doing.  The last few parabolas we spend testing an item of our choosing to see how it reacts in different gravities. 

This girl brought a pedometer to see how it would work.  So I've been thinking and asking my family, friends, and students to think of things that I could bring along with me on my flight that can fit inside my flight suit pocket on my leg.  We wear the green ones, instead of the cool blue ones just in case you were wondering.  And we checked, we don't get to keep the flight suit, but there is an aviation store across the road from Ellington Field (where our flight will depart and land) that we could probably find one at.  I think that greeting my kids in a flight suit would be a hysterical way to start off the school year. 

Howdy!  My name is Maggie Piepenbrink and I teach at Hanby Elementary in Mesquite, Texas.  I graduated from Texas A&M University in College Station in 2011 and was lucky enough to land the job of my dreams teaching 4th grade!  This was my first year of teaching and I can definitely say I have the best job in the world.  I get to work with amazing kiddos and teachers, and we always have a blast.  The reason for this blog, however, is not to describe my life as a teacher - that is a different blog entirely!  The reason I created this blog is to share my experience of working with NASA's Johnson Space Center (as in "Houston, we have a problem") for their Reduced Gravity Education Flight Week.  In other words...I'm going on the Vomit Comet!  Now NASA likes to call it the Weightless Wonder, which does give you a little more of a hint at what the reason for the plane ride is, however "Vomit Comet" lends more of an explanation of what I will most likely be doing on the plane. 

If you've never heard of the Vomit Comet / Weightless Wonder, it's basically like an empty plane that travels like a roller coaster in the air.  We'll be doing parabolas over the Gulf of Mexico....no big deal. :D  The parabolas will allow us to experience multiple Gs against us, as well as 0 gravity and possibly even negative gravity!  It's not all just fun and games, though.  While on board we will be conducting experiments we can bring back to the classroom. 

Now you're probably wondering who the other people are that make up the "we" in my previous statement.  The "we" is made up of myself and four other educators that were selected by NASA to participate in this amazing opportunity.  Two are fellow Texans, and one of those is actually a fellow Aggie!  Whoop!  We are all extremely excited and very ready for our flight week in mid-July.

Of course, the whole point of this experience is to help our students understand concepts regarding gravity and how it affects us.  When I first learned I was selected to participate in the flight week, I tried explaining what I would be doing to my students.  Fail.  I have a very visual group of kiddos, so I turn to the first thing I think of: You Tube.  Video in mind, I show my students the first minute of the following video:

Of course they are cracking up at the mental image of floating puke, so the first question I hear is, "Miss P, can you puke like that and show us a video next year?"  Once they got over the initial thrill of me puking my guts out, we watched a couple more short videos showing more of what I might be doing.  They are now convinced that all 21 of them can pile into my compact car and make the drive to Houston with me, then somehow sneak on the plane to experience weightlessness.  They'll have to be satisfied with the pictures and videos.

But for now, it's the waiting game.  We have preparations we are making to ready ourselves for our flight week, but nothing will compare to actually being there.  I have about 6-1/2 weeks until I leave on July 12th, with a  2-week trip to Ames Research Center in California wedged in between.  I'll be counting down the days and updating with progress along the way.  Don't forget to place your vote on the right side on whether or not you think I'll puke...I'll save the information about that for my next post...