FLIGHT DAY!!!!

A big congratulations to the 11 people who had faith in me, you were right because I DIDN'T PUKE!!!!

After another night of not getting much sleep and more toast for breakfast, we left for Ellington Field this morning with high hopes of getting to fly.  We went through morning meetings and briefings, but were more hopeful because the flight meds were already sitting out waiting for us.  Our flight doc gave us the run-down on the medication and suggested that we get the injection instead of the pill because there seemed to be fewer side effects with the injection.  Once we all got our shot, we walked out of our briefing room and out onto the flight area.  All the team members staying on the ground were taking pictures of us and wishing us luck.  By that point, I was so giddy I thought I was going to explode!  All the people flying got into a line and boarded the plane while the photographers and videographers recorded us.

A short while later, we took off and flew towards our air space.  Once we got there, the pilot leveled off and gave us about 10 minutes to set up our cameras on mounts, check our experiments, and make sure we were ready to go.  We started our parabolas going up, so we had close to 2 Gs against us.  I tried lifting my arms up towards to ceiling, but it felt like I was trying to lift weights.  You could hear the plane get quieter as we were starting the arc that lead to our first microgravity free fall, and just knowing what was about to happen next was so exciting.

Since it is still so fresh, I can't find any words that could help me accurately describe the sensation I felt when I started floating around in the cabin.  I remember my eyes getting huge, having a big smile on my face, and not knowing whether I should scream or laugh.  It was so amazing and awesome.  We had the first two parabolas to get acclimated to what was happening before we started our research.  But even when we were doing our research, we were having a blast.  Our goal was to change positions in our experiment so we could all do each of the jobs, but it was difficult to find a good time to do that.  So instead, we just stayed at our jobs and did them for the majority of the time.  I was timekeeper, so my main job was to start the stopwatch when we started the oscillations, then call the countdown when our time was almost up.  Since I didn't have to pay as close attention to the samples, I tended to float a little higher over the experiment so I could get a bird's eye view of things.  We also had some time to do our outreach experiments.  Oddly enough, my hovercraft didn't do too much.  Due to the air the balloon let out and the way I let go of it, my hovercraft just kind of floated there with me.

Overall, we had 32 parabolas in microgravity, 4 in lunar, and 4 in Martian gravity.  With the lunar and Martian gravity, we had a different type of fun because instead of floating, we would still come back to the floor of the plane.  We walked like astronauts and did all sorts of bouncing and turns...I felt like I was back in gymnastics and cheerleading playing on the springboard.  Once our parabolas were over, we packed up loose parts of our experiments and went back to our seats at the back of the plane.  We landed back at Ellington Field, and all the team members who didn't fly were waiting there for us with signs and big smiles for us.  We took a group picture, had a quick briefing, then got to talk to our team members about our flight.  Since we didn't have to do anything to our experiment other than switch out the glove boxes, we had much more spare time than the other teams. 

When it was time for the other teams to go to their briefing, we decided to stay in the room next door so we could stay in the air conditioning.  A few minutes later, our 2 girls who were going to fly in the afternoon came back and told us there was more bad weather and they would have to wait until tomorrow morning for their flight.

I haven't been able to download any of our pictures or videos that we took from our flight, but once I do I will put them on here so you can see what I got to experience today.