We had been briefed before about what not to eat/drink leading up to your flight...nothing acidic, no spicy foods, AND NO CARBONATED DRINKS! That meant no coke! My last coke was in the morning of the Monday we got here, and at this point in time, I still haven't had one! Another requirement was to get a good night's sleep because our flight meds would make us drowsy. Of course, even though I wanted to go to bed early Tuesday night, I couldn't because I was so anxious about Wednesday's flight.
I got up Wednesday morning and the first thing I did was put on my flight suit. Once that was on, I continued with my morning routine of brushing my teeth, doing my hair, putting on makeup...all with my flight suit on because I was so excited!
I had toast and water for breakfast so I would have something in my stomach, but not anything too major that would inevitably make a surprise visit on the plane later. We drove to Ellington Field (playing Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" on repeat the entire time), and we checked to make sure everything was in order.
Around 8:00, we had a meeting just for the fliers. It was mainly to remind us of ways to avoid getting sick and things to remember so we could fly for our full 2.1 flying hours. At 8:30, when we were supposed to start getting our flight meds, one of the guys in charge gave us the bad news: because of the bad weather in the military air space where we were supposed to fly, we had to scrub the mission and wait until the next morning. That meant I would have another day without coke, eating toast for breakfast, and trying desperately hard to go to sleep when you are too excited.
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| About 5 minutes before we got the bad news |
We had to go back to the hangar where the rest of the team members were and break the bad news to them. The guys in charge decided that we would have our first flight leave at the same time the next day, then have the second team leave that afternoon. So since we wouldn't leave until the next day, we had to go get our skittles and M&Ms off the plane so they wouldn't become gross from the heat.
We met up with our PSTI director from last year and had lunch at Jason's Deli, before getting into our flight suits to walk around Space Center Houston so we could take some pictures. Space Center Houston is kind of like an indoor playground/science place for kids to explore in. The workers all wear NASA jumpsuits, so when we started walking around in our green flight suits, we got some amazed looks. While we were there we paid a visit to the Educator Resource Center which is a place where educators can go to get things to help them teach in their classroom. Before we left, we HAD to stop and get some souvenirs!
After that, we met with all the other teams to participate in a Digital Learning Network. DLNs are basically live video chats that NASA has that teachers can sign up for to use in their classrooms. Our downlink was with some NASA scientists in Hawai'i who were working on In-Situation Resource Utilization, which basically means using what is present on a mission to make things work. They were testing in Hawai'i because the of the similarity of the geologic conditions to the moon, asteroids, and Mars.
We were then free to go back to the hotel and were on our own for the night. We went out to eat then started working on our presentation that we will be giving to some of the departments at NASA to convince them to continue this program for PSTI alumni.
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