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Countdown to zero gravity

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LAN_403

Desmogod

Tue Mar 07 2006, 04:16AM

Registered Member #139 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 11:01AM
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posts: 358

Carbon_Rod wrote ...

Even the useless individuals tend to carry a grudge. Often ending up as management later one may even meet them (or their wife) on the board of directors one day -- shiver.

And it's usually the useless people who end up being your boss.
a grudge AND no concept of what's going on is a bad combination.

Part Scavenger

Tue Mar 07 2006, 02:54PM

Registered Member #79 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 11:35AM
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 673

LUCKY!!

Have fun and good luck today! Keep us posted. What I wouldn't give to ride in the 'comet...

AndrewM

Thu Mar 09 2006, 12:20AM

Registered Member #49 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:05AM
Location: Bigass Pile of Penguins
Posts: 362

Well, mission accomplished. We did 40 parabolas, for about 16 minutes of weightlessness. It was absolutely amazing, almost indescribable. Even the 2g portions of the flight were amazing; I tried to stand up and walk, and felt like my feet with literally glued to the ground.

On my flight our equipment developed a few quirks, and we couldn't get data. I was up till about 2:30 fixing it so that my team could try again the next day, when it performed flawlessly!

Pics!:

Carbon_Rod

Thu Mar 09 2006, 02:15AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

Andrew, Just curious:

1.) It looks like you held your lunch (did ya cheat). Anyone paint the cabin?

2.) Which part failed? (Mechanical or electrical?)

That looks like way too much fun. I always wanted to see toys in a zero-g atmosphere like a Frisbee, boomerang, or glider.

btw: No bag of chips or ant farm ?

AndrewM

Thu Mar 09 2006, 02:51AM

Registered Member #49 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:05AM
Location: Bigass Pile of Penguins
Posts: 362

Yes, I held my lunch. If you consider taking the ScopDex, then yes, I cheated. NASA tells me that 80% of unmedicated first timers lose it, and only 10% of those medicated...

One girl did lose her lunch, from UTexas I think. She was NOT happy, she lost it on parabola 10 or so, which meant she had 30 more of being a very uncomfortable young lady.

The RGO coordinator keeps track of 'No Kill' flights, flights that no one throws up on. He says theres usually about 1 a year, and it turns out the flight with the rest of my team on it nabbed the honor.

The equipment failure was... well... both mechanical and electrical. Our shaft seal leaked, because an Oring overheated and deformed. In addition, I had used a PIC with an old version of my code on it; the code incorporated a strong jerk at the beginning of a throttle ramp in order to start up the brushless motor. Turns out this jerk was too strong for our sensitive drops, and they left the platform in a nonenlightening way.

We pulled the seals out after the flight, replaced the orings and repacked the seal. In addition, I brought my laptop to the field and while the flight crew was giving their briefing I changed the controller code. It was, in truth, a bit of luck, because I couldn't prime the fluid system before take off, so I have no idea if I'd lowered the starting pulse enough. Thankfully, I did.

We came prepared for additional failure, however. If the seal failed again, or the starting pulse still ruined our data, then we were prepared to do a geysering study. We had taken great pains to ensure that our dynamic pressure was less that the force exerted by the drops surface tension; this allows drops to be pumped onto a platform, rather that rocketing away from it. Our analysis ignored the effects of the magnetism, because we had no idea what it wold do. If we had no other experiments to conduct, I told the flight crew to turn the magnetic field way up and increase the infuse rate until they got geysering, it would be an interesting and useful experiment all on its own.

As it turns out, they managed to do the primary experiment AND the backup. The geysering analysis was VERY interesting: the fluid behaved almost like it was sticky and never shot away. Instead, it tended for form columns axially through the coils. I suppose without any other forces, the domains in the fluid simply aligned with the magnetic field. This would then urge them to stack end to end.

Lastly, we didn't bring any, but many people brought toys. Someone brought a styrofoam airplane which, predictably, was pretty stupid. Without gravity, the lift produced by the wings just sent the plane rocketing to the ceiling.

ragnar

Thu Mar 09 2006, 05:09AM

Registered Member #63 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:18AM
Location:
Posts: 1425

Did anyone bring a girlfriend?

a zero-gravity hug would be interesting!

AndrewM

Thu Mar 09 2006, 01:02PM

Registered Member #49 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:05AM
Location: Bigass Pile of Penguins
Posts: 362

heh. at the start of the program I considered a proposal involving techniques for, um, "having relations" in weightlessness... but decided against it.

a few years ago, there was a group who did an experiment on body painting in zero-g. art students, obviously.

Steve Conner

Fri Mar 10 2006, 01:59AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Woot, a ride on the vomit comet! And with real complicated electronic experiments too- I nominate Andrew for 4hv Geek Of The Year Award

HV Enthusiast

Fri Mar 10 2006, 03:06AM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

Congrats. No vomit - impressive.

I unfortunately did throw up once (actually a few times on this particular flight) on a commercial flight which was on a 737 from Sarasota, FL to Charlotte, NC through some of the worst weather i've ever seen in an aircraft and this was a time i was flying almost daily through the springtime storm corridor while working as a field engineer in Florida. Luckily practically everyone on the flight was throwing up (i wasn't the only one) and what made things worse was the whole cabin just wreacked of vomit!

Carbon_Rod

Fri Mar 10 2006, 03:40AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

â€˜ "having relations" in weightlessness â€™
A contraption for this was patented a few years back. (I wish I were kidding here.)

*** Resists urge to make jokes about zero-g spot experiments lol ;] ***

Andrew, do you have any ideas about postgraduate studies?

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