Up there

Text and photos by John DeLooper


Six teams and some VIP's got to fly today. Patti H., Susan and Nick flew from the Space Cowboys. They were brought into the briefing room, given medications and then lined up to march into the plane. A few were a little giddy based upon the medications...

Once the plane was loaded, those of us not going on the flight stood by watching the protocol - because most of us are going tomorrow.

We were able to track the plane on the computer and could see the flight path as well as when they were going to land. After they landed, most of my team members bounded down the steps in complete glee. It appears that the DOE teams had a "no kill" flight - no one got sick. That wasn't true for some others but most appeared to be recovered based upon the group photo at the end of the flight.

In the afternoon, Heather Paul, an engineer who designs space suits, provided us with some of the interesting details on what it takes to build a suit that will be functional yet protect the astronaut. The Trenton team poses with the demonstration suit.



In the end, not everything worked as we expected for our experiments. Hardware broke. Cameras moved. But we learned and made some modifications and will try again tomorrow. Allison, Darrell and I will run the experiments. The big day has arrived!