Penn State News

Penn State Flyin' Lion Bill Marshall awoke this morning from one dream to begin living another. Like the shuttle astronauts he idolizes, Marshall got a wake-up call from the president. President Graham Spanier called the senior mechanical engineering major to wish him well on today's flight of the KC-135. For Marshall and his Flyin' Lions teammate Ben Weber, the president's greeting set the tone for their Astronaut-For-A-Day experience.

In many ways, it's like a real mission on a smaller scale, Marshall said. Astronauts train for a year to fly for a week; we trained for four months to fly for a few hours.

Despite the brevity of their flight aboard NASA's zero gravity trainer, Weber and Marshall packed in the full range of thrills and frustrations familiar to any astronaut. Low visibility and stormy skies over the Gulf of Mexico forced three delays of the early morning flight. Each delay added to the anxiety that helps to give the KC-135 its nickname, the Vomit Comet.

To avoid becoming one of the skills, as the flight crew refers to those who can't quite stomach microgravity, the Penn Staters followed every recommendation. They ate a light breakfast. (One that you won't mind seeing twice, as Lead Test Director John Yaniek put it.) They took the motion sickness medication, Scop-Dex, a mixture of scopolamine to control nausea and dexadrine to relieve the drowiness caused by the scopolamine. And they drank enough water to ensure that they'd stay hydrated throughout the flight.

Instruction in motion sickness prevention is mandatory before a KC-135 flight. Still, some newcomers to the reduced gravity environment inevitably get sick. Earlier this week, Test Director Yaniek said that in six years of flight with student investigators, he has never had a mission with no skills. Should a team survive without a single sick student, Yaniek said, he would mark the historic event by hanging the team's photograph in the offices of the reduced gravity program. Upon hearing Yaniek's promise, Marshall had immediately vowed that his flight team would meet the challenge.

By 1:15 p.m., the clouds had lifted enough for take-off. Marshall and Weber boarded the aircraft along with ten students from five other universities. On the ground, Flyin' Lions Dawn Noga and John Halenar observed and talked to their teammates via a live downlink from the KC-135.

The aircraft flies a series of parabolas, producing brief intervals of weightlessness that begin at the top of each arc. For the first twenty parabolas, the student investigators tested the Subject Load Device, the project that won the Flyin' Lions a slot on the KC-135. The device is a spring-loaded system designed to improve the ease and effectiveness of exercising in space. Since there is no up or down in microgravity, Weber and Marshall did their squats and steps in a horizontal position. On the last ten parabolas, they simply played, making the most of a unique opportunity to bounce off the walls.

I think our flight was a real success, Weber said.We got some good data, and we had a lot of fun too.

By Marshall's reckoning, the flight succeeded for another reason. For the first time in the history of the Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, not a single student got sick.

If you want it done right, send Penn State, he said.

For Bill Marshall, this day of dreams couldn't have ended better. With his own picture hanging on NASA walls, he will now be part of the pantheon of space heroes.

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