Students Take Wild Nasa Ride

What goes up must come down is how four University of Idaho students describe a ride on a NASA airplane nicknamed the “Vomit Comet.”

“I took up seven (sick) bags and had only one left when I came down,” said an ecstatic Jeffrey Daniels, 25. “Even now, I’m getting sensations like I’m floating.”

Daniels, Joshua Wilson, Tiffini Roddick and Nathan Stoddard are mechanical engineering students participating in the first NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Program at the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

They flew on the same Boeing jet that astronauts use for training. It also was used for filming the weightless scenes in the movie “Apollo 13.”

Of the four, only Stoddard beat the Comet.

“I did very well. I didn’t get sick,” he said. “I’ve kind of got an iron stomach. It’s mind over matter.”

The plane gets its nickname because the pilots push it into a sharp climb and then a steep descent. That provides about 25 seconds of zero-gravity conditions.

The students were one of 25 teams selected nationwide to take part. They submitted a proposed experiment on viscosity measurements to be performed during the zero-gravity flight.

Unfortunately, they ran into problems with an instrument called a levitated oscillating sphere viscometer.

“Our goal was to test the validity of testing this new method of measuring viscosity in zero gravity,” Daniels said.

Daniels and Stoddard conducted their own recreational experiment with a cordless hand drill. They inserted a screwdriver in the drill. Then one held the drill handle and the other the screwdriver.

When the plane went into a parabolic maneuver, they squeezed the drill trigger. The two cartwheeled around in opposite directions like windmills in a crosswind.

“That was very cool, experiencing the laws of motion and the conservation of angular momentum,” Stoddard said.