Wednesday morning, Lynn Harper from NASA Ames gave us a very interesting talk on microgravity research. She talked about some of the great NASA spinoffs, and the possible value of suborbital flights. I found it interesting that the telemetry for intensive care wards was developed for the Apollo program. One of her interests is that biological cells do behave differently in space. Although gravity does not have a direct affect on cells at this level, it does affect the environment, which in turn affects how cells develop. Her suggestions for teacher experiments in space included repeatable experiments and she though non-thermal mixing of substances of different densities would be very interesting.
She also mention a nice series by Don Pettit with Saturday Morning Science. Petit was an astronaut and he uses a lot of footage from his time on the International Space Station.
Wednesday we had a woman from XCOR tells us about their rocket planes. For $90K you can buy a ticket to fly into space in 2014. This is the rocket plane which will carry Teachers into Space.
The Lynx
We also began work on our experiment. My subgroup is trying to build the heaters to melt the wax.
Wednesday evening we visited Blackbird Park which is where they have several Lockheed Skunkworks stealth planes, including the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Stealth Fighter, a U2, and the A12.
A12 Blackbird
SR-71 Blackbird
Bill Flannigan, SR-71 Test Pilot and our tourguide
F-117 Stealth Fighter
Our tourguide of Blackbird Park was Bill Flanigan, an ex-SR-71 test pilot.
