Pictures at Ellington

Here are some pictures from Ellington Field in Houston.

Frame Pictures

Cutting the 80/20 for the frame.

The finished product...well...sort of.



Frame with Lexan panels installed.

Wheat!

Frame Update

The big pieces for the frame are in. Jonathan went yesterday and marked the cuts we need to make. We are waiting now for the corner and connector pieces. Once those are in we can assemble everything.

Frame Material

Our frame material should be in by next Friday (5/2). I'm not sure of all the details, but there was some problem with 80/20 trying to establish a credit account with Lamar. As far as I know, it has been taken care of and our material should be shipping soon.

Congratulations!

The winner of our High School Design competition is...

Team "JAC":
Jessica Floyd
Alicia Allen
Courtney Howell

From Lumberton High School

Their experiment is titled "The Space Cube". It involves the study of how microgravity effects the total time to melt an ice cube.

Congratulations!!!

Thanks to all the teams that participated in the competition. There were a lot of great ideas.

Thoughts

Just basically going to use this as a notepad, don't have one with me.

The PSD function could be valuable in visualizing the difference in the systems, if everything else is the same. Everything including the point at which the pendulum is started.
The difference in g^2/Hz would all be due to the wheat. But then again, what does that really tell us.

NASA Forms

Just a reminder...April 8 is the deadline to submit the PIF and signature forms. We can fax the signature forms and proof of undergraduate status once everyone signs them. The PIF form is done online, though. Go to the micro gravity website (http://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov/security/login.cfm) and login. Click on the link for the PIF Form in the checklist and it will take you to a page to fill out your information.

Equipment Is In

We have received the accelerometer, actuator, and digital analyzer. Corey and I are going up to the school in about an hour to hook it all up and see how it works.

Adios

Medical Status

I sent Sara an email asking why it didn't show I had completed my flight physical and she said:

As far as the medical, I am waiting on update from another office to update the website. I expected that this or next week sometime. After the website is up to date, I will send an email to the team leads so that the teams can check their status. Thank you.

Sara W. Malloy Lead Reduced Gravity Flight Program Coordinator Office of Education (AE2) NASA Johnson Space Center 281-483-7847 (voice) 281-483-3789 (fax)

Outreach, Etc.

Hey guys,

Just to give everyone an update, I'm working on putting together a flyer to send out to area schools for our design competition. Hopefully we'll get a good response from this. I'll keep you updated as I here back from them.

FYI - The flight physical is due Feb. 29. I believe this is the doctor who is certified for them. You may want to call to be sure.

Vardiman John MD
409-833-9797
3570 College St
Beaumont TX 77701-4683

Digital Analyzer

Hey guys,

Please go look at this site and let me know what you think? I am waiting for an email response from their sales people.

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/202100

Digital Analyzer

I spoke with Iotech, and their package for a digital analyzer will cost around 10k.
I am going to explore another option with NI. Their package appears to be cheaper.

Proposal Accepted!

Hey guys. We just found out that the proposal was accepted. You can check out ours and all the others that were accepted on this site:

http://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov/news/activeteams.cfm

According to the website, the flight week we are scheduled for is Flight Week 2: June 5-14, 2008. It's not as soon as we would have liked but at least it's not well into the summer. Hopefully, this can fit into everyone's graduation->work plans. We'll have to discuss the implications of our flight being after graduation with Dr. Zhou.

Have a great weekend.

#3 X-Planes

3. In terms of choosing a drive train to hover above the ground, the two companies choose completely different designs. Give some pros and cons of the two approaches. If you are the chief designer, which design would you choose and why?
Boeing choice to use the more conventional and proven method in the directional exhaust system. Since this system is already in use with the Marine Corps Harrier, it is known how this system will perform and what to expect. With the use of this system, the pilots will already have knowledge of how it works and how to control it effectively. The good thing about this system is that it has a limit number of moving parts involved, in which reduces the chances of a mechanical failure. One problem that is known about this system is that it has a tendency to ingest some of the directional exhaust into the engine causing a stall, and ultimately it could cause a crash. The team of Boeing experienced a slight stall when in testing but the crash was avoided.
Lockheed Martin went out of the box on their choice of a hovering drive train. They decided to implement a lift fan in the center of the aircraft while also using the directional exhaust. This approach is rather radical in the since that it had never been tried and the possibilities of a failure is high. The interesting thing about this system is that the airplane proved to be more stable during vertical landing due to the fact that the aircraft had two columns of air for support instead of just one. The lift fan proved to be much more powerful than the method that Boeing chose to implement, thus making the aircraft more adaptable. While in testing the Lockheed team discovered that the lift fan provided a “breath of fresh air” to the situation. This means that the lift fan directs fresh air from the top of the plane towards the ground creating an invisible shield protecting the engines from ingesting any of the exhaust air and causing a stall. The one downfall to this design is the large amount of mechanical moving parts involved. It makes since to minimize the amount of moving parts in an assembly in order to reduce the possibilities of failure, but Lockheed Martin did exactly the opposite and it paid off.
If it were up to me, I would choose to use Lockheed Martins drive train. Mainly because it has a lot more power, more stable, and it reduces the chances of an engine stall. The team of Lockheed Martin showed that they are willing to take risks and be truly innovative in their design, and it is because of this that I believe they received the contract. Although this system has more mechanically moving parts, I would suggest implementing a routine inspection of the aircraft to ensure the proper function of the hover drive train.

??

Hey guys,
I just wanted an update on what Dr. Jordan had to say about the proposal and what I can do at this point to help get the final draft ready.

Outreach Opportunity

I talked to Katrina Brent about getting some letters from a couple of schools to verify their interest in our outreach ideas. She is also planning on writing a letter to state that she will act as liaison between our team and the schools. This will add strength to our proposal if we can get them.

Also, she sent me an email about an activity on campus that we can participate in:

"Would your group be available to speak with about 40-50 students from Lumberton High School about your project on Monday, December 3rd? Lumberton High School’s Science class will be visiting our campus and the College of Engineering on this day and I thought it would be a great opportunity for you and your group to speak with these students and teacher about your project. It would probably be in the morning sometime."

We should check our schedules to see when we would be available.

Proposal Advice

This is something I read on the micro website right now that I thought we should all keep in mind. Clearly I don't think it is anything we will have to worry about but I figured posting this wouldn't hurt.

USING OLD PROPOSALS-be very careful
Please do not use any text from older proposals. Even if you wrote a section for last year's proposal and have been assigned to write it again this year, please resist the temptation to include last year's work in this year's proposal. If your ideas are basically the same, find another way to present them. The best advice is to start from scratch - you'll be a lot safer. Copying from a previous proposal, for purposes of this program, is called plagiarism. We don't want you to get caught in that trap. Please be careful. If you feel you must include a small amount of previous text, cite it properly.
Why are we so strict about this?
Because this is an educational program, and each team should submit original work.

Accelerometer Update

Today I got one 3D axis accelerometer from Dr. Irwin. I also got an ULI interface to go with the accelerometer. On Monday I will go and get the software that ties it all together. Hopefully Dr. Irwin will be able to find one of the missing accelerometers so that we will have two available. We hooked the equipment up to a laptop in his lab that has the software on it and I believe that this set-up will suit our needs.

Today I got a Measurements Lab key from David. I have stored the above equipment in the Lab and I suggest we store all addtional equipment in the lab. There are several stipulations for having the key, but we can use the lab to work on the project if necessary. A minimum of 2 people have to be present for work to be done.

Outreach Update

Doug Goforth replied back that everything sounded good. He gave only two stipulations:

The student's experiment would have to be present and attached on the Monday of the TRR (Test Readiness Review).
Also, due to the TRR taking place only once as well as badging issues, we will need to limit it to one team (3 students + 1 teacher).

I will type something up this weekend so we can bring it to Katrina next week.