I can fly!
By Stephanie Feldman ‘04

I have always been fascinated by the idea of space flight and weightlessness – from Charlie’s adventure in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory to the first video I saw of NASA astronauts propelling their food across the Discovery’s cabin. Of course what 7 year-old doesn’t love the idea of grown men playing with their food? At Dartmouth I was thrilled to take the class “Life on Mars?” with astronaut and Associate Professor of Medicine, Jay Buckey. I was able to speak with him about the projects that he was doing with NASA and his time in the Spacelab. His research interests were mostly in the physiology of long-term space missions. Of course, I was fascinated with NASA and jumped at the chance to help him round up some subjects for a hearing study. During this experiment he mentioned that NASA has a program that I might like.

NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program selects undergraduate student teams to take a trip aboard a plane that simulates weightlessness through a series of parabolic arcs. Each team proposes an experiment that requires a weightless environment and can be conducted aboard this KC-135 aircraft. This was a chance to actually experience the space environment I had dreamed about and a great opportunity to personally study weightlessness.

It was time to dream up an experiment. I teamed up with friends Lea Kiefer ’04, Chelsea Morgan ’04 and Lauren Talbot ’04 and we all sat down with Professor Buckey. As varsity athletes at Dartmouth we were especially intrigued with muscle atrophy due to non-use in microgravity. We started looking into ways for astronauts to keep their postural muscles strong without requiring multiple hour workouts each day and without a heavy, bulky workout device. Once we had the idea, we excitedly designed our proposal in a few marathon Novack nights and smoothly submitted our project to NASA minutes before the October deadline. We were selected!

Our study was to trial run an exercise program we developed called DREAM (Dartmouth Resistance Exercises for Antigravity Muscles). These exercises use elastic and non-elastic resistance bands to target five postural muscles. The calf, quad, hamstring, hip and back muscles are especially prone to rapid atrophy in microgravity because they are constantly worked just by moving on Earth. We planned to monitor our muscle activation during DREAM using an Electromyogram (EMG). We hoped that our time aboard the KC-135 would show that these exercises significantly activated each muscle and that each exercise was gravity independent. For eight months we designed in-flight protocols, learned how to record muscle activity, grew some amazing muscles as we perfected DREAM, and jumped through the countless hoops expected with a government sponsored program for human subject studies conducted by students. We dealt with everything from vision tests to Houston evacuation plans, from multiple IRB approvals to procuring a portable Endeavor EMG (which was so kindly loaned to us by the wonderful and amazing Nicolet Biomedical Inc.)! Come graduation, our experiment was ready to fly. On July 7th Chelsea, Kiefer, Talbot and I journeyed to the heart of Houston - well, not really. We flew into northern Houston, and about 9 hours later, after traffic, a few wrong turns, delayed flights, a delicious collection of Sonic strawberry limeade creams and root beer floats, and many, many miles of highway traversing the immense city that is Houston, we made it down to Ellington Field. Which is way outside of "the loop." This meant, we learned, that every trip we took within Houston took approximately 2 hours. We are still not sure that the city of Houston actually ends at all... Thankfully one resident Miss Lindsay Sheffield was a wonderful hostess. She took us to the beach, fielded our seemingly endless phone calls begging for directions and put us face to face with Mr. Nicholas Lachey at the acclaimed celebrity softball game. The celebrities won.

As you can imagine, after the thrill of the game and seeing the likes of Miss USA it was hard to concentrate on NASA affairs, thankfully we take our space travel most seriously. The first two days were spent assembling our equipment. Our equipment didn't require much assembly. And more relevantly, it was still in New Hampshire with our faculty advisor, Professor Buckey. We managed to impress the other teams nonetheless with ruthless hangman skills and an uncanny ability to inhale whole canisters of Pringles.

Luckily our equipment did arrive and we spent the second day mastering the art of low electrode impedance. A basic understanding of computerized impedance readings can be simplified as: Red numbers are horrible. Black numbers are wonderful. And throughout the week, black numbers next to the impendence readings were met with cheers and pats on the back and inexplicable feelings of pride for the electrode placer.

With our amazing impedance readings and a basic run down of our experiment, we passed the final NASA readiness review and we were off to the hypobaric chamber for oxygen deprivation training. Funny, it wasn't so much "training" as straight-up oxygen deprivation. We all entered a small room and started breathing from air force regulation oxygen masks. We looked hot. Think Tom Cruise, but girls, and no actual planes. The chamber was pressurized to 25,000 feet and we took turns taking off our masks and breathing the thin air in the chamber. Hypoxia is actually what causes drunken behavior when alcohol hampers your cells’ ability to use oxygen. So yeah, NASA basically got us drunk.

Kiefer and I went first. And while we started off very well, completing the math problems on our worksheet, we soon digressed into laughter and a conversation about our lips turning blue which neither of us really remembers having, but, oh yes. It was captured on video. My favorite video sequence, however, was the voice telling us to turn our oxygen on and don our masks after 5 minutes in the thin air. Easy right? Hardly. I vaguely remember one instructor stopping me as I put my mask on. "What do you have to turn on?" "Do you need to start the oxygen?" I am captured on video in a very concentrated state. Then a grin breaks out on my face. "Oh yes!" I appear to remember. "The oxygen switch must be flipped on!" But when I place my hand on the switch it is like I have completely forgotten how a switch works. Meanwhile, Kiefer next to me is looking back and forth between her own console and me. She knows that she must do something, but can neither remember what it is, nor can she discern from my own fumbling antics what I am doing. The best part is the voice of our instructor over the headsets directing our attention to Kiefer's confused state. "Everyone look at number 3. She has passed her point of useful consciousness." But every one of the instructors agreed that we are very fun drunks.

The training was completed and our flight days were approaching. Chelsea and I were flying on Thursday and Kiefer and Talbot were flying on Friday.

Flight day.
Chelsea and I slip into our super cool flight suits - which are identical to the coveralls very popular with mechanics and custodians nationwide. Seriously, though, throw a NASA patch on that puppy and call it a flight suit and it is, in fact, "super cool."

The flight itself was INCREDIBLE!

A brief explanation: the plane levels off at 26,000 feet. It is then put through a series of climbs and dives which create 30-second periods of increased gravity (2gs) and 25-second periods of weightlessness in the cabin. In total, each flight has 30 periods of weightlessness, one period of lunar gravity (1/6g) and one period of Martian gravity (1/3g), where one g equals the force of gravity you feel on Earth.

When we nosed over the first parabola I could feel my body lifting off the floor of the plane and before I really realized what was happening I was about to face-plant into the ceiling. As I stopped myself with my hands the force flipped me over and I was floating upside down in the middle of the cabin. I grabbed one of the cords strung along the side of the cabin and flipped myself upright managing to land my feet on the side of the plane. I pushed off and sailed effortlessly through the air crashing into the other side of the cabin in a fit of amazed laughter. It was like flying except you just were there. Hanging in the air. And every time I touched anything I went sailing in the other direction.

At one point I curled up in a ball and had a few people spin me in endless circles. Another time Chelsea and I sat on the floor cross-legged facing each other and holding hands. We closed our eyes during the 2g part of the parabola and when we opened them we were floating upside down in the middle of the cabin. Another one of my favorite moves was "the lizard." You would push off the ground onto the wall and crawl up the wall across the ceiling, down the opposite wall across the floor and back onto the wall, trying to complete as many circles as possible before the crew yelled "feet down!" and the plane started to rise at 2gs. It was one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life. And basically since we landed I have been trying to think of a way to do it again! Added icing on the cake was the fact that our experiment went really well. We completed all of our DREAM exercises, successfully record muscle activation, and got a bit of a weightless workout.

The videos of our flight are on the way and we plan to hold an outreach event at Dartmouth with clips of our microgravity fun - hopefully during homecoming this fall!

With our experiment completed, it was time to ship our equipment back up to Dartmouth. However Fed-Ex wasn’t so easy to find. As we were pulling dejectedly out of yet another Fed Ex-less parking lot, we spotted a Fed Ex truck and a determined Chelsea hopped a curb in an erratic u-turn to chase it down. The truck driver handled the situation very well when after a few minutes of residential street tailing he pulled over and I went flying out of the car towards the driver-side window. I think he knew that he could take me if a fight did ensue.

So with our equipment shipped and our bellies full - very full - of Texas BBQ and baskets upon baskets of tortilla chips, we took off our NASA badges, turned in our flight suits and boarded our respective planes for our very uneventful, very level flights home. Now I'm back in San Francisco, where, despite the distance, I am not entirely convinced I am not in some out-skirting suburb of Houston.

Signing off, this is Stephanie Feldman.

To learn more about this program and Dartmouth’s DREAM team go to: http://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov