Wednesday, March 14: More thunder, glass miracles, Lions battle Trojans in bowling

We woke up to booming thunder that set off car alarms and lightning that briefly dispelled the early morning darkness.

Everyone but today’s flyers departed at 6 a.m. to pick up the portion of the glass chamber that had been broken.

We ran into traffic on the highway, all because people stopped to look at an accident as they drove by. We finally reached the glass blower’s shop. He was extremely nice, and by some miracle had managed to fix our chamber.

We drove off to Ellington Field, eager to begin preparations for the day’s flight. The flyers were in and out of briefings while the rest of the team vacuumed the chamber and backfilled it with argon. Finally we were allowed onto the plane to finish preparations.

We installed the chamber into its clamps and hooked up the wires. When we tested the Langmuir probe and source meter they surprisingly gave us perfect data. After making last minute notes on the clipboard and procedure sheets, we stowed all necessary equipment in the overhead compartments above the seats. After watching the plane take off, one of the men who works at the hangar allowed us to see the super guppy plane.

He talked to us a little about its history and present usage. That has to be the most oddly shaped plane I have ever seen, but it does its job of transporting huge cargo, including other planes like the Osprey.

I just marveled at its size. After that mini-tour, the four of us left on the ground went to pick up food and bring back some for the flyer boys, since we flyers from yesterday were starving upon return.

More thunderstorms descended upon Ellington, so when the flight returned they pulled the plane directly into the hanger and everyone then left the plane. Our boys came off with huge smiles.

Chad, who had never been on a plane at all before, said he felt fine and that it was cool. Once the flyers had time to recuperate we unloaded our experiment from the plane. That was an extremely sad moment. It was the first signal that the trip was coming to an end.

At the same time we have become excited for our friends on the USC team, who loaded their experiment today, and will begin flying tomorrow. After many pictures in our flight suits we drove back to the hotel in the pouring rain. Side streets along the highway were completely flooded!

After a nap we departed the hotel for a souvenir shop we had spotted. It had lots of NASA and Texas memorabilia. Then we went to Abe’s for dinner. It was a Cajun restaurant, and we all tried foods we had never eaten before, like seafood gumbo. They also seasoned their chicken in a special way that was unfamiliar to us.

After a quick stop at home several of us headed to the bowling alley to meet the USC team. Penn State, unfortunately, was not up to par, and we lost to USC. After a couple games it was getting late, so we wished tomorrow’s flyers good luck and headed back to the hotel.