GYRE 2003

[gfish]

As most of you know, since I rarely pass up an opportunity to talk about it, in 2003 and 2006 the GYRE project, of which I was a member, flew on NASA's Vomit Comet. Excuse me, Weightless Wonder. Since it is mostly an outreach program, NASA provides almost as many videographers and photographers on the flight as crew members, so it's well documented. I recently booted up the archive disk where I had encoded the SVHS tapes they gave us in 2003, decided to throw them up on youtube. (Turns out I never ripped the DVDs of the 2006 flight, but since I'm on this video archiving/offloading kick, I think I'll try to get those done this weekend.)



Hypobaric chamber ride, where you learn what hypoxia feels like. It feels like being drunk to me, quite pleasant and very dangerous.


The Test Equipment Data Package review, were very serious NASA dudes (some of whom have a say in rather or not the Shuttle flies) look at your experiment and ask very pointed questions about why it isn't going to explode and kill everyone on the flight. If they find a problem, you have less than a day and very limited resources with which to fix it. A singularly stressful experience.


Flight day 1


Flight day 2

Comments

[gfish.livejournal.com]

That was the 2006 flight, using my miniDV camera. I still have the tapes, but it would take a lot of editing to make something interesting out of it.