Vomit Comet 2009: The First Flight Day!

Today, Joe, Sam, Myself (Erin) and, our NASA mentor, Dr. Agui few on the microgravity plane (aka G-Force 1). We had our pre-flight briefing at 7:45am then our motion sickness briefing. We were given a combination of medication that is both an upper and a downer. So at some point in the day we will be wide awake..then get real sleepy. We then boarded the aircraft, with two vomit bags in pocket. As the plane was still climbing to elevation we were told to get out of our seats and begin prepping our experiments.
Once everyone was ready the plane began to climb at a very sharp angle. At this time, the force of the acceleration is normal to the floor and about 2g forces. So if you weigh 110 lbs at this time if you were on a scale you would weigh 220 lbs. As the nose of the plane begins to tip over we then experience reduced gravity. I had done this program last year and felt like I new what to expect. As we started the first lunar I started floating up...and away from our rig. I just waved goodbye to Joe and Sam because I felt like I couldn't get back to them...then Sam pulled me back. We then began to collect data and take notes. At one point in the flight we were repeating the same thing that we did on the previous parabola so we decided we would have some fun...we started jumping up and down and all the cameras came over to us. At the end of that parabola, one of the heads of the Microgravity program came up to us and told us to try and hold off on having so much fun...because we may distract the other teams from their work. This was the second year in a row that I was told to stop looking like I was having so much fun. At the end of the flight we were given 3 zero gravity parabolas. These are always the craziest because its really hard to get used to the fact that the slightest touch on a wall will make you fly across the airplane in the other direction. For the first one we all went flying up. to the top of the plane. As I tried to adjust myself I ended up moving closer to our flight rig, which contains our experiment. Just as I realized I was in the worst position possible for when we started the 2g portion again, the flight crew yelled feet down! ...shoot. So I tried to get away from the rig again...still couldn't. I then started to feel gravity again, which meant, in a few seconds I was going down. I pretty much ended up flailing around trying to get away from the rig but it just wasn't happening. Finally, one of the flight crew just yelled "SOMEBODY GRAB HER!!!" ..I'm just floating there...thinking, 'yes, please somebody grab me!' Our NASA mentor then pulled me over by him...I ended up kicking on of our cameras (not very hard at all) and then finally got to a safe area. It was intense. The next one Sam and I went flying around running into each other. The third and final parabola Sam and I took off to the closest window, Joe was already there. As we got close to the window there was a photographer in the way...and there was no stopping us..so we kind of took him out in the process. It was sort of a slow motion collision..we couldn't stop, he couldn't move, and we apologized for running into him before it even happened. So basically, we had a GREAT time on our flight. We had SOOO much fun!
So if you are still reading this, you might want to know how our actual reseach went. Well to sum it up, good. We had 1 problem, one of our rotating drums stopped rotating. That was a little upsetting but we were able to manage and fix the problem. AND the best part, we learned something really interesting about the angle of repose of the lunar dust simulant JSC-1A under a vacuum system. The angle of this dust was almost vertical, which we had not seen at all under ground tests. So that was pretty sweet.