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| Quantum Leap |
| Local students may be launching space-age
careers |
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| Photo by Sarah Hillman |
| Amanda Martin, Avery Cotton,
Will Bowers and Ronald Wessels are among the
NASA-bound students from Western Oregon
University | | By
Craig
Coleman
MONMOUTH -- For the members of Western Oregon
University's Microgravity Flight Team, the thought of racing
through the atmosphere in NASA's "Weightless Wonder" borders
on the unnerving.
The agency's famed C-9
jet airliner is used to train astronauts by generating
25-second periods of zero gravity during a series of
high-velocity climbs and
dives.
Unnerving, perhaps.
Nausea-inducing, a possibility.
But "not
enough to deter any of us from going," said Will Bowers, a
math major and team member. "I'm excited about the
experience."
Last winter, Western's
group, teaming with a contingent from Oregon State University,
was among 50 teams selected from 300 applications from
colleges across the country to take part this July in NASA's
Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities at Johnson Space
Center in Houston.
The annual program
gives college undergrads the chance to research, build, fly
and evaluate an experiment in a reduced gravity environment,
per the path of the agency's own
scientists.
The two Oregon universities
have collaborated on a project involving a prototype nuclear
reactor. Its application could revolutionize space travel in
the future, cutting the eight months it takes to get to Mars
from Earth down to 80 days and the necessary fuel load to
one-tenth.
OSU will test the start-up
conditions necessary for the reactor while Western looks at an
emergency shut down scenario.
WOU senior
Amanda Martin says she and the rest of the team spent months
working on their proposal, and were thrilled to learn they
would be flying in July.
"Western hasn't
had this opportunity before," she said, noting that the team
has received almost $10,000 in funding between WOU and the
Oregon Space Grant Consortium.
"The
schools that have been accepted are prestigious ... (like)
MIT.
"It's intimidating when you look at
the company you'll be in -- but also flattering, because it's
atypical for a non-engineering school to be
accepted."
Creating a propulsion system
for the next generation of space travel is motivation behind
the OSU/WOU experiment, said team member Avery
Cotton.
By 2010, NASA will have begun
phasing out use of the space shuttle, and is currently
examining the use of a plasma rocket for space travel, Avery
said.
NASA currently uses solid rockets -
which once ignited, can't be turned off -- to move the space
shuttle out of the earth's atmosphere. From there the shuttle
must coast to its destination, akin to a car rolling
downhill.
A plasma rocket would be able
to turn around in mid-flight and adjust its flight
path.
The two teams' experiment is a Zero
Critically Rotating Fluidized Bed Reactor, which will be
secured inside the plane before take off and activated once
the craft nears zero gravity. The device contains no nuclear
material.
A plasma rocket would use
plasma, matter heated beyond a gaseous state, as a propellant.
Achieving that state requires a nuclear
reactor.
The teams' hypothesis is that
the particles inside the reactor -- glass beads as simulated
fuel particles -- can achieve a plasma or "fluidized" state if
rotated fast enough. The fuel could then be fed into a
rocket's propulsion system.
Constructing
the reactor is only one aspect of the overall goal of the
reduced gravity program, Martin
said.
Both teams devoted much of their
time to outreach, visiting K-12 schools across the state to
talk about space travel and how nuclear reactors
work.
"I love it," Cotton said. "I want
to be a teacher and this is good practice -- it's
interesting-enough material that kids what to know what we're
doing and why."
Part of NASA's overall
goal with its reduced gravity program is to motivate students
-- possibly future agency employees -- toward science and
engineering in young people, Martin
said.
"That's one of their focuses,"
Martin said. "Within the next five years, 50 percent of NASA's
staff will be retiring."
Martin, who will
attend Portland State University next fall to earn her
Master's degree, echoed Cotton's sentiments regarding the
educational outreach.
"Part of the
problem with teaching math and science is that it's hard to
see the actual application of it," she said. "Here, we're
presenting things in a physical sense, instead of only a
formal sense."
For more information on
the OSU/WOU Microgravity Flight Team:
http://www.wou.edu/student/club/microgravity/
Western's
Microgravity team members are Avery Cotton, Ronald Wessels,
Deborah Clark, Will Bowers, Amanda Martin, and Kathryn King of
West Salem High School.
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