FL 250 and Puerto Rico

There are long days and LONG days.  Yesterday was one of the latter.

Waking up bright and early at  5:30 AM after a good 4 hours of sleep, we headed out to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) for physiological training required of all persons flying on the KC-135.  So from 7:30 to 11:30, we had four hour-long sessions where we reviewed gas laws, decompression sickness, optical illusions, and other vital info we should know while floating in the air.

So after a (too) hearty lunch, we headed over to the NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory), where NASA's 400x200x80 ft training pool and hypobaric chamber are located.  After another hour and a half of lectures on how to survive explosive decompression and use the valsalva (the official name for pinching your nose and blowing), we got to use their supplemental oxygen equipment (like the ones pilots use in F-16's) in the Hypobaric Chamber for our "flight" to Flight Level 250 (FL250) or 25000 feet.  Gas expands at higher altitudes as you well know, so that meant the gas in our GI tract would expand as well.  Good thing the NASA people fed us lots of pizza the night before.  A couple people made good use of the "right cheek roll" technique to relieve themselves of any discomfort.  I'll let your imagination figure out what that was.  After breathing for 30 minutes on 100% oxygen to rid ourselves of the Bends-causing nitrogen in our blood, we ascended to FL250 at 5000 feet per minute.  Even clouds appeared in the chamber as the water vapor condensed.  Bodacious.

We took off our oxygen masks and personally experienced the effects of hypoxia for about 5 minutes (taking turns so that we could watch each other).  Unfortunately, we all acted like sad, depressed drunks while completing the worksheet they gave us to test our time of useable consciousness.  We descended at 2k / 3k feet per minute, but Gary had some trouble depressurizing his middle ear (this contraption that blew air into his nose helped take care of that problem).  It turned out that one of the blood vessels in his right ear burst and filled his middle ear with blood (ouch).  He was a trooper and we were back at sea level. 

Afterward, we toured the NBL and took a look at the biggest swimming pool in the world.  At the moment, they have a mockup of the shuttle payload bay and one of the arms of the International Space Station (ISS).  We also heard about a new arm they are working on that can detach and reattach to move across the ISS.  They have a huge loading dock as well next to the pool with various different mockups of various shuttle and ISS components not currently used in the pool; plus a giant crane to throw the stuff into the pool when needed.  Gnarly stuff.

After rushing to the JSC afterward to passage and feed our cells, we ate and came back home at around 11 PM.  If we were smart we would have gone to sleep immediately.  Too bad we, in our infinite wisdom, decided to play more Puerto Rico till 3 AM.  Except Gary, who took the initiative and got some 4 more units of Z's than us. 

We'll see what else Houston has to offer today other than NASA, Outback, and 103 degree heat index.