Growing Pains

Quick update from our end. 
 
Orientation was long but mesmerizing today, especially on 4 hours of sleep.  We found out we would be the last student group and one of the last groups in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD to use the KC-135.  They are retiring the KC-135 in October and switching over to a DC-9 airplane.
 
Today our experimetal box went from 3 levels of containment to 0 levels of containment back to 3 levels of containment.  A hazardous material such as our fixative (Bouin's solution) requires 3 levels of containment (i.e. the syringe the contains the Bouin's, the experimental box, and another box around that).  The combined genius of our group astounds me on a daily basis.
 
However, we are still working to improve our box.  Today we picked up materials at a local hardware store to buff up the shape of the box.  We plan to use foam to stabilize the syringes on the sides, while they are attached during microgravity.  The experimental box will be placed on top of milk crates.  Also we will use a heating pad to keep our cells comfortable while they are taking up residence in our box.
 
Weather strips have turned out to be our best friends.  They fill up the gaps and leaks in our box.
 
In other exciting, breathtaking news, we plan to use an membrane/cytoskeleton stain, in addition to using our Sytox Green nucleus stain.  This is a deviation from our previous usage of fluorescent beads to determine the position of the nucleus as it moves in microgravity.

On the sightseeing front, the lab that we went to in the Johnson Space Center is the actual lab where all the moon rocks were kept!  That's totally sweet!  We also saw the loading dock where they loaded the space capsule when it came back down to Earth.  Talk about a Kodak moment.  Too bad we didn't take any pictures. 
 
Ok I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow is a full day of physiological training.