Thursday, December 26, 2013

Architecture Students Play Wii in Zero-G for NASA Research project

A group of architecture students visited Ellington Field at the Johnson Space Center in Houston this November to participate in NASA's 2013 Minority University Research and Education Program (MUREP) Education Flight Program. NASA selected the ENV students (Martin Saet, Garrett Sanne,Brice Colton, Andrew Cartwright, and Brianna Wiley) for their proposal “Boredom in Space: Experimental Application of Remote Sensor Video Gaming in Micro Gravity.” The research proposal frames the need for the experiment as follows: “As human spaceflight demonstrates increasing possibilities for long-duration or deep-space missions, one factor that we must consider is the mental health of the crew. Living and working within a small environment for a period of several months is psychologically taxing, and may lead to crew discomfort and sub-optimal mission performance. The purpose of Boredom in Space: Experimental Application of Remote Sensor Video Gaming in Micro Gravity is to assess the feasibility of using popular video gaming products with intuitive, motion-based input devices (e.g. the Nintendo Wii) to provide future astronauts with a means of recreation.”  Before the trip, the students developed their own experiment and crafted the equipment for use in the zero-gravity flight. The trip to Houston included such highlights as a VIP tour of the Johnson Space Center and, of course, the zero-gravity flight—all made possible by crowd-sourced funding from GoFundMe and additional financial support by NASA, ENV, and the National Space Grant Foundation.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Thanks to Everyone

To all the folks at NASA for the amazing private tours
To the Zero-G team and the MUERP program
To all the folks who donated money for this project through GoFundMe
To Dean Woo at CPP for his support and helping to find money as well
To Sarah Quasny at JSC for picking us/ supporting us and playing with us!
We had a great time - Feel free to browse our original proposal and the rather boring TEDP (103 pages)
We will post a final report and some additional videos soon.

Original Proposal
TEDP Technical Report

Move of messing around between serious research of playing video games

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO 

Movie of Flying Rubber Ducky


Some great pics of second flight!!!





Some great pics of first flight!!!





First flight team ready to go


Experiment getting loaded up


Some more checks with the flight crew The red shirt is Sarah our Nasa mentor



Guppy

The Guppy was doing touch and go's all day outside our hanger

Hanging out with an Astronaut

Joe Acaba hung out with us for a while and told lots of stories of living for 6 months in the ISS

Super Cool tour of building 9 - Got to go in the Shuttle

This was done by a cal poly pomona alum (cowboy hat) who designed the most expensive toilet ever


Some good ole texas food


Saturday, November 16, 2013

ISS Swimming Pool

Then we saw the pool with the entire ISS assembled in it - This is the biggest indoor pool in the world

Super VIP tour my our NASA mentor got us on the floor of Mission Control

Our tour was amazing and really special. They are in constant communication here with the ISS - Unfortunately all the folks on the ISS went to sleep already.

Final team in Houston



Brice Colton - Wish you were here...

Brice was an invaluable member of the team from the start all the way through - In the end he could not miss the time from his job so he did not go to Houston. Here he is in the original team photo

Testing and getting Final Check-Offs

Ours was the most prepared of any - but still had some strapping issues and they had to verify that the bolt

s were tightened down precisely - Good job Andrew

Martin and Andrew arrive to JSC Ellington Field to set-up


All ready for testing and Andrew throwing some darts


Prototype framed up and almost ready to go


Government is back up!!!

So we will be going one week later from the 8-15th
Too bad as everyone was hoping it would be during winter break from school

Government is Shutdown

Flight is delayed until further notice.....bummer

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Please Support Us!


We have $1,000 already Thanks so much
We are trying to raise the money by crowdsourcing so the more people who know about this the better…..I am attaching their original proposal and a few images … you can read the mail form NASA below ….and yeah – I get to fly too….

Here is our crowdsourcing page



Proposal got Accepted - Horay

5 Cal Poly Pomona Architecture students have been selected to participate in the NASA's 2013 MUREP Education Flight Program. Their proposal for NASA was selected to carry out research on playing video games in space. the students (Martin Saet, Garrett Sanne, Brice Colton, Andrew Cartwright and Brianna Wiley) are planning and carrying out their own research project and all they need is some funds for the project itself and the travel to Houston in November. The zero-g flight and training are all paid for by NASA. Please help support this tremendous and once-in-a-lifetime experience for these students. For more info on the program see the Microgravity University website http://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov/