Running back to Saskatoon

Last week was a crazy week, which went by way too quickly. I only barely had the cognitive ability at the end of the day to realize how lucky I was to be a part of the rocket campaign and do some networking with some very impressive people. Lecturers from several universities, and researchers from Cornell were there working on two large Black Brant 12 sounding rockets. There were several lecturers from the U of A: David Miles and Jonathan Rae. David is a master's student who has designed and built an extremely sensitive magnetometer, and he hopes to fly the magnetometer on several upcoming satellites. Jonathan Rae gave an interesting and informative lecture on some aspects of atmospheric physics, such as the magnetosphere (their lectures went well together!). Other lecturers represented Tromso university, University of Oslo, and Kongsberg defense in Norway (Kongsberg, sounds like something out of a Donkey Kong video game!).

Us Saskatonians got our picture with a nice block of Brown Cheese:

I guess I missed the cue to look badass...



Coming back in time to Canada has its advantages and disadvantages. I didn't sleep for a full 24 hours on the trip from Oslo to Saskatoon, but I got my 8 hours back that was taken away when I crossed the Atlantic for Norway. Not sleeping for 24 hours - now that is something I can say I've only done a few times. Your brain and body start to do weird things when that much time has passed since your last REM cycle. Twitching in irritating ways, nodding off while standing up, etc. Time seems to speed up (maybe from all the micro naps you take while it looks like you are walking around!) and 1 hour flights go by in minutes.

On the other hand, my 9 hour flight over the Atlantic didn't go by so quickly... I didn't check in until getting to the airport, and I got the unlucky draw of a seat in the geometric centre of the aircraft. David ALSO had a seat in the very middle, but two rows behind. I expressed my hopes before boarding that I would be in between interesting people... I must have cursed myself, because I was next to an extremely loud guy who wouldn't give me any room, and kept shutting off the movie I was trying to watch with his elbow! I eavesdropped on David sitting next to the most interesting man in the world (a fellow space/aerospace enthusiast) two rows behind me as I had to squeeze myself into the smallest possible cylinder so I wouldn't have to rub wenis' with the guy next to me... ugh, I can still feel the elbow stubble rubbing my arm *shudder*.

Lesson learned - Always get a seat next to your fellow physics students.

On the way back, David, Taylor and I were with the Calgarians: Alex, Lohrasp and Russell. We reflected on the past week and generally reminisced. It felt like we had known each other for much longer than a short week - here we are at a pub in Heathrow, where beer flows much more cheeply than in Norway!

Cheap English ale!

I slept until noon Sunday, it was a good thing :)

The past two days (Monday and Tuesday morning) my body thought it was supposed to wake up at about 5am - so I watched the sun rise!

Here is the hybrid rocket motor I told you about, burning away the plexiglass:

This was impressive. A student was controlling a valve that let out N2O (laughing gas - you can't see it in the picture but we are all laughing heartily :D). The N2O mixed with the plexiglass to create a cocktail of gases.

Oh, I guess you guys probably want to see a picture of the Rocket being launched, right? Ha! Must have slipped my mind:

Oh, just reaching mach 3 here, no big deal.

On thursday night, after coming back late from Palermo, the pizza place, where we witnessed the best and only aurora all week:

David took this exposure from Palermo's patio - WITHOUT a tripod.

Ah, I probably shouldn't start a sentence and then show a picture and talk about something else should I?... It's late, I'm tired... Anyways, this is awkward, I think I'll just jump right back in...now: my group (Experiment group) went back to work on our presentation. I will now show you the only picture I have where I'm not smiling on this whole trip, feel lucky!

I promise the smile isn't there only because I'm thinking hard about something. I feel like this scene would be in a Hollywood movie during a montage of people learning rocket science really quickly or something... Just LOOK at those equations on the whiteboard!

Bonus question - Can anyone tell me what the diagram in the middle of the whiteboard is for? The equations in blue around it are related.

And now for my conclusions regarding this trip:

This picture sums up a philosophy that has been rampant in my life for the past several years:

If you cannot read the quote above Chris Hadfield's head, it says "The sky is not the limit".

How fitting that the same sentence is the name of the documentary made about the USST. Also how fitting that the same sentence appears on a brochure I saw on the wall at Andoya Rocket Range. At the same time I was in Norway last week, three students who studied at the U of S were in Cape Town, South Africa at the International Aeronautical Congress (IAC). They met BILL NYE, and generally kicked ass in terms of networking. I hope to go to next year's IAC, which is being held in Naples. This trip has really opened up doors for me, I just need to pick one...

Astronauts are so cool.

Signing off, thanks for reading.
-Kevin Krieger