It's hard to summarize my feelings of these past few days in words. I was anxious, nervous, excited, and ecstatic all at the same time. I can say that my second flight was certainly more pleasurable. Okay, so I got a little sick on Monday. However, a little motion sickness wasn't going to stop me. On Tuesday's flight, I didn't need to open that little white bag even once. I must say, microgravity is a whole new experience when you're feeling well!

Going from hypergravity to microgravity is like nothing here on earth. In microgravity, the floor seemed to fall beneath me and my body no longer knew which way was up or down. My hair started to flow freely through the air in every direction, the way it does when swimming underwater. One small push off the wall would send me sailing across the entire aircraft.

Then the director would yell, "Feet down, coming out." This meant our 30 seconds of floating was up and hypergravity was taking over. In other words, time to stick to the wall motionless. I wouldn't dare move my head during this time, for the fear of having a motion sickness accident.

Then, just when the 2-g's was about to get the best of my stomach, we'd pull out and be in heaven, I mean, microgravity again. Time for more fun in collecting our data. This abrupt transition certainly confused my body, but I'm already craving for more.

My experience on the KC-135 will always seem like it happened yesterday. This incredible opportunity shows that hard work really does pay off in the end. This was a direct application of how I see myself working in the future. I am even more focused on my engineering goals, especially in the space program.

This was my second flight on-board the "K-Bird." The first time around, in March, I was quite nervous. I wasn't sure what it was going to be like and I was quite worried about motion sickness. I remember being very worried going into the first parabola. I was holding onto anything I could find, while floating away from the floor of the aircraft.

After the first micro-gravity phase came the hyper-gravity phase. I remember someone telling me, before the flight not to make any sudden moves and to stay as still as possible during this phase, so I did. The second parabola got easier and so did the subsequent ones.

The second flight this August was definitely easier. I was more confident, but still worried about motion sickness. This time around, I threw myself right into it. In fact, I was so into it that I had trouble maintaining my orientation. Due to the requirements of the experiment this time, I was also quite active during the hyper-gravity stages. This made me slightly nauseous a couple of times, but I held it inside me. In fact, I managed to not get sick, both times!

The experience on-board can not be described in words. It was so good that I kept wanting to go back. The thought of sneaking onto the aircraft crossed both times. It was absolutely the best experience I ever had, and if I could ever do it again, I would, but others deserve to fly as well!

This is probably the most exciting thing that I have ever done. This was a glimpse at real engineering from beginning to end. The experiment started out as intuitive and creative thoughts that meshed together for a solid experiment.

The team spent lots of time and effort creating a proposal to submit to NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities program. Included in this proposal where calculations, drawings, stress analysis, objectives, and synopsis.

After jumping up and down for joy when we heard that our proposal was selected, we cranked down and started fabrication. We ran into a few obstacles, but we had plenty of time for corrections. Just as in the real engineering world, problems arise and part of the process is coming up with solutions.

The trip out to Houston was a long drive but I was traveling with my two great team members who made it enjoyable. Our experiment was loaded onto the aircraft and we waited the weekend out to fly the wonderful KC-135.

Monday morning came around and I was excited, anxious, exhilarated and eager to start the flight out over the Gulf. I took the first few parabolas slowly to become acclimated to the microgravity and hypergravity. It was easy to see that the microgravity switch worked like a charm. Although all of our calculations indicated that it would, it was still exciting to see something we designed and built actually carry out its function so well.

The magnetically guided screwdriver also worked well which was pleasing. We collected all the data that we needed and then the screw was tightened so much that the small motor wasn't able to unscrew it. But we were glad to see that because it would be bad to build a space structure remotely that had loose screws.

The flight was awesome and I felt like one of the luckiest engineering students to have this opportunity.

Flight two was even better. My teammate and I felt great through the majority of the flight, and the experiment was successful again. I floated around the cabin just like someone in space would. It felt really neat to move my arms and legs and not go anywhere, just float.

I am looking forward to studying our data in depth and writing the conclusions. This has been a dream come true. I have become even more interested in the space program as a result of the whole experiment. I see many great possibilities with space exploration.