Oops

It's been a month already since my last post. Wow! I guess not too much exciting has happened. My project got slowed down due to the simulation software not being accurate enough and giving incorrect results. We're back on track now and headed for some exciting results. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the calculations to complete. These take a long time. A case I'm currently running will take about a week to compute. And that's not even the most complex case I will run. So now I wait for data to come in. Then I'll be post-processing and analyzing it for a paper to be presented at a conference this summer.

My mid-term presentation is this coming Friday. I have to present my progress to all the other interns, mentors, student program coordinators, etc. I'm excited to get to share my work with others.

My birthday was last week. We went to a sushi place. It was really good. Then we went to an ice cream place. It was cold stone. Then I went to bed at 10:30. That was wonderful.

I think we're going skiing next week in New York. It'll be my first time downhill skiing. I'm debating whether to get a lesson or not. I'm sure it'll be enjoyable regardless of my decision.

Air Force One, Astronauts, Flying my bicycle

Wow, NASA certainly does not disappoint when it comes to extracurricular activities. President Obama decided to make a day trip to cleveland and the surrounding area last week in order to talk to some real Americans. Lucky for me, NASA Glenn is adjacent to the Cleveland airport, where obama flew in. A group of us interns were advised by a 20 year employee to view the landing of Air Force One from the top of one of the NASA buildings. Turns out we were not allowed to be up there and security kicked us off about 2 minutes before landing, and we were forced a glimpse between buildings from the ground. I didn't realize how big a 747 was! I got a better view of the takeoff, however:

That was friday. On wednesday, the austronauts of this past shuttle mission, STS-129 made a visit to NASA Glenn for a briefing and meet & greet. This was unreal! I sat in the front row as the astronauts talked about their mission. It was of even more significance to me because they brought a friend's (Brandon Krick) experiment to the International Space Station! I asked them about it but all they knew was that they brought a black box with experiments in it. I got their autographs and a picture with the commander, Charles Hobaugh:

I've also been going to Ray's Indoor MTB park alot. It's basically a bunch of ladder bridges, logs, and jumps in a huge warehouse. I've been taking my bike off some sweet jumps which is really fun. My skills are really improving and being in the air is really fun. Today I'm going to see a bunch of pros shoot a video there. It should be some great entertainment.

Oh yeah, work is going well. I'm making a lot of progress on my project, although it's likely that all we'll learn about it is that it won't work. That's research though. I guess.

First Week

Wow, a week went by quickly. Monday morning was hell with all the security, IT, and other boring presentations. Lunch in the cafeteria with my mentor, Stephanie, and a few other USRP interns and mentors was delightful. On the way to the office from lunch, we poked our head in a few labs. One of them was testing lunar rovers in a huge sandbox. That was pretty mind blowing and surreal. I also saw the supersonic wind tunnel that I'll be simulating on my computer. The rest of the afternoon consisted of getting the kinks worked out of my computer and reading a bit.

The rest of the week I continued to read, learn a few Unix comands (I'm working on a Linux machine), and a few other software programs I'll be using. Thursday we toured a robotics lab where they develop robots for bomb squads, haz mat, moon dust harvesting, etc. That was pretty cool. We also toured the graphics and visualization lab where they had some nice interactive 3D demonstrations.

I guess I should explain what I'm doing here. I'm doing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for tests in a supersonic wind tunnel. CFD allows the engineer to get flow properties (velocity, density, momentum, etc.) by numerical simulations rather than having to actually test and collect data. My simulations are actually being done in parallel with wind tunnel tests. The computational and experimental results will be compared and analyzed.

This afternoon (friday) I completed my first simulation (of the empty wind tunnel running at Mach 2 (2 times the speed of sound(about 1500 mph))). It is currently running on my computer and should be completed when I come in on Monday!

Made it

Arrived in Cleveland yesterday, spent the afternoon at the Rock & Roll Hall of fame with Dad (he flew back to Florida this morning). That was kinda cool, but definitely not worth the 22 bucks. Cleveland science center is next to the RRHF and they have a wind turbine outside the building which is pretty sweet. Probably gonna check that place out with the other interns.

Spent the rest of the day shopping for random crap like pillows and clothes hangers.

The house I'm staying at is great. It's a single guy who rents the upstairs bedrooms to NASA interns. The other intern is actually from my lab back at UF. It's nice to have someone here that I know.

The snow is starting to suck. It's a pain in the ass when it gets all over everything and you have to take your shoes off at the door and then your socks get wet when you accidentally step in a puddle of melted snow by the door.

Here are some pics from the trip north:

Cincinnati

fml

cleveland weather. i'll be arrriving on thursday.




this will be interesting...

haha

Well I didn't blog over the summer or fall. This blog used to be about cycling, but I don't do much of that anymore. Racing I mean. I still ride a bit.

I plan on blogging about my experience this coming semester as an intern at NASA Glenn Research center in Cleveland, OH.

I'll be leaving Florida next week and returning at the end of April.

I'm really excited about the whole thing. Except for the weather. That's gonna suck.

Summer is here

Maybe I'll start babbling again...