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Session 2302

WSU and Microgravity Combustion Research at NASA Lewis Research Center

David N. Koert, David A. Nordling Wichita State University and Daniel L. Dietrich NASA Lewis Research Center

“The training of a scientist is a long and expensive process. Studies clearly show that there are talented individuals in every part of the population, but with few exceptions, those without the means of buying higher education go without it.” Vannevar Bush (1945)

INTRODUCTION The words of Vannevar Bush, father of the hypertext system, have an ominous ring in these days of uncertain funding for the sciences, diminishing financial-aid for students, waxing interest in science and even anti-science sentiment (Lederman, 1995). In an effort to promote interest in space-science among the potential scientists and engineers of the future, a multimedia presentation has been prepared as part of a NASA Educational Grant with Wichita State University (WSU). The presentation features video footage of a WSU engineering student floating weightlessly on a reduced gravity experimental flight as shown in Figure 1. The presentation uses colorful and attractive overheads describing an undergraduate research experience at NASA Lewis Research Center in the Space Experiments Division (this group develops experiments for the space shuttle and trains astronauts in their use). The presentation is supplemented with slide photographs and video tape of the work which was performed at NASA.

BACKGROUND Since the early 1970's, microgravity science research has emerged as a new way to reveal the underlying physics and chemistry of combustion phenomena. The early work in microgravity combustion, and the majority of the work done thus far, has been conducted in ground-based facilities, FIGURE 1. WSU engineering student David i.e., the 2.2- and 5.18-Second Drop Towers at Nordling during a break between solid materials Lewis Research Center. However, these facilities, flammability experiments onboard NASA-Lewis’ and the higher g-level parabolic trajectory jet parabolic trajectory DC-9.

1996 ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings

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Koert, D. N., & Nordling, D. A. (1996, June), Wsu And Microgravity Combustion Research At Nasa Lewis Research Center Paper presented at 1996 Annual Conference, Washington, District of Columbia. 10.18260/1-2--6406