Alarms start ringing at 6:00 am and we grumble out of bed as we rub sleep from our eyes. We soon file into the lobby for breakfast. A man decided to follow Sara around to take pictures of her waffle before it fell on the ground. Then, we left and were on our way to Ellington Field.
After we got our badges and went through the turnstile, we saw our plane. Okay, not “our” plane, but the one our team has worked diligently for the last ten months to be able to fly on! We found our tables and began unpacking our supplies for the day.
Texas is a very hot state. Lucky for us, most of our work was in the High Bay, which is an air conditioned area where we put together the tubes and vacuum pumped them. We attended a safety briefing at 8:30 am. The safety briefing gave us the ability to use NASA tools and made sure we knew protocol for being around and on the plane. After the briefing, the whole team diligently put tubes together for the Test Readiness Review and the first flight tomorrow. 
After the TRR, we put some final touches on the ESU and loaded CATE onto the plane. We situated into the back and figured out the most comfortable positioning for the members of each team.
Allyson, Sam, Addie, and Josh all worked together to make sure the backlighting and cameras were aligned and working properly. The extra cameras were then placed on poled behind the team so that each member can be seen and each student’s experience is fully captured.
At the end of the day, we got a full briefing on how to prevent motion sickness. Not too many people asked questions, but Jamie gave us a lot of good tips on how to survive the flight with little to no sickness. The best moment was when Jaime called Brad out by saying “I’m glad we finally got you out here. You’ve been trying forever!” because he wasn’t asking any questions about the flight. Then, we finally got what we had all been waiting for, our flight suits!!
With the preparation of today done, our flight suit fitted, and procedures locked down nothing will stop us tomorrow… except maybe rain, but WE WILL FLY (eventually)!
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