We went to visit the centrifuge which is used for creating up to 20G i.e. 20 times the weight of gravity. For example, whatever you weigh on earth you would weigh twenty times heavier when you’re in this spinning machine. The centrifuge is used for various experiments on both humans and different space research. Astronauts also use this as part of their training in order to get used to the high G levels.

In the background of the above photo, you can see the wind tunnel which is used for testing the aerodynamics of space shuttles, planes, formula one cars and many other vehicles and products. It was mind blowing (Pardon the pun!) to hear that the tunnels are so big that they test boeing planes inside. In addition, we carried out some great experiments testing how the human eye compensates for your heads orientation. Vibration on a space shuttle can be lethal if it’s not taken into consideration for the design. I volunteered to lay on the vibration table which shook me from zero G to five G while trying to read from a screen. This was an experiment used  to see how much a human can read when exposed to high gravity vibration. At five G it was nearly impossible to read the screen without feeling motion sickness.

The final experiment was using a monitor that detected eye movement and different sounds distinguished different movements (a useful technology for preventing falling asleep while driving). The core lectures mainly covered ‘satellites and communications’ but the most novel was the ‘space and pop culture’. It explained the influence of space on television, movies and music such as ‘Star Trek’, ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Snoop Dogg’s’ new song with one of the first astronauts rapping in the video (Cringe!). The lecturer has paid one million dollars to fly on the first trip of Richard Branson’s Virgin galactic space flight. She finished off the class with a video from U2’s latest world tour in Barcelona. The video contained Bono and the gang speaking to the International Space Station live from their concert in Barcelona which we had done a couple of weeks previous. As the core lectures had come to an end, it was ISU tradition for all the lecturers and staff to sing “Oh Happy Day” (their own made up version) to the class which was very funny.

All spare time during the week (extremely little to say the least) and our time over the weekend was focused on studying for the core lectures exam the following Monday which involved revising material from a  total of sixty-three lectures.