"Just bizarre. Just strange. It was impossible to control yourself; your feet were going everywhere."
Stephen Lynch, UCSD Senior

Continued
who cared for the six people who became sick onboard yesterday. "Sensory confusion is what it is....You take gravity away, you get strained signals."

UCSD senior Kai Miller, who flies today, wanted to know if he could stand it. Since he was 6 years old, Miller has dreamed of becoming an astronaut. As a boy he'd look into the sky. "And that's where I wanted to go," said the 22-year-old from Newport Beach.

He dove into science-fiction books and then into science class. It seems everything he's done in the past few years has been to keep him on the astronaut track.

In July, a month after graduating from UCSD, Miller will start an eight-year combined medical and doctoral degree program at the University of Washington. He has received a feull scholarship, plus money to live on.

"The idea of pushing the envelope has always been appealing ot me. That's the fundamental drive behind all science. I mean, this is the last frontier for explorers."

But the students' ride in zero gravity wasn't necessarily guraranteed when their projects were chosen. They had to pass through NASA's physiological training first. That was done last week.

After a day of classroom lectures at Johnson Space Center on atmospheric make-up and what happens to the human body with limited oxygen, the students took a simulated flight to 25,000 feet in NASA's hyperbaric chamber.

The chamber demonstrates the effects of pressure changes and lets students practice recognizing and treating hypoxia, a state in which a lack of oxygen impairs mind and body functions. The hours of training prepare the KC-135A passengers for the unlikely event of a rapid pressure drop.

If students were nervous at the thought of getting sick on the Vomit Comet, the preparation for the hyperbaric flight offered a sure distraction. The prospects in the chamber were far more grim:

Uncontrollable gas, exploding teeth and bleeding eardrums that "look like hamburger meat," said NASA medical technician Sharon Sands.

Gas expands when pressure drops and trapped gas has to go somewhere. The simulated ride up, Sand said, would be a "symphony." To minimize the effects of decompression, she told students to avoid certain foods.

To keep their eardrums intact, students practive the Valsalva maneuver, where you tilt your head back, pinch your nose and force the air through your ears

No preemptive measure against exploding teeth through.
Anyone who hadn't been to the dentist in a while could be in for a mouthful of tooth shrapnel, she said.

Once at 25,000 feet in the chamber, students took off their oxygen masks and tried to figure multiplication problems, list the presidents in reverse order, connect-the-dots and sign their names three times.

It was incredibly difficult. A few seconds without the oxygen and your vision can go blurry and wobbly. Things are suddenly comical. You feel stupid or drunk but not bothered by it.

On Wednesday and Thursday, four of the eight UCSD students took their turns flying on the KC-135A and studied the fluid shifts in a model of a human body.

In space, the lack of gravity causes the blood from the legs to pool in the chest. The phenonmenon can cause bone loss and heart problems in astronauts.

The team constructed two models - a demonstration model, with chambers that represent the legs, the mid-section, the chest and head. more->

Breathing test:UCSD Senior Stephen Lynch paused while taking a test
without his oxygen mask inside a NASA hyperbaric chamber. The chamber
simulates an altitude of 25,000 feet and teaches students how to recognize
symptoms of oxygen deficiency.