By James Day
Donald Pettit and Rick Spinrad graduated from Oregon State University in 1978. Spinrad, OSU’s vice president for research, has had a sterling career in private industry and academia. Yet when he introduced Pettit’s appearance Feb. 22 at the university’s LaSells Stewart Center, Spinrad noted he was still at OSU while Pettit “had gone a lot farther.”
Farther in the case of Pettit – a Silverton native and 1973 Silverton High grad – means space. As in 370 days spent in space as a NASA astronaut on three missions.
That’s not the sort of experience most folks have. And it’s why a standing-room-only crowd of 150 people, from pre-teens to seniors, oohed, aahed, laughed and clapped through the 75-minute lecture and video presentation Pettit gave at OSU.
“Space is my frontier,” said Pettit, who was inducted into the OSU College of Engineering Hall of Fame. “It’s a place where your normal intuition doesn’t apply. Bizarre things can happen. They entice people to go to different places, rich in discovery … and the answers are not in the back of the book.”
Then he showed some of his experiments.
Pettit took a polarizing filter into space as part of his personal stash of gear and ran a series of experiments on it using a thin film of frozen water on a loop of wire. In zero gravity the water film yielded colorful images when viewed under the polarizing filter.
“I’ve got a hundred of these films,” he said. “And I’m still trying to figure out what it all means, but I’m sure it means something. This could make a good science fair project for a kid.”
Pettit took zucchini seed pods into space and tried, with mixed results, to grow zucchinis in a weightless environment.
“Could I do a potted plant in the corner?” said Pettit about the experiment, conducted inside a plastic bag. “In weightlessness you have no dirt. How can I feed this thing? I had to make my own dirt and nutrients from food scraps. I called it compost tea and injected it into the plastic bag.
“But the plants weren’t doing too good. There was too much salt. I did a lot of work to keep them alive and the zucchini sprouted a flower on Valentine’s Day.”
The science lessons went on in rapid-fire succession.
Pettit, using digital images from an infrared camera, showed dazzling views from space.
He showed how the International Space Station links with unmanned supply vehicles. “Instead of docking, it parks 10 meters away,” Pettit said. “Then you lasso it with robotic arm.”
He put a camera on a tripod, left the shutter open as the earth turned and brought back colorful star trail pictures. “I’m not sure if I should call this art or scenery,” Pettit said, as the crowd applauded.
Pettit took four knitting needles into space, developed a static electricity charge in them by rubbing them against some fur boots then fired drops of water at them. The droplets orbited the knitting needles like a planet around the sun.
“I wanted to see what would happen in space,” Pettit said. “(Benjamin) Franklin tried this experiment with cats, but there are no cats in space.”
