Making food in space is not as simple as it is on Earth, but thanks to a prototype anti-gravity blender designed by a team of ISU students, the process will be easier.

“NASA is planning to go to the moon and Mars,” said David Chipman, senior in mechanical engineering. “They can’t take all the food with them for them to eat. They have to be able to grow their own food. If they have to grow their own food, they have to process their own food. So that’s where we came up with the idea of the blender.”

The team of six ISU students built and tested the blender for the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, focusing on how the blender would work with soybeans because of the wide range of foods that can be made from them.

“We started out with soybeans because NASA’s already done some research on that, and that had more uses, as far as making tofu or soy milk,” said Jonathan Gettler, senior in electrical engineering.

It took about a year to design and build the prototype, which cost $1,500 and is roughly the size of two microwaves, said Kevin Schroeder, senior in mechanical engineering.

The blender is capable of mashing food in a reduced gravity or microgravity environment. It is different from blenders on earth because it doesn’t require gravity to pull food toward any blades.

“It’s analogous to a rolling pin, crushing soybeans that are in a bag,” said Chipman, the project’s leader. “The rolling pin would be stationary and underneath is a plate that moves.”

The group, which began with Chipman, Gettler, Schroeder and Clayton Neumann, junior in mechanical engineering, wrote their project proposal in August 2003, and sent it off to the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program.

“In December we found out that we were accepted,” Chipman said. “At that point we really started working extra hard.”

From December to July, the team built and tested their prototype in preparation to go to Houston. It was at this stage that Dustin Lunde, junior in computer engineering, and Russ Uthe, senior in computer engineering, joined the team.

“We had to design everything from scratch,” Chipman said. “We had to custom-fabricate all the equipment that we took. It was a lot of work, but we had a lot of fun doing it.”

Lunde, Chipman, Neumann and Gettler all got to test the prototype in reduced gravity, with the help of a special NASA aircraft, the KC-135, also known as the “weightless wonder.”

“A couple of the original group members weren’t able to go on the flight, and I knew some of the guys from my freshman year in college,” Lunde said. “At the beginning of the summer, they asked if I wanted to help out — just finish up the project and fly with them. I said, ‘Yeah, I couldn’t pass that up.'”

The plane does a series of parabolas, going up to about 32,000 feet and then down to about 24,000 feet, and then up again, anywhere from 30 to 40 times. Both reduced gravity and two Gs are experienced on the flight.

“It’s like a regular airplane, and all the seats are gutted out except for a few in the back, and the walls are padded,” Lunde said. “When you’re falling, that’s when you’re at zero Gs.”

The blender was tested as the plane nose-dived for 23 seconds, for a total of 32 times, or 12 minutes and 16 seconds.

“It’s indescribable,” Chipman said of the experience. “There’s no resistance. You could climb around the inside of the airplane like a salamander crawls on the wall.”

Chipman, who graduated from Iowa State in May 2004, decided to return to get a degree in mechanical engineering.

“After doing this project, I was really interested in engineering,” he said. “Just the whole idea of designing and testing. That was really neat. It’s something you build. That whole process to me was very interesting.”