A red beach ball hangs from the ceiling 40 feet above a baby pool filled with styrofoam packing peanuts. A dozen student engineers wearing hard hats and holding walkie talkies pace the cement floor of Penn State's Bryce Jordan Center. Two of them fiddle with a laptop computer.
Wires stretch from the computer to velocity sensors on either side of the pool.
A handful of students and professors watch from the bleachers. The countdown begins. The ball wobbles in the air on its way down. This is just a test. The real drop will take place at Wallop's Flight Facility, Virginia, in May 1999, when the students release a similar sphere from a rocket.