Suspended in Orbit

The spacelab was launched into orbit on Columbia on 20 June 1996. When it touched down again 16 days and 21 hours later, it set a record as the longest-duration space-shuttle flight in the history of the program. The Spacelab itself consisted of a long module, located in the shuttle’s cargo bay, which held 12 racks of equipment for various experiments. A total of 40 scientific investigations were associated with the spacelab, including 16 life science and 24 microgravity investigations. Investigators produced metallic alloys and protein crystals, studied fluid behavior, and examined how surface tension, thermal gradients, and other parameters affected materials processing and fluid behavior.

Saville operated his experiment from Earth by sending commands to the shuttle that would inject drops into liquid-filled test cells and then subject the cells to predetermined temperature changes. Cameras and sensors would record the temperature, density and position of the drops. Days before the experiment took place, however, a power-supply feed to one of ALEX’s test containers shorted out, forcing Saville and several of his graduate students to catch the next flight to Huntsville and work around the clock in order to repair the short and save the experiment. In true “MacGyver” fashion the shuttle crew repaired the short by cutting a credit card–sized piece of plastic off the cover of a flight procedures manual and inserting it between the wires and metal housing that was causing the problem. The experiment went off without a hitch, and Saville declared himself “positively euphoric” about the way the experiment performed.

Although all the experiments aboard the spacelab had implications for government and commercial interests, Saville freely admitted that ALEX did not have any immediate or direct applications. Driven by his passion for knowledge and pure science, he nonetheless saw his work as relevant, remarking to a reporter, “a reliable theory has many applications. . . . Although I can’t tell you it’s going to appear in your catalytic converter or your home appliance next year, there are many applications for knowledge.” But Saville’s modesty may have led him to overstate the impracticality of his research. The theoretical findings from his experiments help investigators determine how much electrical field strength is needed to stabilize fluid cylinders, with important implications for atomizing and spraying, polymer blending, polymer membrane manufacturing, and fiber spinning. The phenomenon he explained has seen widespread use in medicine, in the production of polymers, and in electrically controlled spray painting.

Saville was truly a pioneer in the field of fluid mechanics and colloid science, and his work reveals fundamental principles governing the behavior of fluids. Along with William Russell and William Schowalter, he published Colloidal Dispersions (Cambridge, 1989), which became a major text in the field. In recent years Saville and his collaborator, Ilhan Aksay, also at Princeton, developed methods for controlling the behavior of colloids, bringing researchers one step closer to guided self-assembly. Saville’s peers lauded his accomplishments; in 1997 he was presented with the Alpha Sigma Chi Award for Chemical Engineering Research, and in 2003 he was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. Sadly, Saville passed away from cancer late last year, but his legacy will be preserved at CHF, which acquired his extensive personal archive in December 2006.

For Further Reading

Fricke, Robert W. STS-78 Space Shuttle Mission Report. Houston: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, 1996.

Monti, R. Physics of Fluids in Microgravity. London: Taylor and Francis, 2001.

Moore, D.; Peter Bie. Biological and Medical Research in Space: An Overview of Life Sciences Research in Microgravity. New York: Springer, 1996.

Sadhal, S.S. Microgravity Transport Processes in Fluid, Thermal, Biological and Materials Sciences. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 2002

Whitaker, Ann F. Space Manufacturing, the Next Great Challenge. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1998.