Training for Your Space Vacation Though you won’t have to train as hard as a professional astronaut for your trip into the universe there are still things you’ll need to learn and do as an aspiring space traveler To spend any amount of time in space you’ll need to be in good physical shape It’s important to exercise to build up your muscle strength and endurance and eat well leading up to the trip You’ll also be given a medical checkup to make sure you don’t have any serious health conditions that would make space travel too dangerous For a suborbital trip you’ll actually be in space for only a few minutes So after passing the physical exam you’ll likely take some practice runs in a spinning centrifuge to get used to the extreme forces you’ll experience on your flight You’ll read more about this kind of flight simulator later but for now just imagine being strapped inside a giant spinning top Training for trips to the worlds beyond Earth orbit however is a bit different For these longer trips your training will also be longer months or even more You’ll need to become an expert on everything from aeronautics the science of air travel and learning how to deal with medical and other emergencies to the more day-to-day stuff such as repairing the toilet which could also be considered a type of emergency and cutting your fellow passengers hair You’ll also have to get used to living with others in small spaces possibly as small as a moving van drinking liquids and eating food out of bags working on a day-night schedule different from that of Earth and locking yourself in a tiny radiation shelter a thick-walled room that protects you every time the sun burps out a solar flare in your direction Top right Restrained by a harness astronaut Guion Bluford exercises on the treadmill on the space shuttle Challenger Center right Commander Richard Truly sleeps right-side up while astronaut Guion Bluford sleeps upside down on the space shuttle Challenger Bottom right Space food bags of snack foods and dehydrated foods Below STS-131 and Expedition 23 crew members pose for a photo on the International Space Station STS-131 crew members are pictured in the light blue shirts while the Expedition 23 crew are wearing darker shirts
Have some time before your trip Consider enrolling in a flying in a spaceship space camp like those offered at science centers and space agencies around the world There you’ll get to experience what it’s like to plan a mission train for it serve as a mission control member and use some simulators to experience a few of the sensations you’d feel
You might be surprised to find out that the gravitational pull of the Earth is nearly the same hundreds of kilometers or miles above our planet as it is on its surface But as a space traveler in Earth orbit you’ll get to feel the sensation of weightlessness while your spacecraft is falling around Earth fast enough to cancel most of gravity’s influence Actually there is still a tiny amount of gravity called microgravity that varies a little depending on where you are in your spacecraft But beyond the orbit of the Moon the gravitational pull from the planets and their moons is much much less In fact you could think of this space between planets and beyond as having zero gravity Getting Ready for the Greatest Show Off Earth Simulations are among the most useful tools for space training Whether it’s a computer program or a full-scale model spaceship a simulation is designed to imitate elements of your space adventure Simulations help you gain experience without posing real-world danger To prepare for the sensation of weightlessness one kind of zero-gravity simulation happens inside a specially modified passenger jet with an empty padded area in place of the plane’s usual seats Using current rocket technology a trip to the Moon and back will take days a trip to a comet will take anywhere from one to four years depending on how far it is from Earth to get to the planets of the inner solar system such as Venus or Mars and back will take months or even years depending on the distance between the planet and Earth at the time of the trip a journey to the planets of the outer solar system such as Jupiter or Saturn and back could take up to ten years
These vomit comets you can guess how they got this nickname climb as fast as they can up to an altitude height above the ground of about the same as a typical airplane flight As the plane gets close to its maximum altitude you start to feel lighter and lighter Finally your feet arms and then your whole body rise off the floor to float in mid-air for 20 to 30 seconds Then the plane dives downward to its starting altitude before leveling out for its next run During a session of zero-gravity training you’ll get to do this about a dozen times Another way you might train for the feeling of weightlessness is to jump into a giant specially designed pool of water Weights will be attached to you so that you neither float up to the surface nor sink down to the bottom instead you hover in place like an astronaut in space NASA runs the world’s largest underwater training facility which is 60 m 200 ft long and 12 m 40 ft deep and is used to train astronauts for space walks Above Zero-G’s Airbus A300 climbing toward a weightlessness simulation Below Astronauts Rick Mastracchio left and Koichi Wakata right train for a space walk in the waters of NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab NBL
