This Company Will Train You to Be An Astronaut

Lots of companies are plotting how they’ll eventually take tourists to space, and from the looks of websites like Virgin Galactic or Space Adventures, you can just throw down a couple hundred thousand (or a couple million) dollars and be on the first flight to low-Earth orbit. But it’s not quite that easy.

There’s always lots of talk about astronaut training for serious astronauts—NASA-trained scientists who have to do very important things aboard the International Space Station or are training for a theoretical mission to Mars—but ultimately, anyone who goes to space is going to have to have some sort of idea how their body is going to react to a microgravity environment. That’s where Waypoint 2 Space comes in.

The Houston-based company offers comprehensive astronaut training to anyone who has $45,000 to spend on the week-long "spaceflight fundamentals" course. On Tuesday, they announced that they're the first company to be licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to begin a program like this. Other companies offer bits and pieces of training, such as weightless flights on the Vomit Comet, but Waypoint 2 Space is the first to offer full training. They've been cleared to start operating as early as May.

While working on commercial space programs such as the Dream Chaser and SpaceShipOne, Kevin Heath, CEO of Waypoint 2 Space, says he noticed that no one was worrying about who would actually be riding in the things.

“There are people who are spending a ton of money to go to space, and we want to make sure their mind and body is prepared for that flight,” Heath said. “There’s lots of people working on getting people to space on the launch side, but there’s not many people working on safety training.”

Heath partnered with NASA (part of the company’s program will take place at NASA’s Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston) and former astronauts to device an astronaut training program that’s as close to NASA’s as possible.

“When you go to space there’s a lot of things going on. There are sounds that you’re going to hear or not hear, there are forces that are going to be interacting with you, there are different challenges you’re going to have to face,” he said. “If we can show you how to prepare for that then we can make sure your flight is the best it can possibly be.”

As much as Richard Branson might want you to think it’s as easy to hop on a spaceship as it is to hop on an airplane, the truth is that everyone’s body reacts in different ways. It's not cheap, but if you can afford to go to space, you can probably afford the training costs. During the week-long course, Waypoint 2 Space will allow people to experience weightlessness through parabolic flight (aka the Vomit Comet), teach participants about changes and pressures spaceflight puts on the body, teach people about communicating with crew in space, introduce them to reduced-oxygen environments, allow them to try on and perform tasks wearing a pressure suit, and teach very basic spaceship control navigation.

The company is also offering two higher-level courses in sub-orbital and orbital spaceflight training, which it plans to contract out to commercial spaceflight companies that plan on having regular astronauts who will take many flights, such as SpaceX.

Of course, there's still nothing more than a vague timeline for when manned commercial flights to space will begin operating, but Heath says that when they do, he'll "have a line of passengers trained and ready."

“Whenever you go to tour a spaceflight center as a space geek, you walk up and there’s always a velvet rope. You walk up and you have to stare at the things through a thick glass,” Heath said. “We’re taking that away. Our philosophy is, if you want to go to space, we will train you to go there.”