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The Spaceflight Preparation Program
Your Worldview experience starts now. Enter our unique spaceflight preparation program, which will not only provide essential skills and safety training for any space fairing experience but will provide thrill after thrill, with each new activity extending your adrenaline threshold.
Please click on the headings below to read more.
Synthetic Preparation means that we are using ground based technologies to simulate the sensations and experience of spaceflight. It is used to teach you skills that will be put into practice in the flight phase of the preparation and your spaceflight.
The program is designed for the modern spaceflight participant and the first activity is to spend a day testing your limits in our centrifuge.
The centrifuge is a training device in which we will rapidly spin you round for a short period (in a controlled manner) in order to simulate similar gravitational forces that you will encounter later in the program and in your spaceflight. We will incrementally increase the g-force as you learn to cope with each level.
The purpose of this is to examine your tolerance to the immense accelerations needed to break free of the Earth’s gravity. The average person has a low g-tolerance and so would find a spaceflight an uncomfortable and possibly breathless experience.
Our experts will monitor you personally on board the centrifuge to ensure that you are dealing with and enjoying the experience. Remember – our NUMBER ONE PRIORITY is your safety.
Our experts on hand will assess your progress and give guidance on tried and tested techniques to help you endure the acceleration thus helping make your spaceflight experience exciting and not exhausting.
It will be necessary to return to the centrifuge for further sessions, depending on how you fare and also on the condition of your general health. We may also recommend a personalized dietary and exercise plan, created around your lifestyle by our team of specialists.
Later in the centrifuge program you will go through an entire flight profile simulating all of the g-forces for their true durations. All you need to do is imagine being on board that spaceship and you will feel like you are actually there.
The disorientation simulator or the “diso-sim” will give you an insight into your spaceflight mission. The diso-sim is where we will demonstrate how your senses (vestibular system) will be affected by your spaceflight, which may lead to motion sickness. Everyone is affected differently and the purpose of this training is to help you understand your own tolerances; whilst also having some fun!
All professional pilots and astronauts have to be trained in a Decompression Chamber and you will experience this training too. With taking any kind of flight will come the emergency procedures briefing.
In the unlikely event of cabin decompression; a lack of Oxygen can result in short-term effects on the body, whilst you can enjoy these effects in the chamber we can prepare you and make sure that you are ready.
With your g-tolerance skills honed to a fine art and your appetite thirsting for bigger thrills, the flight preparation of the program puts you in a range of high powered, high performance aircraft, each one with a specific purpose.
The first aircraft you will encounter is a low wing, high performance aircraft capable of the most spectacular aerobatic maneuvers. This will familiarize you with the process of pre-flight briefing and suiting up. Once in the air, you will be subject to just about every orientation you can imagine and you will experience real on-set of g-force and disorientation. The other purpose of this day is have the time of your life and with on-board cameras in the aircraft you can be sure never to forget it. You sit in the front seat of the cockpit while your Red Arrow pilot pulls climbs, twists and turns, a smoke trail will allow you look back and see the maneuvers you have completed.
We will put you back on board with the Blades. It is one thing to simulate the spaceflight profile in a centrifuge but to experience it while you look out of the window at the Earth rushing away puts you closer to space than ever before. Our expert pilots will fly the aircraft on a profile identical to that of your spaceflight, even though not as high or as fast as a spaceship, you will feel the real onset of gravitational forces equal in magnitude to those on the way to space.
There will be a brief period of weightlessness at the top of the climb before you begin to descend back towards Earth. The aim of this flight is threefold:
(1) To give you a real-time, high-speed experience and make you familiar with the flying suit and equipment, pre-flight briefing, and the noise and vibration involved with high performance aircraft.
(2) To give you experience of the real-time onset of gravitational forces on the body so that you can practice the straining and breathing techniques learned in the centrifuge.
(3) To enjoy yourself and see the world whizz by at sonic speeds, thus providing an exhilarating and essential part of your preparation.
It is entirely up to you how slowly or quickly you work through it. On completion of the program you will be a certified astronaut candidate able to fly with any provider of personal spaceflights. You can repeat any of the phases at any time for any reason, maybe you enjoyed the jet flight so much you want another go?
Maybe you didn’t quite master the quadruple backward summersault last time out on the parabolic flight? The important thing is you are prepared physically and mentally for you spaceflight so that you can be confident it will be the most exhilarating experience of your life.
These activities will be spread out between now and the day you take your spaceflight to provide you with the best and most exciting preparation and experience available anywhere in the world.
This program is an exciting and thrill-seeking adventure in its own, and can be taken by anyone without committing to spaceflight.
Your second aircraft is specially modified to fly a very particular flight profile called a parabolic flight. The plane will make around 30 parabolas each flight and each time you will experience around 20 seconds of weightlessness on board. With our instructors by your side it is essential that you learn the techniques for moving around in micro-gravity, after all how else will you get to the window to take in the view of Earth in Space? There will also be practice of getting in and out of a spacecraft seat whilst in micro-gravity. But with a total of 10 minutes of weightlessness on board the parabolic flight, there will also be plenty of time to try quadruple somersaults and walking on the roof.
The Spaceflight Preparation Program is designed to be completed over a period of time leading up to a spaceflight. You can undertake one phase at a time or book the full program up front to guarantee your place on each phase.
Phase 1 – One Small Step, G-force and disorientation training.
Phase 1 is 3 days in total, 2 of these days are spent at our facilities in Farnborough, at the RAF’s home of Aerospace Medicine. The 3rd day is at Sywell Aerodrome where we will be joined by The Blades and do some out of this world flying. During the first 2 days you will be exposed to g-force in the centrifuge, you will experience decompression at 22,000ft in the Hypobaric Chamber and be convinced you’re hanging upside down in the disorientation simulator. You will learn techniques to cope with all of this with the help of one-to-one tuition from an aero-medical expert.
On the 3rd day you sit in the front of the cockpit and the pilot’s objective is to put your new skills to the test by giving you real-time, in the air, G-Force onset and as a former Red Arrow, he is more than qualified to do so. Phase 1 includes 3 night’s accommodation in a top hotel with all meals included and luxury transport between the hotel and training facilities. We will arrange for you to attend a medical examination with an aviation medicine specialist 1 month before you begin.
Phase 1 - £8,500
Phase 2 – Beyond Your Limits, Demonstration Spaceflight.
Phase 2 is a similar format to Phase 1 with 2 days in Farnborough followed by a day at Sywell. The difference being that you will experience a full simulation of the G-force experienced by astronauts on launch and re-entry. Keeping the theme extreme we will re-enter the Hypobaric chamber to demonstrate the effects of rapid decompression at high altitude. Team work is you best weapon for coping here and by this time you are your crewmates will have been through enough to pull together and fight the effects to accomplish a series of mental tasks.
On the 3rd day we head up to Sywell again for your second round of flying with The Blades. This time around the purpose is to put everything you’ve learned into practice. The flight path will precisely mimic that of a sub-orbital spaceflight. Again Luxury transport and accommodation is taken care of.
Phase 2 - £8,000
Phase 3 – Weightless, Micro Gravity Parabolic Flight.
By now you will be fully prepared for the G-force of launch and re-entry but in between is of course your time in Outer Space, floating free of Earth’s Gravity and taking in the spectacular view of the Earth, seeing for the first time the curved Horizon against the blackness of Space you will notice a thin hazy film representing the Atmosphere; the only place in the known Universe that can support Human life.
But what does weightlessness feel like, how do you move around in a cabin with no floor or ceiling? How do you get to the window to take in that view? This can only be done on a parabolic flight, you will experience cycles of weightlessness inside the cabin of a specially adapted aircraft. You will learn how to move in weightlessness and learn to operate your seat restraints to make getting in and out as efficient as possible maximizing your time in Space.
As well as your accommodation we also arrange a presentation evening for you and your fellow astronaut candidates to receive your wings and contemplate the journey ahead.
Phase 3 - £7,500
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