A Trip Out Of This World

First, we arrived at the spaceport outside of New Mexico and we went through the Astronauts walk along with Michael Coatshur, CEO of Virgin Galactic and he walked us through 4 days of training in preparation for the flight.

Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 is all about Repetition training, for example, the Astronauts will learn how to buckle and unbuckle their seat belts 100 times a day, so it become muscle memory and second nature during the flight. Day 4, you get suited up and you are turned into an Astronaut.

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Again, the training is all about repetition so you can understand where you want to be throughout the whole process during the space flight. It’s a dress rehearsal to decide where do you want position yourself in altitude. Do you want to look down to Earth from the 55-mile view? Do you want to be upside down? Do you want to be looking outside the window that shows the 1,000-mile view? How do you want to be orientated in gravity? The goal is to be thoughtful and to contemplate where you want to be mentally at the moment and not leaving the embeddedness of the memory to chance so the Astronaut can be ready for it because the views can be surprising and stunning at the same time. That’s what the repetition is for so you will be an Astronaut training again and again.

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Next, we went to The Master class. This is where you sit in this room on the final day of training. Someone who has already flown would be brought in either in person or by video. This is to give them perspective on what they have done and what they should have done during the flight. But overall, it’s what do you want to do and hear it from someone who has already done it before.

We also viewed the Mission control room, which was really fascinating to understand the different roles of the engineers and pilots. The pilots are the best in the world, they are space shuttle pilots and military pilots and they are just incredible people. This is an additional support system they bring on top of all of that with experts at every console and a backup for every person that’s there again adding an extra layer of safety.

Finally, we went into the hanger, and they don’t allow anything in the hanger that’s considered a FOB, (foreign object debris) they are very particular about not letting anything in the hanger that might interfere with the ship or the journey, so they do a FOB sweep or foreign debris. When viewing the spaceship, it was the most awe-inspiring thing I had seen and just left me speechless.

I would say the best way to position this to clients is to have an understanding of what goes into becoming an astronaut and identifying those individuals who have an affinity for space travel. Thank you.

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