 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
First NASTAR Suborbital Space Scientist Training Course
Boulder CO (SPX) Aug 12, 2009 Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), working with The National AeroSpace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center, is leading a program that will provide spaceflight physiology training for prospective scientist-astronauts wishing to fly on upcoming suborbital space missions. The SwRI-NASTAR Suborbital Space Scientist course, which is similar to training courses used by the space tourism industry, will be taught to a select set of a dozen scientists, graduate students and educators from U.S. research and educational institutions and is designed to acquaint and qualify individuals with the physiological rigors of suborbital human spaceflight. The NASTAR Center, which provides training and research support for the aerospace industry, will host the two-day course at its facility outside Philadelphia in January 2010. The course will include space flight training and altitude physiology, as well as classroom work, centrifuge flights, altitude chamber runs and other training elements. Institutions sending researchers, students or educators to the inaugural program include SwRI, Boston University, the Denver Museum of Natural Sciences (DMNS), the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Central Florida and the University Space Research Association (USRA). Before organizing the course, SwRI's Dr. Alan Stern and Dr. Daniel Durda visited The NASTAR Center in June 2009 to survey its facilities; Stern then invited various leaders in the new field of human suborbital Research and Education Missions (REM) to participate. "NASTAR is the leader in private space flight training," says Stern, associate vice president of the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division. "Having trained for and flown high-performance F-18s and high-altitude reconnaissance jets like the WB-57, I could see that NASTAR was uniquely positioned to support this program with its extensive, modern facilities and their application to suborbital research in space by scientists, engineers, educators and even students." "Alan and I will be taking this course ourselves under an SwRI initiative," adds SwRI Principal Scientist Durda. "The coming era of commercial suborbital space flight offers tremendous potential for the research and education communities. We hope the day won't be far off when our first suborbital research flights have been contracted for and our first research experiments are being constructed." "We found no shortage of participants lining up to devote their time and funds to take the course," concludes Stern. Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links NASTAR Center spaceflight training program Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News
TankHab: Living In A Gas StationSydney, Australia (SPX) Aug 11, 2009 The current Augustine Review of America's human spaceflight plans has produced a fascinating showcase of ideas. Granted, it's also quite disturbing, as a very pragmatic consensus emerges that NASA will be unable to return astronauts to the Moon in the near future. On a brighter note, we've seen some interesting mission plans and architectures that have been suggested for the time when ... read more |
|
|
| The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2009 - SpaceDaily. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement |
del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
YahooMyWeb
Google
Facebook