When Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket launches into space this Tuesday, July 20, all crew members will have received just a few hours of training .
The first commercial flight of the New Shepard launcher, developed by Blue Origin, is scheduled for July 20 at 3 p.m. (French time). For this inauguration, the founder of the company Jeff Bezos will be present himself with his brother, Mark Bezos. They will be accompanied by aviator Wally Funk and an 18-year-old student named Oliver Daemen.
From takeoff to landing, this first commercial suborbital flight from Blue Origin is expected to last eleven minutes and offer the quartet at least three minutes of weightlessness before returning to Earth. The flight will be broadcast starting at 1:30 p.m. (French time) on BlueOrigin.com and take-off is scheduled for 3:00 p.m.
Naturally, flying for space cannot be improvised. Also, each member of the team received a fourteen-hour training smoothed over two days to comply with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations.
“Our training is comprehensive and prepares the crew for everything they need to know about the vehicle “, said Blue Origin Flight Director Steve Lanius during a press conference held this Sunday, July 18.
Specifically, the crew received training on the use of the capsule for nominal, "off nominal" and emergency procedures. In particular, they have been trained in possible emergency situations for which professional astronauts are also trained (response to fires or hastily exiting the vehicle on the pad).
Today's vile training concluded with mission rehearsals covering five different scenarios and a final exam. Eventually, all were approved for launch this Monday, July 19.
For comparison, NASA astronauts must spend two years of training as candidates before being certified for future spaceflight. Once assigned, astronauts also train for several months for each mission , depending on its duration and complexity. For example, a typical ISS crew spends about two years training to prepare for six-month missions in space.
In the future, space tourists from Blue Origin who benefit from this training will be integrated into an "astronaut village" that replicates to a small extent the confined spaces in which professional astronauts get to know each other before their mission.
“There is the classroom component. They will also work in a simulator that we have in our astronaut training center “, explains Ariane Cornell, director of astronauts of Blue Origin “Then they will also go to the pad. We want to make sure our astronauts feel acclimatized, not just with the capsule itself, but with the facilities at our launch site, as well as with the team at large “.
