The development of a neutral buoyancy and virtual reality training system for training suborbital scientists

Abstract In 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 Blue Origin’s New Shepard and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) flew dozens of spaceflight participants (SFPs) on suborbital spaceflights. The SFPs, whether they were scientists or space tourists, each paid $450,000 or more for their ticket. With each flight providing between 180 and 240 seconds of microgravity time, this meant each second of microgravity time cost at least $2500 and the consequence of performing a task incorrectly could be extremely costly. In spaceflight, the tactile-kinesthetic and vestibular systems are affected by microgravity. While astronauts who visit the International Space Station (ISS) have time to adapt to microgravity, SFPs have little time to adapt because the time from rocket ignition to microgravity is less than 5 minutes. Compounding this lack of adaptation is the fact that suborbital SFPs may only have two or three days of preparation compared with many years training for an ISS astronaut. To evaluate the extent to which training in an analog environment can help scientist SFP’s prepare for their flights, this study evaluated the effectiveness of two spaceflight analog training modes, one that took that place in a neutral buoyancy environment (NBE) and one that took place in a virtual reality (VR) rendered environment (VRE). This study compared how much time was saved by practicing suborbital tasks in these environments across four groups. Results indicate that an analog-based learning environment positively affects the cognitive and affective domains of scientist SFPs thereby reducing training time and errors.