Some things where I can see concrete evidence of our work, for example, in Sleep Core and Sleep Systems – trying to define a more comfortable way for astronauts to sleep. We have come up with an air bladder system that provides a distributed force on the body that simulates, or I believe will simulate, the gravitational field that we feel when lying on a bed, causing gravity to exert pressure on you.
Oh, like a weighted blanket?
Like a weighted blanket, but you’re against a wall, so you have to create an inflatable bladder that will push you against the wall. It’s one of the very concrete, clear things. But I work with the company on anything from crew displays and interfaces to notifications and how system information comes up and how big the window should be.
How big should the window be? I guess the bigger the better,But from an astronaut’s perspective, what factors are involved?
the bigger the better. And the other thing to think about is what do you do with the window? Take a picture. The ability to take photographs from a window is important – the quality of the window, what direction it points. You know, it’s not very good if it’s pointing into space all the time and you can never see Earth.
huge
You are also in charge of the astronaut training program at VISHAL. Tell me what that program looks like, because in some cases you’ll have private citizens paying for their travel who have no experience.
A typical training regimen for two weeks on our space station is extended over a period of approximately 11 months with breaks between each training week. And so if you press it all together, it probably represents about three to four months of daily training.
I would say half of it is dedicated to learning to fly on the SpaceX Dragon, because that’s our transportation, and the biggest risks for anyone flying are at launch and landing. We want people to understand how to work in that spacecraft, and that component is designed by SpaceX. They have their own training plans.
