Can you become a space tourist? Check yourself now

In mid-July 2020, Blue Originwill send its first client to space tourism. The travel ticket will be raffled off as part of the auction, which I described in more detail in this article. Recently, users have carefully studied the terms of trading and found in them the requirements for a future tourist. In addition to the fact that a person must be of age, he must have a good level of physical fitness. At a minimum, he should be able to run seven flights of stairs in 1.5 minutes and stay in a semi-recumbent state for more than an hour without having to go to the toilet. As part of this article, I propose to find out what other requirements a space tourist must meet and how you can check your compliance immediately after reading this article.

New Shepard spaceship launch

Selection criteria for space tourists

Tourist requirements are published directly onthe official website of Blue Origin. First of all, a space traveler must be an adult and have the right to enter the territory of the state of Texas, from where the takeoff will take place. Despite the fact that the flight will last only 3 minutes and the New Shepard passenger capsule has all the amenities, the person must be in good physical shape. The requirements listed below are trivial for professional astronauts, but some of the common people may not meet the established standards.

Here are 5 essential physical fitness requirements for the future Blue Origin tourist:

• the candidate must be able to run 7 flights of stairs in 1.5 minutes;
• not be afraid of the height of a 7-storey building;
• be able to zip up in an unfamiliar car in 15 seconds, while being in complete darkness;
• withstand up to 90 minutes of being in a semi-recumbent state without access to the toilet;
• do not feel discomfort when staying in this position with five other people in an enclosed space.

Compliance can be verifiedon your own - try to run 7 flights of stairs with the stopwatch on. It may seem that the company has set too strange selection criteria, but there is an explanation for everything. The fact is that the New Shepard capsule is at a height of 21 meters, which can be compared to the roof of a 7-story building. You need to get to the top of the landing site rather quickly and not get lost when looking down - there has never been such a thing that an astronaut fell during landing in a rocket. After landing, you need to quickly fasten your seat belts, and inside a spacecraft it is as difficult as in an unfamiliar dark car. Sometimes the launch is postponed for several hours, so the crew has to sit motionless for a long time without access to the toilet.

Blue Origin employee checking New Shepard chair

Before the flight, the space tourist and accompanying personshis astronauts will receive a thorough briefing. In particular, they will be shown a panel with six indicators that give permission to unfasten seat belts and so on. To understand the voice commands from the control center, the candidate must be fluent in English and have good hearing. Vision problems can be solved with contact lenses, but being able to hear a voice from speakers in a background noise of around 100 decibels is extremely important. Also, the tourist must be no less than 152 and no more than 190 centimeters in height and weigh from 50 to 101 kilograms.

See also: Is it possible to go to space tourism in a hot air balloon?

Can space tourists be considered astronauts?

It is worth noting that NASA astronauts and cosmonautsRoscosmos has to meet much more serious requirements, so Blue Origin has definitely made space travel more accessible. With all this, space tourists can be considered real astronauts, because they will stay at an altitude of about 100 kilometers and cross the border between the Earth and space.

before the flight, professional astronauts are tested on such a centrifuge

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The date of the tourist's first flight inside the capsule NewShepard was not chosen by chance on July 20. The fact is that on this day it will be exactly 52 years from the day the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon. And the New Shepard spacecraft was named after the first American astronaut Alan Shepard. How exactly the flight will take place, I talked in detail in this article. It seems that something really interesting awaits us - we will definitely tell you about the results of the flight.