Suborbital Scientist-Astronaut Training Course

I think suborbital tourism is pretty neat, but I'm puzzled as to exactly what experiments can be done in a suborbital hop. Since we already have parabolic flights for short-duration microgravity experiments, this is to replace sounding rocket experiments? Is it lower in cost to use a human-carrying vehicle for an experiment that would otherwise be done as a sounding rocket payload?

> Since we already have parabolic flights for short-duration microgravity experiments, this is to replace sounding rocket experiments? Is it lower in cost to use a human-carrying vehicle for an experiment that would otherwise be done as a sounding rocket payload?

My understanding is that the current average cost of a sounding rocket launch is $1 million per launch. By comparison, a ride on a manned suborbital craft (i.e. Virgin Galactic or XCOR) would be $100K-$200K, and a ride on an unmanned craft from Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, or Masten Space Systems would be substantially less. Besides the cost, you could also launch (either the same payload or a different payload for the same experiment) at a much higher frequency, perhaps even multiple times per day. This is a pretty unprecedented capability.

Heinrich's on the right track, but I'd go further. He supposes the instrument would go in the compartment where the passengers sit. But most of my colleagues would want their instrument out in the vacuum, or at least free of any spacecraft windows. That's yet another requirement that probably isn't met by version 1 of these new commercial launch providers.

Plus the one big benefit -- human fingers as insurance against unforeseen hardware failures -- is something of a crap shoot. If you can flick the switch off and on and thus rescue the mission, everybody goes home happy. But many such failures would take more than 5 minutes to diagnose and fix, so in the end you'd still have a failing mission. Add to that the risk that an elbow-bump or sneeze would disturb the payload and ruin the data, for yours or someone else's experiment.

I think in the end you'd still prefer an unmanned suborbital flight.

We all will be interested in whether astronauts in-training or otherwise will or will not display a NASA patch on their uniform/jacket/spacesuit/hat.

The jacket patches I see in the photo do not have "NASA" on them. I guess this shows one aspect of the true effect commercial space is having on our new direction in space.

Who is paying for this? NASA (i.e. us)? I checked today and there are 89 active astronauts listed, most with masters or Phds. With only 5 more shuttle flights only 30 will be flying this year and then only 3-4 to ISS via Soyuz thereafter for the next 5-6 years. Why not let them perform the suborbital testing since they are already trained?

Editor's note: do you see any NASA logos? Any mention of NASA? I was there - and as far as I could tell, no one from NASA was present. You know, it is actually possible to conduct a non-NASA space activity ...

"We all will be interested in whether astronauts in-training or otherwise will or will not display a NASA patch on their uniform/jacket/spacesuit/hat.

The jacket patches I see in the photo do not have "NASA" on them. I guess this shows one aspect of the true effect commercial space is having on our new direction in space."

The answer to that is "no" unless the experiment/flight is paid for or sponsored by NASA. If it's a scientist or some other organization paying for the flight, then the astronauts will display whatever patch the funding organization wants.