From aviation tourism to suborbital space tourism: passenger screening and training issues

摘要

The SpaceX has announced that that it has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the Moon in late 2018. On the other hand, in the suborbital space tourism (SST) area, there are two major reusable suborbital launch vehicles (RSLVs) under development and test flight for suborbital scientific research and SST purposes, the Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and Blue Origin's New Shepard. Of which, SS2 is the horizontal-takeoff-horizontal-landing (HTHL) type and New Shepard is vertical-takeoff-vertical-landing (VTVL) type. Therefore, the commercial operations of SST might be expected to take place in 2018, too. However, no matter the RSLV belongs to HTHL or VTVL, rocket engine is being used as propulsion system. The trajectory dynamics and characteristics are very different from aviation airplane. The SST tourists shall experience the flight phases of high-g acceleration and deceleration, weightlessness, high level noise and vibration. All of these factors affect their physiological, neurovestibular and psychological conditions in different levels. Major disorders include anxiety, decompression sickness, sensory conflict, sensorimotor disruption, space motion sickness, severe vertigo, vomiting, etc. The major purposes of this paper are to investigate the possible effects and to discuss the framework for screening and training.