Some of the things where I can see tangible evidence of my work is, for example, in the sleep cores and sleep system—trying to define a more comfortable way for astronauts to sleep. We’ve come up with an air bladder system that provides distributed forces on the body that kind of emulate, or I believe will emulate, the gravity field that we feel in bed when we lie down, having that pressure of gravity on you. 

Oh, like a weighted blanket? 

Kind of like a weighted blanket, but you’re up against the wall, so you have to create, like, an inflatable bladder that will push you against the wall. That’s one of the very tangible, obvious things. But I work with the company on anything from crew displays and interfaces and how notifications and system information come through to how big a window should be. 

How big should a window be? I feel like the bigger the better—but what are the factors that go into that, from an astronaut’s perspective? 

The bigger the better. And the other thing to think about is—what do you do with the window? Take pictures. The ability to take photos out a window is important—the quality of the window, which direction it points. You know, it’s not great if it’s just pointing up in space all the time and you never see the Earth. 

VAST

You’re also in charge of the astronaut training program at Vast. Tell me what that program looks like, because in some cases you’ll have private citizens who are paying for their trip that have no experience whatsoever.

A typical training flow for two weeks on our space station is extended out to about an 11-month period with gaps in between each of the training weeks. And so if you were to press that down together, it probably represents about three to four months of day-to-day training. 

I would say half of it’s devoted to learning how to fly on the SpaceX Dragon, because that’s our transportation, and the greatest risk for anybody flying is on launch and landing. We want people to understand how to operate in that spacecraft, and that component is designed by SpaceX. They have their own training plans.