Soon Boeing will be ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station with its Starliner craft. Being a new space vehicle, none of the prospective astronauts have any training on how to operate it. Boeing is planning to use a new VR simulator to train the astronauts for the mission.
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The company is part of the NASA Commercial Crew programme, which was formed for private commercial entities to help NASA transport astronauts to the ISS and beyond. This is the group that SpaceX is also part of – it already having a successful launch of astronauts to the ISS last month.
Boeing will be partnering with Finnish company Varjo. They have created the Boeing VR simulator with a headset and hand controllers that can simulate a full mission. This includes pre-launch, docking, undocking to landing.
As you can imagine, Boeing have had their hand in building simulators for a long time. It has formed part of their training for its new aircraft for decades, becoming ever more sophisticated. The aircraft simulators are so real to life these days, pilots step out of successful simulator training very confident in their abilities to pilot the latest aircraft.
According to on the programmers for Boeing Starliner, Connie Miller, “it feels very realistic, with your hands digitally displayed in gloves. You very much get the presence of being in the simulator.”
This is also not the first time Boeing is getting involved with space simulators, but they have traditionally been located in large space training centres (like the Space Centre in Houston, Texas). This won’t require astronauts to be at the space centre or launch sites to use.
Boeing astronaut Chris Ferguson will soon start using the Varjo VR training system to prep for the Crew Flight Test, the first crewed Starliner mission expected to happen in 2021. The remote training will also let astronauts continue practicing during the two-week quarantine ahead of missions. Usually it’s impossible to have that time dedicated to more simulation.
Steve Siceloff, a spokesperson for the ISS, said that “it’s a true high-res experience any astronaut can train with.”
