A Training Roadmap for Commercial Suborbital Spaceflight Participants Mindy Howard 1 , Ben W. McGee 2 , Brienna Henwood 3 ( 1 Inner Space Training B.V., Netherlands, 2 Astrowright Spaceflight Consulting LLC, USA, 3 National Aerospace Training and Research Center, USA) Introduction As commercial suborbital transportation nears practical reality, evaluating the necessity of minimum preflight mission, fitness, and adaptation training recommendations for spaceflight participants is of paramount importance. When considering the reality that the advent of private and commercial space travel opens the spaceflight experience to the broadest spectrum of participants to‐date, who represent widely varying levels of physical and mental health, fitness, and experience, a human‐factors‐based examination of the need for spaceflight participant training recommendations, guidelines, or standards is arguably essential to the establishment of a safe and vibrant commercial spaceflight industry. Impetus ‐ Why Training Standards? Spaceflight is a highly physical experience involving a significant degree of physical and mental stress [1] . Whether from the perspectives of flight safety, as addressed by the Federal Aviation Administration [2] and the Aerospace Medical Association [3] , or if simply working to enable spaceflight participants to minimize unwanted physical and psychological stresses in order to maximize their enjoyment of their spaceflight experience, the consideration of inclusive, easily‐ practicable training standards is a prudent effort. Training recommendations specifically tailored for spaceflight participants are doubly warranted when considering that for many if not most spaceflight participants, flight objectives will differ dramatically from professional objectives and will instead emphasize enhancement of the unique sensory experiences of spaceflight, including “zero‐g,” the view of space, stars, and Earth, and access to meaningful and socially‐distributable means to capture the experience for posterity. NASA’s Spaceflight Training Precedents Because NASA astronauts have served as prototypical spaceflight participants, the training regimen established by NASA can serve as a functional scale against which more general spaceflight participant training guides may be proposed. Physically, NASA astronaut fitness has been assessed pre‐and‐post flight in order to guide individual astronaut training, which includes evaluations of an astronaut’s ability to perform push‐ups, pull‐ups, abdominal crunches, a “cone agility test,” and a single leg stand test, while including measures of leg press strength, hand grip strength, and bench press strength [4] . Aerobically, astronaut training has traditionally emphasized running and competitive athletics, though more recent recommendations stress the use of lap pools, as “swimming provides conditioning to those muscle groups used during spaceflight” [5] . Psychologically, astronauts undergo regular psychometric evaluations, though it should be noted that these are of little relevance to spaceflight participant planning, as NASA astronauts are selected based on the demonstration of superior stress‐ management and problem‐solving attributes, sharply skewing the population prior to even initiating NASA training. Environmentally, NASA astronauts regularly engage in sophisticated analogue training, including centrifuge conditioning, flights in high‐performance jet aircraft, flights in customized DC‐9 aircraft flying microgravity‐ reproducing parabolic arcs, the use of full‐scale neutral‐ buoyancy aquatic training, full‐scale mission simulators, and dedicated crew training exercises.