You watched Space Camp and Flight of the Navigator until the VHS ribbons wore thin (1986 was a great year for movies, BTW). But rather than sending you to ACTUAL space camp, your parents shipped you off to Lake Hiawatha — as a result, you currently find yourself cubicle-bound rather than exploring the outer atmosphere (though with a bitchin’ collection of arrowheads). Following the end of the NASA Space Shuttle Program in 2011 you probably thought your dreams of becoming an astronaut one day had been dashed. No so, flash — there’s still hope for adult cosmonauts like yourself!
For geeks on a budget
Adult Space Camp‘s an opportunity for full-grown nerds to get a taste of space over the course of a long weekend. Their three-day program ($549) and four-day ‘academy’ ($649) promise the following:
This weekend program includes model rocket construction and launch (weather permitting), training on our astronaut simulators, including the 1/6th gravity chair and Multi-Axis Trainer, plus hands-on spaceflight history education amid one of the world’s largest spaceflight collections.
Opt for the academy experience, as it follows a military-style program. Your training will follow the journey from takeoff to landing, and include perspectives from both the shuttle and mission control.
Courses run year-round and are operated out of Huntsville, Alabama. Room and board are included at Space Camp HQ.
For ballers
By now you’ve heard about Richard Branson’s baby, Virgin Galactic — similar to Space Camp, the odyssey includes three days of on-the-ground training to prepare you for life in micro-gravity. Unlike Space Camp, however, your book-learnin’ is followed by an actual orbital experience.
Your $250,000 ticket secures you a seat aboard SpaceShipTwo, a 60-foot-long vessel that will carry you, five other spoiled space-obsessives and two pilots up to 50,000 feet.
The journey is expected to take around 2.5hours, but only six minutes of that time will be spent at zero-gravity. Sounds fleeting, but when you’re hovering, weightless and in a confined space, with Angelina Jolie and Katy Perry, it’ll be worth every dollar.
Put it into practice
If you’re serious about a career up, up in the atmosphere, there’re still employment opportunities for astronauts, despite the NASA downturn. If you’ve ever entertained the thought of driving an Uber to earn extra cash outside of work hours, give it a go in space — just this month, NASA invested heavily in transfer services, to ferry folks back and forth to the International Space Station. Might be a good idea to start taking night classes in conversational Russian to increase your potential tips …
