Air cusion sims

[Benji]

When briefing the MAT, Crew Trainers make (or at least did when I attended) an explicit comparison to the Mercury MASTIF trainer, even though that device had actual controls/purpose and the MAT is more like a ride than a trainer.

For the air cushion sims (like those used on EVAs), nobody ever mentioned that similar rigs were actually part of EVA training and are still used today for testing various robotic systems. I think showing a few photos of that astronaut training would make those sims, already a highlight, seem even cooler.

I learned about it from a recent tour to the Marshall Flat Floor Facility, and NASA has a similar facility at Johnson as well [1][2]. It's also touched on in an excellent video by Phil Edwards exploring the history of EVAs (which also features some archived footage of the Marshall Neutral Buoyancy Simulator): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCVzAcH6E0M

[SpaceCanada]

Also, the hanging harnesses fusing sims are really used by astronauts in training. I wish I could recall the video so I could look it up. I found it really neat to see the correlation.