The HabForum

Randomly perusing the Space Camp website I came across this:

https://register.spacecamp.com/rc

Which quotes:
Multi Axis Trainer: Height - Min 5'3"

Since when?? I have been on the MAT before I finished growing and I am still not 5'-3". (Okay, 159 cm rounds up to 5'-3".) I have seen people/kids shorter than I who have been on the MAT. This must be a misprint. If not, I am lying about my height from now on.

Moreso, I think they need a minimum shoe size or something because my feet ALWAYS come out of the restraints. Maybe they need smaller harnesses at Area 51 too.

I am not a freakishly small person or anything. There are other adults smaller than me, I assure you.

I also saw that on the website and I asked my boyfriend who worked at Space Camp last summer about it, and he said that it was true. I never knew that either, and I think back to camp. I'm 5'4" and there have always been people shorter than me on the MAT.

I wonder if this isn't just for some of the specific MATs. When I was there last fall, they had at least three (might have been four) MATs all lined up in the sim building. And some of them were of different sizes. For my team, they used two MATs. They put the bigger/taller guys on the largest machine, the shorter/smaller gals were asked to use the smaller machine. I don't know if we had anyone under 5'3", but two of my team members were very petite and they both rode, no problems.

Maybe the height requirement is just for the biggest of the MATs.

This isn't a requirement for all the MATs... I have put hundreds of little kids on the smaller ones.

--Matthew

From the mouth of a tech at Space Camp:

The campers height must be equal to the height of the gate at the front of the MAT.

There are two different size MAT, big (red) and small (yellow), one of the larger ones requires a height of 5'3" (an non adjustable foot plate requires that the campers legs are a certain length). However the other MAT's can take MUCH smaller campers.

Okay, this is what I thought. Listing the height requirement like that on the website is a bit misleading, especially for parents of Space Camp level trainees who are clearly shorter than that.

Good to know. We learn something new every day.