Suzanne Humphries
Since it’s neither practical nor easily possible to train the service people of the United States Space Force in actual space, the Armed Forces branch needed to get creative. Now, it is working with firms and funding partners to create the Slingshot Orbital Laboratory, a simulator that will provide interactive training opportunities while replicating real-world physics.
The U.S. Space Force tasked Slingshot Aerospace with creating the virtual reality sim, and they will be working with The Third Floor, a VFX firm that has worked on space-themed Hollywood blockbusters like The Mandalorian and Gravity.
The partners have received $2 million in funding to date, including $1 million from ATX Venture Partners, and a $1 million contract from the U.S. Space Force. The goal is to create a simulator that will help service members, and even students and professionals, gain an understanding of how spacecraft and other objects operate when in space, no matter their education level.
“Space operators need to understand complicated concepts like astrodynamics, the effects of various items in orbit, and how spacecrafts maneuver among other subjects in space—all of which demand more adaptive, interactive, and tailorable educational tools than what we are currently using,” stated Col. Max Lantz, Commandant, National Security Space Institute, United States Air Force in an earlier press release. “Building an immersive environment to drive better comprehension of these foundational theories will be vital to support the Space Force.”
via Tech Crunch
