- I'm at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama,
and this is the Multi-Axis Trainer, or MAT.
Otherwise known as that spinny thing that astronauts get strapped into.
This is an icon of space exploration and space training.
And it looks really fun, or really terrifying,
depending on how close you are to it.
But what does it actually do?
- You ready? - No!
- Eyes open.
- Whoa.
- When you come to Space Camp, you typically
ride the MAT for no longer than 45 seconds.
The MAT spins on three different axes and three different rings.
The outer ring is locked. The centre ring is powered by a motor,
and then the inner ring is free spinning.
And then inside that is a chair that is also spinning on a different axis.
While you're riding the MAT, you don't spin in more than one direction
twice in a row, so you don't get dizzy or nauseous,
but you do get disoriented.
It's a very important difference that they feel.
As your stomach stays in the centre of rotation,
you're gonna get a lot of blood and momentum feeling
in your head and your feet.
Most people love the feeling of the Multi-Axis Trainer.
They love the feeling of being disoriented
without being dizzy, which is a really rare experience
for most roller coasters or simulators like this.
It's based off of something called the MASTIF,
which was used during the Mercury programme.
The MASTIF was actually a series of cages around a central chair.
The MAT is a series of rings.
During the 1960s, astronauts in the Mercury and Gemini programs
would need to train on something like the MASTIF
because of the shape of their vehicle.
It's a capsule and it would spin very erratically
if something were going wrong.
Unlike the Shuttle astronauts where they were in something more plane-shaped,
and so when something is going wrong in a plane
it doesn't act the same.
- So the Mercury astronauts weren't just strapped
into this thing's big brother to disorient them.
It was training, if something -- oh! -- like this is happening in space,
then your mission has gone disastrously wrong.
In training, they would be spun up to anything up to 30 revolutions a minute,
much faster than this, with much higher G forces.
And then the trainer would hand the controls over to them.
The astronaut's chair would [groans]
have controls on it connected to nitrogen gas thrusters.
They would have to work out which way they were spinning
in three dimensions, in real time. [groans]
And then they would have to figure out how to make it stop.
For me, it's a little bit easier.
Could we uh, could we make this stop, please?
- The MAT was never used to actually train astronauts.
We only use it as a simulator here at Space Camp.
I've actually ridden the MAT as well.
We had to do it for training.
I like to say that most people don't get dizzy,
because there are some people who do.
I'm one of them!
- I completely forgot to do the outro.
Could we go again, please?
- If you're good.
- [groans] Oh, there we go.
Thank you very much to all the team at Space Camp.
You can find out more about them
at the links on screen or in the description.
[laughs] Yeah, I'm done.
I am very much done.