Star Harbor Academy

Star Harbor Academy is a Lone Tree, Colorado-based commercial spaceflight training company founded in 2024, developing a 53-acre dedicated training campus designed to prepare space tourists, private astronauts, and future commercial crew members for orbital and suborbital spaceflight — filling the training gap between buying a ticket on a commercial launch and being physically and psychologically prepared for the experience. The facility, scheduled to open in 2026, replicates the breadth of government astronaut training infrastructure in a commercially accessible format: G-force familiarization using a high-G centrifuge (training for the 3-5g acceleration loads of launch and re-entry); microgravity adaptation through reduced-gravity aircraft flights (the parabolic flight maneuver that creates 20-30 second weightlessness intervals); underwater neutral buoyancy tank training for EVA-like activities and emergency egress procedures; land habitats and underwater habitats simulating confined-volume living conditions; and spacecraft simulation labs for interface familiarization with specific commercial vehicle systems. The customer base spans multiple commercial launch providers' passengers: SpaceX Crew Dragon commercial astronaut customers (Axiom Space missions), Virgin Galactic VSS Unity passengers, and future customers of Blue Origin's New Shepard orbital development. As commercial spaceflight expands from a few elite participants per year to dozens or hundreds, the market for pre-flight physical and psychological preparation training grows proportionally. Star Harbor Academy competes with the National AeroSpace Training and Research Center (NASTAR) in Philadelphia (G-training, partial spaceflight training), NASTAR's parent organization, and the training programs offered internally by Axiom Space and Virgin Galactic to their own customers.