The mission would see him conduct pioneering research spanning human physiology and musculoskeletal adaptation, how prosthetics perform in microgravity, and how people move and balance in space.<\/p>\n
McFall admitted he was “not guaranteed to get to space” but he was “certainly one step closer”.<\/p>\n
He cleared the first step after he was declared medically fit for a long-duration mission to the International Space Station (ISS) last year.<\/p>\n
But he admitted there was a “huge amount of training” that was required to get there.<\/p>\n
“Everything from wilderness survival training and sea survival to a lot of classroom-based stuff, physics, engineering, biology, human performance, and behaviour,” he told BBC Breakfast.<\/p>\n
“And don’t forget the parabolic flights, they’re also awesome fun.”<\/p>\n
Asked what it took to be an astronaut, he said: “You’ve got to be a reasonably rational and pragmatic person, someone who’s good at problem solving, good at communicating, able to make difficult decisions under pressure.<\/p>\n
“My experiences of having stood on the start line at Paralympic Games, but also working as a surgeon, you know, long hours, tough situations, difficult conversations with patients and families.<\/p>\n
“I think all these skills really lend themselves really well to training for being an astronaut but also living and working in space as well.”<\/p>\n
McFall admitted his family kept his feet on the ground.<\/p>\n
“My kids are only excited because, apparently, I promised if I go to space, they get a dog. I can’t renege on it now,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a little bit difficult.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mission would see him conduct pioneering research spanning human physiology and musculoskeletal adaptation, how prosthetics perform in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-616981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}