Aerospace medicine specialists are urging clinicians to brush up on their knowledge of space medicine ahead of the start of tourist spaceflights.

Doctors at the US Mayo Clinic say commercial spaceflights will present unique challenges given that members of the public are venturing into territory previously confined to elite astronauts.

Some 560 people have flown in space, but most were highly trained and in peak physical condition.

“The available medical literature on human responses to spaceflight is based predominantly on a male population of fit professional astronauts, many of whom have military experience,” they write.