Erik Seedhouse is a Canadian Space Ag ency Top 30 finalist astronaut candidate, 1997 GQ Magazine nominee for “World's Fittest Man,”astronaut trainer, university lecturer, and author of commercial spaceflight publications including W ho Becomes a Commercial Astronaut?, Training Suborbital Astronauts, and Astronauts for Hire: The Emergence of the First Commercial Astronaut Corps. ^[1]

After completing his first degree in Sports Science at Northumbria University, he joined the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment.

During his time in the 'Para's', Erik spent six months in Belize, where he was trained in jungle warfare and conducted patrols along the Belize-Guatemala border.

He later spent several months learning desert warfare on the Akamas Range in Cyprus.

He made more than thirty jumps from a Hercules C-130 aircraft, performed more than two hundred abseils from a helicopter, and fired an inordinate number of light anti-tank weapons.

Upon returning to academia, Seedhouse embarked on a master's degree in Medical Science at Sheffield University, supporting his studies by winning prize money in 100km ultra-distance running races. Shortly after placing third in the World 100km Championships in 1992 and setting the North American 100km record, he turned to ultradistance triathlons, winning the World Endurance Triathlon Championships in 1995 and 1996. He won the inaugural World Double Ironman Championships in 1995 and the Decatriathlon, the world's longest triathlon, an event requiring competitors to swim 38km, cycle 1800km, and run 422km without stop. [19]

Returning to academia in 1996, Erik pursued his Ph.D. at the German Space Agency's Institute of Space Medicine. While conducting his Ph.D. studies he won Ultraman Hawaii and the European Ultraman Championships, as well as completing the Race Across America bike race. As the world's leading ultra long-distance marathon triathlete, Seedhouse was featured in dozens of magazines and television interviews. In 1997, GQ Magazine

In 1999, he retired from being a professional triathlete to begin postdoctoral studies at the Simon Fraser University's School of Kinesiology. Living in Vancouver, he gained his pilot’s license, started climbing mountains and took up skydiving to relax in his spare time. In 2005, he began working as an astronaut training consultant for Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas and wrote the book,Tourists in Space: A Practical Guide, a training manual for spaceflight participants.

Seedhouse works as an assistant professor of Applied Aviation Sciences and Aerospace and Occupational Safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, where he teaches Human Factors in Aviation in addition to courses in the Commercial Space Operations curriculum. He is also the Manager of the Suborbital Spaceflight Simulator, Mission Control Center.

Between 2008 and 2013, Seedhouse was director of Canada's manned centrifuge operations and managed the hypobaric facility at DRDC Toronto.

He is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, a member of the Space Medical Association, and member of the Suborbital Technical Committee.

In 2009, he was one of the final 30 candidates in the Canadian Space Agency's Astronaut Recruitment Campaign.

Erik is the Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Handbook of Life Support Systems for Spacecraft and a published author with more than 25 books to his name, including two textbooks for the International Space University.

Seedhouse plans to travel into space with one of the private spaceflight companies through the Association of Spaceflight Professionals. As well as being a triathlete, skydiver, pilot and author, he is a SCUBA diver with more than two hundred dives in more than twenty countries. His favorite movie is the director's cut of Blade Runner, his favorite science fiction authors include A.E. Van Vogt, Allen Steele and Stanislav Lem, and his favorite science fiction series is Red Dwarf . Prepare for Launch: The Astronaut Training Process is his fifth book. When not writing, he spends as much time as possible in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii, Kauai, and at his real home in Sandefjord, Norway.