An academy... for space cadets! This is the place you go to learn how to become an Ace Pilot, a Space Marine, a Space Cop or Captain Space, Defender of Earth!.
Essentially the Academy of Adventure or Military Academy Recycled In Space. It doesn't necessarily have to physically be in space. It may be on Earth, on a space station, on a spaceship, or on a planet in a distant galaxy. It is a good setting for a Boot Camp Episode in a Science Fiction series.
These are good settings for An Aesop about standard young adult themes (learning to take responsibility, learning about friendship and love, etc). The age of cadets in stories ranges from kids and young teens (which may give it overlap with wholesome Boarding School tropes) to older teens and young twenty-somethings (which makes romantic subplots and drunken mishaps more likely).
Even though in theory, the cadets are just training, there may be emergencies where they get out of the classroom and into more real-world adventures with spaceships and planetary landings. The space academy will likely recruit from across the globe and in some cases, they may have students from across the galaxy, so there may be Rubber-Forehead Aliens.
In Military Science Fiction space academies, there will be more focus on strategy, battle tactics and weapons. If it is a civil or scientific space academy, the subjects will be more focused on space travel, hard science (physics), and "soft sciences" that are helpful when meeting alien cultures (anthropology, sociology).
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- The Military Junior Pre-Academy of Majestic Prince is a military school that trains Designer Babies to be space pilots.
- The setting of Pilot Candidate.
- Liebe Delta from Infinite Ryvius is a space station where most of the cast are training to work in space. It's attacked and destroyed at the start of the show, leaving the students to escape in the eponymous ship.
- Stellvia (and the other four Foundations) in Stellvia of the Universe.
- An occasional backdrop for Tenchi Muyo! GXP.
Comic Books
- The aptly titled Astronaut Academy series by Dave Roman.
- Cleopatra in Space: Yasiro Academy, where children learn biology, alien languages, and combat training.
Films — Live-Action
- Star Wars:
- The Jedi Temple, serving to train potential Jedi Knights. "Younglings" and "Padawan" not only learned to master the force, but also included flight lessons.
- As seen in The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker tried to recreate a Jedi academy, but it was short-lived due to the Face–Heel Turn of Ben Solo, who destroyed it, killed most of the students and became Kylo Ren.
- The Imperial Academy; it trains TIE Fighter pilots. Luke wished to go there (the fact that Luke, who claims to hate the Empire, is planning to go there shows just how desperate he is to leave the desert world he grew up on), and Biggs actually trained there (then defected). Solo: A Star Wars Story reveals that Han Solo also trained there before getting kicked out and sent to the infantry. A Deleted Scene shows Han crashing a TIE fighter, the very reason he was kicked out.
- In the Expanded Universe, once the New Republic was set up, they had their version of the Academy.
- Luke succeeded in recreating a Jedi academy and trained numerous young Jedi in the Legends Expanded Universe. Most prominently featured in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, the Young Jedi Knights series and the Dark Forces Saga.
- Spacecamp takes a far more fantastical, action- and romance-oriented turn on the Real Life version of Space Camp. The characters even manage to take a trip into space, courtesy of the Robot Buddy.
Literature
- The Battle School of Ender's Game. The Fleet School spin-off series is focused on what happens to Battle School after the end of the war. It's renamed "Fleet School" and only children of IF parents are allowed to attend. Instead of war, children are taught to be future colony and expedition leaders, although it's noted a few times that the skillset isn't that much different.
- Ciaphas Cain was taught how to be a commissar at the Schola Progenium, and later goes on to teach at one on Perlia (where he has a rather understandable 100% Heroism Rating after single handedly breaking the back of an Orc invasion there) after retiring.
- In Robert A. Heinlein's Space Cadet, the Solar System Patrol's main teaching school is located aboard the PRS James Randolph, an old spaceship orbiting Earth. However, the Patrol believes that there is a branch of the Academy anywhere that there's a cadet, so cadets must keep up their studies even aboard Patrol ships in the farthest reaches of the Solar System. There's also a campus on Earth, "Hayworth Hall," which is a sort of "finishing school" that prepares senior cadets to become commissioned officers in the Patrol.
- Saganami Island in the Honor Harrington series, where the officers of the Royal Manticoran Navy and some allied navies are trained, and where Honor herself was an instructor for a while. The Protectorate of Grayson also has a small one (Isaiah Mackenzie Naval Academy) — though it being small, most midshipmen in the rapidly expanding GSN go to their ally Manticore's Saganami Island. Haven also has one, though all we know about it is that Thomas Theisman had the second-worst drunken night of his life there while in his third yearnote .
- The Imperial Military Academy ("We don't march towards the future, we charge it.") in the Vorkosigan Saga.
- Arrivals from the Dark has the Baikonur Academy in Kazakhstan, which is the main example of the trope for the United Space Forces. There are other schools, mainly for advanced education, such as the Navigator School for training astrogators. It's typically shown a little like a boot camp, so a Drill Sergeant Nasty is a must.
- The Swordmasters of the Ginaz of Dune have brutal academy where they train to become skilled not only in the sword but also tactics, military protocol, all weapons, political maneuvering, ship combat, and more. Duncan Idaho was Swordmaster for House Atreides.
- Space Academy: The titular Academy is where all the future officers of the Community are trained. It has many campuses and students from all over the Spiral (Orion’s Arm). The branch that Vance attended had multiple environmental domes and was made inside an asteroid.
Live Action TV
- Any Star Trek series will probably reference Starfleet Academy at some point (except Star Trek: Enterprise, which takes place before the academy was founded), and it featured prominently in the 2009 movie. Vulcans have their own with the Vulcan Science Academy, after which Vulcans typically apply to join the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. This became a point of contention between Spock and his father Sarek. Sarek wanted Spock to go to the Science Academy and then join the VEG. Spock chose to go to Starfleet Academy instead. Even worse, Sarek was given a choice: either Spock or his adopted daughter Michael Burnham could join VEG. He chose Spock. Spock's refusal meant that Sarek's choice was pointless and that he failed Michael for nothing.
- Earthforce Academy in Babylon 5. It also included the "Air Dome", a premiere pilot training center and its Officer Training School.
- The Starcademy in Space Cases. The show also stars two teachers and several cadets from said school.
- Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, with a dose of Edutainment Show as well.
- Red Dwarf makes references to a Space Corps Academy, where Rimmer had wanted to attend, but wasn't sent like his brothers were. Well, except Howard.
- Pandora starts off with main character Jax being sent to Space Academy after the death of her parents.
- Space Academy is all but the Trope Namer, as it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- The Time Lords from Doctor Who all spent centuries training at the Time Lord Academy, learning Stellar Engineering and Spacial Cartography alongside several non-space subjects.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40,000 has the Scholae Progenium, schools which only admit orphans whose parents died serving the Imperium. Their students graduate to become Commissars, Tempestus Scions, Adeptas Soritas, Adeptus Arbites, or even Imperial Assassins or Inquisitors. As with many institutions in the setting, the experience of attending one of these varies depending on the location and the source of the information from merely difficult to lethally brutal.
Video Games
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: Starfleet Academy features the eponymous institution.
- The Elite Command Academy, the Klingon's counterpart to the Federation institution in Star Trek: Klingon Academy.
- In Star Trek Online Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy are major features of Earth and Qo'noS respectively, with instruction-related duty officer assignments and a daily event to teach cadets about gathering particle samples that rewards dilithium.
- The Terran Confederation Academy in Wing Commander. The animation Wing Commander Academy in particular features Academy cadets as the main characters.
- MechQuest's GEARS Academy.
- Space Quest V: The Next Mutation starts at the Starcon Academy.
Western Animation
- The Plumber's Academy from the later Ben 10 series.
- The P.Y.R.A.M.I.D. (Pharaoh Yasiro’s Research Academy and Military Initiative of Defense) in Cleopatra in Space (based on the comic mentioned above,) which is a school for teens of various species that functions not unlike Starfleet, i.e. focusing on exploration and science while also having the main objective of fighting the Galactic Conquerer Big Bad that the titular Cleopatra is destined to defeat. In practice it's basically high school and part of Cleopatra's adjustment to being brought into the future is going from princess of Ancient Egypt to Ordinary High-School Student and all that entails, i.e. dealing with the local Alpha Bitch and trying not to embarrass herself in front of her crush (and mostly failing at the second.) Interestingly, the three-man teams within the student body can become "official" and go on actual missions once they're approved by the ruling body of the academy, which allows Cleo and her friends to have adventures while still living the student life.
- The setting of a Poorly Disguised Pilot for Crash Nebula! on The Fairly OddParents!!.
- The Space Ranger Academy of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
- A flashback episode of Sym-Bionic Titan featured one, as a seeming homage to Ender's Game.
- Transformers: Animated has an Autobot Academy where young bots get trained for duty. Bulkhead, Bumblebee and Wasp were all in the same class. Bulkhead and Bee graduated, while Wasp was caught for a crime and expelled, leaving him very embittered.
- The Galaxy Garrison in Voltron: Legendary Defender is an example of this.
Real Life
- Real Life has an attempted version of this in SpaceCamp.
- Astronauts
have to train somewhere.
