Managing Negative Interactions in Space Crews: The Role of Simulator ResearchSo, too, the early stages of spaceflight were conducted by heroic persons such
as Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn. Space stations were eventually established in
the frontier, and people learned to adapt to life in space. Now we are planning to
return to the Moon and establish a permanent settlement there. The newest fron-
tier dream, the planet Mars, is several orders of magnitude distant from the Moon.
We have an International Space Station with a short but significant history of long-
duration multinational crews. It has even been visited several times by tourists. In
the beginning, the attitude about equipment design was simple: get there, survive,
and get back in one piece. So too with astronaut selection: prove that you have “the
right stuff”—which translated to “be a high-performance test pilot.”
Our technology is much more sophisticated now than it was in the early days of
the space program. Now we are designing vastly larger and more complex space sta-
tions, Moon colonies, long-duration spaceships for the journey to Mars, and space
hotels. The people we will be sending to these sites will be scientists, technicians,
service persons, and tourists. I believe that the shift in emphasis implied by these
changes requires a shift in the way we think about space equipment and the person-
nel who will use that equipment.
THINKING ABOUT EQUIPMENT
It is no longer enough to design to survive.
The time has come to design to thrive.In the beginning of the space program, engineers were not eager to have peo-
ple on board space vehicles. The design spirit seemed to be something like, “We
are confident this will work, so let’s use it. If it is uncomfortable or it is difficult to
operate, then find astronauts who can tolerate it and who can be trained to make
it work.” We now need to shift design thinking to a human factors and ergonom-
ics point of view. This kind of shift in emphasis means designing the apparatus to
match the capabilities and aspirations of those who will use it. For example, space
vehicles are currently very noisy. The noise is due to the fact that warm air does
not rise in weightless environments. Without convection currents, any air that is
to be moved must be moved mechanically. The large number of fans and bends in
ductwork create much of the noise. Spacecraft typically have sound levels of about