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Living and Working in Space

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Phillip Brooker argues that the definitions and aims of HF entail minimalist assumptions about humans, which rely on the notion that human performance in spaceflight can be represented by anthropometric and biomechanical metrics.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 7, 2024

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The speaker describes their interest in studying NASA's Skylab program, particularly the conversation transcripts between astronauts and mission control during space missions in the 1970s. They highlight Skylab as one of the first space stations and emphasize its role in exploring what it means to live and work in space. By examining the extensive transcripts, original recordings, and design specifications, the speaker aims to uncover insights into the human and social dynamics of space missions that go beyond traditional scientific documentation.

The research focuses on the unique environment aboard Skylab, where astronauts not only conducted experiments but also gained insights into their experiences and interactions. The speaker notes that human factors research, which addresses how humans interact with technology, plays a critical role in designing space missions. They discuss the balance between rigorous scientific quantification (such as ergonomics and design specifications) and the more qualitative, human-centered aspects of astronaut life.

The speaker also critiques the traditional engineering-centric perspective in space exploration and highlights the importance of incorporating social science insights for informing future missions. They argue that human factors research should account for qualitative experiences and interactions that cannot be captured through purely scientific approaches.

Furthermore, they share anecdotes about communication challenges faced by astronauts on Skylab, demonstrating how intricate and social the environment can be. The overarching conclusion of their work is the need to expand the understanding of living and working in space to include qualitative experiences, advocating for an approach that values both scientific and social perspectives in the design of future space missions.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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In about 2019, I was, I was coming to,

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a short course in ethno methodology, kind of a way

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of doing social science at Liverpool.

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And one of my friends was,

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co-teaching the course Chris Elsie from

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Di Mumford University.

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And as part of Chris's talk about the general sort

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of widespread availability of conversation transcripts,

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he mentioned just out the blue

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that NASA have these huge corpuses of transcripts

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that detail astronauts talk between themselves,

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and their mission control teams

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for every space flight mission.

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And he mentioned, this particular na,

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NASA mission program that I hadn't really heard of,

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but which sounded pretty interesting, Skyla.

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Um, and this was a program that NASA operated

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through the early 1970s.

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It formed one of the first space stations ever built.

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Uh, and the idea was that astronauts,

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astronaut scientists would live

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for months at a time on this vehicle

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and undertake all kinds

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of scientific experimentation in zero

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gravity low earth orbit.

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Um, so as someone who comes from a science

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and technology studies kind of background, I was kind

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of immediately hooked on the idea

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of looking at these transcripts as a kind of, as a,

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as a form of documentation, of how science

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and engineering work gets done in space as this kind

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of weird and high stakes everyday environment.

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So I got hold of the copies of these transcripts,

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and I also did some digging around to find out, there's

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thousands of pages of talk between the scale of astronauts

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and their mission control teams.

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But, there's also some original recordings

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of things like their EVAs, their extra vehicular activities

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and space walks,

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where they're doing jobs outside the station.

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And there's also some videos recorded for public interest.

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Uh, scientific re the videos were recorded partly

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for scientific research that detailed some of the tasks,

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of doing astronautics on Skylab.

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And there's also these like design specification documents

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that use Skylab insights

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to set out the baseline requirements

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for building future space stations.

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So in, in digging around in all these doc, it kind

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of comes out that, part of the research

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that Skylab was trying to do was explore

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what could it possibly mean to live and work in space.

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Uh, and I kind of put that in, that's their terminology

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that kind of keeps cropping up

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through throughout the documents.

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So I got really interested then in, in just how, NASA

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and other space agencies start to construct this idea

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of living and working in space

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and how it kind of is, built out

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of the practical activities and experiments that NASA design

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and that Skylab astronauts carry out.

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Um, 'cause as a social environment for kind of, you know,

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living and working a space station is really odd.

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And it's really interesting too.

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It's kind of geared towards like the management

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and organization of life and work in a very scientific way.

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So, for instance, engineers

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and mission designers think of, of, of the,

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the Skylar vehicle as this kind of social environment

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where you can control every variable, from temperature

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to noise, calorie intake,

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exercise time, everything.

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So, so this is really kind of interesting

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for the social sciences, I think

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'cause like a site where, so human social life

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and the methods of doing science

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combine in really kind of integrated ways.

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The astronauts are not only doing scientific experiments,

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but they're also the subjects

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of those experiments themselves.

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They're experimenting what it, how their experiences of,

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of life and work aboard this station.

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So in, in all of this kind of like, that's the motivation

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for the, for my own study of Skylab

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and what it means to live in working space.

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And I've been trying to like, find different ways

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of interrogating those documents that are produced as part

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of Skylab, that bring a kind

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of a less scientifically organized, more qualitative sense

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of skylab as a living and working arrangement, and,

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and the work that astronauts do in in that environment.

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Um, so yeah, overall that's the work I've been trying

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to do is just re interrogating those documents produced

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by Skylab to see what else you can, you can say with them.

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What else can you draw from them?

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Is this sort of large, rich, interactional data corpus,

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and trying to not avoid the, the kind of scientific variable

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and analytics sort of approach,

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but just to, to recognize that there are other ways of,

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interpreting those data as well.

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Human factors is, is, it's a kind of a program

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of research that space agencies do.

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It's not just limited to space agencies like anyone

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who designs technology, will focus on the human factors.

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It's the ways in which humans kind of meet up

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with technologies and use things

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and do productive work together.

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But space agents particularly have a space,

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agencies particularly have a, a kind

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of a vested interest in this

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because they're designing technologies, from scratch,

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for specific purposes.

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So they have to constantly think about

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how this thing might be used.

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Um, and it is like human factors.

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Then it becomes quite closely related to, to this idea

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of living and working in space.

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Um, the hu the notion of human factors research,

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it covers a lot of different sorts of things,

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but I think like for it, for nasa,

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certainly in the 1970s anyway,

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at root human factors is seen, is typically kind

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of like seen as more

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or less, identical with ergonomics.

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Um, which is like the design of physical environments

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and the design of physical bits of equipment in such

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that they're like intuitive, robust, they're useful,

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safe for human use.

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So, so definitely in Skylab and, and

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and arguably emission programs since then too,

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human factors is kind of explored as this notion of the

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physical fit between a human and their environment.

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Uh, and you can trace this right

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through from the experiments that Skylab,

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astronauts do in, in their space flight missions

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to the design specs

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that end up getting written about, about their work.

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Uh, so the design specs will often feature things like

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measurements of arm spans,

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of the average astronaut like heights,

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body mass, things like that.

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Also things like standard, the standard kind of,

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measurements for sitting positions in zero gravity.

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Not that you sit on chairs, but people

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crouch in a particular way.

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So it's important to know that if you're gonna build

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workstations for them, by implication of those,

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those physical bodily measurements, you have things like,

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you know, workstation arrangements,

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but also minimum sizes of doorways,

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where you put buttons

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and controls on a piece of equipment, things like that.

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So it's kind of, human factors kind of informs all of

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that stuff, but it is kind of telling as well, well,

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it is not only how space station engineers think about human

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factors, but it's also an approach that more than a few

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of the astronauts themselves, have shared.

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So for instance, going back to Skylab, the commander

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of the third crude Skylab mission,

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it was a man called Jerry Carr,

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and he's deeply involved in the ergonomics design

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of the Skylab station, but also

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after he kind of leaves the Astronaut Corps, he goes on

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to do exactly that kind of work.

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He's a, becomes a design consultant

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for ergonomics and human factors.

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Um, but,

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and I think quite importantly,

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ergonomics is not the only way that NASA

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and space agencies could have thought about

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human factors research.

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Uh, and in Skylab, it, it becomes kind

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of like an interesting site

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because as the ship is being designed in collaborations

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between engineers and the astronauts

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who have this ergonomic focus,

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higher management effectively bring in other design

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consultants who have this kind of different,

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and, as NASA put it more nebulous take on

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what a space station should be like.

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Uh, so these design called consultants, they're people

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who argued for things that really horrified

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and perplexed the engineers.

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So things like a window, in the space station

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or like a non-military gray color scheme, warm lighting,

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and also uniforms

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that compliment the interior design, things like that.

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So even though the engineering

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and the physical safety of the Skylab ship was like the

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paramount concern for nasa,

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the design consultants more often than

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not actually got their way.

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And the window is a good example, really.

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'cause if you think from an engineering perspective,

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cutting a hole in the side of a space station

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to put a window in is in engineering terms, one

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of the worst possible ideas that you can have.

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It creates a weak point

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where you don't have to have a weak point.

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It's completely unnecessary in engineering terms,

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but as I say, the design consultants win out on,

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on things like the window and other decisions

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because their argument was, well, you can't imagine,

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how a ship would be livable for any crew for any period

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of time without being able to see outside.

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It'd feel more like a prison.

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And that's not what living

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and working in space should be about.

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Um, but crucially that this, this kind of like blend,

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bleeds into sort of discussions

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of the scientific aspect as well.

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So the engineers, their businesses quantifying

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and measuring the decisions that they're making in terms

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of things like the stress on the metal, exterior

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of the ship, and the capacity for materials

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to withstand high temperatures and so on.

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Uh, and the de So, so they can, they can rigorously kind

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of calculate these things and, and present those results

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and say exactly why it would be a

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bad idea to put a window in.

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Uh, whereas the design consultants,

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they can't quantify in that way.

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They can't really express other than kind of rhetorically,

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just why a window is important.

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Um, so you get this kind of split between two different ways

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of constructing what it means to live in working space

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where you've got one like the engineering aspect.

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Uh, it can be featured in design specifications

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where you've got, calculations

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and scientific findings resulting from, you know,

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rigorous quantifiable science, scientific studies.

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Uh, but the other, the more human kind

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of oriented design aspect of why is it important

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to put in a window, can't really be

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expressed in those same terms.

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Um, and because of this,

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even though you get a window in Skylab

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and you get all these other things that the design

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consultants are trying to do, the design specifications

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that result from Skylab will often kind of, well they,

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they, they're important because they're not,

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they don't just describe what happened on Skylab,

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but they cast forward to things like the International Space

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Station,

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and other vehicles that that NASA have have built and,

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and other space agencies.

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Um, what this kind of points to is that,

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there are things that are based on social practice

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and kind of like, you know, interaction stuff,

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which are very important,

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but they can't be recorded in the same ways

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as scientific results.

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And the overall point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that

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because of things like this, the boundaries

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of human factors research are perhaps less stable than they

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might appear in the documentation.

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So finding different ways to account for

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what is involved in living

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and working in space that aren't kind of strictly rigidly

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to do with quantification

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and the representation of phenomena scientifically.

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That's what I'm trying to do with the research.

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And if I, there's another good example of this,

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around, a particular Skylab experiment,

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which I'll, I'll kind of briefly explain.

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So M1 51 was the designation

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for an experiment called the time Skylab Time motion study.

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Um, a scientific team on the ground.

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They designed this experiment

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to record the astronauts undertaking various tasks

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and then timing them to see what's the difference

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between them performing the tasks on the ground

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and in space over a few different kind of tries at it.

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Um, so there were tasks like donning

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and doff in a space suit,

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preparing a meal using their

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exercise equipment, things like that.

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So these were the kind of the core activities

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of living and working in space.

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It's the things that have to be done that are very difficult

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to talk about scientifically.

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And the hypothesis was

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that at least some tasks would be kind of performed quicker

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and more efficiently in space than on the ground.

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Um, though it might take a bit of practice for the crew

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to kind of whittle their times down to an optimum level.

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So you've got this, like this suit done in

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and doffing experiment, for instance.

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These are the big famous like kind of white pressure suits

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that astronauts use for going outside the space station.

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One part of the M1 51 experiment was

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to take video recordings of the crew getting in

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and out of these spacesuits to time them doing it,

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and then plot those times on a graph to show

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how much better they got at it over time.

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Um, they were measuring this o literally only in the time it

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took to, to perform the activity from not having a

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spacesuit on to having it on.

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Um, but if you actually look at the original videos, like

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that's one way of like graphing out kind of,

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scientifically recording information about it.

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But if you look at the original videos,

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you see something quite interesting,

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which isn't really captured in the graph.

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And that's the, the astronauts,

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they don't actually do this individually.

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So the astronauts on the graph, they take one line

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of the graph to mean one astronaut,

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but in the videos, astronauts help each other.

11:45.825 --> 11:48.605
Um, so there's a lot of like, crosstalk I guess

11:48.605 --> 11:49.725
between the lines of the graph,

11:49.725 --> 11:51.045
which is kind of interesting.

11:51.045 --> 11:52.165
So in the videos for instance,

11:52.165 --> 11:54.885
you'll see one astronaut manages to get their suit pants on,

11:55.105 --> 11:57.125
and then they go over to the other astronaut

11:57.125 --> 11:59.805
to help bend him down and get the, you know, get the,

11:59.945 --> 12:01.765
the headpiece over his head and things like that.

12:02.545 --> 12:04.085
Um, and then they return carry

12:04.085 --> 12:05.165
on with their own suit and so on.

12:05.165 --> 12:07.565
So, so this idea of like helping each other get,

12:07.565 --> 12:09.765
it gets a small footnote in the scientific paper

12:09.765 --> 12:10.965
that's based on this experiment,

12:10.965 --> 12:12.805
but it's not part of the scientific results

12:12.805 --> 12:15.325
because the graph measures individual astronauts

12:15.325 --> 12:16.525
doing the task by themself.

12:16.945 --> 12:18.525
And this for me is kind of important.

12:18.675 --> 12:20.405
Like if a key part of

12:20.405 --> 12:22.805
how astronauts get their day-to-day activities done,

12:23.025 --> 12:25.605
if it can't quite be captured in scientific results,

12:25.835 --> 12:27.445
then we do need to find different ways to sort

12:27.445 --> 12:29.645
of understand the work they're doing, rather than just try

12:29.845 --> 12:32.285
and like footnote it away in a brief caption.

12:32.465 --> 12:35.205
The scientific work done on Skylab is, is,

12:36.345 --> 12:37.725
is not the only thing that they were doing.

12:37.825 --> 12:40.085
So communications is another one of these activities

12:40.085 --> 12:42.445
that gets a lot of attention from NASA in terms of like

12:42.445 --> 12:44.925
how it sets up a mission program like Skylar.

12:44.925 --> 12:46.445
But the astronauts are gonna be away from earth

12:46.465 --> 12:48.565
for a long period of time, like months at a time.

12:49.065 --> 12:50.885
But again, it's also the kind of domain where science

12:50.905 --> 12:53.565
and engineering sort of meets social life and work.

12:53.585 --> 12:55.325
The idea of communicating with a team

12:55.425 --> 12:56.445
or working together,

12:56.825 --> 12:59.245
it meet these things come together in, in interesting ways.

13:00.025 --> 13:02.445
So as America's first Space station

13:03.265 --> 13:05.245
and one which was gonna have like multiple different living

13:05.245 --> 13:06.805
and working areas, it's about the volume

13:06.985 --> 13:08.405
of a three bedroom house.

13:08.585 --> 13:11.445
All in all. So NASA has a lot of concern for things like

13:11.445 --> 13:14.765
how Skylab number one is gonna stay in touch,

13:14.765 --> 13:16.725
with Earth, as it orbits

13:16.725 --> 13:19.205
to the planet once every 93 minutes,

13:19.225 --> 13:22.085
but also how the astronauts inside the ship are gonna talk

13:22.085 --> 13:24.245
with one another from the various locations of the ship.

13:24.245 --> 13:25.445
They might be in different rooms

13:25.585 --> 13:28.325
or, as, as they go about their day-to-Day work.

13:28.325 --> 13:29.805
And neither of these things, it sounds quite

13:30.005 --> 13:31.845
straightforward, but neither of them are in

13:31.845 --> 13:32.925
the 1970s at least.

13:33.165 --> 13:35.285
'cause in order to have a usable radio signal

13:35.285 --> 13:38.325
between the ship and Earth, you needed Skylab to be more

13:38.325 --> 13:42.125
or less directly over one of the 13 communication centers

13:42.555 --> 13:43.885
that were placed all over the world.

13:43.905 --> 13:45.405
So not just in the US but

13:45.465 --> 13:47.885
but everywhere as part of, what was known

13:47.885 --> 13:50.485
as the space flight tracking and data acquisition network.

13:51.425 --> 13:53.645
So part of the trick of communicating

13:53.645 --> 13:56.885
with Skylab was organizing this looping schedule of work

13:57.195 --> 13:59.885
with hundreds of people all over the world, being ready

13:59.885 --> 14:01.765
to take a call and redirect it through

14:01.765 --> 14:04.365
to mission control from Skylab, ought

14:04.365 --> 14:05.605
to receive scientific data

14:05.605 --> 14:08.285
that's being sent over the radio depending on which bit

14:08.285 --> 14:10.005
of the world Skylab was currently over,

14:10.215 --> 14:11.405
which was always changing.

14:11.985 --> 14:14.685
Um, so this is a monumental human effort to kind of develop

14:14.745 --> 14:17.005
and maintain over a long mission.

14:17.305 --> 14:19.885
And even with this setup, Skylab could only talk

14:19.885 --> 14:21.965
with mission control for about 20 minutes out

14:21.965 --> 14:23.645
of every hour since the coverage

14:23.645 --> 14:24.925
of the network isn't complete.

14:25.585 --> 14:27.805
Um, even internal to Skylab then.

14:27.805 --> 14:28.805
So, so just thinking

14:28.805 --> 14:30.805
of the in internal communications on the ship,

14:31.025 --> 14:33.725
the internal atmosphere of Skylab, it had to be pressurized.

14:33.755 --> 14:37.045
It's made up of different proportions of natural, gases,

14:37.265 --> 14:39.045
you know, different than the,

14:39.065 --> 14:40.805
the everyday air that we breathe on earth.

14:41.145 --> 14:43.325
So when they did the kind of initial testing on the ground

14:43.325 --> 14:45.685
in a pressurized chamber, they found

14:45.715 --> 14:46.925
that astronauts trying

14:46.945 --> 14:48.725
to work together often got sore throat

14:48.725 --> 14:51.165
because they were shouting all the time, sound doesn't carry

14:51.225 --> 14:53.925
so well through this, this pressurized environment

14:53.925 --> 14:55.565
that they were using,

14:55.875 --> 14:58.045
even across quite small diff distances

14:58.045 --> 14:59.045
so you could be in the same room

14:59.045 --> 15:00.085
and still shouting at each other.

15:00.105 --> 15:02.845
So a lot of time and effort is, is spent on designing,

15:03.325 --> 15:06.165
building, and placing the, internal communication system

15:06.185 --> 15:08.005
for the crew to use, which then has

15:08.005 --> 15:11.165
to be factored into the way that NASA design the living

15:11.165 --> 15:12.965
and working environments and the schedules

15:13.065 --> 15:14.325
of astronauts activities.

15:15.705 --> 15:17.365
One way this becomes important is

15:17.365 --> 15:20.685
that on the third crude Skylab mission, the astronauts,

15:20.685 --> 15:22.445
they were having a bit of trouble trying to keep up with

15:22.445 --> 15:24.605
that schedule as it was designed for them on the ground.

15:24.605 --> 15:26.685
And they felt like they were getting part behind, partly

15:26.685 --> 15:27.805
because of the ways in which the

15:27.965 --> 15:29.565
communications system worked.

15:29.865 --> 15:31.405
So for instance, like,

15:31.505 --> 15:33.845
for periods when mission control was receiving scientific

15:33.845 --> 15:36.485
data from the ship, the way the comms worked,

15:36.505 --> 15:39.405
it automatically bumps out the astronauts from using their

15:39.405 --> 15:41.765
tape recorders and they would use tape recorders to,

15:41.765 --> 15:43.805
to record scientific data from their experiments.

15:43.805 --> 15:45.405
So they'd have the, the tape recorder on

15:45.405 --> 15:46.765
as they're doing an experiment

15:46.765 --> 15:49.285
and read out the numbers to, to be captured for later.

15:49.825 --> 15:52.245
Um, but if you automatically get bumped out of

15:52.245 --> 15:54.165
that system halfway through doing an experiment,

15:54.165 --> 15:56.605
it creates these little lags, these annoyances

15:56.825 --> 15:59.685
for astronauts which kind of accumulate and make it harder

15:59.745 --> 16:02.085
and harder for them to keep on time with their work.

16:02.625 --> 16:04.925
And ultimately, this did result in the crew that,

16:05.125 --> 16:07.645
that third Skylab crew having to tell mission control

16:07.755 --> 16:10.525
that the way their work was being organized, comms included,

16:10.945 --> 16:12.165
it wasn't working very well.

16:12.385 --> 16:15.365
And this, this did get warped by the media,

16:15.365 --> 16:18.005
being a story about the astronaut st in a strike in space,

16:18.455 --> 16:20.445
which I'll put in scare quotes 'cause none of it was true.

16:20.745 --> 16:23.205
But nonetheless, it brings into relief this idea that

16:23.805 --> 16:25.165
communications is not a simple matter

16:25.165 --> 16:26.765
of just having a radio channel open.

16:26.935 --> 16:28.445
There are important outcomes from

16:28.445 --> 16:30.685
how the communication systems work

16:31.025 --> 16:32.965
and how it is integrated into the work

16:32.965 --> 16:34.885
of using it that need attention.

16:35.225 --> 16:37.325
So this is one of the reasons I think communications is an

16:37.325 --> 16:39.645
important, site of interest,

16:39.805 --> 16:42.165
'cause the technical accounts of a communication set up,

16:42.185 --> 16:44.565
but they're only really partially a story.

16:44.565 --> 16:46.805
You have to kind of, if you want to round out that story,

16:47.065 --> 16:49.525
you have to see how these communication systems get used

16:50.025 --> 16:54.285
and, in the situated context of the social practices

16:54.465 --> 16:56.085
of living and working with it.

16:56.545 --> 16:59.325
Um, and kind thinking like sort of beyond scale up as well.

16:59.325 --> 17:01.445
I think this does have a future kind of impact too.

17:01.505 --> 17:03.965
So, I mean, Skylab flew in the 1970s,

17:03.985 --> 17:05.405
so it is part of history now.

17:05.405 --> 17:08.325
It uses radio technologies which are no longer kind of,

17:08.325 --> 17:10.805
you know, relevant, but there are currently plans

17:10.905 --> 17:13.445
for human crude space flight missions to go

17:13.705 --> 17:15.565
for longer durations and further away.

17:15.865 --> 17:19.165
So, you know, the European Space Agency and Nassau

17:19.205 --> 17:20.285
and groups of space agencies,

17:20.395 --> 17:23.045
they're already planning a return to the moon with the idea

17:23.065 --> 17:24.965
of long-term ish settlements.

17:25.305 --> 17:27.885
Uh, and people are also talking about future plans

17:27.885 --> 17:31.085
to get humans on Mars, even, which, you know, a long,

17:31.085 --> 17:34.045
long way away, a long, it takes time for communications

17:34.045 --> 17:35.085
to travel and so on.

17:35.145 --> 17:37.645
So alongside this as well, you're getting astronaut groups

17:37.645 --> 17:41.045
who are from a much wider range of fields, than the kind

17:41.045 --> 17:42.965
of mostly military oriented core

17:42.965 --> 17:44.725
that was in place in the 1970s.

17:44.825 --> 17:47.925
So overall, there's much less reason to believe

17:47.925 --> 17:50.050
that missions like this could operate on the ma on,

17:50.065 --> 17:51.605
on the more sort of command

17:51.605 --> 17:54.805
and control philosophy, that it u that used

17:54.805 --> 17:56.245
to be the case in the 1970s

17:56.245 --> 17:59.245
where the idea was mission control reasonably expected

17:59.245 --> 18:01.565
that they would tell astronauts what to do on a minute

18:01.565 --> 18:03.485
by minute basis and the astronauts would

18:03.485 --> 18:04.565
do it, no questions asked.

18:05.185 --> 18:07.605
Um, what I'm trying to kind of point to here is

18:08.305 --> 18:09.355
this most cut, sort

18:09.355 --> 18:11.755
of qualitatively oriented interactional approach

18:12.175 --> 18:15.235
to space flight data, you know, produced as part of missions

18:15.955 --> 18:18.555
suggests that we can use these materials to understand

18:18.555 --> 18:21.275
and support how astronauts, how

18:21.335 --> 18:23.275
how like reasonably large crews

18:23.275 --> 18:25.355
of astronauts will exert their own autonomy

18:25.775 --> 18:29.515
and their own expertise across all aspects of their work,

18:29.515 --> 18:30.675
including comms.

18:30.815 --> 18:33.715
And that taking that sort of approach would be a good way

18:33.715 --> 18:36.395
to help them organize and make decisions for themselves.

18:36.935 --> 18:38.755
Uh, so I think a framework that would help NASA

18:38.775 --> 18:41.675
and other space agencies to start seeing these kind

18:41.675 --> 18:43.915
of things in the day-to-Day already collect for the purposes

18:43.915 --> 18:47.075
of supporting these future missions, is gonna be vital

18:47.255 --> 18:48.835
to the, to those missions going forward.

18:49.215 --> 18:52.315
The main overarching conclusion of my work in this area is

18:52.315 --> 18:54.435
that, that there is much more to the notion of living

18:54.435 --> 18:57.235
and working in space than can be recorded if you're taking

18:57.235 --> 19:00.315
that sort of exclusively scientific approach to defining

19:00.315 --> 19:01.715
what living and working in space is

19:02.055 --> 19:03.315
and how it's to be measured.

19:03.775 --> 19:06.315
Uh, so the scientific approach is, is perfectly adequate

19:06.315 --> 19:09.115
for lots of purposes, including things like engineering,

19:09.115 --> 19:10.835
making sure a space station is a safe

19:11.255 --> 19:13.595
for human habitation and so on.

19:13.975 --> 19:15.155
But safety

19:15.375 --> 19:18.035
and kind of like the, the physical basics are not the,

19:18.135 --> 19:22.475
the only kind of concerns, to humans doing work

19:22.575 --> 19:24.355
and living in a space environment.

19:24.695 --> 19:26.595
Um, and human factors research

19:26.655 --> 19:27.875
has to kind of allow for that.

19:27.895 --> 19:30.395
It has to build that approach into its

19:30.395 --> 19:31.475
kind of core foundations.

19:31.975 --> 19:34.795
Um, so it is important to note, you know, I don't, I don't,

19:34.795 --> 19:36.555
I don't want to kind of suggest that NASA don't kind

19:36.555 --> 19:38.955
of do this stuff already, necessarily NASA

19:39.095 --> 19:41.315
and other space agencies, they do have a long history

19:41.335 --> 19:43.355
of social science research on space flight.

19:43.575 --> 19:45.115
But I think it's fair to argue that

19:45.115 --> 19:48.635
that has been a peculiar kind of relationship so far.

19:49.135 --> 19:51.515
Uh, so in the past, for instance, in the, in the lead up

19:51.515 --> 19:54.435
to Skylab, when NASA were thinking of Skylab as being a kind

19:54.435 --> 19:57.435
of step towards things like space cities and,

19:57.495 --> 19:59.755
and mass orbital tourism, which where they were kind

19:59.755 --> 20:02.475
of planning from the 1980s onwards, even,

20:02.655 --> 20:04.915
NASA's engagement with social science research was more

20:04.915 --> 20:07.955
about that kind of world building macro stuff of

20:07.975 --> 20:10.235
how thousands of people can live together

20:10.535 --> 20:11.675
on a vehicle of the future.

20:12.095 --> 20:13.795
Uh, and more, more recently, the, the focus

20:13.795 --> 20:15.795
of social science research done

20:15.815 --> 20:19.155
by space agencies is narrowed in a good way, really,

20:19.175 --> 20:21.595
to things like methods for quantifying interpersonal

20:21.595 --> 20:23.315
relationships between smaller crews

20:23.315 --> 20:24.395
on long duration missions.

20:24.815 --> 20:26.355
Uh, so say up to seven people.

20:26.455 --> 20:29.075
So the idea of studies like these would be, you know,

20:29.095 --> 20:30.995
to record personality types

20:31.295 --> 20:33.275
and find the optimum mix of personalities

20:33.295 --> 20:34.475
for long duration missions.

20:34.855 --> 20:37.355
But the thing that hasn't changed in NASA's approach

20:37.355 --> 20:40.435
to any research really, including social science, is

20:40.435 --> 20:42.875
that there is this kind of big red line for space flight

20:43.435 --> 20:45.275
agencies, where in order for them

20:45.275 --> 20:46.875
to use social science insights

20:47.065 --> 20:48.965
To inform, the

20:49.105 --> 20:51.445
how human space flight missions are constructed,

20:51.985 --> 20:54.445
the social science that they do has to take on the form

20:54.665 --> 20:56.365
of quantitative natural science,

20:57.155 --> 20:59.685
like variable experimentation with the control group

20:59.685 --> 21:02.125
and so on, in order to be acceptable

21:02.125 --> 21:03.565
and kind of admissible for the record.

21:04.345 --> 21:06.325
Um, there's good reasons for this.

21:06.465 --> 21:08.565
On the one hand, like the, you know, the, the rationale

21:08.565 --> 21:11.365
for it is that well, these produce replicable reliable

21:11.395 --> 21:12.565
results,

21:12.585 --> 21:14.965
and you can demonstrate a clear line between those results

21:15.105 --> 21:17.845
and funding that you get to do the studies and so on.

21:17.945 --> 21:20.725
But on the other hand, like I've, like I've said already,

21:20.725 --> 21:21.965
really, there's lots of human life

21:21.965 --> 21:24.565
and work that isn't best described in those terms.

21:25.105 --> 21:27.765
Um, and these aspects that are kind of ineffable

21:27.825 --> 21:30.205
to the scientific method, they're only gonna get more

21:30.205 --> 21:32.605
and more important as space flight missions start moving

21:32.635 --> 21:35.565
away from earth, at further distances

21:35.665 --> 21:37.645
and they span long durations.

21:37.865 --> 21:39.085
So overall, what I'm trying to do

21:39.115 --> 21:41.245
with this research is present a collection of studies

21:41.265 --> 21:44.245
of all these different types of materials to demonstrate

21:44.545 --> 21:46.965
and to emphasize, the importance

21:46.985 --> 21:50.085
and value of like taking this more qualitative approach

21:50.105 --> 21:53.205
to understanding the work of Astronautics to show how

21:53.205 --> 21:55.845
and why it is useful for space flight agencies

21:55.985 --> 21:57.285
to do things like that themselves.

21:57.985 --> 21:59.925
Um, so the whole piece overall then that the,

21:59.925 --> 22:01.925
the research I'm doing can be useful in terms

22:01.925 --> 22:04.565
of helping inform how we kind of design

22:04.665 --> 22:06.925
and deliver future space flight missions.

00:00 - In about 2019, I was, I was coming to, a short course in ethno methodology, kind of a way of doing social science at Liverpool. And one of my friends was, co-teaching the course Chris Elsie from Di Mumford University.

00:12 - And as part of Chris's talk about the general sort of widespread availability of conversation transcripts, he mentioned just out the blue that NASA have these huge corpuses of transcripts that detail astronauts talk between themselves, and their mission control teams for every space flight mission. And he mentioned, this particular na, NASA mission program that I hadn't really heard of, but which sounded pretty interesting, Skyla.

00:34 - and this was a program that NASA operated through the early 1970s. It formed one of the first space stations ever built. and the idea was that astronauts, astronaut scientists would live for months at a time on this vehicle and undertake all kinds of scientific experimentation in zero gravity low earth orbit. so as someone who comes from a science

00:56 - and technology studies kind of background, I was kind of immediately hooked on the idea of looking at these transcripts as a kind of, as a, as a form of documentation, of how science and engineering work gets done in space as this kind of weird and high stakes everyday environment. So I got hold of the copies of these transcripts, and I also did some digging around to find out, there's thousands of pages of talk between the scale of astronauts and their mission control teams.

01:19 - But, there's also some original recordings of things like their EVAs, their extra vehicular activities and space walks, where they're doing jobs outside the station. And there's also some videos recorded for public interest. scientific re the videos were recorded partly for scientific research that detailed some of the tasks, of doing astronautics on Skylab. And there's also these like design specification documents that use Skylab insights

01:45 - to set out the baseline requirements for building future space stations. So in, in digging around in all these doc, it kind of comes out that, part of the research that Skylab was trying to do was explore what could it possibly mean to live and work in space. and I kind of put that in, that's their terminology that kind of keeps cropping up through throughout the documents. So I got really interested then in, in just how, NASA

02:08 - and other space agencies start to construct this idea of living and working in space and how it kind of is, built out of the practical activities and experiments that NASA design and that Skylab astronauts carry out. 'cause as a social environment for kind of, you know, living and working a space station is really odd. And it's really interesting too. It's kind of geared towards like the management and organization of life and work in a very scientific way.

02:33 - So, for instance, engineers and mission designers think of, of, of the, the Skylar vehicle as this kind of social environment where you can control every variable, from temperature to noise, calorie intake, exercise time, everything. So, so this is really kind of interesting for the social sciences, I think 'cause like a site where, so human social life and the methods of doing science

02:56 - combine in really kind of integrated ways. The astronauts are not only doing scientific experiments, but they're also the subjects of those experiments themselves. They're experimenting what it, how their experiences of, of life and work aboard this station. So in, in all of this kind of like, that's the motivation for the, for my own study of Skylab and what it means to live in working space. And I've been trying to like, find different ways

03:18 - of interrogating those documents that are produced as part of Skylab, that bring a kind of a less scientifically organized, more qualitative sense of skylab as a living and working arrangement, and, and the work that astronauts do in in that environment. so yeah, overall that's the work I've been trying to do is just re interrogating those documents produced by Skylab to see what else you can, you can say with them. What else can you draw from them? Is this sort of large, rich, interactional data corpus,

03:47 - and trying to not avoid the, the kind of scientific variable and analytics sort of approach, but just to, to recognize that there are other ways of, interpreting those data as well. Human factors is, is, it's a kind of a program of research that space agencies do. It's not just limited to space agencies like anyone who designs technology, will focus on the human factors. It's the ways in which humans kind of meet up with technologies and use things

04:09 - and do productive work together. But space agents particularly have a space, agencies particularly have a, a kind of a vested interest in this because they're designing technologies, from scratch, for specific purposes. So they have to constantly think about how this thing might be used. and it is like human factors. Then it becomes quite closely related to, to this idea

04:30 - of living and working in space. the hu the notion of human factors research, it covers a lot of different sorts of things, but I think like for it, for nasa, certainly in the 1970s anyway, at root human factors is seen, is typically kind of like seen as more or less, identical with ergonomics. which is like the design of physical environments and the design of physical bits of equipment in such

04:55 - that they're like intuitive, robust, they're useful, safe for human use. So, so definitely in Skylab and, and and arguably emission programs since then too, human factors is kind of explored as this notion of the physical fit between a human and their environment. and you can trace this right through from the experiments that Skylab, astronauts do in, in their space flight missions to the design specs

05:19 - that end up getting written about, about their work. so the design specs will often feature things like measurements of arm spans, of the average astronaut like heights, body mass, things like that. Also things like standard, the standard kind of, measurements for sitting positions in zero gravity. Not that you sit on chairs, but people crouch in a particular way. So it's important to know that if you're gonna build

05:40 - workstations for them, by implication of those, those physical bodily measurements, you have things like, you know, workstation arrangements, but also minimum sizes of doorways, where you put buttons and controls on a piece of equipment, things like that. So it's kind of, human factors kind of informs all of that stuff, but it is kind of telling as well, well, it is not only how space station engineers think about human factors, but it's also an approach that more than a few

06:05 - of the astronauts themselves, have shared. So for instance, going back to Skylab, the commander of the third crude Skylab mission, it was a man called Jerry Carr, and he's deeply involved in the ergonomics design of the Skylab station, but also after he kind of leaves the Astronaut Corps, he goes on to do exactly that kind of work. He's a, becomes a design consultant for ergonomics and human factors.

06:25 - but, and I think quite importantly, ergonomics is not the only way that NASA and space agencies could have thought about human factors research. and in Skylab, it, it becomes kind of like an interesting site because as the ship is being designed in collaborations between engineers and the astronauts who have this ergonomic focus,

06:45 - higher management effectively bring in other design consultants who have this kind of different, and, as NASA put it more nebulous take on what a space station should be like. so these design called consultants, they're people who argued for things that really horrified and perplexed the engineers. So things like a window, in the space station or like a non-military gray color scheme, warm lighting, and also uniforms

07:09 - that compliment the interior design, things like that. So even though the engineering and the physical safety of the Skylab ship was like the paramount concern for nasa, the design consultants more often than not actually got their way. And the window is a good example, really. 'cause if you think from an engineering perspective, cutting a hole in the side of a space station to put a window in is in engineering terms, one

07:31 - of the worst possible ideas that you can have. It creates a weak point where you don't have to have a weak point. It's completely unnecessary in engineering terms, but as I say, the design consultants win out on, on things like the window and other decisions because their argument was, well, you can't imagine, how a ship would be livable for any crew for any period of time without being able to see outside. It'd feel more like a prison.

07:52 - And that's not what living and working in space should be about. but crucially that this, this kind of like blend, bleeds into sort of discussions of the scientific aspect as well. So the engineers, their businesses quantifying and measuring the decisions that they're making in terms of things like the stress on the metal, exterior of the ship, and the capacity for materials to withstand high temperatures and so on.

08:13 - and the de So, so they can, they can rigorously kind of calculate these things and, and present those results and say exactly why it would be a bad idea to put a window in. whereas the design consultants, they can't quantify in that way. They can't really express other than kind of rhetorically, just why a window is important. so you get this kind of split between two different ways of constructing what it means to live in working space

08:37 - where you've got one like the engineering aspect. it can be featured in design specifications where you've got, calculations and scientific findings resulting from, you know, rigorous quantifiable science, scientific studies. but the other, the more human kind of oriented design aspect of why is it important to put in a window, can't really be expressed in those same terms. and because of this,

08:59 - even though you get a window in Skylab and you get all these other things that the design consultants are trying to do, the design specifications that result from Skylab will often kind of, well they, they, they're important because they're not, they don't just describe what happened on Skylab, but they cast forward to things like the International Space Station, and other vehicles that that NASA have have built and, and other space agencies.

09:20 - what this kind of points to is that, there are things that are based on social practice and kind of like, you know, interaction stuff, which are very important, but they can't be recorded in the same ways as scientific results. And the overall point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that because of things like this, the boundaries of human factors research are perhaps less stable than they might appear in the documentation.

09:44 - So finding different ways to account for what is involved in living and working in space that aren't kind of strictly rigidly to do with quantification and the representation of phenomena scientifically. That's what I'm trying to do with the research. And if I, there's another good example of this, around, a particular Skylab experiment, which I'll, I'll kind of briefly explain. So M1 51 was the designation

10:06 - for an experiment called the time Skylab Time motion study. a scientific team on the ground. They designed this experiment to record the astronauts undertaking various tasks and then timing them to see what's the difference between them performing the tasks on the ground and in space over a few different kind of tries at it. so there were tasks like donning and doff in a space suit, preparing a meal using their

10:32 - exercise equipment, things like that. So these were the kind of the core activities of living and working in space. It's the things that have to be done that are very difficult to talk about scientifically. And the hypothesis was that at least some tasks would be kind of performed quicker and more efficiently in space than on the ground. though it might take a bit of practice for the crew to kind of whittle their times down to an optimum level.

10:53 - So you've got this, like this suit done in and doffing experiment, for instance. These are the big famous like kind of white pressure suits that astronauts use for going outside the space station. One part of the M1 51 experiment was to take video recordings of the crew getting in and out of these spacesuits to time them doing it, and then plot those times on a graph to show how much better they got at it over time. they were measuring this o literally only in the time it

11:19 - took to, to perform the activity from not having a spacesuit on to having it on. but if you actually look at the original videos, like that's one way of like graphing out kind of, scientifically recording information about it. But if you look at the original videos, you see something quite interesting, which isn't really captured in the graph. And that's the, the astronauts, they don't actually do this individually.

11:38 - So the astronauts on the graph, they take one line of the graph to mean one astronaut, but in the videos, astronauts help each other. so there's a lot of like, crosstalk I guess between the lines of the graph, which is kind of interesting. So in the videos for instance, you'll see one astronaut manages to get their suit pants on, and then they go over to the other astronaut to help bend him down and get the, you know, get the,

11:59 - the headpiece over his head and things like that. and then they return carry on with their own suit and so on. So, so this idea of like helping each other get, it gets a small footnote in the scientific paper that's based on this experiment, but it's not part of the scientific results because the graph measures individual astronauts doing the task by themself. And this for me is kind of important.

12:18 - Like if a key part of how astronauts get their day-to-day activities done, if it can't quite be captured in scientific results, then we do need to find different ways to sort of understand the work they're doing, rather than just try and like footnote it away in a brief caption. The scientific work done on Skylab is, is, is not the only thing that they were doing. So communications is another one of these activities that gets a lot of attention from NASA in terms of like

12:42 - how it sets up a mission program like Skylar. But the astronauts are gonna be away from earth for a long period of time, like months at a time. But again, it's also the kind of domain where science and engineering sort of meets social life and work. The idea of communicating with a team or working together, it meet these things come together in, in interesting ways. So as America's first Space station and one which was gonna have like multiple different living

13:05 - and working areas, it's about the volume of a three bedroom house. All in all. So NASA has a lot of concern for things like how Skylab number one is gonna stay in touch, with Earth, as it orbits to the planet once every 93 minutes, but also how the astronauts inside the ship are gonna talk with one another from the various locations of the ship. They might be in different rooms or, as, as they go about their day-to-Day work.

13:28 - And neither of these things, it sounds quite straightforward, but neither of them are in the 1970s at least. 'cause in order to have a usable radio signal between the ship and Earth, you needed Skylab to be more or less directly over one of the 13 communication centers that were placed all over the world. So not just in the US but but everywhere as part of, what was known as the space flight tracking and data acquisition network.

13:51 - So part of the trick of communicating with Skylab was organizing this looping schedule of work with hundreds of people all over the world, being ready to take a call and redirect it through to mission control from Skylab, ought to receive scientific data that's being sent over the radio depending on which bit of the world Skylab was currently over, which was always changing. so this is a monumental human effort to kind of develop

14:14 - and maintain over a long mission. And even with this setup, Skylab could only talk with mission control for about 20 minutes out of every hour since the coverage of the network isn't complete. even internal to Skylab then. So, so just thinking of the in internal communications on the ship, the internal atmosphere of Skylab, it had to be pressurized. It's made up of different proportions of natural, gases,

14:37 - you know, different than the, the everyday air that we breathe on earth. So when they did the kind of initial testing on the ground in a pressurized chamber, they found that astronauts trying to work together often got sore throat because they were shouting all the time, sound doesn't carry so well through this, this pressurized environment that they were using, even across quite small diff distances

14:58 - so you could be in the same room and still shouting at each other. So a lot of time and effort is, is spent on designing, building, and placing the, internal communication system for the crew to use, which then has to be factored into the way that NASA design the living and working environments and the schedules of astronauts activities. One way this becomes important is that on the third crude Skylab mission, the astronauts,

15:20 - they were having a bit of trouble trying to keep up with that schedule as it was designed for them on the ground. And they felt like they were getting part behind, partly because of the ways in which the communications system worked. So for instance, like, for periods when mission control was receiving scientific data from the ship, the way the comms worked, it automatically bumps out the astronauts from using their tape recorders and they would use tape recorders to,

15:41 - to record scientific data from their experiments. So they'd have the, the tape recorder on as they're doing an experiment and read out the numbers to, to be captured for later. but if you automatically get bumped out of that system halfway through doing an experiment, it creates these little lags, these annoyances for astronauts which kind of accumulate and make it harder and harder for them to keep on time with their work. And ultimately, this did result in the crew that,

16:05 - that third Skylab crew having to tell mission control that the way their work was being organized, comms included, it wasn't working very well. And this, this did get warped by the media, being a story about the astronaut st in a strike in space, which I'll put in scare quotes 'cause none of it was true. But nonetheless, it brings into relief this idea that communications is not a simple matter of just having a radio channel open. There are important outcomes from

16:28 - how the communication systems work and how it is integrated into the work of using it that need attention. So this is one of the reasons I think communications is an important, site of interest, 'cause the technical accounts of a communication set up, but they're only really partially a story. You have to kind of, if you want to round out that story, you have to see how these communication systems get used and, in the situated context of the social practices

16:54 - of living and working with it. and kind thinking like sort of beyond scale up as well. I think this does have a future kind of impact too. So, I mean, Skylab flew in the 1970s, so it is part of history now. It uses radio technologies which are no longer kind of, you know, relevant, but there are currently plans for human crude space flight missions to go for longer durations and further away. So, you know, the European Space Agency and Nassau

17:19 - and groups of space agencies, they're already planning a return to the moon with the idea of long-term ish settlements. and people are also talking about future plans to get humans on Mars, even, which, you know, a long, long way away, a long, it takes time for communications to travel and so on. So alongside this as well, you're getting astronaut groups who are from a much wider range of fields, than the kind of mostly military oriented core

17:42 - that was in place in the 1970s. So overall, there's much less reason to believe that missions like this could operate on the ma on, on the more sort of command and control philosophy, that it u that used to be the case in the 1970s where the idea was mission control reasonably expected that they would tell astronauts what to do on a minute by minute basis and the astronauts would do it, no questions asked.

18:05 - what I'm trying to kind of point to here is this most cut, sort of qualitatively oriented interactional approach to space flight data, you know, produced as part of missions suggests that we can use these materials to understand and support how astronauts, how how like reasonably large crews of astronauts will exert their own autonomy and their own expertise across all aspects of their work, including comms.

18:30 - And that taking that sort of approach would be a good way to help them organize and make decisions for themselves. so I think a framework that would help NASA and other space agencies to start seeing these kind of things in the day-to-Day already collect for the purposes of supporting these future missions, is gonna be vital to the, to those missions going forward. The main overarching conclusion of my work in this area is that, that there is much more to the notion of living and working in space than can be recorded if you're taking

18:57 - that sort of exclusively scientific approach to defining what living and working in space is and how it's to be measured. so the scientific approach is, is perfectly adequate for lots of purposes, including things like engineering, making sure a space station is a safe for human habitation and so on. But safety and kind of like the, the physical basics are not the, the only kind of concerns, to humans doing work

19:22 - and living in a space environment. and human factors research has to kind of allow for that. It has to build that approach into its kind of core foundations. so it is important to note, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't want to kind of suggest that NASA don't kind of do this stuff already, necessarily NASA and other space agencies, they do have a long history of social science research on space flight.

19:43 - But I think it's fair to argue that that has been a peculiar kind of relationship so far. so in the past, for instance, in the, in the lead up to Skylab, when NASA were thinking of Skylab as being a kind of step towards things like space cities and, and mass orbital tourism, which where they were kind of planning from the 1980s onwards, even, NASA's engagement with social science research was more about that kind of world building macro stuff of how thousands of people can live together

20:10 - on a vehicle of the future. and more, more recently, the, the focus of social science research done by space agencies is narrowed in a good way, really, to things like methods for quantifying interpersonal relationships between smaller crews on long duration missions. so say up to seven people. So the idea of studies like these would be, you know, to record personality types

20:31 - and find the optimum mix of personalities for long duration missions. But the thing that hasn't changed in NASA's approach to any research really, including social science, is that there is this kind of big red line for space flight agencies, where in order for them to use social science insights To inform, the how human space flight missions are constructed, the social science that they do has to take on the form

20:54 - of quantitative natural science, like variable experimentation with the control group and so on, in order to be acceptable and kind of admissible for the record. there's good reasons for this. On the one hand, like the, you know, the, the rationale for it is that well, these produce replicable reliable results, and you can demonstrate a clear line between those results and funding that you get to do the studies and so on.

21:17 - But on the other hand, like I've, like I've said already, really, there's lots of human life and work that isn't best described in those terms. and these aspects that are kind of ineffable to the scientific method, they're only gonna get more and more important as space flight missions start moving away from earth, at further distances and they span long durations. So overall, what I'm trying to do with this research is present a collection of studies

21:41 - of all these different types of materials to demonstrate and to emphasize, the importance and value of like taking this more qualitative approach to understanding the work of Astronautics to show how and why it is useful for space flight agencies to do things like that themselves. so the whole piece overall then that the, the research I'm doing can be useful in terms of helping inform how we kind of design and deliver future space flight missions.

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