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This topic in "Human Missions" is offered for gathering of insights to help mission planners identify personnel for a Mars pioneering mission.
The United States, Russia and China have been developing experience selecting candidates for flight over decades. In addition to the small number of people who have flown, there have been (and still are) great numbers of people involved in supporting the fliers in preparing for, executing, and recovering from their missions.
The article at the link below reports on the selection process used by NASA in finding the current (2020) class of prospective astronauts.
Of particular interest (to me for sure) is specific mention of the importance of emotional intelligence.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40427114/na … job-skills
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I think you will find that the qualifications for astronauts depend very strongly upon what you want them to do. It is entirely mission-dependent.
For example, if you are flying experimental craft, you are going to want test pilots with astronaut training.
If you are doing some sort of science mission, you are going to need science specialists in the appropriate fields, as well as somebody qualified to "drive" the spacecraft.
If you building some sort of base or facility, you are going to need people who know how to build things, and who have experience coping with unexpected circumstances. You are also going to need specialists in long-term life support, and somebody not only qualified to "drive" the spacecraft, but also any ground vehicles involved. And somebody qualified to repair all these things.
See how it changes?
For colonists, the qualifications will be different yet. So will the qualifications of the crew of the colony ship.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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For GW Johnson re #2
Thank you for your support of this new topic!
There ** is ** an actual situation developing in the NewMars forum ...
RobertDyck has imagined a particular spacecraft design, and a mission. In addition, RobertDyck has offered suggestions for the outline of a crew, and kbd512 (and probably others I'm forgetting) have contributed to refinement of the descriptions of the titles and to some extent, the range of primary duties as well.
Would you be willing to add to that growing collection of ideas?
This new topic is as good a place as any for a post or two, because material can then be copied or adapted in other topics.
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Adding in you other post:
I'd like to point out that your experience might be seen as illustrative of what life could be like for Mars settlement pioneers. The ordinary (on Earth) expectation is that everyone is isolated when problems occur, and they have to solve them without help.
I've over simplified the statement above, in an attempt to set the stage for the concept I'd like to introduce.
In planning for Mars settlement, we have a model to go by for how humans on location might be supported.
For the ISS, each human is supported by a small army of people in various agencies and organizations on Earth. That goes for every nationality, and even the ones who don't have national space programs.
The Mars environment is remarkably similar (from the standpoint of communications) to this forum. 24 hour turnaround is quite common in this forum, although there are occasional rapid turnaround events, and there are occasional delays of days or even weeks.
In the Mars support concept I am imagining, each onsite worker could be supported by a network of family and friends, and by professionals who are paid to support the onsite team, much as the robot explorers are supported by paid staff in today's situation.
The person who is on site is going to need to be handy with tools, as you have demonstrated, and the support group can help by offering advice or specific data that might be helpful.
Accordingly, I'm hoping this post will stimulate one or two forum readers to start thinking about the human support network that might be set in place for each on site worker.
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The main different is distance to which adds to the delay to come up with solutions and while we will have a digital library of what we have for manuals and such its the knowledge of what we have that aids in fixing problems when things do not work as intended.
We can train in all of the engineering but its how we view a problem not just what normally would be used to fix it with the correct parts but what do you do when we do not have the real replacement parts?
Being part craftsmen in the ability to build from raw materials is just as important to solving and fixing the broken piece of equipment. Most engineering have few abilities to build unless they want to get there hands dirty with the tools and machines which you must also learn how to operate safely.
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For SpaceNut re #5
The radio time for traffic between Mars and Earth varies from (about) 4 minutes to (about) 24 minutes.
The point I was trying to make is that the NewMars forum is a good model for what that would look and feel like ... Most communication on the NewMars forum takes place in a 24 hour cycle.
People on Mars would experience the Internet in much the same way. The transmission might take 24 minutes, but that makes no difference if your regular cycle of swapping messages is 24 hours.
What is important (it seems to me) is packaging up all the data about the problem you are seeing at Mars, and sending it to your support team on Earth, so they can mull it over and send a reply for your next Sol.
That said, thanks for picking up on this new topic and helping to move it along!
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Thats ok if the problem can be worked out under that condition but when time runs out on you in less than a communications cycle ( from (about) 4 minutes to (about) 24 minutes.) we have a problem... as we will not survive under cold, no air....That said that is why we will need backup systems to run as good as the primary units do for those items. So will 2 be enough for the fail safe or will we need 4 to ensure against conditions that require urgent or immediate solutions that can not wait.
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For SpaceNut re #7 .... I think you have the right idea ... this topic is about selection of personnel for duty at remote locations.. Whoever is selected will need the resilience to be able to stay alive while waiting 24 minutes for advice on what to do next.
It would seem reasonable to me to PLAN for 24 hour turn-around in communication with Earth. This forum provides an excellent model for what the communications environment will be like. You (like most of us) tend to come online at a window of time that works well into your day schedule. If you were supporting a member of a Mars expedition (and that is certainly possible if you are interested in service along those lines) you would take up the requests from your "customer" when you open your local work window.
I'd like to suggest we forget about picking up the smartphone when on Mars, and instead plan for 24 hour turnaround support cycles.
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What would be the most important trait in someone living in a Mars or Callisto colony would be great self-sufficiency. The ability to think clearly and quickly on one's feet. A person who immediately begins seeking answers to the situation instead of wringing his (her) hands and wailing. If you recall in the movie, the Martian, that's the advice Mark Watney gave to the astronaut candidates at the end of the film. If you want to survive, get to work.
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For Oldfart1939 re #9 .... and in support of your reference to "The Martian", communication did NOT reach the 24 minute turnaround level for an extended period.
I do think that each person who is selected for a Mars expedition should be supported by family and friends, and by dedicated paid staff who are able and willing to do the on-the-ground work to research problems and recommend solutions, or at least counter-measures.
The notion of hardy individualists doing well on Mars (without support) seems (to me at least) to be a stretch.
On the other hand, the traits of hardy individualists seem most appropriate for the situation.
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Here a few of those plausible topics
first was an actual Near disaster for crew on ISS launch (Soyuz)
This was the hole in the ship atmosphere leak...
The next are made up
Fire on the ISS, lunar base or Mars habitat or domes
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I'm not sure what I might contribute to this topic, except some generalities from the school of hard knocks. What I said in post 2 still stands. To that I would add:
For a certain set of scenarios, what Kbd512 said about there being no idle passengers, all on board must be crew, is correct. That is earlier in the process, when the ships and the crews are smaller. And by smaller, I mean up to at most around a hundred folks. You don't have the option of shipping "live meat". It's too difficult to get them out there and in transit, to tolerate such.
Later, when the scenario looks more like a ocean liner or a cruise ship, one presumes those difficulties have been resolved, and that the vessels are enormous, as are the quantities of people on board. The difficulties of getting out there will have been resolved, so that ticket prices can be low. Under those circumstances, you really would be looking at a smallish crew and a huge quantity of "live meat", er, idle passengers.
What Spacex has proposed with its Starship used as a Mars transport kind of falls in the boundary between those two regimes. A hundred colonists being shipped to Mars seem not to be envisioned as performing crew functions, but the ticket price may (or may not) be low enough for the ocean liner analogy to apply. We'll have to wait and see what happens with that.
As for addressing risks, there certainly are a plethora of them. There's not the time or space (or knowledge on my part) to address all of them. But I would like to address unexpected air leaks/depressurization risks.
The Russian Soyuz capsule exhibited such, which was eventually traced to a drilled hole in its pressure shell. I never did hear a believable explanation for how that hole got there. Now there is a slow leak they have been unable to find on ISS. To the best of my knowledge, this is still unfound, unrepaired, and unexplained.
To me, but not to many others yet, this suggests something for the "book" on do's and don'ts with spacecraft design. You simply need access to the interior of your pressure shell, in order to find these leaks and fix them. Simple as that. And just as difficult as you might imagine, because it means you do NOT mount equipment on the inner wall of that shell. If the leak is serious, you do NOT have time to move that equipment looking for the hole. And without an MCP-type suit, you do NOT have the agility to do such work in a depressurized compartment.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2020-09-19 08:46:15)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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Which brings us back to personality of those that can think and those that follow. These are leadership traits in that they think and get others to react to the situation. In which one for all and all for one must efforts are expected to over come the situation that they might face. All hands on deck....not hiding in a closet until its safe once more....
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For SpaceNut re #13
There is a third category of people .... That is a set of people who are flexible enough to lead one moment and follow the next.
The principle is at the heart of US military design of special combat teams. It is ** also ** at the heart of the design of the US military period. The days of World War I and earlier, when the leader/follower concept still held sway, are long gone. In the American army, and likely in all the services, personnel are expected to step into vacancies that may occur on the battle field.
I saw a perfect example of this a few days ago, when I was shopping for supplies at a large local lumber distributor. Three people came together in a situation where wood needed to be cut for packing in vehicles at hand. An employee of the enterprise offered help by showing that a chop saw was available, which neither of the customers knew about. The first load was chopped in short order, and all three people helped to load the pieces into a vehicle.
Then, the second customer asked about cuts for the plywood sheets he had. The chop saw was not the right tool, but the first customer had brought an electric saw because he was not aware there was a chop saw. The electric saw made short work of the plywood cuts. During that operation, the employee held down one side of the plywood, the second customer held down another corner of the sheet, and the first customer made the cuts.
In this situation, leadership swirled rapidly and seamlessly from one person to the other without more than the absolute minimum number of words.
This topic is about astronaut selection.
I am offering this little anecdote to try to illustrate the suggestion that personnel hired for an expedition be evaluated for their ability to shift gears from leader to follower and back again as smoothly as players in a championship basketball team shift responsibilities.
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th-
It takes time for leadership as you described above in your anecdote to emerge. I've advocated a military style organization in all my previous posts, and those based on a "triad" team basis make most sense to me. We simply cannot wait for the evolution of leadership under life or death situations. Here's my reasoning: say a team member is seriously injured operating a rover, or slides down a steep embankment. A 2 man/person team would probably not survive the experience. One-on-one rescue is damnably difficult to handle and in many cases, impossible. Having a predetermined small group leadership structure is important. Say the team leader is injured? Then a predetermined #2 takes over. I've said before that in early going, there should be no solo or 2 man excursions outside the habitat.
I really can't see an early Mars landing team consisting of more than 20-25 persons. The "leader," is essentially the primary decision maker and work allocator, but with considerably more authority than the average civilian "boss."
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2020-09-20 11:47:17)
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For Oldfart1939 ...
Thanks for your reminder of your advocacy of a military organization style for early pioneering ventures.
If some nation states carry out those expedition (US, China, Russia) I would expect to see the military model.
India is a mystery to me. Japan might be in the game at some point. I would expect a military model there, called something else.
The European Union is likewise a mystery ... I have ** no ** idea what they would come up with.
However, my suggestion of hiring people capable of working as a member of a team while leading in their specialty seems as though it would work for practically every model. The idea of a "great leader" seems antiquated to me, but it might turn out to be perfect for some cultures. I doubt it for the few remaining democratic states, but would expect it for China and Russia.
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th-
It's just a model that works. When lives are on the line millions of miles from home, it's not the time for social experimentation. There is a certain "comfort level" involved with this model. Sure, those who don't like authoritarian models will be displeased, but there will be LOTS of training involved before any departure to Mars. Leaders can make judgemental errors, but working within a tightly knit and highly trained team, they are usually minimized.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2020-09-20 21:01:52)
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There is probably nothing more complex that the ISS partnership, operation and command structure for the ISS even if its for short bubbles where the crew size is above 7....
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stat … a_rsa.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_control_center
http://www.spaceref.com/iss/ops/ISS.User.Guide.R2.pdf
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/p … P67235.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut … _positions
Partner nations are all part of the transfer of command at various times.
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For Oldfart1939 re #17
With your post in mind ....
For SpaceNut re #18
Thank you for the helpful list of references. More or less at random, I selected the esa document from 2001. It shows that even then, the partners in building the Space Station had found a way to agree upon the principles by which the participants would live together.
https://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bul … l105_6.pdf
The closest approximation to this Code until
then was a ‘Standards of
Conduct Agreement’, which a
mission specialist sent by a
foreign organisation such as ESA
for training in the United States
was required to sign before being
assigned to a specific US Space
Shuttle flight. The main purposes
of this document are to obtain the
person’s consent to be subject to
the authority, orders and direction
of the Commander, to limit the
disclosure of data which are
protected, and to refrain from
using his or her position or
information obtained in the course
of the mission for personal gain.
All crew members, of any
nationality, are subject to
the authority of the ISS
Commander
It seems reasonable (to me at least) to suppose that individual crews (from whatever nation) will follow the same or very similar guidelines.
How the crews from various nations will interact when on Mars (or the Moon sooner rather than later) is To Be Determined.
There was (I gather) a long discussion about how to deal with "use of force". In the end, compromise language was adopted, with a qualification, but any use of force is assumed never to be necessary. In other words (as I interpret the language) it was assumed that every person accepted as a member of the crew (from whatever nation) would refrain from behaving in a manner that would require application of force.
This position seems (to me at this point) unreasonable to adopt or expect when space vessels start carrying paying passengers, but the culture of human space may so firmly entrench that principle that it will flow relatively easily to non-crew passengers.
Thanks again to both of you for your contribution to this topic
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The mission selection process is not so defined as we are looking for the next in skill sets and ability to perform the science, the engineering analysis and the geological if we are exploring for resources as we will be on Mars. Then there is the trade engineering industrial abilities and construction hands on which after getting the resource will be put to work building and building the needed leverage to become self sufficient.
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Since we are talking about a variety of undertakings on later missions, there will still be something of a hierarchical structure to all activities. Here on Earth, all construction crews have a job foreman, and in research laboratories where science is done, there is always a group leader who directs the efforts of a research team. The idea that there can be looser associations in a hostile environment is rather fanciful. All these jobs will be structured before the mission ever departs Earth. The succession of responsibilities when or if a leader is killed or otherwise incapacitated needs to be clearly defined to prevent chaos.
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For Oldfart1939 re #21 and entire set of over 2000 posts
Because of the quality of your contributions to the topic so far, I decided to go back to the beginning of the messages you contributed, starting in 2016.
This is not the first time I've studied your opening post, and it probably won't be the last.
I need to read a great deal more (starting from the beginning) to try to get a sense of what kind of question might be worth your time.
I am not in disagreement with what I ** think ** you've pointed out so far, but I will be interested to try to glean from your writings any hints of how you would hire and how you would foster effective teams for a Mars expedition, or for an Earth-based undertaking, for that matter.
SearchTerm:AnchorOldfart1939
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th-
Thanks for the implied compliment about my posts. Maybe a bit about my personal background would give some insight into my thought processes.
First, I'm a military veteran, and served in the US Army as a medic before completing my degrees in Chemistry (BA in Chemistry, University of Colorado, then Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry, University of Wyoming); I also did an NIH Postdoc at University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Research Associateship at Stanford. After my academic career, I went into industry and started 2 separate business ventures. This is where my "selection abilities" for employees were developed. Learning to evaluate potential employees is a real education in itself, but it's more than reading resumes. I always looked for compatibility with fellow employees and ability to communicate, over and above good academic credentials. Mainly, the ability to do the job at hand superseded all other considerations. But I really required commitment to DO THE JOB RIGHT.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2020-09-22 20:49:49)
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For Oldfart1939 re #23
Thank you ** very ** much for your substantial boost to this topic!
I think that Post #23 is right ** up there ** is significance to GW Johnson's EducationDoneRight
SearchTerm:DoTheJobRight
Would you be willing to think back over your hires and write up a short synopsis of the process of hiring, development of the person, and your overall assessment of the success of the risk you took?
In another topic, SpaceNut has been leading a consideration of the reason we still have abject poverty in a nation the size of the United States.
Success in hiring does not guarantee success of a corporation, because management has a lot more to worry about than personnel, but it is an essential element of success.
Caveat ... I understand this is a public forum, and it would be inappropriate to post anything that could be tied back to individuals who are still living.
That concern may limit what you can post.
PS ... my Dad was in the Medic Corps in World War II .... he was with a unit that ended up occupying Germany after the surrender, but he stayed stateside for whatever reason.
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Selecting a new employee is sort of a crap shoot. There are many factors that only come to light later. But nowadays, the pre employment physicals and drug screenings help a lot. I had 2 bad experiences with alcoholism of people working either with me or under me. Had to walk one guy to the clinic for a blood alcohol during working hours, and he was immediately dismissed for being heavily under the influence--they did find some blood in his alcohol stream. Thankfully he was working under a different supervisor and I didn't have the nasty job of firing him.
Given the physical requirements of going to Mars, such problems would be discovered at the outset of the process, but under civilian hiring, all a guy has to do is stay off the bottle for a couple days prior to the physical. Having periodic and random screenings attempts to address these issues.
It's then a process of being an amateur psychologist an determining the compatibility with the requirements of the job and how well the individual fits the working environment and within the team. That's why most larger companies have these Human Resources specialists doing a lot of these tasks.
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