Aviat Space Envir Md
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Aviat Space Envir Md · Jun 2000
Predictors of behavior and performance in extreme environments: the Antarctic space analogue program.
To determine which, if any, characteristics should be incorporated into a select-in approach to screening personnel for long-duration spaceflight, we examined the influence of crewmember social/ demographic characteristics, personality traits, interpersonal needs, and characteristics of station physical environments on performance measures in 657 American men who spent an austral winter in Antarctica between 1963 and 1974. ⋯ These results represent an important first step in the development of select-in criteria for personnel on long-duration missions in space and other extreme environments. These criteria must take into consideration the characteristics of the environment and the limitations they place on meeting needs for interpersonal relations and task performance, as well as the characteristics of the individuals and groups who live and work in these environments.
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Commercial space travel may soon be a reality. If so, microgravity, high acceleration, and radiation exposure, all known hazards, will be accessible to the general public. Therefore, space tourism has medical implications. Even though the first flights will feature space exposure times of only a few minutes, the potential may someday exist for exposure times long enough to warrant careful consideration of the potential hazards to the space-faring public. The effects of acceleration and microgravity exposure are well known on the corps of astronauts and cosmonauts. The effects of space radiation are partially known on astronauts, but much remains to be discovered. However, there are problems using astronaut data to make inferences about the general public. Astronauts are not necessarily representative of the general public, since they are highly fit, highly screened individuals. Astronaut data can tell us very little about the potential hazards of microgravity in pediatric, obstetric and geriatric populations, all of whom are potential space tourists. Key issues in standard setting will be determining acceptable limits of pre-existing disease and inferring medical standards from mission profiles. It will not be a trivial task drafting minimal medical standards for commercial space travel. It will require the collaboration of space medicine physicians, making the best guesses possible, based on limited amounts of data, with limited applicability. A helpful departure point may be the USAF Class 3 medical standard, applicable to NASA payload specialists. It is time to begin preliminary discussions toward defining those standards. ⋯ acceleration, aerospace medicine, medical standards, microgravity, radiation, space, space tourism, environmental hazards, environmental medicine.