Space Studies master’s student, Annie Wargetz, will give her thesis proposal presentation as follows.  Please mark your calendars and show your support by attending.

When: Monday, October 1^st at 2:30 pm

Where: Ryan Hall, Room 111

Title: Crew Selection and Training Requirements for Long Duration Manned Planetary Missions

About:  For a long-duration manned, inter-planetary mission, selecting the crew will be one of the most important processes in the design of the mission, specifically for the first time.  Crew composition and dynamics can be the factor that contributes to a mission’s success or its failure, even if the equipment, such as the hardware and technology, on board is near perfect.  Once selected, the crew will need training in myriad areas, including emergency procedures, equipment maintenance, planetary operations, medical protocols, conflict resolution, interpersonal communication, self-control under high stress situations, as well as many others.  As the crew’s diversity increases in the professional, socio-cultural, and personality-type areas, so does the need for additional training.

By conducting an exhaustive literature review on the history of crew selection and training for manned spaceflight and Earth-bound analog missions, much is expected to be learned about the selection processes which proved to be successful and those where improvement may be needed.  This literature review will provide the basis for answering the question: how do we select and train a crew for a long duration spaceflight to another planetary surface, such as the Moon, an asteroid, or Mars? This review will also prove useful in learning and formulating recommendations on how to select a crew for the Inflatable Lunar Habitat (ILH) currently being constructed at the University of North Dakota. 

Upon completion of the literature review, a new preliminary schematic approach for selecting a crew and training them for a long duration planetary mission will be generated, as well as a set of criteria which can be used to select a crew for the ILH.  The new schematic approach will take into account potential hazards of the operational environment and impossibility of rescue expeditions from Earth if emergency happens.  For the ILH crew, the confinement of the crew in close quarters will be taken into consideration.

There is much we have learned about how to select and train a crew that we can use in moving forward towards manned missions beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but there will be many lessons we have not yet learned or even foreseen.