Samantha Harvey. 2024. Orbital. Dublin: Vintage. Winner of The Booker Prize 2024. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Human Factors and the International Space Station
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2001
The purposes of this panel are to inform the human factors community regarding the challenges of designing the International Space Station (ISS) and to stimulate the broader human factors community into participating in the various basic and applied research opportunities associated with the ISS. This panel describes the variety of techniques used to plan and evaluate human factors for living and working in space. The panel members have contributed to many different aspects of the ISS design and operations. Architecture, equipment, and human physical performance requirements for various tasks have all been tailored to the requirements of operating in microgravity.
Motivational profile of astronauts at the International Space Station
Acta Astronautica, 2010
Research has demonstrated that the motive triad of needs for achievement, power, and affiliation can predict variables such as occupational success and satisfaction, innovation, aggressiveness, susceptibility to illness, cooperation, conformity, and many others. The present study documents the motivational profiles of astronauts at three stages of their expedition. Thematic content analysis was employed for references to Winter's well-established motive markers in narratives (media interviews, journals, and oral histories) of 46 astronauts participating in International Space Station (ISS) expeditions. Significant pre-flight differences were found in relation to home agency and job status. NASA astronauts, compared with those from the Russian Space Agency, are motivated by higher need for power, as are commanders in comparison to flight engineers. The need for affiliation motive showed a significant change from pre-flight to in-flight stages. The implications of the relationship between the motivational profile of astronauts and the established behavioural correlates of such profiles are discussed.
Flying with Strangers: Postmission Reflections of Multinational Space Crews
On Orbit and Beyond, 2012
After the Space Age began as part of the national rivalry between the USSR and the United States, space exploration gradually took on a multinational character as both countries included astronauts from their respective allies, and eventually from each other, in their missions. This trend became institutionalized in the Shuttle-Mir program and in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). The latter is the rst truly international, as opposed to multinational, space capsule, in that it does not belong to and was not built by one country. In previous cases, one national space agency was always the host and crewmembers from other nations were perceived and treated as guests. This "guest" status, which usually 1. This research was made possible by Contract No. 9F007-033006 with the Canadian Space Agency and is part of the project Long-term Effects After Prolonged Space ight (LEAPS).
The Commercialisation of the International Space Station
Studi in Onore di Claudio Zanghì (a cura di Lina Panella - Ersiliagrazia Spatafora), vol. IV: Diritto dello spazio e miscellanea, 2011
The legal problems involved with the permanently manned International Space Station (ISS), especially when this architectonic complex in orbit is manned, pose a significant challenge for the jurist. As Lafferranderie, indicated, the international space station is decided as both a technical and legal concept. It is exactly this binomial that determines the conceptual complexity of spacecraft. The jurist must perform in an area where technological modes draw the of legislative conduct, and therefore legal creation is conditional on those technical influences
Agent based modeling of collaboration and work practices onboard the international space station
2002
ABSTRACT: The International Space Station is one the most complex projects ever, with numerous interdependent constraints affecting productivity and crew safety. This requires planning years before crew expeditions, and the use of sophisticated scheduling tools. Human work practices, however, are difficult to study and represent within traditional planning tools. We present an agent-based model and simulation of the activities and work practices of astronauts onboard the ISS.
Reference Guide to the International Space Station
The book was originally intended to be for the public, Congress, and potential customers interested in flying payloads on the International Space Station but was almost immediately adopted for astronaut candidate familiarization and training and is widely used as a reference both in technical circles and by the media. The book identifies the major components of the station, the functionality of each system, and the manner in which the station was assembled and operates. The book was originally sought it 2003 but the first likely authors had difficulty determining how to compile it. I got the assignment in 2005 and was able to compile the book because of my familiarity with the systems architecture, since I was one of the original station systems architects, for Man-Systems, mainly the habitable modules and the interior module design, throughout the stations formative stages from 1986 through 1991. At that time I wrote and compiled the more technical Space Station Man-Systems Architectural Control Document.
Quest: The History of Spaceflight, 2018
Winner of the 2017 Sacknoff Prize for Space History from the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) Aerospace Special Interest Group (Albatross) and Quest: The History of Spaceflight: https://www.spacehistory101.com/Sacknoff\_Prize\_for\_Space\_History\_s/1824.htm Since the earliest days of spaceflight, a range of actors—philosophers, scientists, engineers, lawyers, politicians, and “the rest of us”—have connected the view of Earth from outer space, often called the “world picture,” with “thinking globally.” In doing so, these actors have related space activities to new kinds of political and existential meaning. Historical, anthropological, and sociological studies of these perspectives usefully deconstruct the influence of colonialism, politics, social order, and culture on the world picture, suggesting that its so-called global thinking is not so global after all. Notably, Benjamin Lazier (2011) and Jordan Bimm (2014) historicize views about observing Earth from outer space, mainly as intellectual, politicized developments among philosophers and early spacefarers. In Lazier’s account, the world picture is flat, not merely a philosophical but an actual “enframing”—literally, a picture of Earth from space. But for astronauts and the engineers who design their vessels, the view of Earth from outer space occurs not within a two-dimensional frame but a physical space, which I tentatively call a “world space.” This approach inverts the object of study in discourses on the world picture from the impersonal “Whole Earth” to the space in which actors encounter it. I ask: How do the historical contingencies and sociological networks of spacecraft design influence astronaut experiences of viewing Earth from outer space and their “global thinking” or lack thereof? I offer an historical and a sociological account of design, architecture, and bodies in one of the most unique sites of the International Space Station (ISS), the Cupola, often referred to as “our window on the world.” I argue that the Cupola and ISS are what Michel Foucault would call “heterotopias.” This concept presents a politically-charged, unorthodox lens through which to study such spaces. The heterotopia enriches scholarship on the world picture, providing a language by which to highlight flows of power in the Cupola and ISS. First, I review and critique studies on space, place, outer space, and thinking globally, using the heterotopia to intervene in these discourses. I then reveal various kinds of heterotopias related to life in the Cupola that highlight control and resistance to it. I show that the Cupola was designed and operates to order life and technological practices within and beyond its space, but that it also induces experiences that contest this spatial order. Although the Cupola may not create a “sense of place,” as Lazier might suggest and as Lisa Messeri claims of planetary scientists’ encounters with other worlds , it partly rejects its own spatial order by eroding astronauts’ global thinking and subverting its function as a technology that disciplines astronaut life. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to express the utmost gratitude to Richard Staley for his invaluable and continuing insights and guidance during and after the writing of my M.Phil. Dissertation at Cambridge, from which this article is adapted. I must also thank Charissa Varma, Marwa Elshakry, Peter Dickens, Jordan Bimm, and Jeremy Kessler for their generous feedback and for various discussions that stimulated the development of the piece. I am further indebted to Mary Brazelton, Josh Nall, Simon Schaffer, Asif Siddiqi, Matthew Hersch, and Eleni Panagiotarakou for conversations on and offline that extended the reach of my research.
The first space hotel employees: Human resources challenges in a post-terrestrial paradigm
Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 2017
This article discusses some of the issues regarding the first employees to work in a space hotel. As space hotels initially will be vastly different to existing hotels on Earth, it is important to question what human resource challenges this will raise for hospitality workers and providers. To assist reflection on this issue, the notions of space tourism and space tourist are explored, and a definition of a space hotel is included to create product and service boundaries. Plausible futures methodology is used to create five main human resource considerations and concludes by suggesting this sector is largely unexplored.