Standards
NASA-STD-3000
(or the Man-Systems Integration Standards, MSIS)
was written in the late 80’s and was NASA’s
first human factors standard. NASA-STD-3000 specifies
how to design systems that will support human health,
safety, and productivity in space flight. It was intended
to apply to all NASA systems with human crews. However,
it was written too specifically and geared towards
existing programs and systems (the International Space
Station, for instance). So NASA decided to write a
set of human factors standards in more general terms
– a standard that would apply to all present
and future systems with human crews (an orbiter, a
lunar lander, a mars rover, an EVA suit, etc.). NASA
also decided to combine these human factors standards
with a set of standards for crew health and medical
support. The result is an agency-level two-volume
document that addresses the human needs for space
flight. This new standard is called NASA-STD-3001, the NASA Space
Flight Human Systems Standards. Volume 1, “Crew
Health” covers the requirements needed to support
the astronaut health (medical care, nutrition, sleep,
exercise, etc) and Volume 2, “Habitability and
Environmental Health” covers the requirements
for a system design that will maintain astronaut safety
and performance (design of the food facilities, bathroom
design, layout of workstations, seating and crew restraint
design, lighting requirements, etc.)
These volumes are written in general terms because
all new systems will have their own specific requirements.
But, both volumes require that each program establish
a specific set of requirements that will meet the
general standards. Program-specific requirement documents
exist now for ISS (SSP 50005) and for Constellation
program (HSIR).
So, what happened to NASA-STD-3000? NASA-STD-3000
is going to become a reference handbook for space
human factors. It will not be a “standard”
that is referenced in development contracts. The new
handbook will be called the Human Integration Design
Handbook and will serve a number of functions. Among
other things, it will be a resource for people writing
the contractual program-specific standards, it will
be an information baseline for research workers, and
it will be a design guide for engineers. This fiscal
year, we are in the process of transferring the information
in NASA-STD-3000 into a handbook format. And, where
possible, we will update the contents with human factors
information we have learned in the past 20 years.
Contacts:
NASA POC: Dane M. Russo, Ph.D.
NASA POC: Ken Stroud
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