E317 - Monthly Moon Missions Missing Mishap Management

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Welcome to Human Factors' Cast, your weekly podcast for human factors, psychology, and design.

Greetings and salutations, earthlings, you are listening to another episode of Human Factors' Cast, this is episode 317.

We're recording the so live across the internet on March 19th, 26th.

I'm your host Nick Roman.

I'm joined today by Mr. Barry Kerr.

Hey, that neck is great to be here again.

Also coincidentally an earthling.

We got it for you tonight.

Instead of the beam of AI or any AI related things, we will be picking you up right from where we left off last time and be talking about space this week.

But first we got some programming notes, Barry, what's the latest over at 1202?

In a bit of a running theme, the 1202 is, we still have February's episode up, and that's the latest one out there with Martin Thode, the current president of the CHF, and longtime friend of the show.

March is running slightly behind, but it is hopefully getting recorded this weekend because what we're wanting to look at is balancing remote learning of human factors with everything else that goes on and how does that fit with every day life.

So hopefully if we get that done, then that would be great.

And then that sets us nicely up for what's going to be going on in April, which is where we'll be out ergonomics in practice 26.

And so hopefully we're going to come out with out from there with a bunch of interviews and all the gossip of the tea about what's going on, been going on at conference.

And just to highlight that if you do use the 12 or two human factors website that you need to be using 12 or two pod dot com.

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I'm going to good one tonight.

You're going to get some zesty one miners and zingers about the stories tonight.

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Barry select to play this.

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Nick is our host for a worst host.

But hey, this is the part of the ship all about human factors news.

Barry for the stories this week.

Well, Nick, as you mentioned earlier, we are going back to space and particularly going back to the moon,

but not to talk about rockets or propulsion or even the technology we talk about people because one of the biggest mistakes

we still making complex systems is assuming that if the engineering works, the system works.

In human factors, we know that that's just not true.

Systems don't succeed or fail in isolation.

They succeed or fail based on how well they support humans, the humans inside them.

And then these two stories really do expose that tension.

On one side, we've got growing ambition.

Talk of making lunar missions routine almost industrialized.

On the other, we've got a very uncomfortable reality check.

What happens when something goes wrong?

And there is no easy way to recover.

So tonight, this isn't really about space exploration.

It's much more about the fundamental question.

Are we designing systems that humans can actually live, work and survive in?

Or are we still designing them as if humans are just another component?

So let's start with the ambition and our first story.

So the idea being discussed is a future where we're landing on the moon every month by 2027.

Now on the face fit, that sounds like progress.

It sounds like maturity.

It sounds like we're moving away from exploration to operations, but from a human factors perspective,

Alan Bells probably should be ringing a little bit.

Because scaling frequency isn't just a logistical problem.

It's a human performance problem.

When you move from to that kind of tempo, you're not longer designing for exceptional performance.

You're designing for repeatability under real-world conditions.

That means fatigue, training variability, procedural drift, maintenance pressures, organizational shortcuts,

all the things we know creep in when systems become routine.

When we've seen this before, in aviation, in healthcare, in defence, in oil and gas,

as soon as something becomes normal, the system starts to stretch and the humans inside it start to carry more and more of the burden.

So the real question here isn't, can we land on the moon every month?

It's more about what does that do to the humans within the system?

And are we actually designed for that reality?

Nick is landing on the moon every month good, bad or disastrous waiting to happen for you.

Okay, we want an hinged comment, here's an unhinged comment.

This feels very much like we'll figure it out in post, like we did last week on the show,

except for the show is the moon and the moon.

So how do we figure that problem out later?

I think, look, the monthly landing cadence to me actually has a societal impact that I don't think is brought up in the article.

This is something that I think about quite often, when we think about space travel and space operations,

they are exciting and they are something that, you know, is like aspirational.

We develop these technology so that technology can lack of a better term, trickle down to our everyday lives.

And so I think what might happen is you might make space less sexy.

You're going to normalize it to the point where we don't even care where we,

but on the other hand, it could go the opposite way where we treat it as like critical infrastructure that we need to support is like a part of our everyday life.

I can see it going either way.

I tend to see it as being less exciting over time as probably the default.

I think if we think about what or not something like this needs to work.

The cadence must work.

If failure with the cadence impacts the schedule, there's going to be a damaged public perception of space-faring adventures,

just because of the competence stated with that, right?

It's literally you're trying to run operations to get to the moon every month.

If there's continuous delays, then it's going to be seen as incompetence.

And it's not going to be seen as anything from a public person.

Some of the vertical frames this as like a production with the lander.

But really, I think you kind of hinted at it in the intro here.

This is fundamentally human factors.

Maintenance, mutations, organization, all that stuff.

When it comes to get a moon landing every month.

It's exciting, but I'm worried.

What are you thinking?

I mean, for me, this is, it's about appetite for achievement, isn't it?

It's the setting out the stall about what is this?

What is spaceflight going to be in the next five, 10, 20 years?

Going forward, because for the longest time now,

I think there's been very much less appetite for spaceflight space engagement

until SpaceX came along.

SpaceX came along, set a sort of a new narrative for the spaceflight,

showed that it was from a commercial perspective more achievable.

They were throwing up rockets like two or dozen, great.

Sort of normalizing it a bit more.

But here now we're talking about something that is not just about visiting space.

It's not just about going to the ISS, it's about doing bigger things.

And ironically, I think we feel that the moon isn't a big thing.

That it just gone to the moon, it's just gone to the moon.

But it is actually way further away than what the ISS is.

And it is a significant thing to do.

So it's not just about visiting the moon,

but it's about utilizing the moon.

This is what the bigger thing here is.

It's about going to that next phase about having a longer term presence there.

I think the point you made was really good around around that perception piece

because when this idea that the moon landing might just become dull boring,

because we saw that during the Apollo times,

that the earlier Apollo missions, the world stopped.

Everybody wanted to watch what was going on.

It was on TV.

And if you then, you've asked for it to Apollo 13.

And there's, you see the lives to find it.

And it's highlighted in the film as well,

where the astronauts thought they were going to be on TV,

and then everybody was watching.

The news networks didn't really care.

It wasn't broadcast until Apollo 13 became a problem.

And then it became newsworthy again.

So I think that this is probably what we will achieve here.

And is that the achievement is that Apollo, sorry,

lunar missions flights to the moon will become as routine as catching the bus to town.

So what I think is interesting here as well is it isn't just about the flight.

It is about what it is we're going to do with the moon.

And I'll quote from the article that says that the accelerators flight rate goes hand in hand

with preparing the lunar surface for the influx of visitors,

which explains the need for monthly missions to the moon.

So monthly mission, we're talking about 12 missions a year,

which because I think monthly mission sounds like it's a lot.

And it is quite a fast tempo.

I can barely get podcasts out in that, in that tempo.

Whereas, you know, they're talking about doing that,

but we are only talking about 12 a year.

So that is repeated the same thing 12 times.

But what does that infrastructure on the moon look like?

So I think that this is what I find interesting is,

what do we think that needs to be built on the moon in order to handle

whoever is going up there?

So therefore that leads to why are people going up there?

What is it that we anticipate doing?

So yeah, so I think initially that that's where I'm at.

What do you see as being so critical that we need to develop on the moon?

That we need to have this have this tempo.

What do you think is going to be that starting point?

I see a backup plan for what happens if he gets stranded on the moon.

But that's our next story.

I think a lunar base is likely what they're gearing up for.

I would.

I think that there's a science that can be done.

If we had a lunar base, something that we can conduct experiments in

and we have it is something that we can attempt to consider soil.

Those types of things.

And really having a habitat that is safe for astronauts live in.

I think it's the first step and are gearing up for that.

That makes sense.

That strikes me about the a year cadence is that.

Are they, you know, obviously these are different crews.

There might be some crossover across crews.

But that to me, and there's going to be these handoffs between things like training and lessons learned that they experience on the mission.

And there's going to be a huge, I guess, need for human factors when it comes to things or that that knowledge transfer happens across crews.

And reasonable timeline.

Otherwise, you're going to start encountering some of these systemic issues repeatedly that we know our issues that are not resolved early on.

That to me is going to be really important for the success of a fast paced launch cadence.

I think there's also a lot of, I imagine that the moon landing system is likely automated.

With some sort of human oversight, but there's going to be some of those things with automated systems that are in place from earth to the moon.

There's going a lot of different procedures that need to be established and maintained and updated.

So time as we learn more stuff, there's going to be the between, I already mentioned, but not only crew, but mission control.

You also have the coordination between various contractors.

I think they mentioned space access in this article, but I imagine that there's already some coordination between the various spaceflight companies and contractors.

I imagine that there's likely going more coordination that needs to happen if you're going to increase the tempo list.

I don't, I find that there's, there's a lot to think about.

And I desperately hope that they figured out a lot of this.

My world is saying that they're going to learn a lot here, and I hope it's not at the cost of.

But let me back up and ask you, what do you think they're going to build on the move, do you see with with this type of seed?

Well, I mean, the article does say that they're clearly on about building the moon base because that's where Isaacman does say, if you're building moon base and you're going to stay, you'll need lots of missions to and from the moon.

So that's a non-riding comment.

So we, if you're staying on the moon base, I think there's loads of issues for people around here, because we know that just from the physical perspective that the issue of gravity on the body is huge or not a lot.

Depending on which way you look at it.

So when you're not, when you're in space, right, as soon as you get into orbit, you start to have to do exercising and so to make sure you retain bone density.

If you're living on some sort of moon base, then that has long term effects of the body.

So at what point, because you're going to have to, if you're setting up a moon base, how do you crew it?

Are people going to be up there for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, years?

Or are you going to get to the point we're actually saying actually people are going to go up there and they're not coming back purely because that if they, if they're up there for any long,

long period of time that they, that they're busy inhabiting the moon, that no man that you just can't do the level of exercise that is required and to operate a day job.

And the unexpected come back to worth the end of it.

So there's all that sort of, I think fundamental question about what does a, what does living on the moon mean and look like?

And does that 12, does that 12 flight to your cadence mean that you can have good rotoring of people that actually you can go up there for a month and then you come back and you don't go back for a period of time.

So are you, is it a one month on six month off type of view in order to maintain your the physiology of your body?

Or will people just be happy to turn around and say, you know what? I'm, I'm, I'm off of space and I want to go to the moon.

I want to go to Mars, you know, that sort of thing. People make some significant life changing decisions that they say that they commit that they properly commit to this.

And then that means that there is a whole, a whole lot of responsibility there to make sure that whatever systems are put up there are maintained because it's not like say the ISS where we turn around and I think it's the next few years we're going to turn around and say, you know what?

It's done now decommissioning it. Let me burn it back in the atmosphere. We're done with that piece.

As soon if people are making this long term commitment to lunar and beyond, we can't just leave them there. It's not it's not a thing.

So that's where I think one piece of sort of the physiology element is going to be really interesting about how we deal with that.

Another bit is around the systems and equipment that we end up using because again, we mentioned SpaceX, but but they're obviously other companies out there now within the space race proving reusability.

Then rockets are going to be reused on a regular basis. That means that there's going to be testing. There's going to be maintenance of them things.

And in the same way that we insist on good maintenance of vehicles and things, we're going to have to make sure that there is enough testing and maintenance spares logistics, et cetera, to match that cadence of rocket use.

So at the moment, we're celebrating the fact that again, SpaceX has reused certain rockets three, four, five times.

If we are putting this into the mainstream, are we expected to use the same rocket 12 times in a row, or are we using, you know, what is that mean time between failure expectation going to be for that.

And as we mentioned, as I mentioned in the blurb, will our will the fact that it becomes regular mean the direct that actually will be able will be more willing to say, all that isn't quite right.

We'll just fly it anyway. It'll be fine. And we'll catch it on the next run, which we do see when you have more things like this.

And I guess the last bit I would throw is how is if this is basically merchandising and having almost anybody or more people can go to the moon.

What role we will comfort and class pay it a play into this. Are you going to have a rocket with first class and standard class operations or business class.

And are you going to expect to go there and just be a civilian. And as you get in, you'll have somebody read out or you'll have the card in front of you that does what to do and it gets emergency.

See the next story. Or is it are you always going to have professional astronauts doing this.

So yeah, I think there's there's a lot of issues there that we need to really consider.

What do you think about this idea about living on the moon and making them sort of people have to make that sort of significantly decision. How do you think you would handle that.

I think that's I think that's embed astronauts take just by.

If we're looking at near astronauts who are embarking on this this journey here are like aware that something could go wrong and that they would spend the rest of their lives on the moon.

However, long or short that is there's some more societal like deeper.

What does it mean to be to emigrate from earth to their planetary body.

That is a different question that I think we're talking about here in the in the short term, but it is an important one because there will like the different reasons that people explore away from earth.

Right running away from your problem is or the thrill of adventure and some seeking some or wanting to continue science in another environment, right.

There's different reasons for a second though I'd like to talk about what this is for the people here on earth or from the people going to the moon.

But also there's there's this whole subsection sub subclass of people that are going to be affected by it on earth.

And these are the people who are working in mission control king on the operations logistics of space flight from ground effective, right.

What does this monthly be mean for our people going to get burned out on sending up a rocket every month with people on it.

Is there going to be any drift in the amount of in the procedures that need to be followed, right.

Is there anything that's taken from other don't like how air control and airports handle flights are.

Is there going to be something similar for space flight that you know once once we get around the astronauts only problem.

What you know what when we do increase cadence what if it's once a day at that point what if you have constant moon landings that just you know very people to and from the earth from to the moon.

I think that gets into a lot of other problems that are not going to be present here at this 12th year but 12 month cadence but.

You know I think there are going to be some real human factors issues when it comes to things like alarm fatigue or decision decision when it comes to these like fairly novel circumstances when when you're.

You're going to the moon once a month that has traditionally been i'm going to use this term moon shot like really you're going to the moon and you have to think about.

I don't know the this is a good segue to the next story is what happens when something does is there a backup plan to get those folks off of the moon or you know coming back so did you want to finish up any other last note like for the next one.

But well I think that that point you just made is actually quite good one because we when you look at some of these things we're assuming that on this this monthly trajectory so you got a bunch of people going out you got a bunch of people coming back we've had some stories fairly recently where people have got ill on the on the ISS and then you think about other fairly normal functions of of human beings things like pregnancy things like just generally getting older or.

People have things like panic attacks or get claustrophobic claustrophobia or you know there's all sorts of things that we sort of take for granted here that okay something significantly goes wrong away you go to hospital or you're going to get some support or whatever.

You're not going to have the almost the moon is almost going to be a bit wild west when it comes to them so if you turn around and you maybe get ill or something like that but the next we've only just got there so the next.

Shuttle isn't around for another month what's happening there, especially if it's something that is like pregnancy or something like that that really relies on on gravity to make sure that there's no issues and things and things like that how we're going to have to work out how all these sort of things work and and what how do we get people back and on what do we do with them when when they get here because presumably it's not just the simple case of getting back to work.

And going straight to hospital and something there's going to be procedures in place and all of that so yeah I'm really I'm overall I'm really quite enthused by this idea that we are.

Going for the bigger picture that we are looking to set out an appetite for.

In regular moon journeys because that can only take us take us onwards which has been sort of lacking up to this point so that would be great but I think there is once that does happen there is going to be plenty work for human practice practitioners to be supporting this ambition.

Yeah I think I think that's a great transition to the next story let's get into it.

Cool so yeah so this second story is about rescuing astronauts and so this is where the second story could right through that ambition that we've just been talking about because when you strip it back there's a pretty stark finding we don't yet have a really credible way to rescue astronauts if they get into serious trouble on the moon.

Now from a human practice perspective this is the bit we should always start with not the success case but the failure case because systems don't get judged on when things go right they get judged on how they behave when things go wrong.

And in this case we're talking about an environment where you just can't send send help quickly you've got extreme constraints on life support all of the time and crews may be forced to make high stake decisions with very very limited options.

So this becomes a question of designing for survival not just operation what does autonomy really mean when you're cut off.

How do you support decision making when stress time pressure and uncertainty or their peak and critically how long can a human actually endure in that system before the system fails them because if rescue isn't viable then the burden shifts entirely onto the crew and the design and that leads to an uncomfortable necessary question are we building systems that are resilient to failure or are we quietly accepting that some failures are just not survivable.

Then what do you think the article sites no rescue capability and I think that's a professional way of saying yes you live there now.

Now you're in an EVA suit like I think in a lot of ways this headline is sensational it's you know we don't have a plan for weapons or somebody gets stuck on the moon.

But you know I think that is important to think about if rescue is not an option what is the option.

You know we can't go through and do the martian where where you have somebody stuck there back and they they works on their own to live I think when I think about this I think about applying other domains.

So you know submarine or offshore drilling where there are these habitats that are occupied for long periods of time.

The moon ultimately when you have that base needs to have some sort of temporary habitat to support until you plan is made just because you don't have a rescue plan in place doesn't me that you can't build one.

I think we're hoping best case scenario here and that's kind of what you're saying is we need to design for when the systems go wrong but if these habitats to help support that then I think then I think that's important to the I think what's perhaps your problem then a singular event where something goes wrong is where you have this becoming I mentioned this earlier with the cadence but like a systemic issue that happens over time.

It becomes harder and harder to fix because it's baked in where oh no we've we've you know left system failure look at them no problem.

Oh it happened again okay we'll come back on the next if we start doing that and making it a practice that's much harder to fix than trying to solve it first time we're curious though Barry what do you think

is going to go on in people's heads when what are your initial thoughts.

Well it's interesting is that because I think this is in the initial phase this is all going to be about the attitude of those users those operators those people who were initially there because if you're going to go up I would imagine the early people go up our all trained astronauts that have been trained to

and into their lives and they all will fully understand the risks will be in a certain is adventure mode they fully appreciate the fact because they've they've signed up to the program they know that things can go wrong and this is got

presence throughout or space flight already that all the astronauts who grew up know that things can go wrong and they accept that I think there's there's real reason why a lot of early astronauts in particular were all test pilots there is a certain thing around the type of attitude that they have.

So if you but once you transition from that adventure mode shall we say to standard mode so not let's say normal people now we're transitioning to the to the moon and doing more of that sort of stuff does that mean that the that there was

different type of change is because how often whenever you know you get a new bit of care to you maybe go and do some some you may be going to roll a coast or something like that and you sign the disclaimer saying yeah yeah yeah and I know the wall would all the risks are you sign it off you don't really read them.

But then suddenly you're in the middle of an emergency and you have to do that you you want to get back and you can't for whatever reason what happens to your risk appetite you've already mentioned the film the

Martian this is almost a bit projectile Mary where people are going essentially out of something and not necessarily expecting to come back how does

the attitude change but it I guess you're the way of looking at it is is this just the sacrifice that we pay to be an adventuring type of species.

When they the early Apollo missions were going on there was apparently a speedwriter who drafted a speed for Nixon there was intended to be read on TV if there was a moon disaster that

that really happened and this the part of this speech say fate is ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These men these brave men Neil Armstrong and Edward Aldrin know that there was no hope for their recovery but they also know that they was hopeful mankind in their sacrifice and that is very much of that.

Everybody accepting at that point that these you know it just happens you know that the things go wrong that's part of the job it's not a drama just get on with it.

That adventurous spirit is going to go away and we're going to have what we have now an expectation of survival not an expectation of risk so we will have to get to I mean I completely agree with what you say it's a sensationalist.

Headline it's almost it's a sensationalist article because we are still at that early stage where we can't expect to know we don't even know what we're building on the moon we don't know how why we're going to be on the moon in the medium to long term so how can we truly have worked out what the risks are there for what are the reactions to those risks.

Short of saying we know that there's going to those going to be somebody who has a medical emergency on the moon they're going to so what can you do on the moon and therefore what point do you have to get home the correlation with the ISS here the ISS always has to have a return module so be the Soyuz or a dragon or whatever.

Linked up to the to the ISS in case something happens then the all part that is the emergency vehicle the all pile in there and away home they go with I think very short notice is there going to be something like that on the moon where there is a rocket ready to return and it can just load people up and you go within a within a matter of minutes given the way that a lot of this works in terms of trajectories time space and all that sort of stuff because it's not a.

The half hour trip to get back to the earth I think there's going to be a lot greater planning involved and there's we're going to have to make sure a lot more things can be done on the moon as it is so how would you.

Set up or what sort of the processes do we think from a human perspective we will need to go through to be able to categorize what gets done on the moon and what doesn't.

Yeah I think I think the default would be do everything that you can not on the moon here.

Right it's a plan that don't get stuck on the moon I think that's not great contingency plans but I think also you know when when you think about we really need to prioritize what is important when we send people i'm not saying that we're not doing that i'm just saying that.

When we go to the moon when we go in the face we should be mindful about what science or mission we are trying to accomplish not just go for that which again I don't think we're.

That but you know I've that up to the experts pushing the field in the vast domains for what to study next I think.

The interesting thing to me is that.

The psyche of the people that go it has to be.

One that this could happen right you brought up the speech and I think the friends who made along the real payload along the way was the unchecked confidence that the astronauts have you know thinking about going and conducting a mission I really just.

Like it has to take a certain kind of person to do it snow backup plan or getting somebody home and that is a.

I know psyche valves happen for astronauts but that is a very specific type of evaluation that needs to be continued I don't know I.

This is.

It's weird isn't it because I think there is i mean you raised the point about.

People going you know why people going to the moon and the fact that we would expect that they're doing it for good reasons therefore get better and the proper medical workups are not to do the job.

I guess what we've seen recently with blue origin and a few others this this space tourism you know people with deep enough pockets certainly the moment people with deep enough pockets.

Being able to jump in into one of these things and and flight to the moon because they can not because they should but just because they can.

And certainly I think we're going to see in the short term when this becomes a thing more of that happening and so because why I guess why wouldn't it given given society today.

So when you look at them them elements are we then turning around and saying they they're held to a different standard or why are they then go because again when you look at infrastructure you're going to go to the moon you're then going to have an infrastructure for them to stay.

Does it then end up being its own its own organization its own economy all that sort of stuff in order to maintain.

The space tourism because people have the heavy monies when them tourists then become ill or whatever they're going to have to they'll have a different level of expectation as to what would if you're there to work so I think the way that people.

I think the thing that worries me most is the way that people will change their perceptions about what.

What space what or lunar travel is as it becomes more commonplace because at the moment you suddenly turn around to your eye and said right Nick Barry you're going to be on the next space X for the next dragon flight on with space X you're going to go up to there I said I think we both be.

I think we both be excited stroke terrified stroke show me the training show me how to do the job properly whereas if you then go on a bus you don't necessarily do that if you're going to if you're going to play now you'll go and you'll you'll it must be if you go on the train if you're going to play for the first time.

You very much listen to everything that the safety message says once you've been on it five or six times once you've been on it 10 times once some people are on it daily weekly whatever.

It's the same multi like yeah yeah yeah okay fair enough just yeah another cards there i'll put that away once space becomes that that's probably then when we enter into the biggest risk phase yeah and what we need to understand more about is how to deal with that complacency and work and deal with deal with the issues then.

yeah I want you know there's more relation between these two stories than perhaps we're thinking about because i'm wondering if the cadence piece is a card you know is there a word somebody to survive on the moon for a month while they wait for the next ship.

Yeah is that kind of built into these things I wonder if they're also kind of pising the progress piece of it rather than general genuine recoverability.

And that feels bad to me but hopefully it's like you know just make progress so that way we can to have something not quite go right.

I think there's going to be something there around like you said having with that planning about what does that what does that cadence look like what is actually going to be on the moon you then need to have them pieces on the moon to be able to maybe manage these longer term issues that you don't need to worry about in other sectors so on if you're on an offshore rig for example then they do have extensive medical facilities because trying to get home is so this is going to be the same isn't it that what you can do on the moon.

With facilities so that means you're going to have to build many facilities and things like that dental facilities etc etc in order to be able to manage it so.

Yes I think this is going to be a case of let's look at risk in a different way look at how we can solve as you said solve issues at wherever it happens as opposed to relying on just pulling any mode the world's biggest emergency rip call to get you back to get you back to earth.

There's always the backup plan you can.

Towards the earth.

Thank you let's wrap up let's thank you to our friends over a few tourism and gizmodo for our new stories going along we do post the links to in our discord where you can join us for more discussion on these stories and much more we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back to see what's going on in the human creativity right after this.

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Thank you to our friends over at the human society technical group for aerospace this week in aerospace.

Thanks Nick and Barry this is Elena and Phil from the aerospace system technical group at HFBS last time during our discussion on pilot peer support program we mentioned that pilots are trained to put their emotions in a box before stepping on to the aircraft.

And we wanted to dig deeper on the emotional aspect of piloting so this week.

We invited Alejandra Ritz Sakura who is the first author of a recent systematic literature review on the role of emotions during flight simulations.

Her work was published in the international journal of aerospace psychology.

Hi Alejandra thanks for joining us.

Hi thank you so much for inviting me my name is Alejandra Ritz Sakura.

I hold that PhD in the education of the good you from my hearing university.

And the topic of my dissertation once around the role of emotions and an affect in pilot training, especially with assimilation.

Yeah so aviation human factors whenever we assess a new technology.

We tend to focus a lot of our measures on performance and workload.

This is saying sure that the technology is accurate and easy to use for pilots.

But your work focus on emotions what led you to that topic.

Well exactly these intense connection between workload or cognitive load and performance like in my previous research.

I was more with medical training and then I came with high sticks proficiency of the decision making that these professionals may cut can have an impact on likes of others.

So in this case I went like what about the most like emotions are also a reaction and complete a role in the decision making and in the performance of these type of professions.

When I started reading more in pilot training.

It's like it's all about workload situation or it's like more cognitive processing where they're there than emotions per se.

So that why I wanted to begin more of like what about this affective side that is reactive have a role in performance.

And that's how I started to bring to my question of like what's the relation between affect performance in flight training simulations.

So before we dive into your report.

It's important to give a comment understanding to our listeners about the terms that you're using affects emotions mood because they're not synonyms right.

No, no, no, they're not.

So yeah, this is a good question.

So affect is a umbrella turn that's how we call it like encompass all the emotions stress and mood.

It's the effect is a reaction we have like what's good for me or what for me is like a book evaluation.

And then we can see it reflected in mood stress or emotions mood is a we call it the emotional weather like the effective weather sorry like more in general.

How are we feeling like you can say I'm feeling down at any okay.

But it's very general and it can last for a few days and it's not specific to a situation.

It's positive or negative, but it's like not specific then for stress.

It's always feeling it always feels as negative because it's a challenging situation and it's always arousing.

But again, it lasts for a few hours.

Again, like is is not specific like there's not one specific trigger for stress to happen is like more situational.

Emotion that are these are the ones are extremely specific.

There we are for something specific that happened and they can be positive or negative again in the sense of feeling good or feeling bad and they can be arousing or deactivating in the physiological component.

So you have those like you have four quadrants in the case of emotions and for pilot training or.

Yeah, aviation, I would say like focus more on stress and emotions because pilots usually fly a maximum of 14 to 16 hours.

So the mode might change a lot in that sense like we have let's control to understand what the role of that effective component in their performance.

All right, can you tell us a bit more on the mystical side of how you conducted your systematic review.

Sure, so I chose lay based on my research question I chose three main concepts and then I found a bunch of keywords and synonyms for them, which are pilots in different ways affect and simulations because I wanted to understand like using simulation as a technology in training.

So I merge all of those based on that I chose three databases, including area, second info and I got 431 articles I filter them with Ryan and I didn't know with 29 and met my inclusion criteria.

So that's how I got it then after preparing the articles and analyzing the content I created five teams of how.

So these can kind of explain the relationship between affect and performance.

So for example, one of them with like not the relationship person, but it's like both of them are continuous processes.

So that's why they're so related and only one is like the relation between negatives, activating emotions and stress on performance and the reaction to surprising or subtle events.

Yeah, they're a social dynamics and the intervention to manage affect your responses.

Yeah, so you mentioned that emotions can be positive or negative earlier, so did you take a look at the fact of those specific emotions on fly performance.

Yes, so again, just to be specific, it refers to like if it's recent or only said and one thing that is interesting is that in case of aviation, most of them focused mostly focused on negative emotions.

Such as or affect like stress and anxiety and example, stress and anxiety, how I inverted you relationship with performance like too low or too high can be bad.

In this is that an ideal level anxiety and ideal level of stress could be good for performance, but like if it goes to the extremes, either your board and is engaged from the test, so that my lower your performance or your two over one to perform accurately.

And then one interesting one that went about positive emotions was joy.

These walked in the case of a social situation because you were it was a pilot without a pilot.

And in the case, joy expressed in laughter was not so good for performance because the person was focusing more on the other like interacting with the other person of having that social connection related and the tantrum hand, so in that case, like this specific situation like joy was not so good.

But other than that, there's not a lot of positive emotions.

I mean, really break my heart that laughing in the cockpit will lead you to a you know worth performance, you know, I love having positive pilots with me on the flight day.

But then, I mean, you so in your work, you show that emotions really play a role in the pilot performance in the flight simulator, whether it's the effect of stress or the ability to focus on the task at hand.

So would it make sense to go back to the initial training that pilots go through that they're being told to put their emotions into a box before going to aircraft or are there techniques for pilots to better control their emotions.

Yeah, so great points against the putting in the emotions in a box, and this is not only for aviation is for any high sticks profession like I find is common dance, like no control yourself and put the emotions and I said.

For me, I see emotions as an instinctive reaction and they have a function like they're they're appearing for a reason they're trying to say something.

So yeah, I don't think it's a great idea on the opposite. I think it's better to use that during the training process and seeing how.

How they feel how when they are treated so by the time they arrive to the aircraft, they know themselves more and they know they have techniques to manage an example one technique for managing their emotions could come from the instructor, you know, like saying this is a safer environment, you can express as much as you want here.

You know, it's going to judge you is for you to use this in your favor and then providing techniques of how these instructors on it in the past, how they could do it better.

Another technique is Calvary appraisal is very simple is just like taking this situation cognitively and how can I even do it differently.

So, for example, if I fail this training session, instead of saying like, okay, move on, which is like just pressing is saying what can I learn from this for the next time.

And so recognizing that there's something there that could be useful in the future. And yeah, again, like, and see from that on, like getting familiar with emotions and knowing how they work on us and how they could play a really performance so that they're not like these far concept from error, like, how can we use it in our favor.

Yeah, so sounds like instead of putting a box, it's like recognizing it and finding the right technique to cope with them and to use them.

Thank you so much for the explanation. Thank you so much Alejandra for joining us today. It's been wonderful talking about your research. We look forward to seeing that development in the future.

And that's all we have for today. Take care.

Oh, so nice hearing from experts who actually know their stuff about pilot psyche. It's almost like we planned that to be, I mean, we did plan that to be a part of this episode.

Oh, we totally planned it. I mean, you can see that I would all just tied together and was completely inspired and thematically home together like, yeah, it was amazing. We were so good.

Perfect. Thanks, Phil. Thanks, Elena. And thank you Alejandra for your for your this week in aerospace. We really appreciate that segment. It's one of my things that you'll do here. I have no good segue way. One more thing. What do you got?

This week, we fight today. I've been to see Project Hill Mary, which anybody who's been listening to this podcast for a while will know that we've been looking forward to this all nervous about going to see it for a while.

So it's perhaps my most anticipated film ever. So if you want to hear more about what we do, either me as in the post show or we'll do some do some more down the line once Nick has been to see it.

However, really what my one more thing is around kind of design and review tools because anthropometrics is something I've done some of but not loads of.

And when I've been playing with when I've been playing with some of this stuff, it's quite expensive, especially when you start getting to the VR world because obviously the using things in VR makes certain elements of anthropometric design development and testing so much easier.

But when I replayed with it, I would say five six years ago, it's expensive. You have to have specific sweet set up or not. You know, only the larger companies are available to do it.

I've been more looking into recently the ability to develop some of that kind type VR capability over the past couple of weeks and actually it's impressive what you can get now with such low cost.

So using things like meta meta quest headsets using things that are much cheaper than the tens of thousands of pounds that they used to be.

You can actually get some fairly easy to develop for either cheap or free CAD and be visualizing and interacting with it in a fairly simple setup and be able to do that sort of assessment.

So I'm really quite impressed about just how it's the one bit around the VR world and maybe the XR world. I'm now actually really buying into is the fact that you can do this sort of analysis cheaper and easier.

Therefore becoming more effective than you ever could do. Yeah, big thumbs up for VR and CAD.

And we're still waiting on that.

That's true. That's why I didn't mention to them because they keep on ghosting this.

Right.

Nick, what about you? What's your more thing? Oh, you mentioned Project Hill.

Right. I've read it now. I've read the book and post show. So you can meet us there.

My, my real this week since we're doing a thing real one is I.

Are you familiar with the tool Figma?

Oh, yeah. Okay. I've been deep in Figma. It's a great tool. It's a great tool.

The thing that I've been doing building components reusable components.

And I saw that this is what human factors trained people should doing with their time.

It's out of necessity that I'm doing it.

But what I'm finding is that it gives me a better appreciation for what designers do.

When I'm building these components like human factoring that happens at the micro level.

Oh, does this need a dropshadowed in outline? You know, what is going to be more visually salient against the background here?

I'm doing those like micro human factors levels versus like the systems level, which is what I'm typically better doing.

And it's, it's been a good reminder to myself that understanding the components that make up a system is often just as important.

And does the system as a whole is a nice like little or self, not that I forgot it, but just that.

Oh, yeah, this every level and that, you know, overthinking to the max is a real thing when it comes to come so that was my one more thing.

And that's it for today, everyone.

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Where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about your trip to the moon?

My upcoming trip to the moon, I will have to tell you about how I made my children cry about that.

But you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram if you want to see where I'm going with my pottery journey at the moment.

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Spacecraft, railway locomotives, nuclear submarines, healthcare, jet aircraft.

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