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To me, the biggest technical obstacles for a human mission to Mars and beyond are many and varied. Spacecraft propulsion, life support, waste disposal, communication delays, and logistics planning are just a few. However, key in my mind are more “human” aspects of deep space travel. Below is a recent chapter I wrote for a NASA publication, soon to be released. I have garnered permission to post it on social media platforms. I hope you enjoy my thoughts.Anderson, C.C. (in press). Psych/Human factors visions for the Moon and Mars: What the future holds for those embarking on a long-duration mission far from home.In L.B. Landon, K.J. Slack, & E. Salas (Eds.), Psychology and Human Performance in Space Programs, Volume 2: Extreme Application. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis.PSYCH/HUMAN FACTORS/VISIONS for MOON/MARS:Clayton C. Anderson (February 1, 2019)In my professional lifetime, I spent 15 years as an engineer and 15 as an astronaut. Every single year of those three decades was with NASA at the Johnson Space Center. Having risen through “the ranks” of the center and her hierarchy from the early age of 24 (I had a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Iowa State University), I would learn many lessons that would apply later in my career… especially during the time I spent as an astronaut. Knowing the way different organizations and their management thought, and what they considered truly important (and maybe more critical, what they thought was not important) became keys to my being able to adapt in a NASA-world focused way more on technology and its capabilities than the talented personalities who generated that technology. I would also figure out (eventually) there is a bit of a “game” that must be played if you wanted to be successful. My ability to influence contentious scenarios, rife with flawed communicators and unbending individuals, in an ever-conscious effort to produce “win-win” scenarios, became a must for my survival, and facilitated my rising to the role of a flown-in-space astronaut. These types of skills are going to matter greatly as we move from our low-earth orbital perspective to one that will eventually become the viewpoint of interplanetary travelers.To date, our country has accomplished some marvelous things. We have landed humans on the Moon and returned them safely to Earth. We have sent probes to the outer-most reaches of our solar system, with Voyager 1 and 2 now sailing far beyond the orbit of Pluto, our furthest planet (and it’s not a dwarf!). Only recently, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft returned data and photographs from a snowman-shaped asteroid dubbed Ultima Thule (a Latin phrase meaning “a place beyond the known world”), more than 4 billion miles from our sun. And of course, we cannot forget to mention my home for more than 5-months (or stated more accurately 151 days, 18 hours, 23 minutes, and 14 seconds), the International Space Station. Sailing about our planet once every 90-minutes, it has been doing so –with humans aboard—since the year 2000. Imagine for a moment, that there are young people today, who have never known a time when there WEREN’T humans living and working in outer space!I cannot believe I was a small part of those accomplishments. As a young NASA engineer, I helped devise space shuttle trajectories that enabled us to send the Galileo probe to Jupiter, the Magellan probe to Venus, and the Ulysses probe to visit our Sun. I was on a team that used the space shuttles to deploy satellites into geosynchronous orbits to monitor and protect our planet; satellites that are still performing their roles today.What America has accomplished in her storied 50-year plus space-history is nothing short of amazing. But we have so much more to do. While we –those who comprise what we call NASA-- may own a storied past, it’s now truly time to figure out what to do next. In order to do that, we must learn from this past and be bold enough to take greater “leaps of faith” into the future. And I believe we must do this using a combination of both robotic and human missions. As Neil A. Armstrong –the first human to set foot on the lunar surface—once said, “A (hu)man can be amazed and amused…, a robot can be neither.”At this point in time, we are poised to consider three distinct targets of opportunity for human spaceflight, and they have been discussed at length for years. Should NASA focus on the mining of asteroids, or should we head back to the moon? And what about the glamour destination of Mars? Are we even ready to attempt that one? While seemingly independent targets, with each individually intriguing, no matter which one we chose, there are issues we’re going to have to deal with. Many are not technical. They don’t involve computer software or a functioning life support system, and they aren’t concerned with a spaceship’s rocket engines and thrust vector. Yet they are all-together human; bearing the much-too-NASA-like title of psychological and human factors.Only recently, a question was posed to me that is quite relevant to this discussion. Paraphrasing, I was asked: “What are your thoughts on the U.S. sending people back to the Moon before Mars?”My response began with a statement reflective of my long-time desire for NASA’s next step…, as Nike would say: “Just Do It!”With all due respect, I have not changed my tune since I was an active astronaut at the height of my spacefaring career. I have been, and will always be, an advocate for a return to the Moon BEFORE Mars. And we need to get there sooner, rather than later.I believe my logic is sound. We are not yet ready to tackle Mars..., in many ways. A trip of this type will bring much different human (health) factors and psychological issues to bear than we have experienced thus far. Mitigation will require a clear and dedicated focus to develop appropriate solutions and counter-measures and we are only just now beginning to truly come to grips with specific challenges we will be facing. It is my contention that the sooner we reach the lunar surface --with crew sizes large enough to look like a colony-- the sooner we can begin to make inroads into the technologies and psychologies needed to truly enable survival as a species on the rusty –and rocky-- surface of Mars.As a long-duration space station crew member, and a veteran of an analogous --albeit much shorter-- extreme-environment stint with NEEMO 5 (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), I have personal experience in this realm. Missions of this type contrast greatly with the glory-days of our space shuttle. Most shuttle missions were on the order of days in length with a training template that can roughly be described as lasting about 9 months. Crews –at least initially-- were almost always comprised of commanders who wore military stripes and were jet airplane or helicopter pilots. Rounding out their crews would be mission specialists, aka scientists boasting impressive PhDs. But for a mission to Mars, are these still the proper skill sets we need? If the answer is “yes,” then I believe they’re going to need considerably more –and noticeably different-- training.Now retired from NASA for more than 7 years, I am admittedly not within the mainstream. Yet my understanding of our current technology capability says we do not yet fully understand –nor do we have solutions for—a myriad of issues we are bound to face attempting an endeavor of this magnitude. While many will focus on the technical issues to be overcome, we will be challenged psychologically, perhaps in ways not yet foreseen.We (or at least I) do not understand the true psychological implications of a journey that will take 6-9-months just to get there. In a perfect world --assuming planetary alignment yielding a 6-month trip out and a 6-month trip back home-- I cannot imagine we would land on the Martian surface and not spend at least 6 more months living and working there. It’s kind of like when you were little, and your Dad planned one of those long driving summer vacations. Remember? What may have been a simple concept in Dad’s mind, always seemed to grow into a bit of an adventure. Once you got somewhere after a long day’s drive, you were gonna stay there for a while before moving on. That means –with respect to a Mars journey-- the total trip time is around 18 months (at a minimum). That’s a long time away from Earth. Oh… I don’t doubt that there will be many astronauts ready to make the journey; chomping at the bit to be the first to set foot on the rocky red planetary surface. But from where I sit, this is a trip we have not yet fully come to grips with.Living and working in small groups, especially for long periods of time, in what will undoubtedly be incredibly tight quarters (everything will be limited, simply from a cost perspective), can be fraught with issues and/or conflict. While these rifts may not be major, they will be there for sure. People like Shackleton, Amundsen, Sir Edmund Hillary, and even Ferdinand Magellan dealt with similar problems (e.g., confinement, isolation, exposure to physical hazards, altered work or rest schedules) during their arduous treks, and I have no doubt that we will deal with them too. And tragically, during my era (1998-2013) NASA provided very little preparation for issues of this regard, relying almost solely on each astronaut’s own expertise, valid or not. Leadership should no longer be optimally sought primarily from those with military jet fighter pilot and helicopter jockey backgrounds. These steely-eyed, ultra-courageous astronauts from past molds who could dog-fight with the best of them and perform military rescues that would make our heads spin, may need to be retooled a bit –or perhaps bolstered-- by individuals with skill sets rivaling those of psychologists, human resources specialists, and business-like CEOs.Gone should be the give orders, execute orders mentality. Leading/managing (I don’t like the term commanding in this instance) a crew will need to be more collaborative, say, akin to managing a baseball team. Great ballpark skippers exhibit an almost chess master-like ability to make all the right moves. Success will come to the mission whose leader carries a similar tool box, one that allows he or she to manipulate a not-insignificant group of extremely high achievers --all with varying skill sets, temperaments, and hot buttons-- and is able to mesh those pieces together over a lengthy time period, producing championship-like results. Throw in the fact that the “team’s” entire season will be an away game (134 million miles away), and it’s easy to see (at least it is for me) the potential for looming challenges.Small things will become bigger things, nagging at individuals like a pebble in a shoe. We must develop and provide sound methodologies and solutions with clearly useful –and constantly executable-- training, such that crews will be ably prepared when these times do come. All mission members will need to be adept with empathy, humility, and team building strategies, while mastering psychological techniques to help battle depression, anxiety, and loneliness. And to reiterate, I believe we have NOT done this well in the past. And with no quick-return-to-earth “lifeboat” capability (aka no Soyuz, Crewed Dragon or Starliner, coupled with the fact that our distance from Earth may be months away), issues of this type could fester for a very, very long time.Analog missions like NEEMO and the Moscow and Hawaii-based isolation habitats, may provide us with ways to better screen those we will chose to send. But how effective will these endeavors prove to be when “push comes to shove?” Will internal/external doors on a Moon or Mars habitat need to be designed such that TWO crewmembers are required to operate them, to avoid a crisis of the mind like the totally unexpected one that would lead to a padlock on the space shuttle middeck hatch every mission?[1] Should alcohol become part of a mission manifest (Don’t kid yourself, the Russians have been flying Cognac for years)[2]? What about the supposed calming effects claimed to be helpful by earth-bound users of food-based or extracts of cannabis? In times of stress, we gravitationally-challenged humans often turn to consumption of various stimulants to “turn the tide” as it were. Perhaps it’s time for us to consider the same ideas with respect to long duration spaceflight. After all, it is one thing to get a crew as ready as possible, having (hopefully) selected the right people and mix, but quite another to ensure vehicle and habitat systems --and everything else that is needed-- are there, and in the right combinations, to support them.During my time in orbit, my strength was clearly my family on earth. Based on the technology available at the time, I communicated with my wife nearly every single day and sometimes multiple times a day. Using a computer program that gave me telephone capability via internet protocol (IP), I could “pick up” our IP phone and call anyone around the world…, given an appropriate positioning of transponders, receivers, and geosynchronous satellites to guarantee a locked-on signal. I also had email capability that, while not as immediate as what I experience on earth, provided me with relatively rapid communication for work, family, and pleasure. I was further able to interact with family and friends through weekend video conferences (at least when someone felt like talking to me). Today’s high-flying astronauts can even access the internet, something we didn’t have due to NASA’s concern with potential hackers. Now, all are graciously provided by NASA, with minimal impact to onboard schedules and a family’s time at home. Isolation from family was not something I had to deal with during my 5-month tour on the ISS. But it will be something we experience on a trip to Mars. Due to the tremendous travel distances, communication lapses will constantly plague a journey from Earth to the Red Planet.Watching the recently-released movie “The Martian,” I felt the one thing they really got right was their depiction of the communication issues experienced by cinematic-hero Mark Watney. Imagine having a single –and non-visual-- method of communication with your loved ones that looks a lot like sending a text today. The caveat is that it could take minutes to hours or even days to get a response to that text. The 20-minute signal delay (one way) that is guaranteed to happen will –more than likely-- not allow for teleconferences, or IP phone calls. Email, which still may be viable, will undoubtedly seem more like the afore-mentioned texting. I often relate a humorous example of this delay to groups when I speak, based on my time on the space station. Imagine, you are poised at your spaceship’s console, ready to press the red button or the blue button, but for the life of you, you don’t know which is correct. You can’t find the procedural information you need to help with your decision, and you decide your only choice is to contact mission control. Beginning with the amount of time it takes you to type in your message and hit send, you must now add 20-minutes to the time it will take before anyone on Earth even sees your request. Now, once it’s in the hands of a brilliant team of flight controllers, how long will it take them to come to agreement on what the correct answer is they need to send back to you? Let’s assume it’s immediate and the answer is blue. They type their response and hit send, to which another 20-minutes must be added for the message to reach us on Mars.But what if their answer isn’t immediate? What if they must form a team, hold some meetings, and hash over what the proper answer should be? My experience as a 30-year NASA employee tells me that this could take days… maybe weeks, and our favorite space movie does a pretty good job illustrating that as well!This considerable reduction in communication capability could be a huge obstacle. Crews will need to be an order of magnitude more autonomous as there will be a much smaller percentage of time that they can “call the ground.” From medical issues (and medical emergencies) to system/maintenance problems and psychological crises, their survival will depend not only on their ability to recognize, evaluate, and rectify the situation, but on the technology level of their environment. This, in my opinion, will be one of their biggest challenges. Systems will need to be significantly more autonomous, perhaps even to a level of using Artificial Intelligence (watch out for HAL!). Procedures will need to be so clear and unambiguous (that is not the case today) that there is no question about what they are expected to do.Individuals having psychological and separation-driven issues will need the crew to be their extended family. I personally find it extremely unpalatable to think I wouldn’t have the regular contact with my wife and kids that I enjoyed on the space station. And there’s also the question no one ever seems to want to tackle - sexual activity. Will there be romantic interactions between crew members? So far from home, lacking that human sensual interaction, will this pose difficult situations given a mission that may last about 2 years? Several of my colleagues found this temptation to be quite the challenge during their training experiences in Star City, Russia, so why would we think a two-year Mars excursion would be any different? Will we endeavor to do anything to help them maintain their families and spousal relationships, or will we just accept today’s attitude of “oh well… that’s how it goes?”Perhaps we should send couples then? Knowing whether this is a smart thing to do can be very complicated. Does the couple have children? If so, what are their ages? If both parents head for space, and tragedy ensues; have we left their children to a future without their parental guardians (this is often the argument used today against sending married couples to space)? And do we really know if an apparently well-adjusted couple here on earth can weather the challenges and stresses of a long-duration space voyage? Those challenges are not the same you know. It’s possible that what started out as an enviable relationship between caring partners could experience significant highs and lows when confined for months in a not-so-roomy aluminum spaceship. And will we then need a uniquely designed area of privacy? Sleep stations for two? Bigger sleeping bags? Many college campuses today have a designated “safe space” for students needing a place to “cope.” Perhaps we’ll need a designated “couples’ area?” In any event, NASA will be forced to navigate the world of an ever-inquisitive media and headlines that scream “… Is NASA studying sex in space?!” In the past, this has been something NASA avoided like the plague.During my 152-day expedition (15/16) aboard the International Space Station, part of the magic of being in space was seeing Earth. I could gaze from our insufficient windows (no cupola existed during my expedition tour in 2007) at the beautiful planet below. I was captivated by the challenge –and the resulting excitement that erupted when a much-desired photo op was successful-- of capturing recognizable photographs of amazing sites like the Grand Canyon, Mount Kilimanjaro, icebergs in the southern Atlantic Ocean, and the Pyramids of Egypt. And a short work break, quietly staring through an earth-facing window could go a long way in relieving the stress of a long day or a difficult repair procedure. Using the side-facing windows of the Russian docking compartment I could wait for a sunrise, placing my face against the window’s glass to feel the warmth of the rays completing their 93 million-mile journey. For just a moment, I was home… contentedly napping in my back yard. These were things I looked forward to every day and they will be a missing aspect on a trip of planetary scale.The long trip to Mars will not afford us many luxuries. Day and night cycles, caused in low-earth orbit by our travel about the earth, will not exist. For the most part, once removed from the earth by an approximate lunar distance of 250,000 miles, it will always be sunny, until the day we finally enter Martian orbit. The further we travel from home, the more difficult it will be to see Earth. And this assumes we’ll have a space craft with adequate window space and an attitude control system (with ample fuel) that will allow us to maneuver and look in that direction! Arrival at Mars, and landing on the surface, will obviously re-capture our spirits, but it won’t be the same during the arduous trip to get there.The earth is our home. As humans, everything that defines us exists on the planet’s surface. Our sense of self, our loved ones, our history, it’s all there on the one place in our solar system (and perhaps the universe) where our species thrives. To journey to a new world, orders of magnitude more desolate than that discovered by the early colonists, will be a jolt to our psyche. I imagine it may be as if one were lost on the ocean, safely contained on a moderate-sized boat, but with nothing to see for miles and miles. It’s a mental picture I can’t quite grasp, guessing that only after arrival will anyone be able to truly understand its impact.In order to get smarter –and we are doing that now, having recently followed an ISS crew spending nearly a full year onboard the station— we need to answer many new questions. Things like how we will send necessary stashes of fuel, food, water, spare parts, clothing, etc. Then there are “daily life” issues like how we dispose of fecal matter (can’t burn it up in an atmosphere somewhere, as there will be no atmospheres to use on our interplanetary trajectory) and other waste products (aka trash). Radiation from the sun and other fusion-energy emitters from our all-encompassing Milky Way galaxy will be a bane to our existence. And in the event of a true medical emergency? A stroke, a heart attack, appendicitis…, what will we do? Should our space ship and mission base have a doctor/surgeon and medical facility? How much pre-flight medical training should our crew undertake? Those things are damned expensive, they’re big, and they most certainly won’t look like those we see in movies.Our time will be spent in tight quarters, both during the journey and then once safely on the surface. While perhaps a bit larger than our travel vehicle, the surface living quarters will still be such that habitat-confinement time will be high and stressful, maybe worse than what we experience on the space station. Living in a socially dense space, isolated from loved ones, and with no ability to just “go for a walk,” will most certainly affect a person on a multi-month, multi-year mission. Even those stationed in Antarctica can go outside and “enjoy the weather,” while waving to their favorite penguin. Receiving news (both good and bad), will challenge our brave heroes mentally more than ever before. The idea of space station personal websites, full of family content and so ably updated by our “psych support” staff on earth, may be a thing of the past. Sending family photos, videos, and personal care packages may prove to be much more difficult than how it’s done todayExperts claim the surface of Mars or the Moon can provide us with “in situ (on site)” resources we may take advantage of. “They” tout our ability to concoct fuel, extract water, create oxygen, make iron bricks for building structures, simply by “living off the land.” While this may be true, I want to know HOW we will do this? Do we understand the technologies required to make these wondrous visions a reality? What infrastructure will be required? For example, has NASA subcontracted with companies like Caterpillar and John Deere to get their ideas? If we look solely at the example of pulling hydrogen and oxygen from the ice resident at the lunar poles, the task is much more daunting than we may be led to believe. With a considerable amount of the ice deep within a huge crater, there will have to be large-scale equipment upon which our extraction success will be linked. And once extracted, what is the process for reducing that ice into something useful? Referring again to our favorite space motion picture, there are very few Mark Watneys out there. And I know of none in our current corps of astronauts who are capable of the level of “MacGyverism” and knowledge that the film bestows on Watney. Improvising a farm inside a habitat using Martian soil fertilized with human feces, water produced by extracting hydrogen from leftover rocket fuel, and potatoes intended for Thanksgiving dinner, is a bit of a stretch from where I sit. And don’t get me started on how he modified the only functional rover for long-distance travel. But I digress.The responsibility for survival will indeed rest (almost) totally on the crew. There will be a daily toll –both physical and mental—on each of them as they must constantly attend to the workload issues associated with simply staying alive. There will be a tremendous sense of isolation as there is no form of “quick help” or real time coordination with the Mission Control Center. Help will come in the form of their individual and combined skill sets and their ability to collectively troubleshoot across a very wide range of problems.I liken our position in human space exploration to that of the Pilgrims and their arrival on the Mayflower in 1620. Upon their initial landing at Plymouth Rock, they struggled mightily, ill-prepared to battle a robust climate, rectify their lack of sound shelter, and develop a solid food source. Although many perished, they would eventually figure it out. Using help from the already-in-place native-American residents, these brave –albeit improvising-- pioneers eventually settled comfortably, living off the land by taming the wilderness with growing knowledge and tenacity. It was only then that they began to venture further into their new world.The ISS is our Plymouth Rock. It is where we are starting to “… figure it out.” As we begin to venture away from our initial outpost, I continue to favor the Moon as our next destination. A mere three days away (with proven 1970’s technology), and a minimum communication delay (a few seconds), it is a place we can return to with confidence. It is a place where we may begin to develop the very technologies that will be necessities for us on Mars. To me, a lunar outpost is a valid and sensible next step.Space exploration is dangerous. It is difficult and it is hugely expensive. We must continue to learn and grow in our understanding of what exactly needs to be done.Now…, when do we leave? The Martians are waiting on us!Keep lookin’ up![1] The Curious Use of Combination Locks By NASA During Space Shuttle Missions[2] The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut, Clayton C. Anderson, University of Nebraska Press 2015

The most limiting factor? How about factors plural? I have attached below a chapter I was asked to write for a scientific NASA publication that is coming out in the near future (2020). I would ask that you read it in its entirety to understand what I think will be the issues or, as you call them, “limiting factors.” I wrote this solely based on my experiences as an astronaut who did both short and long duration missions.PSYCH/HUMAN FACTORS VISIONS for MOON/MARS:What the future holds for those embarking on a long-duration mission far from home.Clayton C. Anderson (February 1, 2019)In my professional lifetime, I spent 15 years as an engineer and 15 as an astronaut. Every single year of those three decades was with NASA at the Johnson Space Center. Having risen through “the ranks” of the center and her hierarchy from the early age of 24 (I had a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Iowa State University), I would learn many lessons that would apply later in my career… especially during the time I spent as an astronaut. Knowing the way different organizations and their management thought, and what they considered truly important (and maybe more critical, what they thought was not important) became keys to my being able to adapt in a NASA-world focused way more on technology and its capabilities than the talented personalities who generated that technology. I would also figure out (eventually) there is a bit of a “game” that must be played if you wanted to be successful. My ability to influence contentious scenarios, rife with flawed communicators and unbending individuals, in an ever-conscious effort to produce “win-win” scenarios, became a must for my survival, and facilitated my rising to the role of a flown-in-space astronaut. These types of skills are going to matter greatly as we move from our low-earth orbital perspective to one that will eventually become the viewpoint of interplanetary travelers.To date, our country has accomplished some marvelous things. We have landed humans on the Moon and returned them safely to Earth. We have sent probes to the outer-most reaches of our solar system, with Voyager 1 and 2 now sailing far beyond the orbit of Pluto, our furthest planet (and it’s not a dwarf!). Only recently, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft returned data and photographs from a snowman-shaped asteroid dubbed Ultima Thule (a Latin phrase meaning “a place beyond the known world”), more than 4 billion miles from our sun. And of course, we cannot forget to mention my home for more than 5-months (or stated more accurately 151 days, 18 hours, 23 minutes, and 14 seconds), the International Space Station. Sailing about our planet once every 90-minutes, it has been doing so –with humans aboard—since the year 2000. Imagine for a moment, that there are young people today, who have never known a time when there WEREN’T humans living and working in outer space!I cannot believe I was a small part of those accomplishments. As a young NASA engineer, I helped devise space shuttle trajectories that enabled us to send the Galileo probe to Jupiter, the Magellan probe to Venus, and the Ulysses probe to visit our Sun. I was on a team that used the space shuttles to deploy satellites into geosynchronous orbits to monitor and protect our planet; satellites that are still performing their roles today.What America has accomplished in her storied 50-year plus space-history is nothing short of amazing. But we have so much more to do. While we –those who comprise what we call NASA-- may own a storied past, it’s now truly time to figure out what to do next. In order to do that, we must learn from this past and be bold enough to take greater “leaps of faith” into the future. And I believe we must do this using a combination of both robotic and human missions. As Neil A. Armstrong –the first human to set foot on the lunar surface—once said, “A (hu)man can be amazed and amused…, a robot can be neither.”At this point in time, we are poised to consider three distinct targets of opportunity for human spaceflight, and they have been discussed at length for years. Should NASA focus on the mining of asteroids, or should we head back to the moon? And what about the glamour destination of Mars? Are we even ready to attempt that one? While seemingly independent targets, with each individually intriguing, no matter which one we chose, there are issues we’re going to have to deal with. Many are not technical. They don’t involve computer software or a functioning life support system, and they aren’t concerned with a spaceship’s rocket engines and thrust vector. Yet they are all-together human; bearing the much-too-NASA-like title of psychological and human factors.Only recently, a question was posed to me that is quite relevant to this discussion. Paraphrasing, I was asked: “What are your thoughts on the U.S. sending people back to the Moon before Mars?”My response began with a statement reflective of my long-time desire for NASA’s next step…, as Nike would say: “Just Do It!”With all due respect, I have not changed my tune since I was an active astronaut at the height of my spacefaring career. I have been, and will always be, an advocate for a return to the Moon BEFORE Mars. And we need to get there sooner, rather than later.I believe my logic is sound. We are not yet ready to tackle Mars..., in many ways. A trip of this type will bring much different human (health) factors and psychological issues to bear than we have experienced thus far. Mitigation will require a clear and dedicated focus to develop appropriate solutions and counter-measures and we are only just now beginning to truly come to grips with specific challenges we will be facing. It is my contention that the sooner we reach the lunar surface --with crew sizes large enough to look like a colony-- the sooner we can begin to make inroads into the technologies and psychologies needed to truly enable survival as a species on the rusty –and rocky-- surface of Mars.As a long-duration space station crew member, and a veteran of an analogous --albeit much shorter-- extreme-environment stint with NEEMO 5 (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), I have personal experience in this realm. Missions of this type contrast greatly with the glory-days of our space shuttle. Most shuttle missions were on the order of days in length with a training template that can roughly be described as lasting about 9 months. Crews –at least initially-- were almost always comprised of commanders who wore military stripes and were jet airplane or helicopter pilots. Rounding out their crews would be mission specialists, aka scientists boasting impressive PhDs. But for a mission to Mars, are these still the proper skill sets we need? If the answer is “yes,” then I believe they’re going to need considerably more –and noticeably different-- training.Now retired from NASA for more than 7 years, I am admittedly not within the mainstream. Yet my understanding of our current technology capability says we do not yet fully understand –nor do we have solutions for—a myriad of issues we are bound to face attempting an endeavor of this magnitude. While many will focus on the technical issues to be overcome, we will be challenged psychologically, perhaps in ways not yet foreseen.We (or at least I) do not understand the true psychological implications of a journey that will take 6-9-months just to get there. In a perfect world --assuming planetary alignment yielding a 6-month trip out and a 6-month trip back home-- I cannot imagine we would land on the Martian surface and not spend at least 6 more months living and working there. It’s kind of like when you were little, and your Dad planned one of those long driving summer vacations. Remember? What may have been a simple concept in Dad’s mind, always seemed to grow into a bit of an adventure. Once you got somewhere after a long day’s drive, you were gonna stay there for a while before moving on. That means –with respect to a Mars journey-- the total trip time is around 18 months (at a minimum). That’s a long time away from Earth. Oh… I don’t doubt that there will be many astronauts ready to make the journey; chomping at the bit to be the first to set foot on the rocky red planetary surface. But from where I sit, this is a trip we have not yet fully come to grips with.Living and working in small groups, especially for long periods of time, in what will undoubtedly be incredibly tight quarters (everything will be limited, simply from a cost perspective), can be fraught with issues and/or conflict. While these rifts may not be major, they will be there for sure. People like Shackleton, Amundsen, Sir Edmund Hillary, and even Ferdinand Magellan dealt with similar problems (e.g., confinement, isolation, exposure to physical hazards, altered work or rest schedules) during their arduous treks, and I have no doubt that we will deal with them too. And tragically, during my era (1998-2013) NASA provided very little preparation for issues of this regard, relying almost solely on each astronaut’s own expertise, valid or not. Leadership should no longer be optimally sought primarily from those with military jet fighter pilot and helicopter jockey backgrounds. These steely-eyed, ultra-courageous astronauts from past molds who could dog-fight with the best of them and perform military rescues that would make our heads spin, may need to be retooled a bit –or perhaps bolstered-- by individuals with skill sets rivaling those of psychologists, human resources specialists, and business-like CEOs.Gone should be the give orders, execute orders mentality. Leading/managing (I don’t like the term commanding in this instance) a crew will need to be more collaborative, say, akin to managing a baseball team. Great ballpark skippers exhibit an almost chess master-like ability to make all the right moves. Success will come to the mission whose leader carries a similar tool box, one that allows he or she to manipulate a not-insignificant group of extremely high achievers --all with varying skill sets, temperaments, and hot buttons-- and is able to mesh those pieces together over a lengthy time period, producing championship-like results. Throw in the fact that the “team’s” entire season will be an away game (134 million miles away), and it’s easy to see (at least it is for me) the potential for looming challenges.Small things will become bigger things, nagging at individuals like a pebble in a shoe. We must develop and provide sound methodologies and solutions with clearly useful –and constantly executable-- training, such that crews will be ably prepared when these times do come. All mission members will need to be adept with empathy, humility, and team building strategies, while mastering psychological techniques to help battle depression, anxiety, and loneliness. And to reiterate, I believe we have NOT done this well in the past. And with no quick-return-to-earth “lifeboat” capability (aka no Soyuz, Crewed Dragon or Starliner, coupled with the fact that our distance from Earth may be months away), issues of this type could fester for a very, very long time.Analog missions like NEEMO and the Moscow and Hawaii-based isolation habitats, may provide us with ways to better screen those we will chose to send. But how effective will these endeavors prove to be when “push comes to shove?” Will internal/external doors on a Moon or Mars habitat need to be designed such that TWO crewmembers are required to operate them, to avoid a crisis of the mind like the totally unexpected one that would lead to a padlock on the space shuttle middeck hatch every mission?[1] Should alcohol become part of a mission manifest (Don’t kid yourself, the Russians have been flying Cognac for years)[2]? What about the supposed calming effects claimed to be helpful by earth-bound users of food-based or extracts of cannabis? In times of stress, we gravitationally-challenged humans often turn to consumption of various stimulants to “turn the tide” as it were. Perhaps it’s time for us to consider the same ideas with respect to long duration spaceflight. After all, it is one thing to get a crew as ready as possible, having (hopefully) selected the right people and mix, but quite another to ensure vehicle and habitat systems --and everything else that is needed-- are there, and in the right combinations, to support them.During my time in orbit, my strength was clearly my family on earth. Based on the technology available at the time, I communicated with my wife nearly every single day and sometimes multiple times a day. Using a computer program that gave me telephone capability via internet protocol (IP), I could “pick up” our IP phone and call anyone around the world…, given an appropriate positioning of transponders, receivers, and geosynchronous satellites to guarantee a locked-on signal. I also had email capability that, while not as immediate as what I experience on earth, provided me with relatively rapid communication for work, family, and pleasure. I was further able to interact with family and friends through weekend video conferences (at least when someone felt like talking to me). Today’s high-flying astronauts can even access the internet, something we didn’t have due to NASA’s concern with potential hackers. Now, all are graciously provided by NASA, with minimal impact to onboard schedules and a family’s time at home. Isolation from family was not something I had to deal with during my 5-month tour on the ISS. But it will be something we experience on a trip to Mars. Due to the tremendous travel distances, communication lapses will constantly plague a journey from Earth to the Red Planet.Watching the recently-released movie “The Martian,” I felt the one thing they really got right was their depiction of the communication issues experienced by cinematic-hero Mark Watney. Imagine having a single –and non-visual-- method of communication with your loved ones that looks a lot like sending a text today. The caveat is that it could take minutes to hours or even days to get a response to that text. The 20-minute signal delay (one way) that is guaranteed to happen will –more than likely-- not allow for teleconferences, or IP phone calls. Email, which still may be viable, will undoubtedly seem more like the afore-mentioned texting. I often relate a humorous example of this delay to groups when I speak, based on my time on the space station. Imagine, you are poised at your spaceship’s console, ready to press the red button or the blue button, but for the life of you, you don’t know which is correct. You can’t find the procedural information you need to help with your decision, and you decide your only choice is to contact mission control. Beginning with the amount of time it takes you to type in your message and hit send, you must now add 20-minutes to the time it will take before anyone on Earth even sees your request. Now, once it’s in the hands of a brilliant team of flight controllers, how long will it take them to come to agreement on what the correct answer is they need to send back to you? Let’s assume it’s immediate and the answer is blue. They type their response and hit send, to which another 20-minutes must be added for the message to reach us on Mars.But what if their answer isn’t immediate? What if they must form a team, hold some meetings, and hash over what the proper answer should be? My experience as a 30-year NASA employee tells me that this could take days… maybe weeks, and our favorite space movie does a pretty good job illustrating that as well!This considerable reduction in communication capability could be a huge obstacle. Crews will need to be an order of magnitude more autonomous as there will be a much smaller percentage of time that they can “call the ground.” From medical issues (and medical emergencies) to system/maintenance problems and psychological crises, their survival will depend not only on their ability to recognize, evaluate, and rectify the situation, but on the technology level of their environment. This, in my opinion, will be one of their biggest challenges. Systems will need to be significantly more autonomous, perhaps even to a level of using Artificial Intelligence (watch out for HAL!). Procedures will need to be so clear and unambiguous (that is not the case today) that there is no question about what they are expected to do.Individuals having psychological and separation-driven issues will need the crew to be their extended family. I personally find it extremely unpalatable to think I wouldn’t have the regular contact with my wife and kids that I enjoyed on the space station. And there’s also the question no one ever seems to want to tackle - sexual activity. Will there be romantic interactions between crew members? So far from home, lacking that human sensual interaction, will this pose difficult situations given a mission that may last about 2 years? Several of my colleagues found this temptation to be quite the challenge during their training experiences in Star City, Russia, so why would we think a two-year Mars excursion would be any different? Will we endeavor to do anything to help them maintain their families and spousal relationships, or will we just accept today’s attitude of “oh well… that’s how it goes?”Perhaps we should send couples then? Knowing whether this is a smart thing to do can be very complicated. Does the couple have children? If so, what are their ages? If both parents head for space, and tragedy ensues; have we left their children to a future without their parental guardians (this is often the argument used today against sending married couples to space)? And do we really know if an apparently well-adjusted couple here on earth can weather the challenges and stresses of a long-duration space voyage? Those challenges are not the same you know. It’s possible that what started out as an enviable relationship between caring partners could experience significant highs and lows when confined for months in a not-so-roomy aluminum spaceship. And will we then need a uniquely designed area of privacy? Sleep stations for two? Bigger sleeping bags? Many college campuses today have a designated “safe space” for students needing a place to “cope.” Perhaps we’ll need a designated “couples’ area?” In any event, NASA will be forced to navigate the world of an ever-inquisitive media and headlines that scream “… Is NASA studying sex in space?!” In the past, this has been something NASA avoided like the plague.During my 152-day expedition (15/16) aboard the International Space Station, part of the magic of being in space was seeing Earth. I could gaze from our insufficient windows (no cupola existed during my expedition tour in 2007) at the beautiful planet below. I was captivated by the challenge –and the resulting excitement that erupted when a much-desired photo op was successful-- of capturing recognizable photographs of amazing sites like the Grand Canyon, Mount Kilimanjaro, icebergs in the southern Atlantic Ocean, and the Pyramids of Egypt. And a short work break, quietly staring through an earth-facing window could go a long way in relieving the stress of a long day or a difficult repair procedure. Using the side-facing windows of the Russian docking compartment I could wait for a sunrise, placing my face against the window’s glass to feel the warmth of the rays completing their 93 million-mile journey. For just a moment, I was home… contentedly napping in my back yard. These were things I looked forward to every day and they will be a missing aspect on a trip of planetary scale.The long trip to Mars will not afford us many luxuries. Day and night cycles, caused in low-earth orbit by our travel about the earth, will not exist. For the most part, once removed from the earth by an approximate lunar distance of 250,000 miles, it will always be sunny, until the day we finally enter Martian orbit. The further we travel from home, the more difficult it will be to see Earth. And this assumes we’ll have a space craft with adequate window space and an attitude control system (with ample fuel) that will allow us to maneuver and look in that direction! Arrival at Mars, and landing on the surface, will obviously re-capture our spirits, but it won’t be the same during the arduous trip to get there.The earth is our home. As humans, everything that defines us exists on the planet’s surface. Our sense of self, our loved ones, our history, it’s all there on the one place in our solar system (and perhaps the universe) where our species thrives. To journey to a new world, orders of magnitude more desolate than that discovered by the early colonists, will be a jolt to our psyche. I imagine it may be as if one were lost on the ocean, safely contained on a moderate-sized boat, but with nothing to see for miles and miles. It’s a mental picture I can’t quite grasp, guessing that only after arrival will anyone be able to truly understand its impact.In order to get smarter –and we are doing that now, having recently followed an ISS crew spending nearly a full year onboard the station— we need to answer many new questions. Things like how we will send necessary stashes of fuel, food, water, spare parts, clothing, etc. Then there are “daily life” issues like how we dispose of fecal matter (can’t burn it up in an atmosphere somewhere, as there will be no atmospheres to use on our interplanetary trajectory) and other waste products (aka trash). Radiation from the sun and other fusion-energy emitters from our all-encompassing Milky Way galaxy will be a bane to our existence. And in the event of a true medical emergency? A stroke, a heart attack, appendicitis…, what will we do? Should our space ship and mission base have a doctor/surgeon and medical facility? How much pre-flight medical training should our crew undertake? Those things are damned expensive, they’re big, and they most certainly won’t look like those we see in movies.Our time will be spent in tight quarters, both during the journey and then once safely on the surface. While perhaps a bit larger than our travel vehicle, the surface living quarters will still be such that habitat-confinement time will be high and stressful, maybe worse than what we experience on the space station. Living in a socially dense space, isolated from loved ones, and with no ability to just “go for a walk,” will most certainly affect a person on a multi-month, multi-year mission. Even those stationed in Antarctica can go outside and “enjoy the weather,” while waving to their favorite penguin. Receiving news (both good and bad), will challenge our brave heroes mentally more than ever before. The idea of space station personal websites, full of family content and so ably updated by our “psych support” staff on earth, may be a thing of the past. Sending family photos, videos, and personal care packages may prove to be much more difficult than how it’s done todayExperts claim the surface of Mars or the Moon can provide us with “in situ (on site)” resources we may take advantage of. “They” tout our ability to concoct fuel, extract water, create oxygen, make iron bricks for building structures, simply by “living off the land.” While this may be true, I want to know HOW we will do this? Do we understand the technologies required to make these wondrous visions a reality? What infrastructure will be required? For example, has NASA subcontracted with companies like Caterpillar and John Deere to get their ideas? If we look solely at the example of pulling hydrogen and oxygen from the ice resident at the lunar poles, the task is much more daunting than we may be led to believe. With a considerable amount of the ice deep within a huge crater, there will have to be large-scale equipment upon which our extraction success will be linked. And once extracted, what is the process for reducing that ice into something useful? Referring again to our favorite space motion picture, there are very few Mark Watneys out there. And I know of none in our current corps of astronauts who are capable of the level of “MacGyverism” and knowledge that the film bestows on Watney. Improvising a farm inside a habitat using Martian soil fertilized with human feces, water produced by extracting hydrogen from leftover rocket fuel, and potatoes intended for Thanksgiving dinner, is a bit of a stretch from where I sit. And don’t get me started on how he modified the only functional rover for long-distance travel. But I digress.The responsibility for survival will indeed rest (almost) totally on the crew. There will be a daily toll –both physical and mental—on each of them as they must constantly attend to the workload issues associated with simply staying alive. There will be a tremendous sense of isolation as there is no form of “quick help” or real time coordination with the Mission Control Center. Help will come in the form of their individual and combined skill sets and their ability to collectively troubleshoot across a very wide range of problems.I liken our position in human space exploration to that of the Pilgrims and their arrival on the Mayflower in 1620. Upon their initial landing at Plymouth Rock, they struggled mightily, ill-prepared to battle a robust climate, rectify their lack of sound shelter, and develop a solid food source. Although many perished, they would eventually figure it out. Using help from the already-in-place native-American residents, these brave –albeit improvising-- pioneers eventually settled comfortably, living off the land by taming the wilderness with growing knowledge and tenacity. It was only then that they began to venture further into their new world.The ISS is our Plymouth Rock. It is where we are starting to “… figure it out.” As we begin to venture away from our initial outpost, I continue to favor the Moon as our next destination. A mere three days away (with proven 1970’s technology), and a minimum communication delay (a few seconds), it is a place we can return to with confidence. It is a place where we may begin to develop the very technologies that will be necessities for us on Mars. To me, a lunar outpost is a valid and sensible next step.Space exploration is dangerous. It is difficult and it is hugely expensive. We must continue to learn and grow in our understanding of what exactly needs to be done.Now…, when do we leave? The Martians are waiting on us![1] The Curious Use of Combination Locks By NASA During Space Shuttle Missions[2] The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut, Clayton C. Anderson, University of Nebraska Press 2015Keep lookin’ up!