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In designing habitats for long-duration space missions, one of the primary issues to address is that of sleep spaces, commonly known as Crew Quarters. While ergonomic design plays a major role in short-duration crew quarters (CQ) design, longer term missions must take into account the significant effect which environmental factors have on crew productivity; to that end, the establishment of private space for each individual crew member, as well as a range of semiprivate work and rest areas represents a significant departure from established norms in space habitat design. Both for proposed planetary habitats and microgravity habitats, various systems must be studied to enhance the wellbeing of the crewmembers.

Long-duration space facilities--or space habitats--pose a particular challenge to the Architect. The duration of the project's development, the breadth and intensity of effort required of all the associated engineering disciplines, and the comparative paucity of hard data available on long-duration habitability in microgravity environments: these factors require an intensive approach to project management, and one which must begin during the very first stages of preliminary design. By streamlining project management with the design process into a continuous dialectic of analysis, design, reassessment and action, the architectural integration of a space habitat can be effected. This hybrid process describes a new kind of design discipline which is uniquely suited to the nature of its domain.

In this, the third and final segment of our preliminary investigation into the impact of providing for good habitability in an advanced space mission, we review the findings of our assessment of existing vehicle and facility types. From these findings, three things are clear: first, that launch constraints tend to drive the available dimensions for all space payloads and thus also for potential habitats; and secondly, that a habitat configuration which is successful at one dimension is not equally successful at another scale. Finally, the principle of economy and optimization clearly prohibits the effective use of a single component for both microgravity and surface habitation. Based on these findings and keeping habitability foremost in our criteria, we will attempt in this paper to propose a reference mission concept whose components are optimal for habitability and thus represent a first step in reducing risks inherent in the human system.