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Long duration space mission crews will have to perform a myriad of tasks under extreme conditions for exploratory and settlement missions. The primary goal for any mission is the achievement of specific scientific endeavors and the maintenance of a safe crew environment. Stressors such as isolation, confinement, microgravity, extraneous work schedules, and crew heterogeneity are examples of elements that may alter the consistency of crew performance. It is critical to predict the influence of such stressors on crew performance for designing successful and safe mission scenarios. In order to assist in the future planning of long duration space missions, the Systems Integration, Modeling and Analysis team of the NJ-NSCORT has developed an interactive top-level model of an Advanced Life Support System (ALSS).

The ALS community faces unique challenges for the interactive modeling of a closed life support system. A top-level model is being developed as part of the System Studies and Modeling team of NJ-NSCORT. This top-level model has been broken down into several groups one of which is the ‘Human Requirements’ or ‘Human Factor’apos in an ALSS. This model examines the physical needs of crew members with respect to the effects of varying mission lengths, habitats and specific human characteristics. The model can be investigated independent of and interactive with the top-level model to examine the human factor using an object oriented approach. Through the object oriented programming language, Java, this model is meant to be accessible to the ALS community to aid in system analysis. This paper will explain the structure and examine the utility of the model with known requirements of humans in space.