So You Want to Learn About Bioastronautics
How do astronauts breathe in space?
What are spacesuits made of?
When are we going to Mars?
Do you believe in aliens?
What is bioastronautics? Is it like, space biology?
I get a lot of questions like this, from everyone - middle school students, fellow researchers, family members, and friends in a variety of different fields from virology to finance to ceramics. I was a latecomer to bioastronautics; my first love was entry, descent, and landing technology. While I still love thinking about aerodynamics and control problems, I’ve found the challenges that lie at the heart of human spaceflight to be some of the most compelling I’ve faced.
Despite the recent surge of interest in human spaceflight, however, there isn’t a clear popular understanding of what types of fields, coursework, experience, or work actually goes into strapping people to rockets and blasting them up into orbit. This inaccessibility isn’t a recent problem. For decades, the only entities capable of human spaceflight were large government agencies like NASA and Roscosmos, which meant that the knowledge was often siloed in specific research center teams and their associated universities. My aim here is to provide an overview of all the topics contained within the field of bioastronautics, and some resources on what you can study, where you can study it, and where you can start to learn more. In the upcoming weeks, I’ll focus more on specific topics like the state of the art of life support systems, the long-term effects of microgravity, and what types of considerations go into interior design in space. Without further ado:
What is bioastronautics, anyway?
I took some time to brainstorm what I consider to be some of the primary fields within bioastronautics. Full disclaimer: this word cloud is is not complete, nor does it claim to be. But as you can see, there are a lot of different subfields in bioastro, some of which seem almost entirely unrelated to each other. Like many fields within aerospace, this is vast, multidisciplinary, and rapidly evolving. There is no one “right way” to enter bioastronautics, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
The Basics
As my poorly-drawn word cloud would imply, bioastronautics pertains to “the study and support of human life in space.” This is obviously quite broad, and can span everything from the physiology of the inner ear to cockpit design, from developing new materials for spacesuits to studying the effects of radiation on cells. Foundational to the field of bioastronautics, however, is an understanding of the space environment. This includes learning what it means to design for a vacuum, the dangers of the radiation environment, the short- and long-term effects of microgravity, and other hazards like micrometeorites and orbital debris. These aspects underline all of the challenges faced in supporting human life in space.
Beyond the space environment, I think of the rest of the field as falling into two high-level categories: human or habitat. Now obviously there’s a ton of overlap between these two categories. I’d actually argue that the entire point of bioastro is capture that overlap and to research all of its opportunities and challenges. But the divide is useful for framing the focus of research, which I’ll elaborate on in the following sections.
So what’s up with humans?
Humans are really messy. They are also the central axis of bioastronautics. As my advisor would say, the entire point of designing a space habitat is to keep the crew alive, healthy, happy, and productive—in that order, like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I think of the tenants and their related topics like this:
Alive: the space environment and its physiological effects, space medicine, life support systems, reliability engineering, fault response
Healthy: Much the same as above, actually, with an added focus on countermeasures like exercise to prevent muscle and bone loss, radiation shielding, and ergonomics
Happy: Psychology, space architecture, behavioral studies
Productive: Behavioral studies, human performance, and ergonomics
With most things in this field, there is a lot of overlap and coupling between these groups. There are additional sub-topics that a person could spend their entire life studying, like diet and nutrition for the microgravity environment. Things like hydration, nutrient absorption, and even food enjoyment are all changed by life and space!
Then of course you have extravehicular activity (EVA) and space suit design. The EVA suit is technically the smallest viable habitat design, as it is a closed volume capable of sustaining human life in the space environment. However, space suit designers require an even more sophisticated understanding of topics like physiology and ergonomics in order to make sure that EVA suits fit and function for their users. Historically, poor suit design resulted in shoulder injuries and foot blisters. Outside of the habitat, the astronaut is the suit—it is there lifeline and their tool, and should allow them to perform their mission objectives safely and effectively.
How do you build a habitat?
Space is hard, and it’s even harder when you have a messy human inside a tin can that you’re trying to keep alive. I think about the habitat side of bioastronautics as encompassing everything from environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) to autonomous systems and robotic teammates. My advisor once again has a good idiom for describing how to functionally integrate the humans and spacecraft in design through physics, physiology, safety, and operability.
Physics: Where are you trying to go? What do you need to do to get there and survive the environment? This encompasses everything from mission design to guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) to spacecraft thermal design. The good news it that you can be a regular old aerospace engineer and still work in human spaceflight.
Physiology: Keep the crew alive! See the previous section.
Safety: If you do the bare minimum to keep the crew alive, how can you make if safer? Can you make systems more reliable? Add redundancy? Easier to maintain? This one is important, as in human spaceflight there are lives on the line. We think of failure in terms of severity from worst to least-worse: Loss of Crew, Loss of Vehicle, and Loss of Misison (LOC, LOV, LOM). Apollo 13 had an LOM, but avoided LOC and partial LOV.
Operability: Is your habitat easy to navigate? Can the crew do their work and complete the mission objectives? Is that system an absolute pain in the ass to use? Can anyone figure out how to use the sleeping bags in their crew quarters? Design it better. This also has a lot of overlap with the human section, as operability implies inherent design for a human operator.
Once again, there are niches everywhere: what is the optimal interior design for microgravity? Does this change in a Lunar gravity? What is the best mobility aid in space? Is it a foothold, handhold? What shape? Is there an optimal atmosphere for human health and performance? How does this atmosphere effect the electronics and the other subsystems in the habitat? Maybe the crew hates certain tasks, and so you figure out the best way to automate them, or design a robot to do it instead. This is where emerging fields like human-autonomy teaming come into play. The autonomous agents—like software or robotic arms—are technically part of the habitat, but need to be able to engage and work for and with the crew. Just like before, although I’ve categorized these topics as part of the habitat side of bioastronautics, they are all thought of with the human in mind.
Hot Topics
With every field, topics come and go in popularity. Bioastronautics is unfortunately often at the whim of NASA funding (which in turn is at the whim of congressional support and public interest) and so some fields will rise and fall with whatever missions happen to be at the forefront of current human spaceflight. Fortunately, the rise of commercial companies pursing human spaceflight also means that some areas of research and bioastronautics class offerings are much more stable and consistent than they used to be.
Right now, some popular areas in bioastronautics include:
Interactions between humans autonomous system, or human-autonomy teaming
In-situ resource utilization
Artificial intelligence as operational aids, i.e. for things like fault detection, diagnosis, and repair or task scheduling
Effects of long-duration spaceflight, including spaceflight neuro-occular syndrome (SANS) and radiation
I’m sure there are many more emerging fields, but these are the ones I happen to see most at conferences and through grant proposals. If you want to see what different players are up to, I would recommend keeping up with news sites like SpaceNews and following the socials of agencies like NASA or companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, or Axiom.
What should I study?
The answer here is it depends. It depends on what you’re interests are, what you want to work on, and what the field needs; it depends on what your school offers and what kind of work you’re willing to tolerate. I would recommend that you take some time to figure out what areas you’re most interested in within bioastronautics. If you’re interested in space medicine, my advice would be to go to medical school, and look for supplemental programs at places like NASA. If you’re interested in the physiological effects of microgravity, I would err to subjects like biology and neuroscience. If you’re interested in life support, go deeper into fields like chemistry; if it’s spacesuits, study materials and textiles. Maybe you’re an athlete who has always been interested in human performance—the good news is there’s a lot of ongoing research into wearable sensors (like heart rate monitors) for use on astronauts.
The short answer is that there are dozens of majors that are all relevant to human spaceflight. The question is whether or not you can find the need and tie it back to the type of work you’d like to do. Take the classes that interest you and always keep an eye out for fellowships, programs, and opportunities to keep abreast of what’s out there.
Where should I study?
This is an even tricker question, because the bottom line (once again) is it depends.
Because my advisor is a gem, he has compiled a a list of US-based and international institutions that host bioastronautics faculty and courses. However, academia is constantly evolving, and while this list is quite comprehensive, it may not be complete; additionally, some faculty have multiple research interests, and so faculty are always coming and going from bioastronautics-related fields. Once again, keep up with new developments in the field wherever possible, and see where different people went to college. Off the top of my head, big players in bioastro right now include CU Boulder, MIT, Texas A&M, Michigan, Johns Hopkins, King’s College London, and UC Davis. If you don’t go these schools, you can look out for their summer research opportunities or agencies like NASA, ESA, and other space centers.
What if I’m not in college?
You may be thinking: yeah, okay, that’s great if I’m looking for universities for undergrad/grad school, but what if I’m just looking to learn? Unfortunately, a lot of textbooks and courses are accessible only through institutions. Fortunately, we live in the age of the internet (for better or for worse) and there are a lot of different documents, websites, and articles floating around out there.
Contrary to what our high school teachers preached, the Wikipedia page on bioastronautics actually has decent overviews of a lot of topics, and if you’re looking to learn about specific areas, I would take a look at pages like the ISS Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLSS) page or NASA reports like the Management and Development of Spacesuits. Reports like these exist all around; they can be a little dense, but are worth skimming through if you’re interested in details. You can find many of them through sites like the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) or through some well-worded Google searches. (When in doubt, you can do what I do and type a specific question directly into the search bar and let it rip) If you want to try your hand at digging for textbook PDFs, here are some that I recommend:
Handbook of Bioastronautics, Laurence R. Young and Jeffrey P. Sutton (2021) - this one is a great place to start if you can find it
Human Spaceflight: Mission Analysis and Design, by Larson, McQuade, and Pranke (2014) - more of an instruction manual with lots of engineering details
Space Habitats and Habitability: Designing for Isolated and Confined Environments on Earth and in Space by Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger (2021) - a more recent work focused on design
Engineering Psychology and Human Performance by Wickens and Hollands (1984) - this one is a lot more broad and relevant to other engineering disciplines
These are all really expensive to buy new, and so I’d try to find alternative ways to acquire them if possible. If you don’t want to read textbooks, I’ve actually found that a lot of astronaut and science fiction books contain educational details. Authors I recommend include Scott Kelly, Andy Weir, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Neal Stephenson.
And finally, my hope is that I can provide blog posts that can serve as primers on different topics related to bioastronautics. If you have certain questions or topics you’d like addressed, feel free to contact me through my website or DM me on Twitter!