E291 - Let's Speculate About Regulations for Commercial Human Spaceflight

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Human Factors Cast. This is episode 291. We're recording this episode live on August 24th, 2023. I'm your host suffering from low back Pain, and I'm joined today by Mr. Barry Kirby.

[00:00:18] Barry Kirby: Hey, good to see you. It's been such a long time. Hey,

[00:00:21] Nick Roome: it has been such a long time, but I'm glad we're back.

We got a great show for you lined up. Tonight we're gonna be diving into some exciting news about the F a, launching a new committee to explore regulations on commercial human space flights. So we'll speculate on that. Later on, we'll be answering some burning questions from our amazing community on struggling to land a job as a human factors engineer.

Job titles to look out for and leveling up from mid-level to senior. But first, some programming notes for you all. We would like some reviews. Oh if you could do that for us, that would be very kind. That takes a little bit of your time, but it's free for you to do. Really helps the show tell your friends about us.

That also really helps the show. And if you have financial means to do supporting us on Patreon is great. Okay, that's my pitch. Barry, what's the latest over at 1202? So at

[00:01:11] Barry Kirby: 1202, I've got a new interview with Dr. Mark Young. He's the current president-elect of the C I H F and will be taken on from me in April, but he's just gone from industry to back into academia.

And we talk about the they've, the future of HF and oh, the way a HF reviews itself, that from a, an academic perspective and from an industry perspective and what we can learn from each other. So again, one of these as always, amazing interview, really good guest and well worth listen.

[00:01:41] Nick Roome: I love that. I love that for you.

That's, thank you. I love that. You know what I like for us. Let's get into the news. Let's do that.

That's right. This is the part of the show all about human factors news. Barry, what is our story this week?

[00:02:05] Barry Kirby: So this week the, we talked about the F A Oh, the f a launching new committee to explore regulations on human space flight human commercial space flight. If I can't even get the heading of the story right.

What have we got? Hope for the rest of it. Let's give it a shot. So the FAA is taking the first steps towards establishing regulations for commercial human space flight. This is a significant development in an industry that is rapidly growing and seen an increase in the number of people traveling to space.

The f A has formed a rulemaking committee that will gather recommendations from major stakeholders such as Blue Origin. Virgin Galactic and SpaceX and submit them next summer. However, it's important to note that the F A does not have any rulemaking authority of occupant safety on board vehicle launches on, sorry, on board launch vehicles.

They can only regulate the safety of people on the ground during the launch. To change this, congress would need to act, and there's a possibility they will do so soon. Currently, there is a moratorium of commercial human space fight regulations, but he's set to expire this October. Unless extended advocates for extending the moratorium argue that the F E A does not yet have the expertise or resources to implement new safety regulations.

On the other hand, RAN corporation suggests the moratorium should expire as there is a lack of transparency in data sharing going on amongst C commercial space flight companies. This lack of com transparency poses a risk for safety and pre prevents companies from learning from each other's experiences.

The debate of assumption reg regulations for human co commercial human space flight centers around finding the balance between ensuring that safety and allowing the industry to grow and innovate. So Nick, what are your thoughts on bringing a regulatory committee into the great journey that humankind can hope to make you right over

[00:03:48] Nick Roome: there.

You good with the,

[00:03:49] Barry Kirby: I'm done now. I'm over. I'm over

[00:03:50] Nick Roome: it. Okay. It's gonna be a show, folks. I'm over here struggling with my back. Barry's over there struggling with words. It's,

[00:03:57] Barry Kirby: which is not a problem except for the fact a podcast that people are listening to and the only thing that they're hearing is words.

And perhaps it's just, yeah. Oh God.

[00:04:06] Nick Roome: Look, I'll promise to, I'll promise to mute when I like wince in pain. If you promise to, to try to read the words.

[00:04:12] Barry Kirby: See, I No promises.

[00:04:14] Nick Roome: Okay. But look, it's gonna be wild ride. Yikes. Alright okay, here's my thoughts. I think this story is interesting from the perspective of there's gonna be a lot of crossover with our Ocean Gate episode, but in space. Space. I think this is really cool because there's there's the similar talks that we were having about why you might want to regulate commercial human travel in particularly dangerous terrain.

I'm trying to like, whether it's the bottom of the ocean or up in space, I think there's a lot of good reason to do and it'll be interesting to see what types of regulations go into it. And especially with the sharing of information across various companies. I think there's a lot of interesting.

Takes that we can do with that. And where is the line with proprietary information and where's, what's that balance between trying to push those boundaries and actually establish boundaries by regulation, by regulatory so efforts I don't know. Like I, there's a lot of different places that we can go with this discussion, but I wanna know what your initial thoughts here are, Barry.

[00:05:28] Barry Kirby: So I think as long as we can get the human factor stuff upfront, I almost don't care. When we've talked about this type of regulation with ai I've been very much of the the belief that we've gotta go light touch because you will, if we don't care if we throw the baby out the bath water, you stifle creativity, we lose innovation and we don't deliver what it is that we want to deliver.

And a really good example of that, Nasa. So NASA is very risk averse hugely risk averse. And, given episodes in, its, in its history, quite rightly but then when you've had a company like SpaceX who've come in and had a very different approach, they've not put people at risk, but they've been willing to fail and fail fast to learn and to keep going on.

So the, the number of launches they put together, the number of landings they put together that ended in failure, but they were always learning in order to then do stuff. Shows that there is that there is an ability that if you within reason have a lighter touch deregulation you, we can maybe progress quicker and progress better in a way that perhaps we weren't expecting.

However if you look at what we've done in the aviation world and the way we now keep people safe in the way that we do Is there an opportunity for us to learn here quicker ba and have the right sort of regulation rather than just going completely hard over which we maybe have done in the past.

So can we make the type of regulation intelligent? Can we make it in a way that that is, is keeping people safe, but is not stifling the creativity, still allowing people to act. And I guess the other element of it as well is there an element of co commer, commercialism, capitalism in this that we are now heavily leaning on?

Are we just suggesting that actually almost state actors do not have as big a place in space flight anymore? That we are needing this stuff in space because NASA is not the only fruit. And the other, the other government based space organizations. We are now in the hands of commercial organi commercial operators in the same way as road transport is now is, ev ca government doesn't do, doesn't build its own cars.

We have enough, we have companies to do that for us. So how do we make that happen? I, there's a lot of places where we go where we could go. Nick, where do you wanna start? Have you got any thoughts?

[00:07:56] Nick Roome: Yeah, you said let's start with the human factors piece upfront. I think that's right. And I want, I.

I, yikes. I back. I almost wanna start with the purpose of why we have regulations in the first place. That to me is, that is human factors. It's really to get at the safety and the effectiveness of these devices, and in this case, these machines that are taking us to dangerous environments space.

And I think really we're looking at this from the perspective of the human interactions with the system. So when you look at the approach that you just took and how you were comparing NASA and SpaceX. Yes. NASA was a little bit more careful. They're government funded and SpaceX took that opposite approach.

Let's fail fast and learn a lot from those failures. The difference is that the failures on SpaceX's part, were not. Involving humans. There's some things that, that regulations might be able to specify, especially when it comes to those failures and risking lives on the ground, especially with some of those failures, right?

That might be something that we look at. But I think the main thing here that we're looking at is the human safety aspect of this. And that's why human factors and these regulations are gonna be so critical here. I think there's a lot of interesting things that we can point to when it comes to specifically the regulation side of things.

And I'm thinking about this from a couple different A approaches, right? You can compare things with the f a standards for design construction, maintenance of like aircraft, right? So I think there's, I. There's standards out there for vehicle safety standards. And I think you could apply a lot of those same standards to spacecraft to make sure that a lot of the same inspections, modifications, all those things that undergo, that, that regulation, that certification from the f a perspective could still be applied to like spacecraft.

I think there's other approaches that we could take. We could look at like crew training and requirements. We could look at the safety training protocols. Are you gonna have to watch a pre-flight video on what happens if the spacecraft blows up in space? I think there's a lot of different ways that we could approach this.

And that's the fascinating thing to me is that a lot of this is a human factors discussion. There's, yes, there we mentioned briefly the data sharing transparency piece. I think that's less interesting than some of the other things about the operational procedures that people might have to take to get onto to plan out these flights or the submitting things to air traffic control, ensuring the safe routes, all this stuff when it comes to space travel because you have a million different things happening with that environment.

And then environmental considerations too. Like I, I'm just, my, my head is exploding with a bunch of different ideas. I guess those are the things that I am trying to think about. And then all the way through to like the informed consent and the post-flight stuff all, like, all that is interesting to me.

So we could dig into any of that. Barry, what do you think?

[00:11:00] Barry Kirby: So I, I think for me, The place that I find truly interesting is what is being able to identify what do we learn and what can we tr? So for me, the art of innovation is transferring from one domain to another. So really what we try to do is cherry pick through the other domains.

And the, and the aerospace domain is the most analogous domain that we've got. It's a closest thing. So if we are on about commercializing space flight, which we are, so what are the analogies to your normal flight at the moment? So if you've go and take a flight you almost don't care which airliner you are boarding.

It could be a Boeing aircraft, it could be an Airbus aircraft, it could be a McDonald Douglas, it could be whatever. The way that you are treated at the airport is the same. You check your baggage, you get your due passport control, you do, or security, all that sort of stuff that is independent of the way you do it.

And I would assume. That this is the way that the space flight will also hook up. You are going to have spaceport we have a couple of space port here in the UK already. It's just somebody got an old airfield to put Spaceport on the front of it. You take off from kit Kdi or Kate Canaveral them sort of things.

Almost no matter what you are using you go and do that. So the way we treat people, there will be the same when you get on your aircraft, you know you're gonna go get into a certain type of seat. It's not, it's gonna be forward facing. It's going to have a certain amount of leg space, 'cause that's regulated.

It's going to have a, it's gonna have safety features in there, like the face masks that drop down on depressurization. And so there's a whole lot of stuff that is regardless of your regardless of the supplier, regardless of the company that's doing. Its, that is, and the airline that's running, there's gonna be stuff there because it's built on regulation.

So what is it we learned from that? That is good. And I should imagine a lot of that will be the same where what we will differ on, I think and where we want to look to innovate is we can see some of these things already. That if you look at a take a space suit, That's something that we get excited by, from a human factors perspective that we have that Nasry has a spacesuit that looks what you would call a spacesuit.

It looks big and bulky and clunky and just what you'd expect to see. I was blown away when I first saw the SpaceX spacesuits because they were lean, they were sleek. There was something out of a futuristic space flight, yet they still fulfilled the need of what it is that they were trying to do.

Then we can also touch on, on, on the use of autonomy because both NASA and I think the Russian equivalents are very manic in, in the way that they work. They don't like to rely on autonomy very much. Whereas the Dragon capsule from SpaceX is almost the other way. It's been designed to be flown remotely or autonomously.

The cool interesting interface designs, which I was trying to desperately watch when it was on the telly. They're their advisory, they're not meant to be interacted with by the by the crew unless it's an emergency situation. So very different.

So I guess I've gone about the f a lot and the analogy to Airly, but do you think there's other domains out there that we could be learning from? And that we should be taking all steering, clearing from, steering clear, steering, clear of.

[00:14:19] Nick Roome: I not so much from like the the steer clear file, like there's a lot of different things that we could look at from other industries.

I think the interesting thing to me is that we're looking at the f A and is the f a the right one to regulate this? Is there perhaps a global organization since space flight would truly be international? And is there like a global set of standards that we could put into place to look at this from a worldwide perspective, right?

Rather than just a US F a focused, that might start with that, but I think in terms of. Applying from other domains. Yeah, I think there's a lot to be learned, especially from like we were talking about with Ocean Gate, like what kind of regulations would be applied in that space, and especially when it comes into these extreme environments, right?

I think for me, the interesting thing is, you're right, there are a lot of, differences from traditional, like air travel that we can look at and pick apart here. And particularly from the perspective of the passengers that I mean there's obviously a lot of different things that we could look at here.

And I'm thinking about like the full process start to finish, right? Even from the vehicle design aspect of it, right? We could start to think about How these are facing extreme conditions. And like we talked about with Ocean Gate, how are we going to design these vessels to withstand things like vacuum radiation, microgravity reentry, all these things that are unique to space flight that you don't necessarily get in traditional air travel.

But then also looking at, like I said, the passengers. And I think this is where it gets really interesting when we start thinking about some of the physiological things that are going on with people. You have to have a pressurized airplane, right? So like how are you gonna handle this with like space suits?

Extended periods in space are challenging for astronauts who are up there for a long time. And when we think about Human space, flight, commercial travel. We can't just isolate it to these instances that we're thinking about, at least the when I say human space flight commercial travel, I think there's, I.

Probably a tendency to think about what we're doing today. Meaning you take billionaires up for a couple seconds, maybe an hour or two in space, and then you come back down and that's low earth orbit. That's not even, like deep space. Okay. But I'm starting to think about even further down the line where, what if we have moon bases and we're starting to transport people from the earth to the moon or from the moon to Mars, or from Earth to Mars.

And so these are the types of things that I think we have to start to establish some of these things early so that way we're starting to think about it, right? So the extended periods in space affecting the human body in ways that we're not necessarily accustomed to with traditional air travel. That that the whole like muscle atrophy thing bone density loss, radiation exposure, a bunch of other things that we're still learning about too.

So setting guidelines on sort of maximum duration of space flights. I think something like that might actually come into play here. Mandatory health checks before and after all these onboarding procedures for, to make sure that the travelers passengers are safe. I think that's just one thing to look at.

We could even look at, like in-flight emergencies, you brought it up. What happens when depressurization happens? Like the emergencies in space are significantly more complex than anything that you would experience in like traditional air travel. I think there's no option to land immediately.

There's no, you can't divert your flight, You could, but I think you need to regulate some specific emergency response equipment training backup systems for these types of emergencies that could happen. And the training aspect for what happens in those emergencies is gonna be drastically different from watching, put it over your face first and then put it over your child's face.

That's, it's not gonna be like that. You're gonna be like it's gonna be completely different in space. I don't know. We're like I could go on. There's I have a whole list of things that I've, like prepared for this. There's,

[00:18:49] Barry Kirby: There are so many different what counts as space?

Trevor Dobbins has commented on face, on LinkedIn asking, are we talking about long space or are we talking about balloons in low low earth orbit and things like that as well. What counts as that?

Chip into something that you mentioned earlier on around Yes. Is the f a the right person organization to do this? Or should we have a global organization? If one thing could, that could unite us as a global entity, it should be this because actually it has done in the past where, we have Americans, Russians, Japanese, lots of different Chinese, lots of different countries coming together to work on the i s to work on these type of things.

It's worth, highlighting that India has had a successful landing this week. They've landed a, their explorer on the south pole of the moon and the first country to do which is amazing and brilliant and congratulations to them for doing so. But when we talk about in internationalism, inter internationalism me again, this is where we could learn from aviation to a certain extent about even just the basics of communication.

So we talk around so air traffic control the language of air traffic control, the international language is English and any pilot who flies has to be able to communicate in English or air traffic control. That's not just because of English arrogance though that probably pays a little bit into it.

But it's just saying that we have to have a common language. When Tim Peak flew the UK astronaut went and was on the I s, he was saying that he had to go 'cause he went and. We went on a Russian space mission, and was in the cellular aircraft spacecraft. He had to learn Russian in order to, interact with the interact with the capsules, with the controls, et cetera.

And the crews and the training training team. So we would need to pick a language and run with it in order to have a le have a common understanding, because you're right, if we end up having, coming back to work, where do you land, all that sort of stuff. If we haven't if we're still landing in the oceans at this point, or we might be landing elsewhere, we don't want to be spending time having to translate and all that sort of stuff.

We need to pick a language and run with it, whichever one that is. So there are a lot of these international institution in institutions that we are gonna have to get together and agree international regulation like I said, not just specific country regulation.

[00:21:15] Nick Roome: Yeah I, you bring up a great point about the complexity with language as well, and I think there's, that kind of goes along with, I don't know exactly what you said, but it sparked my mind to go, oh wait, we're gonna need, we're gonna need a t c button in space air traffic control, but in space we're gonna need like, all, all the space traffic management to think about all the space debris that's up there too, like the debris with with everything going on up there, all the satellites and space junk and trying to navigate through that.

It's already complex with the amount of satellites that we have up there. But thinking about in the future when perhaps every airport is a space port and we're transporting people to and from space, like there's gonna be, it's gonna be an in incredibly more complex when you start thinking about that.

But yeah, you're right. I, there's. Even beyond the sort of practical everyday things, I think there's astronauts go through this amazing psychological exam before they even go into space to make sure that they're all right. And like space can be incredibly isolating if you, if if you're, if it's commonplace in the future, then maybe less but I think mental health is going to be a huge aspect of this as well. So starting to think about psychological assessments before flights. I think, like a t s a pre-check type thing where you have a psych. Exam every couple years that says you're good to go for space flight.

If you get isolated in space, you're gonna be all right while someone comes and rescues you. You're not gonna go crazy on board and like mutiny. I don't know. There, there's, there, there's things to think about from that psychological wellbeing perspective too. I think

[00:23:12] Barry Kirby: I mean there's just to, so continue with that thought a second.

Yeah. There's, we've also gotta think about the difference between passengers and crew. So if you're a passenger, yes, you're going on a one flight and every so often fine that, that's cool, but if your crew and, like an airline you are doing 2, 3, 4 flights a day maybe, or whatever, whatever that looks like.

That then gets us into a, into the long term. The long-term health of staff, because if you are basically the pilot and you are or you're, you are the equivalent of of an air steward and doing, doing them sort of jobs, which require you to be there a long time, do you get to a point where actually you can't return to earth because of the nature of, the nature that gravity has upon your body that actually, you, you either have a limited number of flights that you can do within your lifetime or within a period.

Maybe you're gonna do one a month or something like that. Or you basically realize that at some point you your role is going to be to do this and you have to live off the moon for the foreseeable because you are doing, you're spending so much time doing this type of work that actually it's life changing.

Yeah. That's a new a new avenue of job thinking. If once you've agreed to do that job that there's no return, that's gonna be weird.

[00:24:28] Nick Roome: Yeah. Yeah. That, that is a whole consideration that I didn't even think of until you brought that up. That's interesting from the crew perspective.

Yeah. What is that long-term impact on your body? I think another interesting thing to me when I think about this type of thing is we're thinking about it from like a terrestrial perspective from Earth. Like what happens when we start moving towards moon bases, VARs, missions, I mentioned, I hinted at this earlier, but what happens when.

We're like managing these landings off world. What are the protocols for those landing procedures that are very different from Earth in a lot of different ways? Space stations moon bases, Mars bases, other celestial bodies. What, how do we manage resources on those and how, what's the transfer from terrestrial to extraterrestrial?

And I mean that in the sense of like the, not earth not like et but then there's what happens if you encounter et is there a protocol for that?

[00:25:29] Barry Kirby: What happens if they've already got solution to half these problems and they can just say, there you go. This is how we do it.

I suppose we've gone a bit far, but the, but you just race by, I mean something we've talked about, climate change and things like that. And one of the things I keep on going back to that in the fullness of time, we've gotta get off the rock. The earth will, the sun's going to explode at some point and go over, et cetera, et cetera.

Billions of years time. But it's gonna happen. And at that point, we need to have been got off the rock and got out of the solar system. So at some point we, if we if we don't do that, then we cease to exist as a species. So we won't have any human factors problems anymore. But the, we are going to have to hit these problems and encounter them and become the the species that can live off the moon, bases off the off Mars and springboard further out.

So we are also then going to see a massive change in our evolution. And it's going to be interesting to see from a regulation perspective, to bring it back to the point are we going to allow ourselves to evolve as a species in order to live in space? Because this is, I think this is where the fear is about regulation, that you turn around and try and say we must try and keep things exactly as they are.

We must try and keep the human body in exactly the same state that it's in right now, despite doing all of these things. And we know through things like climate change that actually we are gonna have to learn to cope with a changing environment. And this is just an extension of that really. So how do we allow a change in our environment for us to engage and be able to live with that, regulating it to make sure people are safe, but not trying to keep the uncapable?

That's a very slightly. More drawn out argument than I was expecting to make. But yeah, it's,

[00:27:16] Nick Roome: it's, yeah. I, okay so you bring up climate change here on Earth and us trying to get out, but then there's also the ethical considerations of colonizing other planets and how we treat other ecosystems on other planets from a regulatory standpoint, right?

Are there, are we going to think about respecting potential eco or, these other ecosystems on these other planets to, to make sure that not only those environments are as literally disturbed as possible? Is that the right way to phrase that? But also the fairness with the resources available on those planets, and how we start to think about utilizing those resources on other planets, is that within the purview of the f a or this global.

Entity that we're talking about here, is that within that or is that something separate? I don't know. Because you think about these like economical considerations or the implications that might come along with this. And some countries are not going to have the same resources that other countries have to get to space and to take advantage of these opportunities.

And so like where's the guidelines that ensure like this fair competition from like a capitalist perspective, preventing these monopolies, ensuring that the benefits from space flight is shared in a truly global nature. To not make sure that, one country is ruling space because then it's like United Space of America and that's just not fun.

[00:28:54] Barry Kirby: But what's to stop? It is a really good point because as soon as you get out of, and I don't think a committee of the f A is gonna solve this one. But as soon as you get out of the the pull of earth, literally, then nothing exists. Law does not, and any ruling of law just does not exist out there outside of our own, low earth orbit type piece.

So what is to stop you, taking a trip to Mars and then just saying I'm having this one. Thank you very much. We back to the wild West, we back to, possession is nine-tenths and all that sort of stuff. How do we. Not do that because we can't let, we can't do that without, with the land masses we've got on earth.

Nevermind anything else? So I think there is definitely then wider discussions to be had. I think the, for me, there's an element there and in it brings out in the article is do we know enough to be able to actually do some regulation and meaningful regulation? I guess if I bring up the, these two quotes from it.

Corina Drees, the president of the industry group of Commercial Space Fight Federation. I didn't even know that existed. So the f A does not have the expertise, resources, or plan needed to implement a revised occupant safety regulatory framework. She said allowing the learning period to end this year would open the door to regulations that inadvertently freeze development before industry is at a time to mature harming safety in the long term and our nations, nation's competitiveness.

That's not unreasonable. An unreasonable position to take. Basically, as I read that she's suggesting that we need to allow companies to keep on doing what they're doing in order for us to learn what's going on. However, the Rand researchers suggested that the researcher gi given the commercial space, right?

Companies are not required to share safety data publicly. There is a lack of transparency regarding incidents, anomalies, no real way for companies to learn from each other. The, and that's a really good point, isn't it? The anything that happens at the moment if things go wrong. So SpaceX had it's flk and heavy, no, what the Starship blowup.

And nobody truly even now truly knows whether that was. Property planned. Whether it was a catastrophic failure, whether it was all just part of the part of the show when it blew up after launch, they, was they was that unexpected? Was that commanded, et cetera, et cetera? No, and there's no.

Piece there to share because of the commercial co 'cause of the commercial aspects, right? People, commercial entities, but are secretive. How do we get them into the same space? Huh? Same space pun. As airlines where they are, there are certain elements that they do have to share. And there is things that they do need to declare and they recognize the need to do so because it benefits everybody.

Yes, there's still some commercial stuff that they keep to themselves. Fuel optimization, all that sort of stuff, fine that's down on you. But there are certain elements that need to share and how do we make sure that happens without do, without falling into the trap of what the industry group suggest where you are stifling creativity?

[00:32:02] Nick Roome: Yeah, I think that just comes down to mandatory reporting of any of these incidents or anomalies during flights. I think especially. When it comes to any spacecraft that contains or is being tested for human space flight, that might be how you get around some of the other things. Maybe they test with other vehicles.

And then do, there's still going to be the mandated tests for a human space flight vessel, but I think, some sort of centralized database that companies have to share the safety data for, a scientific study can look at that. And then obviously, like very similar to the aviation industry, the periodic safety audits reviews by independent body entities.

I think that might be a good way to tackle some of that. You I want to go back to a point that you made about, like the law in space. I think a lot of the like international waters Types of principles can work out in space too. But it's another thing to think about. And where does that, like where do the regulations begin and the laws, or where do the regulations end and the laws begin?

That's, they're gonna need to think about that. But like, where is that threshold? Is it truly outside of earth orbit? And are we are, but we're still gonna need to think about the jurisdiction over the craft when it comes to where it's at in its flight and who's responsible for it when. So there's a lot of things to think about.

And I know we're just scratching the surface here, and we could go on and on, but I think we need to rein it in a little bit and give our final thoughts here so we can move on to the next part of the show. Barry, final thoughts. I know it's hard to think about because we talked about so much stuff and it was a great discussion, but

[00:33:50] Barry Kirby: I, I think so in the grand scheme of things, I think regulation is a good thing, I think, but it's gotta be like, touch, it's gotta be thoughtful to making sure that we're doing things for the real reason of keeping people safe in what we're doing without necessarily inhibiting innovation and creativity.

And what I fear is that once we get a co, once you start standing up some of these committees, people end up being on the inside of them and then helping commercial entities and, basically it becomes all a bit dirty and tainted. So if we can keep the altruistic view of what it is that we're trying to achieve, then I think it'd be very helpful.

What do you

[00:34:30] Nick Roome: think, Nick? Yeah, I agree. I think. When we think about f a regulating these, is that necessarily the ultimate end all be all? No, I don't think so. I think we need an international organization to do this and to handle all these questions that we brought up today. Is it a good start? Sure.

And we can get a lot of these like framework things in place but yeah. Are they genuinely the best entity to oversee space flight safety? Or should we form a new international organization to do I think ultimately there's a lot to think about, but these transportation regulations as it relates to space flight are truly going to be important as we saw in the like deep sea tourism sector just a couple weeks ago.

That these types of regulations need to exist for safety reasons. But where is that balance And human factors should be included at the start, and it should be around the safety of humans in space flight. And I think that ultimately needs to be carried through with regulations. And that's why we do them.

That's why regulations exist, is for safety reasons. So let's make sure that it's truly about safety and not about a company being unable to innovate. And by the way, just one more point on innovation. You and I have talked ad nauseum about how confines and cons constraints sometimes make innovation happen.

And so I think these regulations and putting these companies in boxes could actually force them to think maybe outside the box in some ways that then allows us to get to a greater place. And where that greater place is. I'll let you you all interpret what that is, if that's Mars or Moon or, I don't know.

I don't know where I'm going with that thought. That's, anyway, thank you to everyone especially our patrons for selecting our topic this weekend. Thank you to our friends over at Tech Crunch for our new story. If you wanna follow along, we do post the links to the original articles on our weekly roundups on our, in our blog.

You can also join us on our Discord for more discussion on these stories and much more. We also do post weekly polls so you can go and vote on these stories just like the folks did for this story. We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be back to see what's going on in the Human Factors community right after this.

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Thank you, and remember, it depends.

Yes, huge thank you as always. To our patrons, we especially wanna thank our human factors, cast all access and v i p patrons, Michelle Tripp and Neil Gainey patrons like you truly keep the show running even in our off weeks. But hey I wanna talk to you, the person listening to this right now. Did you know if you want to have your own discussion with Barry and myself about any topic that you want, there's a Patreon here for you.

You can actually do your own podcast with us. Choose any topic you want. We'll do h we'll do a human factors cast round table. That means you can talk with me and Barry and we'll talk about anything you want human factors related or not. We could talk about, I don't know, give me a topic, Barry.

We could talk about video games or. Medieval swords. What? Medieval. Medieval swords. There you go. Yeah, we can talk about that. A knife collection books. I don't care. Whatever it is. Y there's a tier for you on Patreon, if that's of interest to you. If you have how about this? If you have a paper that you'd like to talk about and let the world know round table that's your tier, that's what you wanna do.

You wanna just have an hour long chat about it? We'll do our research. We'll come prepared with questions. We're not gonna like half-ass the conversation. It's a full on.

[00:40:27] Barry Kirby: Can I just button in? We'd have to read the paper.

[00:40:30] Nick Roome: We have to read the paperwork. That's what I'm saying, Barry, is we'll do our

[00:40:33] Barry Kirby: research.

We don't normally read the papers.

[00:40:36] Nick Roome: We'll read the paper for this. We have to be prepared. See, here's the thing that.

Yeah, it's very cool. It's a very cool opportunity. If you're interested. There's a tier for you, and you can do that once a month with us. If you have several papers you wanna discuss at this tier, you get one podcast a month with us, we'll sit down, we'll do the whole thing with you. So anyway, that exists.

I just wanted to tell you about it because it's cool. Anyway, I think we get into this next part of the show. We like to call. Came from It. Came from,

that's right. It's my favorite part of the show where Barry gets so annoyed because we talk about the same questions week over week. It's called, it came from. This is where we look all over the internet to bring you topics the community is talking about. If you find any of these answers useful, helpful, give us a like to wherever you're watching or listening to help other people find this content.

All right. We have three tonight. The first one here from the Hema Factor Subreddit. This is Figs and Jam. The user figs and jam, they write. I need advice on how to prove my interviewing skills for human factors, engineer roles. I've been applying for seven months but haven't had any luck. I believe companies prefer candidates with a master's degree, but I have valuable skills and experience in various areas.

I'm looking for mentorship and guidance to help me land a job in the field. Alright, Barry, what are you thinking?

[00:42:04] Barry Kirby: Seven months. That's a long time. I get that. And it can be quite disheartening with the wrong people to ask in the first instance. The first people you should be asking the people who've interviewed you.

And if you get reached back to the ones you've interviewed and not got had jobs with, then they should if they're any good, actually give you some useful feedback because it's a small world. The human factors domain is small and it's in everybody's interest to help everybody grow in that respect.

So go back to them. If the comment was said about believing companies prefer candidates with master's degrees. If they do want people with master's degrees, they'll normally put it on the job spec. And if you've got valuable skills and you think that they are better, or your skills are better and your experience means you supersede that idea of a master's degree, then actually that's the biggest thing that you should be saying in your interview.

I think we've said before, if you've got four or five years of experience, that does counter almost counteract the degree in the academic learning that you get there. So yes, if you've got that, that amount of experience you are right. Getting a mentor, great idea because they can help you.

But fundamentally, if you're pitching the same thing every time and not having any su any success, then there is a level of self review you've got to do in terms around saying, why am I not, why is the pitch I'm giving, not landing and. You've got to put some effort into reaching out to the pe to the people who've turned you down, but also being honestly reflective.

Are you actually giving what you, what the company wants and what you want to give or are you giving what a a self I idealized view of what you should be giving. So be honest with yourself. I dunno. Nick, am I being a bit harsh here? Have you got any other thoughts?

[00:43:44] Nick Roome: No I don't think you're being harsh.

I do have thoughts. So some additional pieces of information that I left out in the, this is a long post, right? And so we edit these for brevity, but I think there's some, there's important details here. So bachelor's in biomedical engineering and they work currently as a hardware engineer.

They're applying for positions in biotech and pharma. And I know these positions are very competitive. And so unless there's I think I agree with a lot of the points that you took here, Barry, is that there might be something else that is a a consideration. These, the people that you should be asking for feedback are the people that are giving you the no.

And what is the delta between you and the person that they ultimately ended up hiring? I think if you can get some solid answers around that and just be clear and, I want you to be honest with me. I think people are more than happy to give that feedback about maybe what made the other candidates stronger than you in your case.

I, like I said, I think these are competitive fields. Seven months though, that's a long time to look for a position. I don't know what's going on there. I truly don't, but I wish you all the best. Alright, let's get into this next one here. This one's also in the Human Factors subreddit. This is by Silver Librarian 71 90.

This is Human Factors Jobs with a Master's. What are the job prospects for someone with a Master's in Human Factors and what job titles should I be looking for? I think that's the gist of it. Barry, what are you thinking?

[00:45:22] Barry Kirby: The, the statistics are in your favor. There are way more jobs than people in human factors at the moment in the uk I, when I recently did a a keynote or an introduction to a conference highlighted the fact that there was, over 5, 5, 600 vacancies in the UK alone.

There's growing eight human factors requirements around the world and the actual numbers of available practitioners is decreasing. If you've got a Masters in human factors, absolutely you should be able to nail a job. The sort of I guess the titles you should be looking for is something with human factors in it.

So human factors engineer, human factors, integration. You, I guess also branching out into the ux ui elements of that. But yeah, anything around them sort of things should get you something. I think it's a good time to be in the qualified in, in, in the human practice field. There's lots of opportunity.

[00:46:16] Nick Roome: Yeah. I sec I second that too. I think there's the search terms are particularly e interesting. I wouldn't say easy. They're definitely interesting And I actually wanna bring, I, I brought this up for a very specific reason 'cause carp CMM in our discord also writes what keywords do you usually search besides human factors?

And so I think this is a good time to bring up this discussion that happened in our discord. Users are, or user is a good term to use, like user researcher. Ergonomics is another good one to throw in there. I think engineering is a good catch all. I think there are different roles that you might be able to fulfill.

Human factors obviously is a term that you want to use. Integration, ux user experience. Yeah. You in the

[00:47:05] Barry Kirby: mix that somebody suggested the other day was actually now start starting to search for Scrum Master because yeah, obviously it's a bit of a termin, it's a specific role in the Agile community.

But scrum Masters make HF people make really good Scrum masters. And more people are now starting to think in that way. I first started seeing it come up in a search term only about three, four weeks ago yes.

[00:47:28] Nick Roome: That's interesting. Yeah. I think when you think about being fresh out of school, I think someone.

With a master's versus someone with a PhD versus someone with a bachelor's versus somebody with just experience. There are going to be different types of jobs available to you based on your experience, and school is part of that experience. I don't think masters necessarily limits you from the same jobs that you might look for with levels of experience or with a bachelor's.

It might prevent you fresh out of school from getting like a more of a principal investigator role in a company doing user research, but I don't think that pathway is blocked off from you. In the long term. I think that PhD candidates probably have a better chance of getting those, like the first dibs at those jobs, but I think there's a lot of different roles out there that you can look at and what's interesting.

From a human factors perspective, just in general is that we can excel at almost any type of job that involves a, doing something better for a person. And so broadening your search to look for human might be another good thing too. Or like psychology, I think there's other different approaches that you can take.

Methods research is another good one to use. And I think there's just it depends on specialties and human factors is this weird melting pot of a lot of different things coming together. But it depends on your expertise and. What types of things you're comfortable with doing, but it's a good discussion, I think.

Okay. We have one more here. This one is on the UX research subreddit by Blue Rottweiler. How did you become senior? Aged into it. There's, they write as a mid-level UX researcher, I wanna become a senior. What skills are needed? And do you have a development plan or actionable list to progress your career?

If you transitioned to another subfield, I'd like to hear about that too. Barry, how do you become a senior from a mid-tier role?

[00:49:38] Barry Kirby: I thought I was slightly sarcastic, put down working hard. But it, I don't think that, I don't think that's necessarily true as such. I think this idea about having a plan is interesting because I've never had a plan.

I've never had the, I want to be in this position by this point. However, I've always wanted to be successful at what I do, so never really known what that success looks like. However, fundamentally, I think if you want to become more senior the obvious way of doing it is through management. You are generally going to be in a position of either managing people, mentoring people, or leading people and know that managing and leading are not necessarily the same thing.

In fact, they're not the same thing. The, but fundamentally, you are going to get to a point where you need to inspire other people and be able to share some of that knowledge. You are either gonna do that through looking after other human factors of ux, e people or you're going to do that as part of a bigger team, so maybe an engineering team or something like that.

And you're going to share knowledge and and your experience that way. So really in terms of the skills that I think are critical that that don't necessarily get taught and people just assume that you pick up is learning about leadership. And learning about how to do some do, have some of them leadership skills, learning how to manage, and that's managing yourself and managing other people.

It doesn't have to be massive in the grand scheme of things, but having some of the ideas about how to plan a project, how to plan a task basic project management skills is really good. And then the third one is communication. Being able to communicate effectively with your peers, with those above and beneath you is something, again, I don't think we teach very well if at all through educational route.

Certainly not in the uk, in the uk and the engineering side of things. But if you are an effective communicator, that will help you become more promotable and become more senior. And then fundamentally at the, in the grand scheme of things, be able to take responsibility. And if you can take responsibility for things and not just shy away from it and being able to own the work and be responsible for what you're doing, then that is golden.

And I don't, and that isn't just to become senior. I think that is the, for me, that is the catalyst for getting you through a career and advancing throughout any sort of organization. Nick what's your thoughts?

[00:51:51] Nick Roome: Yeah, I'm trying I'm thinking about this in two different ways. I'm thinking about this like leveling up within the organization that you're at currently.

You love your position, you want to manage and lead. That's going to be different than another approach that I'm gonna mention here. So the you're right, Barry. I didn't do the, when I leveled up from mid to senior, I didn't do the whole, what's my plan of action? I just assumed more and more responsibility and through that responsibility, gained the experience to apply to those senior roles.

And so I think thinking about what skills a senior has versus a mid level that might be, what are the deltas between those two? Looking at what skills you need to develop to get to those things. Look at senior positions and see what they're doing on those job descriptions. Are you doing those?

If so, then you're ready. And if you want to do that internally, then maybe that's a discussion with your manager or hr. But if you're doing those things and you wanna seek opportunities externally, then if you're doing those things, then you're ready. Like I think the action plan would be looking at the deltas of what those things are asking for in the job descriptions and what you're not doing now.

And then figuring out how you can patch those things by doing more of those things that are on the on the job descriptions, right? So if it does say manage and lead projects, then you need to manage and lead projects. And how do you do that By speaking up and say, Hey, I would love to take ownership of this and I would love to do, people are not gonna say no to having somebody else manage something else.

In fact, it gets very difficult and cumbersome to manage a lot of different moving parts and pieces. And if you can be the point person for something, then that's a good thing. So that's my advice. Take a look at those deltas and see where perhaps you can patch.

[00:53:50] Barry Kirby: There's a, sorry, there's a third way, which is apply for it and fake it till you make it uhhuh.

[00:53:56] Nick Roome: And yeah, there's a fourth way too nepotism. You can do it that way too. And then there's a lot of different ways, but I think we're talking about legitimate ways here, Barry, oh okay. Sorry. Fake it until you make it is good too. Alright let's get into this last part of the show.

It's just called One More Thing, Barry. It's been a while since we checked in with each other. What's been going on in your life?

[00:54:14] Barry Kirby: Yeah, there's been a lot going on, so I'm gonna go for two more things instead of one more thing. Okay, that's fine. I'll,

[00:54:18] Nick Roome: I'll allow it for today.

[00:54:20] Barry Kirby: Firstly, here in the UK it's G C S E Results Day, so that means also 16 year old s school children are getting their results.

And my daughter got the results that she needed to go on to do her a-level. So we're all very proud of our Holly back here which is, she's really cool. The only downside is that she's not gonna go and go and do psychology A level like, like I was hoping she, or sociology a level like, like I was hoping she wanted she was going to because stupid politics.

Anyway. But it's interesting, again, it opens up that whole debate around the point of actual examinations as opposed to different ways of doing education, which is possibly a topic. If I wanted to host a round table, it's something I would like to possibly talk about. But the new big th the other new big thing that's happened for me recently is we moved me.

So my company, we've moved into new offices which is fantastic. We've lived in the PA for the past three years in a Ruby Stadium in a sports stadium and had a room that, and that's been a really different type of environment for what we've done. We've now. Into, a more traditional office structure where we've got two floors of offices between between us all.

So I'm back to having my own proper office. It's got a sofa in it and all sorts. And we've got a, I've got a really big meeting room where what we call in the imagineering room, which we've got whiteboards in it and it's gonna have TVs in there and stuff. And it's just back to more of a space that I feel I can be creative in and things like that.

And the rest of the team are happy. We've got a staff room and we've even got a kitchen and a toilet. So it's just really exciting. And it feels you do these things as a company, I think where you go and have a really big shakeup, a change of scenery, and it reinvigorates everybody and feels like a, not a new beginning, but a new challenge and a new stat.

So I'm quite excited to see what this this change brings us. Yeah. That's quite cool. Nick, what about you? What's been going on with you?

[00:56:02] Nick Roome: I've been spending a lot of time on the Big Brother live feeds. If you're unfamiliar Big Brothers, a television show that hosts a certain number of individuals in a house where they have no phones and they compete for various things, and one by one they're eliminated from the house.

Okay. This season is very interesting because the casting decisions that they've made for the people that go into the house, they're just ordinary people, but a lot of cases. And they've put a good combination of people in there that make it for a wonderful, chaotic time. They're not good game players, but.

The feeds are amazing to watch because they're all making these really bad moves. It's just hilarious to watch the paranoia that is happening. So there's a room that you get when you are head of household, which holds responsibilities for putting two people up for eviction and then there's a way to veto and anyway, there's a whole different plan.

And suffice it to say, the people in the h o h room this year, head of household room, have been just massive levels of paranoia and no head of household has gone smoothly. In fact, every head of household so far has been evicted or we're thinking that they're going to be evicted, in terms of tonight would be the second h o h evicted.

And it's just been a pleasure to watch. It's like the best television show. Because people are just so paranoid in this house and they never stop gaming and it's just amazing to watch. Yeah, I guess that's my re my media recommendation for the week and the show. I feel so bad for the editors, like as somebody who's edited content before, it's just there's so much stuff, years of things happen and the meta commentary of following along with Reddit threads as things are happening live and like finding all these moments and just figuring out how terrible some people are that other people have idolized in the past is just like amazing.

And just. Crazy human psychology at its best, so Big Brother live feeds. That's my recommendation. Anyway, that's it for today, everyone. If you like some of the discussion around deep space or space in general, I'll encourage you to go listen to episode 283 where we talked about surviving deep space missions.

Comment, wherever you're listening and what you think of the story this week. For more in-depth discussion, you can always join us on our Discord community. Visit our official website, sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest human factors news. If you like what you hear, you wanna support the show, there's a couple things you can do.

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As always, links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode. Mr. Barry Kirby, thank you for being on the show today. Where can our listeners go and find you If they wanna talk about how they can get a Diet Coke on their space flight,

[00:58:58] Barry Kirby: Even to come chat with me, find me on social media or normally under Baz K if you wanna find me on X, which that just anyway.

But if you wanna listen to some interesting interviews with personalities and people around the human factors world, then find me on 1202 the Human Factors Podcast at 1202 podcast com. As

[00:59:15] Nick Roome: for me, I've been your host, Nick Rome. You can find me on our discord and across social media at Nick Rome.

Thanks again for tuning into Human Factors Cast. Until next time it.