E316 - When the Sky Won't Sleep and the Moon Must Wait

(A) E315 - When the Sky Won't Sleep and the Moon Must Wait

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[00:00:00] Nick Roome: Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Human Factors Cast. Uh, this is episode 316. We're recording this episode live on March 3rd. No, March 5th. March 5th, 20. I had to check the date. Why did I put third in there? Maybe this is when the show notes were live. I don't know. March 5th, 2026. Uh, again, human factors cast we're starting off great.

[00:00:24] Nick Roome: Uh, I'm your host, Nick Rome. Joined today by Mr. Barry Kirby.

[00:00:29] Barry Kirby: He wrote the show notes and didn't realize that I was reading English and not American dates. Um, so yes, that, that's entirely my fault.

[00:00:39] Nick Roome: Hi. Hi. How you doing on March 3rd? Over there? Is you? In the past it

[00:00:44] Barry Kirby: was great. Yeah. How, how was it in March 5th.

[00:00:48] Nick Roome: It's great over here, man. Alright. We got a great show for you lined up for you tonight. It we're gonna be talking about space. Space, all things space. And I [00:01:00] love this because it is not ai. All right. So let's do the space talk. But first any, any, um, any programming notes from you Barry?

[00:01:09] Barry Kirby: Um, yeah. So, uh, in 1202 Land as mentioned the other week February's episode, he's up a chat with Martin Dy, who was the current president of the CIHF. And it's great to get his perspective and chat with him about what he, how he finds it being president. And we sort of chat about what comparing uh, experiences.

[00:01:27] Barry Kirby: This one's interview is kind of around the corner. It's gonna go live in a week or so, but we're also looking forward to April because it's gonna be EHF 2026 which is the annual conference of the CIHF. So I'm hoping to be able to come out that with a whole bunch of conference gossip, and I'm hoping if I can actually remember to take my power cables this year that we'll get some interviews and things like that while we are there.

[00:01:50] Barry Kirby: So I'm not actually doing I have no official responsibilities. I have no I'm not delivering any papers or anything like that. So I'm going to be a meal [00:02:00] observer of things. I'm going to be enjoying chatting to people. So I'm hoping to bring that to you. And just a reminder that if you are using the 1202 website, then you need to be using 1202 pod co uh.com.

[00:02:12] Barry Kirby: Uh, so 12 12 0 2 pod do com. Otherwise, you apparently get viruses and stuff if you go to the old website because people are nasty and horrible. So, yeah. So that, that's it for 1202. We've,

[00:02:21] Nick Roome: uh,

[00:02:22] Nick Roome: we've, we've done a great job with this intro, Barry. We've full competence on display. And while we're talking about competence, I figured this is a great time to plug the lab.

[00:02:31] Nick Roome: If you want to work with a bunch of competent people, that is not me and Barry, uh, they are much more capable than us.

[00:02:38] Barry Kirby: You could tell who makes the show happen and it's not us.

[00:02:42] Nick Roome: Uh, you know that that's a thing you can do, reach out let us know what your situation is. And, and it's a volunteer lab and there's plenty of great folks in there working on great things that are re really great focused on communication in the field of human factors.

[00:02:55] Nick Roome: So there's my, what, like once every six months plug for the lab. So [00:03:00] let me know if you're interested. Alright. Why don't we go ahead and get into the news.

[00:03:03] Nick Roome: That's right. This is the part of the show all about human factors news. Barry. I only managed to mess up my lines once or twice. So let's see how you do here. What's the story this week?

[00:03:14] Barry Kirby: I dunno what you're trying to say. Um, I say it's not ai. We are not talking about ai. How exciting is this? Instead, we are heading into space, but we are looking at it through a very human factors lens and both of the stories we're discussing highlights something we talk about a lot on this show, the relationship between humans and increasingly complex systems, whether that's astronauts working within one of the most ambitious engineering programs in history or scientists trying to make sense of vast streams of automated data coming in from modern observatories.

[00:03:44] Barry Kirby: So we've got two really interesting examples tonight. One, about how organizations manage risk and complexity in human space flight. And another about what happens when technology generates more information than humans can realistically process. So let's start with nasa. NASA has announced a major [00:04:00] overhaul to its Artemis program, the effort to return humans to the Moon for the first time.

[00:04:04] Barry Kirby: Since the Apollo missions, the agency is now targeting 2028 for the first crude lunar landing, pushing things back in order to add more testing and demonstrations before attempting the landing itself. The concern is that Artemis involves a lot of first time operations, new spacecraft, orbital dock maneuvers, the lunar landing system all working together in a single mission.

[00:04:27] Barry Kirby: So NASA is effectively slowing things down to reduce risk and better understand how these systems interact before astronauts actually head for the lunar surface. The 2027 Animus three mission will be used to get at least one lunar lander on into a low earth orbit, meaning that either SpaceX and or Blue Origin will get to make most of the opportunity to use one of their lunar landers.

[00:04:50] Barry Kirby: Also, the new space suit made by Axiom space is gonna get tested. So from a human factors perspective, this raises some really interesting questions about system complexity, [00:05:00] operational risk. Now organizations decide when a system is truly ready for humans to rely on. Nick, how do you feel about this delay to the, um, to the program?

[00:05:11] Barry Kirby: Do you think it's a good thing, bad thing, or are they just hiding?

[00:05:15] Nick Roome: Do you want little child Nick, who is probably really upset that he can't watch a moon landing for another few years? Or do you want in direct opposition about their feelings on this?

[00:05:31] Barry Kirby: Well, let's go for, um, young Nick first and then bring in sensible Nick later.

[00:05:36] Nick Roome: Alright. Uh, young Nick is very disappointed and sad that he can't watch moon Landing. And you know, as a dad too my son is really into space right now. In fact, he was, he was very, interested about how YouTube thumbnails are made because I showed him the space background for this one. He's like, how do people make thumbnails?

[00:05:54] Nick Roome: So from that perspective, disappointed that I can't share that excitement with my son [00:06:00] or, you know, my, my, my past self to experience the joy of a moon landing. Just gotta wait a few more years. That being said, the human factor side of me is actually really happy to see this. This is systems engineering on display.

[00:06:12] Nick Roome: I think this is really cool to see a priority on safety, and especially when you think back to some of the more recent events here you know, with like Astronaut health, they're they had to bring back an astronaut from the International Space Station. And especially with space disasters in the past, I think having safety as a front and center consideration for something like space exploration.

[00:06:41] Nick Roome: Is amazing. Putting that safety in the public view is really cool. It actually elevates our field in a lot of ways because yes, safety is, is a huge part of this. And, and the systems approach is actually a huge part of this too. Being able to see this, this progress in these chunks or these, these [00:07:00] smaller iterative missions that go through and add little, little pieces of complexity to, uh, like they said a large operation that has many moving pieces with many new pieces of technology.

[00:07:14] Nick Roome: It's gonna be much better to spot anything that's going wrong with the program at those you know, those situations rather than wait for an go of trying to conduct a moon landing, I think. This is pretty cool to see actually from a human factors perspective, uh, especially when they are systems are all working together.

[00:07:37] Nick Roome: Your takes are because I, I know we've talked to folks from NASA in the past.

[00:07:43] Barry Kirby: Yeah. Um, thanks for teeing up. Just a nice little plug there. Yeah, so, we, in 2022, I think it was, uh, we spoke to the people from the atos program, particularly the Orion, um, program. And that was from like season two 13.

[00:07:59] Barry Kirby: [00:08:00] And he was really interesting to chat to them about what they're doing. So when you consider that these people have been into this for such a long period of time, I sort of get from their perspective, they're gonna ha they're gonna be disappointed in this delay in, in, in the way that it's gone.

[00:08:13] Barry Kirby: But I think, as you say. I think it's a, from a safety perspective, it's if there's any sort of via concern at the moment, the right thing to do is to is to pause it and see where you go with it. The, I guess the other element to it is how they recover from this, how they make the most of that opportunity and what they do, I guess the.

[00:08:36] Barry Kirby: Interesting thing from a organizational part of this is actually the attitude of the Nasra administrator. So the Nasra administrator now is Jared Eman. And if you've not heard the name before, you think you've heard the name before. He was actually the commander of Inspiration four, which was the first all civilian space flight by [00:09:00] SpaceX.

[00:09:00] Barry Kirby: Very much a buddy of Elon Musk is a, you know, self-made billionaire, I believe, and really seen as a, um, some, some people accused of buying his way into that SpaceX mission. Um, but he was actually, you know, he's put the time and effort in to be a trained astronaut. So it was interesting when he got made nasa, uh, uh, NASA administrator by this administration many believing that, um, Elon Musk pushed for him to be there because they're buddies.

[00:09:33] Barry Kirby: So there was a lot of fear at the time of him coming along and pushing a more of a, I guess we could call it a SpaceX approach, the, uh, the fail fast. And just do things quickly and get, and get things moving. Because we know SpaceX has had a, has basically had a lot of failure to get where it's up to but obviously very successfully.

[00:09:53] Barry Kirby: So I think a lot of people expected to see NASA almost changed to maybe this more commercial approach. Um, he's [00:10:00] also been really, critical, or, or he is, he is been a real proponent now of, of seeming to bring things out in, into the open more than what even Naau has done in the past. So he recently, and I think it was either yesterday or today, did a, um, went on the record in a, um, in a briefing, uh, that about the Boeing Starliner program.

[00:10:19] Barry Kirby: And we obviously saw the Boeing Star liner have issues getting to the, um, international Space Station and then there'd be issues around actually will they be able to bring their own astronauts home. And in fact they didn't. In the end it made an automated return. But Jared then did this briefing, which lifted the lid on not only perceive, uh, the findings of the failures of Boeing, but also Nassar itself, um, in terms of organization and safety culture and things.

[00:10:46] Barry Kirby: So I think where a lot of people expected Jared to be this maybe, uh, fly by the seat of his pants type approach when he's got into nasa, he's really. Lent into this safety culture. And so that's really, I think, really interesting to see from a per [00:11:00] perspective. And also, I also wonder whether he did go into it thinking he would bring in this new, this new culture, but actually realized that nasry is just a different beast.

[00:11:10] Barry Kirby: Because really does have to put safety first. It's not like, this is where I think the difference is. I'm not saying commercial companies do not put safety first, but NASA really has to have the golden the golden thread to all of this. It has to be whiter than white. Cleaner than clean when it's doing this stuff because, 'cause it's a government organization, because it's government funded they have to make sure that the safety of, of the citizens absolutely comes first.

[00:11:35] Barry Kirby: Um, and you know, as we saw, uh, with some of the, when the, they've had some previous catastrophes, you know, reputation is such a fragile thing. It gets damaged so, so quickly. So I'm really sort of excited by the ironically by the safety culture, um, still being present. We are such a bunch of geeks, aren't we getting excited by the, the safety, but I think it's absolutely true that, um, [00:12:00] that we're certain that we are excited by the fact that the safety culture hasn't been eroded.

[00:12:03] Barry Kirby: In fact, you could argue it's been strengthened, um. And the fact that, but they, they're also not saying it's all often until they've done it. They're saying, um, we want to try, we want to use the opportunity to then also advance the science so they can test these landers, um, that they, that they want to play with.

[00:12:20] Barry Kirby: And also in, in doing some of my, some of the background about, around this, um, because I was, I was particularly interested in the axiom space spacesuit, um, I also learned why spacesuits are orange which was interesting for me. So when they, you'll see the space suits when they're actually in space are all white, but when they actually get into the, um, into the rocket, into the spacecraft, they're wearing orange suits and they wear the orange suits for for launch and reentry.

[00:12:47] Barry Kirby: So if there is an incident, the, that, that bright orange doesn't occur in nature. And so they should

[00:12:53] Nick Roome: find the bodies quickly.

[00:12:55] Barry Kirby: Well, easy to find, um, you know, if there's injuries and whatever to, to recover. Mm-hmm. [00:13:00] Uh, recover through and or bodies in the worst case. But, um, yeah, I, I, I didn't, it's, it's them sort of little things that when somebody explains it, you like, well, of course that's obvious, that's brilliant, but it's the sort of things you don't think about.

[00:13:11] Barry Kirby: That's why you have specialists doing things. So yeah, I think, I think it's, um, interesting. We'll see where it goes.

[00:13:18] Nick Roome: Yeah. If I were to temper my expectations or not my expectations, if I were to temper my excitement about this and sort of offer a critical lens on it the critical human factors practitioner in me says why wasn't all the safety stuff considered at program or earlier on?

[00:13:40] Nick Roome: I, I guess better late than never. I think there's also some risk associated with this approach too. It's a double-edged sword because if you're increasing this launch cadence, if you're launching more rockets there's more opportunities [00:14:00] for, uh, things like things to go wrong.

[00:14:05] Nick Roome: I'll just say it that way. Mm-hmm. There's more opportunities for things to go wrong. Even if you're testing iteratively. So I think if I were to. Come at it with a critical lens, which we often do right off the bat. I just wanted to flip the script here and be excited about something for first and then say, here's my critical take.

[00:14:25] Nick Roome: We do it all here, folks. That's, that's the He factors promise.

[00:14:30] Barry Kirby: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:14:31] Nick Roome: Uh,

[00:14:32] Barry Kirby: I mean,

[00:14:32] Nick Roome: yeah,

[00:14:33] Barry Kirby: it is an interesting thing where you talk about where you, when you mentioned about, um, why didn't they do it off the bat? And I guess there, there could almost be two answers to that. One is that, yeah, they've just been not negligent, but maybe they just haven't considered it early enough and they should have done, but it could also be evolving issues within the within the program itself.

[00:14:53] Nick Roome: Sure.

[00:14:53] Barry Kirby: And so there is a whole bunch of new stuff going on and. [00:15:00] If people have felt pressured, it is really a chief engineer's call of turning around and saying, we just not there yet. They're pushing and pushing and pushing and you, you, good engineering teams work well under stress.

[00:15:13] Barry Kirby: They, good engineering teams will move mountains, but sometimes the mountain is just too big and it takes a really good engineering manager, chief engineer to turn around and say, look, we are, we, we pass that peak stress stage where actually it's just getting dangerous and we just, we're just not evolving as quick as we need to in a, in a safe manner.

[00:15:36] Barry Kirby: So my feeling from this story and the reading I've done around is I think we're more in that latter where they just haven't they're just not developing on pace. And there's critical things that, that are just not happening. And so somebody's made a. A, a brave call, I think. So it'd be interesting to know.

[00:15:56] Barry Kirby: I I don't, I've not been able to find out anywhere, but it'd be interesting to know where the call [00:16:00] came from. You know, it, somebody, somebody will take responsibility, but somebody lower down the food chain will have started going, uh, this isn't working, this isn't right. And how that reporting cadence went up to see whether what, how quickly that was acted upon.

[00:16:15] Barry Kirby: Because if somebody was raising the concerns a year ago, and it's only just come to right, come to light, that's almost as bad as what you were saying. Where or suggest, suggesting could have been the case if they didn't, you know, if they didn't know right at the beginning. But if this has been a fairly recent thing, you know, within the past, um, normally a review would be maybe anywhere within three months.

[00:16:36] Barry Kirby: Um, that's for something this large, that's probably about the right sort of cadence.

[00:16:40] Nick Roome: Yeah I was looking all around my desk for a prop, like a coin. So I guess we can use this. This is, this is just a mount for equipment.

[00:16:48] Barry Kirby: Okay.

[00:16:49] Nick Roome: Okay. So this is a two-sided coin, right? And I think this story has a lot and I tend to think about this as like, I run a human factors communication lab.

[00:16:59] Nick Roome: [00:17:00] I, I have to think about the communication aspect of this, right? So I'm thinking about this, you know, the whole, like here's side one, right? This is I guess the more sexy side, and this is the more structural side, okay? The sexy side. A a moon landing is sexy. A moon landing is cool. A moon landing is exciting and it can generate a lot of public, like support for this type of thing.

[00:17:26] Nick Roome: And here's the flip side, the structure the structure, the slowdown. This, it's, it's less cinematic than a shot straight to the moon. It's less cinematic. But I think in a lot of ways it reinforces is a structure. See, it reinforces the, the idea that we are looking at caution, not as something that we shy away from, but rather that we embrace, you know, in our engineering teams.

[00:17:54] Nick Roome: And I think that's beautiful. I think also if you think about the, again, the structural [00:18:00] side, you have these structure these, uh, these different schedule changes because of unresolved issues. If the public sees under the hood here. What does that mean? Well, it could lead to less trust in some of these, like hugely government funded programs, which is not a good thing, right?

[00:18:26] Nick Roome: So that's, that's the ugly side of the coin. But again, on the flip side, hey, look, if you do a good job after this course correction and everything goes well, this actually does model very well what, having these safety review checkpoints or having some sort of what, what good accountability in engineering teams actually looks like.

[00:18:48] Nick Roome: And so I think there's a lot of a lot, a lot of beauty and ug ugliness, but, you know, exposing that structure to the public is, is I think, ultimately a good thing. I just think that there's a lot that [00:19:00] depending on the execution here. The way that folk engineering our field of human factors safety critical system is largely going to be impacted by big decisions like this.

[00:19:14] Nick Roome: So I'm very interested to see how this all plays out, and I really hope that this is a good schedule change that ultimately leads to more trust in these types of programs focusing on safety.

[00:19:30] Barry Kirby: So do you think then that given, I mean we've obviously very much around human factors communication, it's something we, uh, we believe passionately in, hence we do things like this.

[00:19:39] Barry Kirby: Do you think that people like nasa, um. Particularly say NASA hf people should be considering the impact to public trust, public perception when considering things like this, given that this is a a public body I'm just thinking [00:20:00] back to films like I mean, it's, it's a bad thing, but the MAR for example,

[00:20:04] Nick Roome: yeah,

[00:20:04] Barry Kirby: they bought in the, um, in that bit, but also go back to Apollo 13 and there was them discussions there around what's going on and, when things were going on, then they shut everybody out in order to deal with the problem.

[00:20:17] Barry Kirby: Then nobody knew what was going on. And it wasn't until afterwards that, or sort of immediately you have to tell people there was a void where people are going well this is happening. And, and other people were filling that gap. Do you think it, is this, a human factors thought that we should maybe have more about perception?

[00:20:37] Nick Roome: That's a fascinating question. And I think ultimately public relations is not our job. Our job is not to spin good human factors practice into something that is acceptable for the public. What is our job is to make sure that these things that [00:21:00] are you know, safety critical, mission critical tasks and systems operate as they should.

[00:21:07] Nick Roome: I think that's not to say that human factors can't have a role in pr. I'm just saying that I don't think the people working on the systems should be the people concerned about the messaging to the public. I think if, if you were to ask me structurally, I think there should be an embedded human factors person in the PR team.

[00:21:31] Nick Roome: That then communicate, you know, that is the liaison between those working on the systems and communicating with the public. Hey, we're making, you know, here's, here's the bullet point list. We're making sure that these things are safety and that, this is the reasoning behind.

[00:21:44] Nick Roome: And then it's up to the PR team to spin that and, and say why this is a good thing. So if you were to ask me, no, I don't think the people working on directly on the systems, that that's, that's not their job.

[00:21:57] Barry Kirby: So let me challenge you.

[00:21:59] Nick Roome: [00:22:00] Go

[00:22:00] Barry Kirby: ahead. Um, 'cause it's funny, isn't it? So I would've absolutely said what you were, what you just said in the grand scheme of things because it's still, you know, PR teams are PR teams for a reason.

[00:22:09] Barry Kirby: They're really good at it. But I've been doing a lot of work recently and today in human machine teaming and trust. Right, and, and kind of what we've just been talking about, saying that uh, that NASA is a public body and all that sort of stuff. Part of the machine, the overall system.

[00:22:27] Barry Kirby: Because part of why we do space is because we can to, to quote Kennedy, it's not, we don't do things because they're easy, we do do them 'cause they're difficult and they provide targets for for government and basically hope for the citizens. So if we are doing something like this and considering the, the wider impact, I'm not saying that we should be involved in delivering the spin, but should it be a consideration in saying, well actually because we want to show that we have safer engineering, yes.

[00:22:57] Barry Kirby: Let's put it back and make sure we communicate to that, to the [00:23:00] public as quickly as possible, or do we just steer away from that public thing? Completely. I dunno, I honestly, from my own perspective, right. I don't know what the answer is right now. I think that in, when con considering the, the wider system, so considering the, the wider, um, ambitions of the program are why it exists, I think there, there might be value in considering it in a way that I'm not considered it before.

[00:23:24] Nick Roome: It's very interesting that you say all this because in the day job, a lot of times what we'll do is help craft a message around some of the things that we've been implementing in the system. And, and that message goes off to leadership and it's up to leadership to, to pick and choose what they want to disseminate to communicate what changes have been made to the system.

[00:23:45] Nick Roome: And so we very carefully craft that message and a lot of times, you know, our relationship with leadership is very good and so they'll, they'll take what we say and, and not change much. Mm-hmm. And that's good because then we've thought about what is the best [00:24:00] way that's easily digestible, uh, to understand what has changed with the system what.

[00:24:05] Nick Roome: Process or procedure that you need to do in order to do x, y, z task or workflow. So there's a lot of things that do go into it. And so when I initially made my, my no, it's not their job. It could be it could be part of it. I think, you know, in a lot of ways it, it's part of my day to day and I don't even think about it like that.

[00:24:25] Nick Roome: I think about it as like assisting with communication about the things that we've built and not necessarily not necessarily a messaging outward public facing thing because it's to a, it's a, it's to a subset of users. And I guess you, you could. Flip that and say, Hey, here's the message that we want to convey to people who might be unfamiliar with this.

[00:24:49] Nick Roome: I think I was thinking of it in two different ways, right? One is messaging to the users of thing, and then one is messaging to the public. But in a lot of ways I, it's already embedded in my process, [00:25:00] so Sure. Barry, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's, let's start doing it.

[00:25:03] Barry Kirby: Think of the world. So I'm just, just having a quick look as well at the ATO space suit.

[00:25:10] Barry Kirby: Um, so the, the by axiom space again, so it's, it's slightly outside the bounds of the, sorry to, sorry, to a certain extent. But again, it's interesting seeing the differences between that space suit and what we've seen going up in in other NASA missions, but also with SpaceX. 'cause obviously SpaceX has a I guess a, a, a leaner should, should we say space suit.

[00:25:31] Barry Kirby: Mm-hmm. Uh, one that is, um, less spoken. It obviously doesn't have to do the same. Same role, the same job in the same way. But it's interesting seeing that evolution and the different people get involved in that development. So Axiom has brought together, I believe, prouder and Oakley into this development.

[00:25:49] Barry Kirby: Which is, not names you'd normally associate with, with a NASA space launch. But yeah, so I think, I think that might be a, a, a subject for a, um, a future discussion [00:26:00] around

[00:26:00] Nick Roome: I,

[00:26:00] Barry Kirby: about that type of thing.

[00:26:01] Nick Roome: I think we actually might have ties to that space suit too. Like in the lab. I, I, I need to go back and check, but I'm pretty sure we have somebody in the lab that's worked either on, on some element of that.

[00:26:12] Nick Roome: It'd be, I need to go check.

[00:26:14] Barry Kirby: Yeah. Now you said that. I think we do.

[00:26:16] Nick Roome: I think we do too. Yes. Okay. Uh, alright. Speaking of communication, do we wanna get into this next story? Oh.

[00:26:23] Barry Kirby: I wanna say, talking about this one, no, but we'll stay in space, but we're gonna shift from astronauts to astronomers. And our second story highlights a completely different type of challenge to what we've just been talking about.

[00:26:35] Barry Kirby: Astronomers working with a new observatory that constantly scans the night sky recently woke up to something like 800,000 automated alerts generated in a single night, 800,000. These alerts are triggered when the system detects anything that changes in the sky. And that could be asteroids, supernova changes to stars, or anything else that moves or suddenly [00:27:00] appears.

[00:27:01] Barry Kirby: This technology is incredibly powerful, clearly, um, but it creates a classic human factors problem. Information overload. So when machines can generate hundreds of thousands of signals in a matter of hours, the real challenge becomes designing systems that help humans decide what actually matters to them.

[00:27:20] Barry Kirby: So this story is a great example of what the growing challenge of a human machine collaboration in a data rich environment can be. Well, the limiting factor isn't sensors or computers anymore. It's the human ability to interpret and prioritize what they're telling us. Nick, 800,000 messages in one night.

[00:27:37] Barry Kirby: How are you coping with that

[00:27:38] Nick Roome: alert fatigue? Yay. Cognitive overload. Woohoo. Look, I, this there's real challenges here with trying to parse 800,000 messages a night. And I think. I'm sure we'll talk more about it, but sorting and filtering these messages to what's applicable to [00:28:00] certain astronomers, what's applicable to certain scientists, uh, is going to be a huge boon with this issue of trying to find a needle in a haystack.

[00:28:09] Nick Roome: Right. I think there's gonna be so many cool things and cool discoveries here, but it's, it's like drinking water through a fire hose where you're, you need to be able to understand what is being blasted at you and how to take that information and make it relevant to you. And so I, I don't have a whole lot of initial thoughts other than I'm excited to dive in and this is, this is, uh, this is gonna be a good one.

[00:28:40] Nick Roome: What are your first takeaways there, Barry? I.

[00:28:43] Barry Kirby: Well, I mean, first up, how cool to be able to get so much data and to be di and then to be directed on where all them changes are. I mean, so what we're talking about is the VC root c Rubin Observatory, um, which is just newly opened and this was a trial [00:29:00] run.

[00:29:00] Barry Kirby: And when you look at what they're trying to do, if you can, I guess straight up task analysis, let's do some, um, some casual observation. And astronomers has sat there and looking, 'cause the sky sky's massive. And it sounds like such an obvious thing to say, but it really is when you are looking and as we get more powerful telescopes, you can see deeper into something that you don't know where the end is.

[00:29:22] Barry Kirby: And so any little change that you can see, I mean, we, we see stars twinkling in the sky and, and things like that. But for an astronomer, that's a significant event because you can see, you know, why is it twinkling? What's it doing? So just to see one small change on a 360 view that is just getting denser and denser as the technology gets better.

[00:29:46] Barry Kirby: How do you even track that? How do you understand that? Note it down, keep your records as getting bigger. How, just how do we even start with that data analysis? So that is just a massive challenge. So while we're not talking [00:30:00] about AI in this episode, woo, um, this is still a hugely powerful system, um, that is providing massive amounts of information that fundamentally needs to be s sorted, sifted, and allocated to the right people.

[00:30:14] Barry Kirby: Because I'm, we're not really talking about one person getting 800,000 messages, though I'm sure there's some system administrator there going, oh, dear God as they get copies of everything, um, but. Assuming that the certain areas will be allocated to certain astronomers and so they can do their bit, that's a lot of data being filtered to different people.

[00:30:35] Barry Kirby: It'll be interesting to know what filtering do they have in place to filter in, filter out things? What controls do you have? I've worked on systems or quite a lot of systems that around, particularly around alerting and things and things like that, and alert management and message management is just such, such a huge topic to try and make sure that the most important stuff gets to the top of the list, so gets put in front of the [00:31:00] person in a way that that is meaningful.

[00:31:02] Barry Kirby: And also stays there if needed or they get put back. I mean, we're talking some impressive technology. I mean, this the camera is a three 3000, 200 megapixel camera. That's just huge. And then, and during this test run, it captured millions of galaxies and stars scattered across the Milky Way in addition to 2,104, never seen before.

[00:31:28] Barry Kirby: Asteroids, the. I mean, just the numbers are just, just colossal.

[00:31:32] Nick Roome: Yeah.

[00:31:32] Barry Kirby: Um, but funda, but fundamentally as, as you said, it's just an alerting system. And so it's just how, how do we do data management?

[00:31:41] Nick Roome: You say colossal numbers. Um, 800,000 is a lot. You, did you see what their goal is?

[00:31:50] Barry Kirby: No, I don't. I don't.

[00:31:51] Barry Kirby: Oh, the the 7 million, 7

[00:31:53] Nick Roome: million, 7 million alerts per night. Yeah, there's, there's gonna [00:32:00] be some, some real careful consideration that needs to go into sort of what, what this sorting and filtering system looks like to get down to what actually matters. Right? Are you going to tag it with, uh, certain planets?

[00:32:13] Nick Roome: Are you gonna tag it with certain you know, a astronomical designators? I don't know what they're actually called, but you know, I, I would imagine there's a bunch of different designators for the the cosmic bodies. And so, how, how do you tag them appropriately? How how does this system understand what all that stuff is and how does it parse it?

[00:32:37] Nick Roome: Hopefully, you know, there's some automated systems behind the scenes that know exactly what it's looking at, and then it can tie those to the notifications if this is just like you know. We noticed this change in this part of the sky. You know, how specific are these notifications? I don't know.

[00:32:51] Nick Roome: But being blasted with this many alerts is a huge problem. And actually we've been speaking a lot about the lab tonight. You know, we have, we have, um, somebody in the lab who's [00:33:00] really interested in communications in, in disaster scenarios. You can imagine what would happen if we started getting like, uh, an asteroid headed towards Earth.

[00:33:09] Nick Roome: If, if we got like 7 million notifications about it, just the trajectory just aiming towards us. Like, that'd be, that, that wouldn't be the most efficient way to communicate, I don't think. But

[00:33:19] Barry Kirby: I mean there's a lot here around, I mean, the, there's some of the, I guess we go to the wider organization again, because there's something to be said here about the, I think what they're trying to get to is data transparency and immediacy.

[00:33:31] Barry Kirby: Basically, one of the things that they sort of highlight is that these will be able to go out and they'll be able to quote the article within minutes with each image, say, here is everything. Go for it. There you go. That's that it's just available. Whereas other organizations have had when they've got data like this, they've got implicit holds on it.

[00:33:51] Barry Kirby: Um, so they don't have to release it straight away. They do have to release it within time period. So if this is just saying just chuck it out there and see what you see, it does [00:34:00] fill, does fit into some film narratives where actually it's, it's amateur astronomers find things rather than, uh, the officials because, you know, you've got so many more people, uh, doing that.

[00:34:11] Barry Kirby: Um, so yeah it's really, uh, it's really quite clever. I mean, the bit, as I think you alluded to earlier with metadata. Metadata is gonna be such a key part of this. And basically making sure each picture is tagged with enough metadata to be able to to distribute it properly, but then also evolve that metadata as to what is found on, on that piece.

[00:34:36] Barry Kirby: So then you can see changes over time. I can, just going back to the actual physical aspect of this thing this, the, the mirror in the camera is 28 foot. Yeah. You know, the, I mean, having to manage, maintain, um, operate. So I mean the, the operation would be largely or automated. I, I should imagine.

[00:34:58] Barry Kirby: But the, just about to [00:35:00] maintain such a device that is, the, these things are not are not cheap and are not simple to, to manipulate, but presumably it's gonna need maintaining, cleaning, whatever. That's a lot, isn't it?

[00:35:13] Nick Roome: Here's the coin, right? So the fact that we can democratize this to you know, small institutions amateur astronomers, being able to publish their findings, that's awesome.

[00:35:23] Nick Roome: Alright, Barry final thoughts on the, I could sit here and talk all night about this. Final thoughts on the astronomy, uh, oversaturation of alerts.

[00:35:35] Barry Kirby: This is a the classic organizational HCI design problem of having so much information coming in and how do we make sure that people have the the ability to see the right information when they, when they need to get it, because it's not, not only gonna be available, it's gotta be available in timely manner to whatever, whatever they're using that data for.

[00:35:58] Barry Kirby: So

[00:35:59] Barry Kirby: I think it's a [00:36:00] really cool story and I think I can't, I'd be really keen to understand how they solve the practicalities of, um, of data allocation, um, subscription and the actual data management of it.

[00:36:12] Barry Kirby: So well done to them for being able to democratize the data in, in such a way and look forward to see where it goes in the future.

[00:36:20] Nick Roome: Two, two final thoughts from me. This sort of always on sky, the sky that doesn't sleep. You know, as the, uh, title would imply, I think having this type of thing would this might change our expectations around astronomy in a way that is maybe not healthy.

[00:36:35] Nick Roome: Having sort of these expectations that there'll be findings every day or every night I don't think is a healthy way to think about our discoveries of the cosmos. I think there's, there will be needing to be some sort of expectation setting. On the flip side though, I think this is a very positive story and I think that this might actually feed some of those [00:37:00] citizen science programs, uh, or platforms that actually changes how the public, participates in astronomy and science education.

[00:37:09] Nick Roome: So I think ultimately it's a good thing. We just gotta figure out the filtering problem. Okay. Alright, with that thank you to our friends over at Gadget and Gizmoto for our news stories this week. If you wanna follow along, we do post the links to the original articles in our Discord where you can join us for more discussion on these stories and much more.

[00:37:29] Nick Roome: We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back to see what's going on in the field of aviation right after this.

[00:37:38] Nick Roome: If only the Patreon support could afford me better internet in my area, that would be really the trick here. I cannot wait until Google Fiber comes. Let's just say that. Uh, huge thank you as always to our patrons. You keep the lights on over here. Uh, you keep all the services that we use running and you fund the lab.

[00:37:56] Nick Roome: Believe it or not, uh, a lot of the stuff that we are doing over there [00:38:00] requires resources that we need access to, and you all are making it happen. So thank you so much for helping contribute to not only this podcast, but human factors, science, communication in general. We truly appreciate it. If you have the means to and wanna become a patreon supporter, patreon.com/human Factors cast is the place to be.

[00:38:20] Nick Roome: And there will be some additional benefits for patrons coming soon. So stay tuned for that announcement. There's some exciting stuff brewing behind the scenes. Okay. We've done this for the last couple episodes here, and I, I think this has been a really huge hit. A a lot of people like this. Uh, so we're gonna keep doing it.

[00:38:41] Nick Roome: We're gonna do it anyway. Let's get into our next segment. We call this Weekend Aerospace. Brought to you by our friends over at the HIVS Aerospace Systems Technical Group. Elena, Phil, what's going on in aerospace?

[00:38:56] Elena Zheng: Welcome back to the

[00:38:57] Elena Zheng: podcast. This is Elena and Phil [00:39:00] from the Aerospace Systems Technical Group at HFES. Today we're talking about something that sit at the intersection of aviation safety and human wellbeing, pilot mental health. Before we begin, a quick note. Today's episode touches on mental health topics including stress and psychological wellbeing in high responsibility roles.

[00:39:21] Elena Zheng: If this is a sensitive topic for you, please feel free to skip this episode. We also want to note that we're not mental health professionals, and this conversation is for informational purpose only. It is not intended as medical or psychological advice. Alright, let's jump back in. When we think about aviation safety, we often think about technology training and procedures, but aviation is a human-centered system, and the mental wellbeing of pilots play a critical role.

[00:39:51] Phil Doyon: In recent years, uh, several high profile events have brought this issue into the spotlight. One of the most widely discussed case was the German [00:40:00] wings flight 9 5 2 5, which profoundly changed the conversation around pilot mental health worldwide. But beyond extreme cases like this accident, there's a quieter everyday reality, a pilot face stressors like financial strain, fatigue, divorce, family pressures, performance demands, just like all of us, but within a highly regulated high responsibility profession.

[00:40:31] Phil Doyon: Research suggests that this is not a small issue. A 2021 study found that nearly half of the surveyed pilots met criteria for at least mild depressive symptoms, and yet many do not seek for help.

[00:40:50] Elena Zheng: That's a very key point, not seeking help, because in aviation, mental health is not just a personal matter.

[00:40:57] Elena Zheng: It's tied directly to medical [00:41:00] certification. Many pilots worry that reporting symptoms or seeking care could jeopardize their certificate and ultimately their career. So we have this tension. Mental health challenges are relatively common, but structural and cultural barriers discourage pilots from help seeking researchers have described this as a cultural and structural gap.

[00:41:20] Elena Zheng: The system promotes safety, but it may unintentionally discourage openness. So the big question becomes, how do you support pilots without increasing fear or stigma?

[00:41:32] Phil Doyon: And that's where pilot peer support programs come in. Most people are familiar with the employee assistant program in which you call a hotline and speak to a psychologist or a counselor provided by your employer.

[00:41:50] Phil Doyon: But pilot peer support is different. Instead of calling an external professional, a pilot speaks with another [00:42:00] trained pilot,

[00:42:01] Elena Zheng: and that difference is why a peer support program is helpful. Pilots operate in a very specific professional culture, one built around precision, discipline and performance. Under pressure, a fellow pilot will have a better understanding of the cockpit environment, the responsibility of demand, irregular schedules, and the unspoken norms of the profession.

[00:42:23] Elena Zheng: Peer supports aren't just colleagues offering cash advice. They receive structural training to handle issues like burnout, performance, anxiety, fear after an incident, depression, and life stressors. The idea is to create a confidential, non-punitive first point of contact,

[00:42:42] Phil Doyon: and confidentiality is absolutely central.

[00:42:46] Phil Doyon: If pilots fear that speaking up could cost their piloting license, they simply will not talk. Effective peer support depends on building trust. In 2024, [00:43:00] researchers outlined nine core competencies that define an effective peer support ion. These include skills such as active listening, maintaining confidentiality, demonstrating emotional intelligence, and knowing when to refer someone to professional care.

[00:43:21] Phil Doyon: What I found particularly striking is that these competencies are almost the opposite of traditional pilot training. Pilots are trained to identify problems quickly and execute pre procedures. Pilots are told to put their emotion into a box before stepping into the aircraft so as to focus solely on the mission.

[00:43:45] Phil Doyon: Peer support requires slowing down, listening without immediately trying to fix the issue.

[00:43:53] Elena Zheng: In that contrast is fascinating. In the cockpit, decisiveness is essential, but in peer [00:44:00] support, empathy is essential. Instead of running a checklist, you're building report. And this isn't just theoretical, organizations are actively implementing these programs.

[00:44:10] Elena Zheng: For example, the Airline Pilot Association, A LPA, offers recurrent peer support training to its members in Europe. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has evaluated how peer support programs are being implemented across airlines. They found that large airlines reported that their support programs were fully operational by early 2023, but that implementation rate dropped to 6, 6 60 3% for smaller airlines.

[00:44:40] Elena Zheng: They also reported that pilots strongly preferred direct personal contact with peer than official company channels such as web platforms. There are also testimonials from Canadian pilot groups describing how peer support has helped colleagues navigate difficult periods while staying engaged in their careers.

[00:44:59] Phil Doyon: [00:45:00] So implementation is happening. There is institutional support and there's professional training. But here's the important question. Do we actually know if these program work? Despite strong interest and positive anecdotal reports, scientific evidence is still limited. A large scooping review published this February, screened more than 3,800 documents, and they are identified only three empirical studies that formally evaluated pilot peer support programs.

[00:45:39] Phil Doyon: There was one survey that identified reason for a pilot to contact their peer support program, and they found that pilot with clinically relevant symptoms were significantly less likely to seek support. The two other studies were focus groups and interviews with pilots on their perceived role of the peer support [00:46:00] program.

[00:46:01] Phil Doyon: So we see that there's enthusiasm for pilot peer support, but uh, there's still a significant evidence gap, especially for longitudinal impact of such programs.

[00:46:14] Elena Zheng: Regulators and airlines need data to understand effectiveness, long-term outcomes, and potential unintended consequences. Mental health challenges are real Barriers to care are real.

[00:46:27] Elena Zheng: Peer support program aims to address a gap in a way that align with the aviation culture.

[00:46:34] Phil Doyon: Pilot peer support programs represent a cultural shift. To empower pilots in addressing mental health challenges. They may not be a complete solution, but this signals something important. Aviation safety builds on human wellbeing.

[00:46:49] Phil Doyon: All right, so that's all we have for this week, so thanks for listening. And now back to Nick and Barry.

[00:46:54] Nick Roome: Eventually, whenever it chooses to switch over, it'll be back to us. Did your lights go out, [00:47:00] sir?

[00:47:00] Barry Kirby: Yeah, they have. And I'm trying to the back. It's just a day, isn't it?

[00:47:05] Nick Roome: What an episode this has been. Well, hey, thank you, Phil. Thank you, Elena. Appreciate you as always for breaking down the latest in, uh, the field of Aviation aerospace.

[00:47:17] Nick Roome: Yes. Hey let's get into one more thing before we go. Wait, we just need to say one more thing. Barry, what is your one more thing this week?

[00:47:26] Barry Kirby: Uh, ironically no, I guess so people in the, in the lab and some of this will be aware of this, but I've been trying to create some human factors tools and I've didn't, so I've been involved in developing software for a while and you launch stuff and that's all fine.

[00:47:41] Barry Kirby: I've never, never had a problem, but. Recently decided, I rather than moaning about the fact that there's no HF tools out there that I want to use, that I like, that's not not just a spreadsheet, I'm gonna create some. And so I've developed, been past couple of months, I've been developing, um, a task analysis tool and finally shared it with some people for beta [00:48:00] testing.

[00:48:00] Barry Kirby: Um, of which I think Nick, you've dived in there and a couple of others have as well. Um, give me really cool feedback. That's fantastic. But I've never been so nervous about having other people look at a piece of my work. And I don't know what it is. I dunno whether it's because it's like an ex, showing off a bit what I can do or because it's my peers who are doing it. And it's not just a, a customer in a way. It's, uh, people who actually know what they're talking about. But it's been a really different, almost nerve wracking nervous thing about send to people. Can you come and have a look at this and tell me what you think?

[00:48:36] Barry Kirby: Um, just felt like something completely different. So, yeah, no, that, that's just been a, a, a bit of a massive experience for me in the past two weeks, um, which is weird.

[00:48:46] Nick Roome: Hopefully everybody's been nice about it and it's not like, Hey, you should have had an example in here. And what gives,

[00:48:52] Barry Kirby: yeah, I know.

[00:48:52] Barry Kirby: If people are coming that critical and then highlighting where stuff doesn't work, then, I mean, that'd be really bad.

[00:48:59] Nick Roome: No, the the [00:49:00] example thing was not your fault, it was not your fault. I'm assuming.

[00:49:03] Barry Kirby: No, we fi we fixed it. So that was that, that, and that's exactly the point is there's been a couple of other things as well that you're sitting there going, but I can see this.

[00:49:10] Barry Kirby: Why can't Oh, okay. That's why we get users in, to have a look at it.

[00:49:14] Nick Roome: And this is not gas. This is, it's genuinely a cool tool and I'm, I'm excited to see others try it because it's a cool tool, man. You've built something. Cool.

[00:49:23] Barry Kirby: Cool. Thank you. We shall, uh, we, we shall see. We're debating about what, what are the next steps 'cause other people have suggested that we, um, make it a, um, no make it available as a, as an external tool and, and, uh, a paid for thing.

[00:49:35] Barry Kirby: And so that's my next, next thing. I dunno, dunno what we do with that, but we shall see. That'll be even more nerve wracking.

[00:49:42] Nick Roome: Yeah, I'm sure.

[00:49:44] Barry Kirby: What's your One more thing then, Nick.

[00:49:45] Nick Roome: Speaking of cool tools you like Lego, you've in fact built some space. Lego and I like Lego, but I don't get Lego very often.

[00:49:54] Nick Roome: My son on the other hand, has received something in the neighborhood of like 10 Lego [00:50:00] sets over the last six months for his birthday and Christmas. And has like, struggled to build them. He's six years old. He, um, you know, some of these sets are like 10 plus, not the most difficult thing to build, but the, the sheer number count of some of them is rather intimidating, right?

[00:50:19] Nick Roome: And so he's done these big builds by himself, but he really enjoys the process of like having somebody help him and build with him. So, I don't know if you're aware of this, Barry, but Lego has a builder app and I, I think that's pretty common knowledge is that there's a builder app for Lego that has like the interactive instructions.

[00:50:39] Nick Roome: You can actually flip the model around in 3D space so you can actually see how all the pieces come together. The other thing that I've discovered with this Lego builder app is if you have two devices, so let's say a phone and another phone you can put together build parties and so you can collaboratively [00:51:00] build a Lego set together with other people.

[00:51:04] Nick Roome: And this has been such an amazing like bonding experience for me and my son. Like he loves building Lego, he just doesn't love the whole thing. Uh, I love building Lego. And so now we can build a Lego set together. So we built the um. The Ultimate Collector series R 2D two together over the weekend, and it's really great.

[00:51:24] Nick Roome: We've actually built a couple different models. Using this one mode is basically like using the R 2D two example. You could be like, I build one leg,

[00:51:32] Nick Roome: you build another leg,

[00:51:34] Nick Roome: and then we, one of us builds this part of the body, another one of us builds this part of the body, and then we slap 'em together at the end and it's like complete pieces.

[00:51:43] Nick Roome: Then there's the other way that my son likes doing it, which is. Like this even more collaborative than that. You're opening up one bag and working on that bag together. So I'll build a, a, a part, he'll build a part, and then we'll trade parts and pieces. [00:52:00] And then we're basically like passing around R 2D two, like slapping pieces on it as.

[00:52:05] Nick Roome: The build is going on, and because the build is connected in, in, across this party, it understands how much of the thing has been built. And so it'll stop you at key points. It'll make you go back and build things with other bags so that way you can help kind of clean up, you know, if I'm really fast and he's really slow, I can come back and help him with more pieces and then we put 'em together.

[00:52:27] Nick Roome: It's a really cool thing. I cannot say enough positive things about this experience. If you if you love Lego, if you love building things and want to do it with a partner, you can, you could literally do this for date night. You could do this, you know, with your friends for like, an outing or something.

[00:52:46] Nick Roome: Like you can literally build together and it's, it's very cool and very well done and just kudos to the Lego team for that. Super cool.

[00:52:54] Barry Kirby: Nice. Sounds great.

[00:52:56] Nick Roome: Alright, well that's it for today everyone. If you like this episode, enjoy in the [00:53:00] discussion about space, I'll encourage you to go to listen to, uh, episode 305, specifically.

[00:53:05] Nick Roome: That one. You know why? Because we talk about the evolution of space fashion, where we actually talk about the axiom space suits. And yes, we do have a lab connection. Katie is our lab connection to that space suit. You can go listen to more about that in that episode 3 0 5. Comment, wherever you're listening, what you think of the story this week.

[00:53:25] Nick Roome: Was it a train wreck? Maybe. Uh, for more in-depth discussion, you can join us on our Discord community, visit our official website, sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest in Human Factors news. If you like what you hear, you wanna support the show and get me better internet, you can leave us a five star review wherever you're watching or listening right now, that is free for you to do and really helps out.

[00:53:45] Nick Roome: Two, if you have. If, if you want to be a little bit more helpful, you can let your friends and family know about the show. Word of mouth. It really helps us grow. And three, if you have the financial means to and want to, you can support us on Patreon at [00:54:00] patreon.com/human Factors cast. As always, links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode.

[00:54:05] Nick Roome: Mr. Barry Kirby, thank you for dealing with my internet on the show today. Where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about Axiom Spacesuits?

[00:54:15] Barry Kirby: Well, you can come and find me on LinkedIn and Facebook, um, but if you wanna come and also chat and, uh, hear me chat to people about, uh, human Factors in generally, you can find me on 1202 the Human Factors podcast@ohtwopod.com.

[00:54:29] Nick Roome: As for me, I've been your host, Nick Rome. You can find me across social media at Nick Rome. Thanks again for tuning into Human Factors Cast. Until next time,

[00:54:39] Nick Roome: It depends.