[bostonpete]

They work 8 hours a day including exercise? That seems bizarre to me. I know we don't want them burning out, etc., but if we're sending astronauts up there at great expense I'd think we'd want to ask them to put in a little more than 8 hour days.

16 hours a day plus weekends seems like a ridiculous amount of free time given that there's no commuting, family time (other than calls), yard work, social engagements, etc.

[ceejayoz]

NASA is probably well aware of the extensive research showing that working more than 40 hours a week has negative productivity impacts.

https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-bac...

> In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover that output actually increased – and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased. This is an experiment that Harvard Business School’s Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter repeated over a century later with knowledge workers. It still held true. Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.

The mistakes/accidents bit is especially compelling when talking about a $100 billion spacecraft.

Startup culture would do well to learn from this lesson.

See also: how NASA wrote software for the shuttle: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff

[Tade0]

Bear in mind that in space exercise is mandatory, because the lack of it considerably reduces the time a given person can spend there, which in turn would require more frequent launches, which are expensive.

Also - they're the best of the best. They sort of earned the privilege of not doing overtime.

[CodeCube]

Also, let's not forget that overworking them has literally led to a "mutiny" in space before ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab_mutiny

[hoorayimhelping]

I think you might be grossly underestimating the psychological impact of spending 6 months inside a place the size of an apartment with no day or night cycle, a constant feeling of weightlessness, and no ability to go outside or feel things like wind or rain.

[bostonpete]

They're stuck inside there anyways. If it were me, I suspect I'd prefer to stay occupied. I'm not saying we should work them to the bone, but 16 hours a day plus weekends just seems like a lot of time to fill when there's limited options anyways.

BTW, I'm being down-voted above for expressing surprise at the claim the crew only works 8 hours daily including 2 hours exercise. But the example crew day shown in the following link suggests (by my reading) that it's more like 11 hours (7:30-7:30 with an hour of lunch):

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-typical-daily-schedule-in-th...

[Sharlin]

I don't think they actually work just eight hours a day. There's a lot of maintenance work to do and it's not like there are many things to do on your free time. Although now that there's the full six-person crew, the schedules are probably less tight.

[bostonpete]

It sounds like you're agreeing with me...

[Sharlin]

I guess it also depends on what constitutes "work". The station is their home as well as workplace, after all. And when your home is an aluminum can in a vacuum, there's quite a bit of housework to do. Also, these are six-month missions, unlike week-or-two-long Shuttle flights which naturally had a tighter schedule.

[abecedarius]

Skylab astronauts literally went on strike at one point. NASA must've learned from that.