And the Human Saves the Day or Maybe They Ruin It, The Importance of Humans in the Loop

DeMott, Diana L.; Boyer, Roger L.

Flying a mission in space requires a massive commitment of resources, and without the talent and commitment of the people involved in this effort we would never leave the atmosphere of Earth as safely as we have. When we use the phrase "humans in the loop", it could apply to almost any endeavor since everything starts with humans developing a concept, completing the design process, building or implementing a product and using the product to achieve a goal or purpose. Narrowing the focus to spaceflight, there are a variety of individuals involved throughout the preparations for flight and the flight itself. All of the humans involved add value and support for program success. The paper discusses the concepts of human involvement in technological programs, how a Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) accounts for the human in the loop for potential missions using a technique called Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) and the tradeoffs between having a human in the loop or not. Human actions can increase or decrease the overall risk via initiating events or mitigating them, thus removing the human from the loop doesn't always lowers the risk.

Document ID

20160013680

Acquisition Source

Johnson Space Center

Document Type

Conference Paper

Authors

Date Acquired

November 22, 2016

Publication Date

January 9, 2017

Subject Category

Report/Patent Number

Meeting Information

Meeting: AIAA Non-Deterministic Approaches Conference

Location: Grapevine, TX

Country: United States

Start Date: January 9, 2017

End Date: January 13, 2017

Sponsors: American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics

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Public

Public Use Permitted.

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