Science will be a major emphasis of the International Space Station. In her Oral History, U.S. Mir astronaut Shannon Lucid discusses what it's like to do science on long-duration spaceflights.
Lucid says that scientific investigations need to have "lots of crew involvement," to keep crewmembers "intellectually engaged ... [and] working together with the principal investigator."
She adds that there needs to be "a wide variety of experiments," across several scientific disciplines, in order to keep crewmembers engaged. Furthermore, according to Lucid, the testing on how the human body adapts to space needs to be seen for what it is -- as testing, not as intellectually fulfilling work. She says, " I don't really consider that as work. That's just extra hassle on your day, and those are unpleasant-type things to do. So you don't want to have a lot of those [tests], onboard long-duration space flights, [not] day after day, where that's all you're doing. They need to be interspersed..."
International Space Station
Lucid in Scientific American
Life on Mir
Profile: Shannon Lucid
Shannon Lucid Oral History (PDF)
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