Human civilization now encompasses the inner Solar System and this outward development from Earth has resulted in advances for humanity that could not have been predicted at the onset. We generally think linearly – we are best at extrapolating our current experiences and usually miss paradigm shifts due to unanticipated discoveries. In the year 1807, […]
Category: Technology Challenges
Highlights of Solar System Development on the 200th Anniversary of Men on the Moon
Yerah Timoshenko* Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA 30.1 Introduction Since humans returned to the Moon, we went from being an outpost on a barren rock orbiting Earth to being a nascent civilization on the Moon and Mars, with outposts on dozens of asteroids, outer planets and their moons. We went from a population of […]
Conclusion: Lunar Management Will Be Hard – Very Hard
Each of the preceding areas poses special management problems. None of the managerial concerns identified, with the possible exceptions of those that hit religious or cultural hot buttons, are inherently so problematic as to encourage a competent manager to run screaming from the Moon if taken individually. That can be described as the good news. […]
Uncharted Territory
What lies beyond the boundaries of traditional management are the things that often do not get discussed. Relationships were described in a previous section in the context of privacy. However, managers could still pretend that they do not know what may be going on behind the closed door. Unfortunately, once large numbers of people work […]
Community
Community as a concept is fairly simple. A group of people who work and live together come to know and appreciate all of the strengths and weaknesses of their respective group mates. Large numbers of individuals living, working and interacting for long periods of time in large communities is rare apart from some large expatriate […]
Living Arrangements
Only in rare circumstances, such as in the off-shore oil industry, are general managers concerned about employee living arrangements. It is often necessary for managers in remote locations or where housing and/or work facilities are limited or extremely expensive to manage living arrangements. Managerial intrusions are generally limited, even in such circumstances. The Moon will […]
Health Care
Few managers are acutely concerned with health care except as an issue related to benefits. In that context, a manager is often more concerned with the cost of health insurance to his/her employees and by extension to his/her organization than with the underlying health care process. Lunar-based managers will by necessity view health care and […]
Isolation
What does it take for people to want to live and ultimately enjoy living and working on the Moon over an extended period of time? What are the prerequisites for high job satisfaction, resulting in consistently high job performance? Lunar operations will no doubt be facing some of the same issues that other small communities […]