ance, social organization, health and hygiene, and crew safety. These were then used as stimulus events in subsequent Delphi rounds and panel members were asked to rate every event, on a scale of one to five, with respect to the probability that it would occur, the impact that it would have upon the inhabitants and upon mission accomplishment, and the desirability for the event to occur in the habitat. Eventually, all were classified as high or low priority events. High priority events are those that are likely to occur during the course of uncontrolled sociocultural development, hold the potential for significant impact upon personnel or mission accomplishment and which were characterized by high degree of consensus among panel respondents. Low priority events are those that have low probability and impact scores, and minimal consensus among panel members. Orbital Habitat Prognosis 1. Interpersonal Behavior As the orbital habitat (space station) work force expands and as tours of duty are extended to the maximum possible length that is commensurate with health and wellbeing of crew members, cultural behavour patterns that are unique to the extraterrestrial environment will arise. These patterns will be reinforced by increasing social background heterogeneity within the work force. Initially, the relatively limited scope of mission tasks will require certain knowledge and skills on the part of crew members. Crew selection procedures will ensure that these exist within all crews and, in doing so, they will also create homogeneity in terms of education, job orientation, work attitudes, age, physical condition, social class, psychological profile, cultural values, and other social characteristics that are associated with acquisition of the required knowledge and skills. Development of a space station that is permanently manned will necessitate expanding the mission profile and lengthening the on-orbit duty tour; this will necessitate a concomitant expansion of the knowledge and skills that are found within the on-orbit crews. Examples of the new skills might include barbering, housekeeping, food and diet preparation, construction, gynecology, administration, laundering, waste management, security and law enforcement, maintenance and repair, and farming. These are largely mission support skills rather than mission specific skills and, as crews become larger and duty tours become longer, it will be necessary to include support personnel as part of the space work force. This will result in introduction of different social background characteristics into the work force: different social and economic classes, educational levels, racial and ethnic characteristics, age groups, etc. All of these will be supported by a wide variety of values, norms and attitudes. Expansion of the space work force will necessarily be accompanied by change from homogeneous to heterogeneous social characteristics and the space work force will eventually become as diverse in social characteristics as is the work force within any nation on earth. Space workers will find that some of their Earth-based cultural patterns, attitudes and norms are not appropriate in the extraterrestrial environment; these will be modified over time or discarded and replaced with space-unique patterns, norms and values. Earthly attitudes towards touching and bodily juxtapositioning among strangers, for example, are not likely to be sustainable in a free-fall environment and can be a source of constant personal irritation if they are not modified. With fractional crew rotation, newly arrived personnel will be exposed to the particular set of behaviour patterns, and supporting norms, values and beliefs, that have been developed by their predecessors during the normal course of working and
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