At this very moment, four ordinary people at the Johnson Space Station in Houston, TX, are living for 378 days in a man-made Martian habitat. They are unable to see their families and risk being able to say goodbye to an ailing loved one. The mission is called CHAPEA, and paving the way for NASA’s audacious goal of a human mission to Mars in the next decade or two. 

Why? Is the article showing up in Tangent West’s blog, and what does it possibly have to do with Executive Search? Well…just about everything.

According to the article below, NASA has a punch list of 800 mechanical and technical issues to be fixed before a human mission is possible. This feat poses a challenge but is absolutely doable by the iconic organization. The caveat - can humans handle the isolation of colonizing and living a Martian life? How does NASA know if our species is capable of the minimum of 570 days a Mars mission would require -being the most isolated humans in the history of our existence-127,993,020 million miles away from Mother Earth? And then, if possible…how does NASA go about recruiting these people?

Tangent West is obviously not tasked with finding humans to colonize Mars - make no mistake, I would love to be on that hiring committee. However, we are ALWAYS asked to measure for intangible skill sets that few others can see or interpret. The searches we take have tremendous importance to the organizations we help build. We don’t have the luxury of getting it wrong. 

And as far as those four ordinary people currently living the CHAPEA -NASA mission-you are not even close to ordinary- you are extraordinary and are our future. Thank you. 

Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/magazine/mars-isolation-experiment.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare