The International Space Station (ISS) is now nearly complete, and it can be surprising just how many compartments it has, and yet at the same time how crowded it can feel. The age when people begin to live and work in space is here and now.
Take a look at this video virtual tour of the ISS, dated February 2010.
As the next decade unfolds, we will have to develop the terms and conditions that workers will be provided with while working in space. Perhaps one of the biggest questions is, what jurisdiction will apply? Will a Russian scientist working in a Japanese laboratory be covered by Russian labor laws, Japanese, both, or neither? Will we develop some set of transnational labor standards? How do you regulate the workday hours, mandatory breaks, and days off work in space?
ISS as photographed on Feb. 19, 2010
These questions and many more will need to be more fully explored. At the moment, the scientists working in space are highly protected by their respective governments. But what happens when the profit motive brings workers into space? Many predict that the patterns of trading off workplace safety for increased profits will make the transition to space, just as they have evidenced themselves in the Gulf of Mexico with the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon disaster.
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