According to NASA, any person with physical characteristics that are between those of a 5th percentile Japanese female and a 95th percentile American male shall be eligible to become an astronaut.
Because of this guideline, pathways and workspaces within a space vehicle must accommodate a wide range of population. Unfortunately, there is often a shortage of space inside the space vehicle. Hence, designers try to maximize the use of space. One way to accomplish this is by finding the minimum volumetric requirement that would ensure safety and comfort for the crewmembers.
Until now, static, uni-variate anthropometric data were used to derive these guidelines. Our concern is that they may misrepresent the dynamic postural variations of the crew onboard the space vehicle.
We used a posture based whole-body anthropometric approach to determine the variation in the three different clearances and updated the design guidelines accordingly.