In the fall of 1957, the Soviet Union satellite Sputnik 1 streaked across the night’s sky. The event kicked off the Space Age. It also captured the attention of 9-year-old Jack Stuster, who watched from outside of his grandmother’s house, full of awe.
Stuster could never have guessed that his future career path would land him at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. After college, he pursued a doctorate in anthropology, hoping to study hunter-gatherers in Borneo. He instead wound up writing his doctoral dissertation on commercial fishermen in Santa Barbara, California. And in 1982, shortly after joining a behavioral sciences and human factors research firm called Anacapa Sciences in Santa Barbara, he began working with NASA.
Stuster is one of just a handful of anthropologists to specialize in space exploration. He applies anthropological techniques, such as interviews and participant observation, to understand the physical, psychological, and interpersonal experiences of astronauts, and help plan missions with the explorers’ human needs in mind.
“When the astronauts know I’m an anthropologist … they open up,” explains Stuster, now president and principal scientist at Anacapa. He notes that, unlike the psychologists or physicians who evaluate astronauts, he can’t expel anyone from the mission roster.
