Flight Crew Equipment Development and Integration with the International Partners

In the Freedom program the Flight Crew Equipment (FCE) hardware was provided solely by NASA and used by all Space Station partners during all phases of the program. With the addition of Russia as a partner in the International Space Station (ISS) program U.S. crew members will be living in modules that are provided and supported by Russian hardware during the assembly and assembly complete phase's. Because of differences in design approaches, requirements, system constraints and respective cultures there are considerable differences between the NASA and Russian FCE hardware. This is further complicated by different resupply intervals and methods each partner has available to support their segment. These differences pose potential problems for a crew that is living in a confined environment, required to act and perform as a team while at the same time being subjected to two fundamentally different and unequal lifestyles.