NASA Wants People-People for Astonauts

Due to long stays on the Space Station, NASA wants astronauts to be people-people. Specifically, they need to be:

•Diplomat. The station is operated jointly by the United States and Russia, soon to be joined by Europe and Japan. International relations can get rocky, and the station crew must work together while their bosses on Earth argue. "That's probably the biggest stress" on the crew, says Kenneth Bowersox, a former astronaut who commanded the station in 2002-03 and the shuttle in 1995 and 1997.

•Linguist. The main languages on the station are English and Russian. That's also true on the Russian spaceships.

•Scientist. Dozens of experiments are conducted on the station. The crew keeps them running.

•Repair technician. The station is a complex machine, and things break. Sometimes that means just getting out the wrench. Sometimes that means going on a spacewalk to fix a broken motor, as the crew did last week.