A history of the NASA operational spaceflight Surgeon:1958-Present

Background: Space operations in the United States has required the skills of aerospace medicine specialists since the before the inception of human spaceflight in 1958. The literature extensively covers physiology, clinical science, and conjectures on the nature and future of space medicine. The goals of this project were to examine the evolution of the operational spaceflight surgeon, define the role today, and explore the future of operational space medicine. Methods: The data gathered for this project were obtained from several sources including personal interviews with actively serving NASA personnel, a literature review identified by searches of MEDLINE, Current Contents, PubMed, Google Scholar, internal NASA records and databases, and references from relevant articles. Only ar-ticles published in English between 1961 and 2019 were included. Finally, to provide a primary account to compliment the findings from above eight oral histories were examined from leaders in this field. Results/Discussion: This paper reviews the evolution of operational spaceflight medicine from the NASA perspective, offers a modern definition by those who practice it on a daily basis and explores its future devel-opment as a profession. While this work is inherently limited as defined by the experiences of select individuals; the 336 combined years-of-service of the sources, personal interviews, and command perspectives of the authors attempt to lay a foundation for such a definition. Understanding and appreciating this history is key to the successful future development of operational spaceflight medicine as a specialty, and by extension to manned space exploration as a whole.