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Effective communication between ground support personnel and crew is critical for safe and successful human space exploration missions. Due to the large distances involved, communication in spaceflight can be severely disrupted by time delay (signal latency). Braiding is a new, innovative, patent-pending tool that enables effective and efficient ground-to-space conversation in situations of time delay, from small lunar-type latencies (~1.2 secs, one-way) to much larger Martian ones (~3-21 mins one-way).
Braiding organizes and enables continuous flowing conversation within the physically-imposed constraints of signal latency. Demonstrations have been conducted with astronauts, flight surgeons, space psychologists, space sector specialists and long duration spaceflight analog crew from ESA and other space agencies with universally positive confirmation of Braiding’s utility, novelty and effectiveness.
Participants engage in a Braiding session via a rotating carousel of multiple ‘braids’, as in the diagram which is a screenshot of a real flight surgeon braiding with a role-play crew member. The Braiding tool structures dialogue into constituent threads (‘braids’) with one distinct theme per braid thereby removing confusion about which conversational theme is being addressed. Each participant in a Braiding session engages with the ‘active’ braid on ‘their’ side of the carousel. At any given, absolute, time each person is engaging with a different braid. Braids become active for a fixed amount of time, in sequence. This hides the latency by engaging each participant in continuous interaction on one braid whilst content from other braids is being transmitted ‘across the latency.’ Core features of normal conversation are preserved while the system holds together the organisation of theme and timing that signal latency is proven to erode.
