NASA's astronaut crew currently includes 10 mission specialists who hold a doctoral degree in either astrophysics or astromedicine. One of these specialists will be assigned to each of the 10 flights scheduled for the upcoming nine months. Mission specialists are responsible for carrying out scientific and medical experiments in space or for launching, retrieving, or repairing satellites. The chief of astronaut personnel, himself a former crew member with three missions under his belt, must decide who should be assigned and trained for each of the very different missions. Clearly, astronauts with medical educations are more suited to missions involving biological or medical experiments, whereas those with engineering- or physics-oriented degrees are best suited to other types of missions. The chief assigns each astronaut a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 for each possible mission, with a 10 being a perfect match for the task at hand and a 1 being a mismatch. Only one specialist is assigned to each flight, and none is reassigned until all others have flown at least once.

(a) Who should be assigned to which flight?
(b) NASA has just been notified that Anderson is getting married in February and has been granted a highly sought publicity tour in Europe that month. (He intends to take his wife and let the trip double as a honeymoon.) How does this change the final schedule?
(c) Certo has complained that he was misrated on his January missions. Both ratings should be 10s, he claims to the chief, who agrees and recomputes the schedule. Do any changes occur over the schedule set in part (b)?
(d) What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach toscheduling?

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MISSION 26 10 JAN. JAN FEB. FEB. MAR. APR. MAY JUN AUG SEP ASTRONAUT 1227 26 12 9 20 19 Veit Anderson Herbert Schatz 4 10 10 7 6 6 7 4 4 10 10 10 7 10 109 Moses Brandon Drtina 9 7 7 9 10 10 4