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There is a space ship, flying from planet to planet for multiple years. It is a science vessel, so, once they reach a planet, they do research. But what do they do if they are in transit between planets?

If the ship is at a planet, the researchers shall spend all their time researching. So "normal operations" (maintenance, housekeeping) are performed by the non-research crew. I assume that the non-research crew keeps doing their jobs when they are in transit, so, no need to do the cooking, cleaning, repairs or stuff like that (unless you can convince me otherwise).

Researchers on board include chemists, physicists, geologists, biologists and sociologists.

Here are some ideas I already had:

• They will spend some time analysing the data they collected at their last stop.


• They could start science projects that could be carried out in any other lab just as well.


• They could perform maintenance tasks on their lab equipment.

...once they reach a planet, they do research.

Nope. They're doing research all the time. That's their full-time employment. Aside from the usual time off, it's nonstop research.

Once they reach a planet, they do fieldwork. That means collecting samples, interviewing or observing people, observing animals, taking careful notes and pictures, measuring stuff, maybe running some experiments. Depending on where they land, they might also attend conferences, do guest lectures at universities, workplaces, or for the general public.

Everyone needs vacation time or they burn out, so that's most likely to happen on a planet because, where can you go on a spaceship? You can (and must) have days off, but you can't do a real vacation. So you save it up and go off to some bubble beach and drink margaritas made from something you're going to pretend is agave.

The spaceship is your home base and all your usual work and rest routines happen there. It's where you live. It's where your main lab and office are.

On-planet work is what breaks your routine. In addition to taking a vacation, you're resupplying and getting data and all the other stuff one does with fieldwork. Then you go back home. To the spaceship.

The non-research crew will get some vacation time too and will probably rotate a skeleton crew to watch the ship (if one is needed at all since it will likely get a full maintenance haul-out and a deep clean, though there will be some needed care for plants and animals on board).

Everyone else goes to the planet. Do you really want your cafeteria and janitorial staffs to burn out because they can't get time off from the ship cause they have to stay behind to take care of the scientists? Nope. That's what hotels and dorms are for.

Don't think of planets as places where the "real work" happens. Think of them as the "away" times. The spaceship is home and workplace.

If the researchers do their own cooking, maintenance and housekeeping you can cut away several crewmembers, which means you need less food, water, heat, fuel and space on your space-ship to get there.

The Researchers are likely best qualified for many of the jobs onboard, if only because flying in a space-ship is something for careful, intelligent people and the basics kf the day-to-day living will require a lot of advanced knowledge. Most of the researchers you named would have an easy time being the primary sources for controlling and maintaining the ship.

Lastly these researchers would do good on studying to keep themselves up to date in the latest knowledge to get the best results when they arrive.

I am a scientist. Although I mostly do computational/theoretical work, I have a lot of colleagues who are chemists, geologists and biologists. Just like the scientists in your question, these people spend only a small part of the year on location gathering data. For most of the rest of the time, we are in our institute/spaceship engaged in one or other of the following activities:

• analysing samples in the laboratory (the samples may have been gathered some time ago)


• analysing data from the lab results


• formulating hypotheses to explain the results


• constructing mathematical or computational models of the results


• giving or attending seminars, discussion groups etc. so that we can understand each other's work


• writing scientific papers so that our results can be understood by the wider scientific community


• perhaps doing some media outreach work to present our results to a popular audience as well


• teaching


• writing grant proposals


• doing administrative paperwork, of which there is a surprisingly huge amount

The last three may or may not be relevant on a spacecraft, since there might not be any students on board, and one would hope (optimistically) that most of the admin stuff would be done elsewhere. But the other things would be relevant parts of your scientist's work. I would expect the spacecraft to have an on-board laboratory, so scientific work doesn't have to stop as soon as you leave the planet.

But the results dissemination and paper writing would also be an important part of any scientists' time on a long-term mission. After all, if you don't tell anyone about your results, there wasn't much point in doing the work in the first place - and who better to write it up than the people who are out there in the universe making the observations first-hand? This is one of the most important parts of a scientist's job, and the travel time between planets would be a welcome opportunity to do it.