2 of those working hours each day are blocked out for exercise, too, so this should be a real boon.
16 hours a day plus weekends seems like a ridiculous amount of free time given that there's no commuting, family time (other than calls), yard work, social engagements, etc.
Also - they're the best of the best. They sort of earned the privilege of not doing overtime.
https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-bac...
> In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover that output actually increased – and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased. This is an experiment that Harvard Business School’s Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter repeated over a century later with knowledge workers. It still held true. Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.
The mistakes/accidents bit is especially compelling when talking about a $100 billion spacecraft.
Startup culture would do well to learn from this lesson.
See also: how NASA wrote software for the shuttle: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
BTW, I'm being down-voted above for expressing surprise at the claim the crew only works 8 hours daily including 2 hours exercise. But the example crew day shown in the following link suggests (by my reading) that it's more like 11 hours (7:30-7:30 with an hour of lunch):
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-typical-daily-schedule-in-th...