(new) Hand SignalsIn communication most information comes through un-werbal ways like mimic, tone of voice, body movement etc..
Astronauts for long time had the problem of propper communication becous they can't see each other faces, the voice in the radio is distorted and you don't see any part of your companions body. The same goes for divers, construction workers, miners and so on.
They all have a hand system of communication that doesn't need talking/hearing.
For instance: one worker that samples the ground with a drill sees another man that raises he's hand ("Stop") so he stoppes the drill. Then he sees the man makeing a circle with his right hand ("Take the drill") and shows a "Follow me" signal - all with one hand and in less than 1 sec. yet they understand themselve's perfectly.
In MCO we already have 2 hand signals: "Hello" and "Salute".
I've did some research over some common hand-signals used and prepared those
12 hand-signals that we can use in MCO.
All of them uses only the right hand (in left hand you can grab some equipement).
Using only those 12 hand-signals you can communicate (
without typing) in almoast all situations I could think of:
loading/unloading equipement on ROVER, showing a new player what is what, loading/unloading drill/GPR/Lamp/Box, using equipement, make simple requests, walk in group.
All of them can be combined, for example: "You" - "This" - "Take it" - "Use it".
![](http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1535/marcohandsignals.jpg)
Hand signals are also very important on Mars bocouse sand-storms, radiation-storms, dust devils or radio non-aviable areas make radio communication immpossible to use.
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Here you have the oryginal hand-signals list:
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/693/signald.jpghttp://img714.imageshack.us/img714/2817/militarysignals.jpghttp://img709.imageshack.us/img709/6840/handsignals.jpghttp://img522.imageshack.us/img522/1719/hand2.jpghttp://img163.imageshack.us/img163/9651/hand1b.jpghttp://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3818/standardscubadivinghand.png