I personally don't feel John Perry maps perfectly to my own personality (I've noted before that the OMW-universe character most like me is Harry Wilson), but he's certainly got my sense of sarcasm. I wouldn't mind if Athena turned out a bit like Zoe, but Athena's nine and Zoe's sixteen in The Last Colony, so at best there's some projection there. Jane Sagan, however, is definitely modeled after my own wife, because when one wants to have a female character be smart and strong and competent, it makes sense to model her after a smart, strong, competent woman one happens to know very well. That said, there are of course also significant points of variance.

So overall it's not precisely like my family. However, what I think is significant is that the Perry/Sagan family feels like a realistic sort of family; I want them to feel like people you could know in your everyday life (if, you know, you happened to live on a space colony).