First, though, he had to deal with Mission
Control. Anderson had come aboard the
ISS with the explicit goal of improving pro-
cedures for future crews; his work on the
ground had included astronaut support and
communications. Perhaps it’s no surprise,
then, that he regularly felt annoyed by the
tedious processes Houston demanded he
follow. In preparation for the shuttle’s ar-
rival, for instance, they had instructed him to
remove a special spacewalk bag (storage for
equipment like gloves and eyeglasses) from
the airlock, place it in a second bag, take a
new spacewalk bag from the arriving crew,
remove the old bag from the outer bag, and
give it to the new arrivals to put in the shuttle.
If you think that sounds convoluted,
Anderson would agree. He tried to sug-
gest a simpler approach, but the people
on the ground weren’t interested. In fact,
the flight director forwarded him an email
containing their frustrated internal com-
munications: “Why doesn’t he just be quiet
and do what he’s told?” and “Why don’t
they just bring him home?”
Anderson kept notes and journals about
his gripes—as well as more-pleasant expe-
riences—and turned his reminiscences into
a 2015 memoir, The Ordinary Spaceman. But
his diaries were also part of a review that
NASA had commissioned to identify the
most difficult aspects of lengthy space travel
as the agency began planning for missions
to Mars and elsewhere. Promised anonym-
ity, Anderson and 19 other space-station
crewmembers shared their reflections with
anthropologist Jack Stuster, who heads a
consulting firm specializing in behavioral re-
search. Password-protected and encrypted,
the dear-diaries winged their way to ground
stations whenever the astronauts composed
an entry. They slipped onto a NASA server,
Stuster downloaded them, and NASA de-
leted them. Anderson notwithstanding, only
Stuster knows the identities of the spacefar-
ers he followed in a pair of studies conducted
between 2003 and 2016.
During his 152 days aboard the ISS, An-
derson continued to express his irritation
to Stuster. On another occasion, he and two
crewmembers each detached and reattached
the same door, along with its 44 fasteners,
for different chores on the same day. Why
hadn’t Mission Control let them do all those
tasks while the door was off the first time?
Just days after the space-bag incident, he
cut all but essential communication with
the ground. When he returned to Earth, the
Astronaut Evaluation Board noted, “Clay
will need to rebuild his relationship with
Mission Control if he is to fly again.”
Anderson, though, thinks people on the
ground could be more considerate of astro-
nauts’ experiences. “Imagine you’re living
in your house, and someone 100 miles away
is trying to tell you the best place to pack
stuff and put stuff away,” Anderson, now
retired, says about his time in orbit. “It was
very frustrating to me.”
Stuster saw Anderson not as an overly
autonomous subordinate, but rather as
a crewmember bucking the tradition of
“praise inflation.” Astronauts and their han-
dlers typically act more solicitously toward
each other than they would in person: lots
of congratulations, unearned compliments,
pleases, and thank-yous. Mission Control,
used to constant deference, couldn’t brookAnderson’s opinions. “They labeled Clay a
complainer and treated him badly,” Stuster
says. “It was unfair and petty.”
Having studied the human dynamics of
space travel since the ’80s, Stuster has of-
ten seen relations between crew and ground
falter in similar ways. The distance between
Earth and astronauts will only grow, literally
and figuratively, on missions to places like
Mars. This will introduce fresh challenges.
Stuster recently finished a new study
that analyzes NASA’s hypothetical plans for
such a journey: what the trip would require
of space travelers and the kinds of problems
they might experience, from dental emer-
gencies to behavioral breakdowns. He says
the current Red Planet strategy makes him
nervous. NASA wants to increase the route
time from around six months each way
to a year per leg. Going slower would save
fuel and money—just as biking is cheaper
than driving. “It’s extremely dangerous,”
he says. The crew’s exposure to radiation
would double. And the longer its members
remain confined, the risk of behavioral
and psychological issues would skyrocket.
“NASA’s going in the wrong direction,”
Stuster says. “My mission is to convince the
mission planners that is a bad idea.”AUGUST 2007 WAS A SPECIAL TIME ON THE INTERNA-
TIONAL SPACE STATION. A SHUTTLE CREW—NEW BLOOD,
FRESH SUPPLIES—WOULD SOON ARRIVE. ASTRONAUT
CLAYTON ANDERSON, THE ONLY AMERICAN ABOARD SINCE
THAT JUNE, WAS READY FOR NEW PEOPLE TO TALK TO.
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