Popular Science USA – July-August 2019

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Stuster has spent much of his 40-
plus-year career analyzing how
humans handle objectively un-
pleasant exploration by land, sea,
and space. His terrestrial research
looked at, for example, polar adventurers trapped in
tents and on ships, and it informed his thinking on
the astronauts, trapped in an orbiting tin can. “En-
gineers, architects build models and subject them to
stresses,” he says. “Medical researchers use animal
models, even economic models, to test hypotheses.
And in the behavioral sciences, we look to analogous
conditions.” He began working with NASA in the

1980s and soon convinced the agency that this ap-

proach could help forecast space-station hardships.

He started by reading historic reports, from Chris-

topher Columbus onward, to learn what had plagued

and placated past explorers. Take Belgica’s journey to

Antarctica, the first to winter over. When the vessel

got stuck in ice for nearly a year, its physician, Fred-

erick Cook, prescribed exercise: The crew walked

around and around the ship daily, in what they came

to call the Madhouse Promenade. Cook directed the

maddest, saddest people to sit before the stove, whose

light and heat seemed impossible after so much cold

and dark. With scurvy setting in, they began eating

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