Managing Negative Interactions in Space Crews: The Role of Simulator Researchprograms. In addition, both of these programs managed the expected problems of
human physical and social frailty by very stringent selection procedures and lengthy
training regimens. None of this is compatible with space tourism. Space tourists will
compose a much wider spectrum of spacefarers who will have to be accommodated
and whose training periods will have to be dramatically shorter. In addition, space
tourists will not be government employees and heroes of national renown. Rather,
they will be purchasing their flights to space and will expect services commensu-
rate with the cost of the tour.
I am proposing that, as we approach the end of the first half century of space-
flight, the accelerating maturation of the space program has brought us to a histori-
cal threshold. To move successfully beyond that threshold will require a significant
shift in the way engineers, designers, and flight managers approach their tasks. The
time is past when getting to space was a dangerous experiment; technology was
in an early stage of development, and it was sufficient (and perhaps necessary) to
design minimal spacecraft that required highly selected and arduously trained test
pilots in top physical condition to tolerate them as environments.
At this point in the history of spaceflight, we face two big questions: 1) even
though the cosmonaut and astronaut social systems have adapted to the demands
placed on them so far, will they be able to cope with the much greater challenges
that lie ahead, and 2) is there any chance that space tourism, with a much more
fluid social structure and a vastly broader spectrum of participants than in the cur-
rent space program, will work at all? This paper deals primarily with the second
question, but some of the things that make civilian spaceflight possible will apply
to facilitating astronaut and cosmonaut success with their new challenges of estab-
lishing a permanent Moon base and then going on to Mars.
Social scientists have been studying the behavior of humans in what have
come to be called “extreme environments” even before the space program began.
Extreme environments are those that are characterized by such features as isola-
tion, risk, confinement, crowding, restricted privacy, and the inability to leave
at will. Illustrations of such environments are submarines, Arctic and Antarctic
research stations, undersea habitats, and high-altitude research stations. Once
there was interest in how people might perform in tiny, crowded spacecraft, these
studies of other extreme environments were looked at as analogs for spaceflight
since all of the environments had salient social stressors in common. It seemed
reasonable to assume that it did not much matter if one was deep in the ocean or