Psychology of Space Exploration
up in space if one was confined in a metal canister with other people. A good sum-
mary of this work can be found in A. A. Harrison’s book, Spacefaring: The Human
Dimension.^1 Suffice it to say here that these were good analogs for what space-
flight would turn out to be like. The design of the interiors of spacecraft and the
management of daily life on board benefited much from the information gleaned
from experiences with other extreme environments. These experiences contrib-
uted to the development of selection criteria and training regimens in the early
days of the space program. When reviewed by social scientists, these studies of
real-life situations generated hypotheses and theories that were then subjected to
rigorous tests in laboratories and added to the general fund of knowledge in social
psychology. An example might be Freedman’s density intensity hypothesis.^2 The
density intensity hypothesis stated that whatever emotion is extant when crowd-
ing occurs will be enhanced by the crowding. Crowding per se is not necessarily
aversive. This was a nonintuitive but valuable finding. This phenomenon can be
witnessed at most happy social gatherings. A group of people may have a whole
house at their disposal, but one would seldom find them uniformly distributed
about the premises. It is much more likely that they will be gathered together in
two or three locations, happily interacting in close proximity. The reverse of this
is also true, as can be seen in mob behavior, where the crowding amplifies the
anger of the members. The important point for spacecraft design was that happy
people in a cramped spacecraft would not have their good moods diminished by
the crowding.
Just as the study of behavior in other extreme environments turned out to be
valuable for designing spacecraft interiors and predicting behavioral patterns in even-
tual spaceflight, so too spaceflight simulators can be used to experiment with dif-
ferent aspects of spacecraft interiors such as color, lighting, noise, and temperature
in order to determine optimal designs before committing to a final configuration.
In fact, this method began with simple cardboard and wood mock-ups (primitive
types of simulators); then, beginning in the 1950s with the advent of simulators, it
became commonplace in the aerospace industry and at NASA. More importantly
however, spaceflight simulators can also be used to explore social behavior in extreme
- Albert A. Harrison, Spacefaring, The Human Dimension (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2001). - J. L. Freedman, Crowding and Behavior (San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman, 1975).