Psychology of Space Exploration

Managing Negative Interactions in Space Crews: The Role of Simulator Research

Figure 1. A scale model of the spacecraft simulator used in the study conducted in the
Aerospace Psychology Laboratory at Claremont McKenna College.

remaining suborbital, and flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo in 40 minutes or Los
Angeles to Paris in 38 minutes. However, when the euphoria of the daydreaming was
over, the Delta Clipper team was left with the question, can you really take a group of
unselected, relatively untrained civilians; coop them up in a cramped spacecraft for
two days of orbital spaceflight; and expect them to have a good time?
A new academic year was about to begin, so the designers called a meeting and
asked my lab to address this question in a simulated spaceflight.
We accepted the challenge and built a spaceflight simulator in our laboratory
that had the same volume per person as the one designed for the Delta Clipper (see
figures 1 and 2).