Psychology of Space Exploration
Observers were trained to a high degree of reliability to observe the groups at
all times. The analytical system used was the Bales Interaction Analysis technique.^4
Using operationally defined criteria, the observers measured whether interpersonal
interactions, both verbal and nonverbal (e.g., postures, gestures, and expressions),
were positive, neutral, or negative.
During their duty shifts, the observers each monitored the behavior of two par-
ticipants. An observer would monitor one participant for a 1-minute period, assign
a score, and then switch to the other participant for a 1-minute period and assign
that person a score. Then it was back to the first person for a minute and so on until
the end of the shift.
Our spaceship simulator had the same shortcoming that all earthbound simula-
tors have: it could not simulate weightlessness. However, that does not seem to be a
critical factor. The astronaut and cosmonaut programs have a long history of using
such simulators and getting results in actual spaceflight that match the behaviors
observed in the simulators with a high degree of fidelity.
A simulator is, in a way, equivalent to a stage set. If it looks sufficiently like a
spaceship and has the sounds and smells of a spaceship, and if the things that take
place within it are those that take place in spaceflight, then the participants, so
to speak, “buy into it” and experience the event as a spaceflight. Our spaceflight
simulator seems to have worked very well in this respect. Loudspeakers produced
sounds mimicking those in Space Shuttles and were kept at amplitudes similar to
the Shuttle averages (72 decibels). For liftoff and touchdown, very loud engine
exhaust vibration and sound were produced by large, hidden speakers.
Because the participants in the simulator did not float about in weightlessness
as they would in orbit, we had to have bunks for them to sleep in. During the sim-
ulated liftoff and insertion into orbital flight, the participants remained strapped
in their bunks. The participants reported in postflight questionnaires that they felt
they really had a sense of what a spaceflight would be like—that they often forgot
that this was “make believe” and that they “really were living the real experience,”
to quote two of the participants. They reported being thrilled during the noisy lift-
off and the powered landing.
- R. F. Bales, Personality and Interpersonal Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970).