Psychology of Space Exploration
can we forget the problems of selection, training, and simulator
design . . . . Our leap into space was a significant accomplishment
of the past 30 years and the ergonomic findings that helped bring
it about have enriched our profession in countless ways.^9But other assessments of psychologists’ contributions to the U.S. space program
were less triumphant. In 1975, Robert L. Helmreich expressed pessimistic views of
applying psychology in new areas, stating that prospective customers often respond
with profound indifference.^10 In 1983, he elaborated on how data relating to person-
ality and social psychology were underused by the U.S. space program, which (as we
shall see in chapter 2) he considered in contrast to robust use in the Soviet program.^11
In a 1987 conference cosponsored by NASA and the National Science Foundation,
psychologist and management consultant Philip R. Harris observed that
[a]lthough NASA has been forthright about medical and biolog-
ical insights gained from previous spaceflights . . . the agency has
been hesitant on studying or releasing information on the psycho-
social experience of its personnel in space. Generally, NASA has
limited the access to astronauts by social science researchers, even
by its own psychiatrists and psychologists; the agency has failed to
capitalize on the data it collected that could improve spaceflight
and living for others to follow.^12In the early 1990s, outgoing flight surgeon and psychiatrist Patricia Santy con-
cluded that despite an initial flurry of interest, behavioral research all but disap-
- Ibid., pp. 276–277.
- R. L. Helmreich, “Applied Social Psychology: The Unfulfilled Promise,” Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin 1 (1975): 548–561. - R. L. Helmreich, “Applying Psychology to Outer Space: Unfulfilled Promises Revisited,”
American Psychologist 38 (1983): 445–450. - P. R. Harris, “Personnel Deployment Systems: Managing People in Polar and Outer Space
Environments,” in From Antarctica to Outer Space: Life in Isolation and Confinement, ed. A. A.
Harrison, Y. A. Clearwater, and C. P. McKay (New York: Springer, 1990), pp. 77–78.