Introduction: Psychology and the U.S. Space ProgramIn 2001, the National Academy of Sciences issued Safe Passage: Astronaut
Care for Exploration Missions,^28 prepared by the Committee on Creating a Vision
for Space Medicine During Travel Beyond Earth Orbit of the Institute of Medicine
of the National Academy of Sciences. This panel of experts identified some of the
medical and behavioral issues that should be resolved quickly in anticipation of a
return to the Moon and a mission to Mars. This far-ranging work covers astronaut
health in transit to Earth orbit and beyond, health maintenance, emergency and
continuing care, the development of a new infrastructure for space medicine, and
medical ethics. Most importantly for present purposes, Safe Passage includes a chap-
ter on behavioral health, a topic that we discuss in some detail in chapter 2.
Different missions raise different questions about human behavior. The most
conspicuous questions of the earliest days of spaceflight had to do with life sup-
port, the human-machine interface, and the optimization of human performance to
ensure mission success. Certainly these topics remain crucial today, but to them we
may add many more. Following Apollo and the race to the Moon, NASA entered
new eras in 1981, when the Space Shuttle took flight, and again in 1993, when
astronauts joined cosmonauts first on Russia’s Mir space station and then on the
International Space Station (ISS) in 2000. Topics such as habitability, loneliness,
cultural conflicts, the need to sustain a high level of performance over the long
haul, and postflight adjustment gained a degree of immediacy and could no lon-
ger be ignored. Consistent with Davis Meister’s views on conceptual changes in
human factors, there has been, over the years, a shift from a purely “displays and
knobs” orientation to a more holistic approach, with project managers, engineers,
and behavioral researchers sharing the goal of a seamless human-machine structure
or “system integration.”^29
In their discussion of post-Apollo psychological issues, Connors and her asso-
ciates noted that as missions change, so do behavioral requirements.^30 Perhaps the
most conspicuous trends are in the direction of increased crew size, diversity, and
mission duration. The first round of U.S. flights, under Project Mercury, were solo
but rapidly gave way to two-person crews with the advent of Project Gemini in
- J. R. Ball and C. H. Evans, eds., Safe Passage: Astronaut Care for Exploration Missions
(Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001). - Meister, Conceptual Aspects of Human Factors.
- Connors et al., Living Aloft.