Behavioral Healthchologists would argue that this is a major benefit) than in their potential impact
on risk and performance. This research, in turn, has implications for organizing and
staging space missions. Thus, a combination of maturing social science and inter-
est sparked by space station and exploration missions has opened the door, at least
partially, for new kinds of psychological research within the U.S. space program.
Whether this door will remain open—or slam shut—remains to be seen.
THE RIGHT STUFF
For decades, expanding the role of psychology in the U.S. space program was
an uphill battle with psychologists’ pleas generally falling on deaf ears. Among
the more obvious interpretations, it might be tempting to think of NASA manag-
ers and engineers as “thing” people rather than “people” people, so the behavioral
side of spaceflight is of little interest to them. Perhaps mission managers were sim-
ply unaware of the significance of behavioral factors. Or maybe, as “hard” scien-
tists, they saw the behavioral and social sciences as fuzzy and inexact efforts that
lead to qualitative recommendations that are difficult to implement and unlikely to
work. The sociologist Charles Perrow has discussed how resistance to human fac-
tors within complex organizations has strong structural and cultural underpinnings
and is not overcome easily.^18
Psychologists make contributions to human welfare in such diverse areas as
environmental design, problem-solving, decision-making, leadership, and group
performance, but many people strongly associate psychology with mental illness
and long-term psychotherapy. If such attitudes explained NASA’s ambivalence
about behavioral factors, education would be the antidote; but for many years, edu-
cational efforts had little visible impact in research or mission operations.
The stereotype of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists working with troubled
clients may have threatening implications for NASA administrators who need to
maintain good public relations and build government support. The historian Roger
Launius points out that from the moment they were introduced to the public in
- C. E. Perrow, “The Organizational Context of Human Factors Engineering,” Administrative
Science Quarterly 28, no. 4 (1983): 521–541.