Psychology of Space Exploration
“The right stuff” is an abstraction or ideal type that living, breathing human
astronauts approximate but do not fully attain. By the beginning of the 21st cen-
tury, cracks began to appear in this image. Researchers had long noted behavioral
problems in spaceflightlike environments and worried about what might happen
during future space missions. Hints of problems came from the Russian space pro-
gram, which seemed more attuned to the significance of psychological issues. For
Americans, conditions that had been heralded since the 1960s became realities
in the 1990s when U.S. astronauts joined Russian cosmonauts on Mir, living and
working in space for prolonged periods of time with peers from a very different
culture. A few astronauts described some of the behavioral challenges that they
encountered in space: maintaining high performance in the face of extreme dan-
ger, loneliness, and minor conflicts with other crewmembers.^27 On the debit side
of the balance sheet, members of isolated and confined groups frequently report
sleep disturbances, somatic complaints (aches, pains, and a constellation of flu-
like symptoms sometimes known as the “space crud”), heart palpitations, anxiety,
mood swings including mild depression, inconsistent motivation, and performance
decrements. Crewmembers sometimes withdraw from one another, get into con-
flicts with each other, or get into disputes with Mission Control. Eugene Cernan
reports that the conflicts between the Apollo 7 crew and Mission Control were
so severe that the astronauts never flew again.^28 Both Bryan Burrough and Al
Holland have described some of the difficulties that U.S. astronauts experienced
on Mir.^29 Burrough writes that Soyuz 21 (1976), Soyuz T-14 (1985), and Soyuz
TM-2 (1987) were shortened because of mood, performance, and interpersonal
issues. Brian Harvey wrote that psychological factors contributed to the early evac-
uation of a Salyut 7 crew.^30 U.S. researchers and flight surgeons have acknowledged
instances of fear, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, cognitive changes, somatiza-
- B. Burrough, Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis On Board Mir (New York: Harper Collins,
1998). - E. Cernan and D. Davis, The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and
America’s Race to Space (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). - Burrough, Dragonfly; A. W. Holland, “Psychology of Spaceflight,” Journal of Human
Performance in Extreme Environments 5, no. 1 (2000): 4. - B. Harvey, The New Russian Space Program: From Competition to Cooperation (Chichester,
U.K.: Wiley Praxis, 1996).