Behavioral Healthtion, impulsive behaviors, social withdrawal, cultural misunderstandings, interper-
sonal frictions, and anger directed toward Mission Control. After their return, some
astronauts reported depression, substance abuse issues, marital discord, and jealou-
sy.^31 Astronauts are highly competent, task-oriented people, who, like other highly
functional adults, have the normal ups and downs in their moods and social rela-
tionships. And, as in the case of other highly functional adults, these ups and downs
can sometimes reduce their effectiveness and relationships.
It is not only the normal ups and downs of the individual astronaut that affect
the teams and their work, but also the pressures and occasionally dysfunctional
dynamics of the organization and Mission Control. The Mercury astronauts lobbied
aggressively to fly as pilots rather than to ride as mere passengers (“Spam in a can”)
whose spacecraft were controlled from the ground.^32 H. S. F. Cooper wrote a well-
publicized account of conflict between the Skylab 4 crew and Mission Control.^33 At
the heart of the matter was the overprogramming of the astronauts’ time. As psy-
chologist Karl Weick described the situation:
To get the most information from this final trip in the Apollo pro-
gram, ground control in Houston had removed virtually all the slack
from the astronauts’ schedule of activities and had treated the men
as if they were robots. To get everything in, ground control short-
ened meal times, reduced setup times for experiments, and made no
allowance for the fact that previous crews aboard Skylab had stowed
equipment in an unsystematic manner. The astronauts’ favorite pas-
times—watching the sun and earth—were forbidden.^34- Flynn, “An Operational Approach”; Shepanek, “Human Behavioral Research in Space”;
P. Suedfeld, “Invulnerability, Coping, Salutogenesis, Integration: The Four Phases of Space
Psychology,” Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine 76, no. 6, sect. II (June 2005):
B3–B12. - Wolfe, The Right Stuff.
- Cooper, A House in Space.
- K. E. Weick, “Organizational Design: Organizations as Self-Designing Systems,”
Organizational Dynamics (Autumn 1977): 31.