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Staying Sane in Space

Dr Duncan L Copp

December 2002

Picture the scene. It's day 145 of your 720-day round trip to Mars. You sit staring into the oppressive blackness of space. Earth has long since shrunk to a bright blue-green glow. Mars is still over half a year away. Next to your bunk, a crew member is suffering from constant flatulence – seems like the food scientists didn't quite get the zinc balance right. But worst of all is the blessed country & western music your commander insists on playing day and night. You're suddenly hit with a wave of desperation – just how will you stay sane in space? Surely not another game of travel scrabble?

As they start to plan for their most daring mission yet, international space agencies are finally acknowledging that the biggest risk in going to Mars may be human rather than mechanical breakdown. The biggest enemies will be illness, work pressure, crew conflicts and alienation from their ground controllers. If you think they are pie in the sky concerns, think again – experiences from past missions serve as a reminder of what can happen when these potent factors besiege a crew.

Apollo 7

11 October 1968 and Apollo 7 is poised for launch. After the tragic death of three astronauts during a routine countdown rehearsal 18 months previously, the mission carries the responsibility of putting the Apollo project back on course. Media interest is intense and naturally Nasa is looking for a textbook flight.

All began well until the crew succumbed to head colds. Feeling ill, they started to complain about their workloads and the intrusion of onboard public broadcasts. Before long, commander Walter Schirra refused live TV transmissions altogether and Nasa had its first rebellion in space. As the head colds worsened, so did the numerous unexpected itinerary tweaks from the flight planners. Constant changes and modifications to the pre-planned flight schedule irritated the crew, resulting in another outburst from Schirra: 'I've had it up here today. We have a feeling that you down there believe some of these experiments are holier than God. We are a heck of a lot closer to Him right now.'

Then, towards the end of the flight, the situation became life-threatening. Because of their head colds the crew refused to don their helmets during re-entry, flatly defying orders from Mission Control. 'From now on I'm going to be an onboard flight director!' Schirra shouted. Depressurisation of the spacecraft during re-entry would have resulted in the crew's death and, most likely, the end of the Apollo programme. Apollo 7 was a stark reminder that astronauts are only human.

Strikes in space

After the moon landings Nasa turned its attention to Skylab. This was the agency's first experience with a space station, and it was their first experience of striking astronauts. The problems arose during the mission of crewmen Ed Gibson, Jerry Carr and Bill Pogue in 1973. Things got off to a bad start when Bill Pogue suffered a bout of space sickness. Instead of reporting this to physicians on the ground, as was flight protocol, the crew unanimously elected to keep it quiet. They felt it unnecessary to worry the physicians. However, the crew had inadvertently left the voice recorder running. When the tape was subsequently downloaded to mission control, the crew were radioed and told they'd 'made a serious error in judgment' and that 'we're on the ground to try and help you if you have any problems.' The incident caused a breakdown in trust between ground controllers and astronauts, a major problem for any mission.

Further tensions began to mount. The schedule was demanding, and the crew felt they were being pushed at an unacceptable pace. The screws were turned tighter when one of the gyroscopes used to orient Skylab failed, resulting in the crew falling further behind schedule. The flight controllers exacerbated the situation by constantly comparing the efficiency of the present crew with the greater (and in hindsight unusual) efficiency of the previous one. Eventually, the relationship between mission control and the astronauts broke down completely with the crew staging the first ever space strike, refusing to work for a 24-hour period!

Misery on Mir

Nasa is not alone in experiencing such problems. The Russians, masters of long duration missions, have had their fair share. According to Alan Holland, an ex-Nasa psychologist, who has spoken at length with Russian psychologists, at least three Soyuz missions were shortened by interpersonal issues.

The importance of psychological compatibility was emphasized during the joint US-Russian mission to Russia's space station, Mir. The agreement was that Nasa would partially fund the management of Mir in return for its astronauts gaining long duration experience in space – something Nasa had not really achieved. It would have been difficult to have chosen two nations more culturally diverse; Nasa and its astronauts would certainly get more experience than they bargained for.

During its 8-year construction period, Mir grew in a sporadic fashion. The station suffered from lack of design, which introduced numerous technological problems. Conditions inside were far from comfortable; mildew grew on the walls, living quarters were cramped, and the shower didn't work. Even before the international flights commenced, cosmonauts aboard Mir were occasionally brought home early after complaints of feeling alienated, psychologically disoriented, and suffering from severe depression. The physiological problems were amplified with international crews. One poignant example involved experienced astronaut John Blaha.

Blaha's mission ran into problems before he left the ground. While having lunch with his wife a call from Nasa informed him that the crew he'd be training with for his forthcoming mission had been pulled for medical reasons. Blaha would now spend four months on the aging space station with two Russian cosmonauts he hardly knew. Blaha hadn't had a single training event with them.

Blaha's time in space was to go from bad to worse. The daily lives of astronauts onboard Mir were governed by minute-by-minute schedules, called Form 24s. They are compiled by Nasa, approved by Russian ground controllers and relayed up to the astronauts. Flight planners had given Blaha 90 minutes to perform his first experiment, but it took him five hours just to locate and assemble the equipment! Blaha recalls with anger today: 'The Ground, they didn't know anything about this test, they had never done it in training. All they knew was that in some book somewhere it should take an hour and a half.'

Similar problems dogged Blaha with other planned activities. Soon he was sleeping for little more than three hours a day – he'd become a workaholic. Relentless Form 24s sent from flight planners added further pressure on an already exhausted Blaha. He finally cracked: 'I lay awake in my sleeping bag thinking, I'm 54 years old and I'm not going to make it if I continue at this pace. I just wasn't happy, I was trying to run up a mountain.' Within two weeks of a four-month stay Blaha realised he was suffering from depression. Bad psychological management by ground controllers had made a key crew member mentally ill. Sheer grit and a concerted effort to bond with his Russian crewmates, pulled Blaha through his depression. He managed to hide his mental state from mission control, only revealing the severity of the problem once the mission ended.

The foreign feeling

Blaha's difficulties were far from unique. A recent study involved giving weekly questionnaires to 13 crew members and 58 mission control personnel during the Nasa missions to Mir between 1995 and 1998. The questionnaires were of a standard psychological nature asking the crew members to rate their current mood, and to agree or disagree with various statements about their work environment and interaction with other crew members.

The result was revealing. American astronauts and mission control personnel tended to be less happy and less satisfied with their working conditions than their Russian counterparts. The Americans reported less support and direction from their leaders, more work pressure, less opportunity for self-discovery, and less physical comfort. The reason for the unhappy astronauts has been attributed to the fact that the Americans were very much the foreigners onboard Mir, with crews consisting of two Russians and only one American. The fact that the commander was Russian and the language used was always Russian didn't help matters. Such a situation commonly gives rise to what is referred to as 'displacement', a phenomenon in which people who cannot deal with tension in a small group misdirect their feelings outside the group. For an American on Mir, the only outside group was mission control, who already have enough on their plate.

Learning the lessons

Identifying the psychological problem early on, the Russians set up the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP), employing dozens of doctors to monitor the mental health of cosmonauts. Among the tools IBMP use are a voice-stress analyser to study speech patterns, and cameras to monitor cosmonauts' body language during live video-links. However, IBMP's most ambitious project was SFINCSS (pronounced sphinx), the Simulated Flight of International Crews on the Space Station.

The ongoing construction of the International Space Station is highly demanding. With numerous complex spacewalks and extended working time, the mental and physical health of the crews, both in space and on the ground, are pushed to the limit. To simulate the gruelling conditions, the IBMP teamed up with a number of international space agencies and locked a series of international crews in an isolated chamber for a total of 240 days to determine how the monotony of isolation and confinement may affect crew performance. The lessons from the simulations are proving invaluable for the mixed crews working on the International Space Station and in planning the first missions to Mars.

Nasa also realised that psychological problems are just as important as technical difficulties on long duration missions. In response, they established the National Space Biomedical Research Institute to address a host of possible medical and psychological issues. As team leader Dr David Dinges explains: 'Astronauts aboard long duration missions will endure isolation and confinement in the harsh space environment to a much greater degree than before.' The unit will, amongst other things, identify strategies to maintain motivation, ensure an effective quality of life in space, and in short stop the crew from throttling one another!

The results of these studies are being put to good use on the International Space Station. But the station is just a stepping stone to the final frontier. At some stage during this century humans will travel to Mars. The psychological aspects of such an exploration are huge. While most of us could imagine technical problems scuppering an interplanetary mission, it's just as likely interpersonal difficulties will spell disaster. In particular there is concern about the physiological side effects of stress caused by psychological conflict. Increased stress weakens the body's immune system, gradually making crew members more susceptible to illness. Furthermore, through studying groups of scientists during their eight-month stints in the Antarctic, it's known that long periods of isolation in a hostile environment can impose intolerable strains on teams that would function perfectly happily under normal circumstances.

Efforts are being made to help boost morale and reduce interpersonal conflict on current International Space Station missions and future flights to Mars. These include a mission control and crew member bonding session aimed at the two teams getting to know each other and relating more to each group's respective jobs. The solution may seem obvious but only now is it being fully implicated. Perhaps such an exercise would have prevented John Blaha's bout of depression.

Until now, Nasa has selected crews mainly according to the skills the various members possess. But for interplanetary space travel, and long stints on the Space Station, the Agency realizes that personality may have to become the overriding factor. In the future, we may see a cheerier breed of astronaut setting out to Mars.

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