"It’s extremely difficult to live and work in space," says psychologist Albert Harrison, who compares a stint onboard the International Space Station to "being in a cramped house with trash piling up." While the wobbly legs of an astronaut just returned to Earth may be the most obvious side-effect of a year-long space mission, simply getting along with other astronauts for months at a time may be even harder.
According to Harrison, author of
Spacefaring: The Human Dimension, "One of the things that the Russians have done with tremendous skill and daring is to build a record of increasingly long space flights. Our own astronauts gained experience on Skylab and later on Mir and the ISS." As a result, "the people that go up into space have been able to get along with one another. They work out patterns of mutual existence, living under conditions where they’re cramped together." In orbit 240 miles above the Earth’s surface, astronauts who tire of being in close quarters have "very little opportunity to get away."
And in their celestial home away from home, there’s little room for solitude. Long gone are the days of the Mercury space capsules, with room for only one astronaut on missions measured in hours. But like their predecessors, Harrison says, today’s "astronauts still have the ‘Right Stuff,’ it’s just that it’s redefined a little bit."
"The ‘Right Stuff’ has sort of expanded," in Harrison’s view. Modern astronauts are "still highly competent and motivated and they’re still cool. Today they don’t have to be fighter pilots with great kill ratios ... but they do have to be able to get along with one another in ways that weren’t required in the 1960s." The challenges of long-term amity can become even more difficult when astronauts come from cultures with different ways of relating to others. "Today’s international crews," says Harrison, "raise the complexity. A lot of effort goes into ensuring that international crews can function comfortably."
The Greatest Obstacle
But interpersonal strife is far from the worst threat to a stable space program. Commenting on the space program in the United States, Harrison says if he had "to pick one problem which is greater than others, I think it’s national will, our desire to go to space, to provide the political infrastructure and the economic support to realize that dream."
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