Posted on 01/21/2004 6:34:51 PM PST by ambrose
Mars... a big step for womankind? (Filed: 21/01/2004)
It's not just physical dangers astronauts have to contend with. Psychological friction is a big problem ? especially for men, says Raj Persaud
The Bush space plan
When President Bush announced plans to send humans to Mars last week, he talked of weightlessness and radiation as being the key dangers. But there is increasing evidence to show that one of the greatest hazards lies in the crew itself.
Close confinement: an all-male crew can lead to stress linked to competition and aggression
The hostile space environment and the hardware will, of course, be crucial factors in a Mars mission. But so will the software of our brains. The proposed expedition will require humans to spend longer in close proximity with each other in a confined capsule than ever before. Some psychologists believe an all-female crew would be best suited to such a mission.
Even at its closest approach to Earth, every couple of years, the red planet is at least 35 million miles away. It takes roughly six months to get to Mars and once there, the explorers will need to wait 550 days for the orbits on Earth and Mars to allow an easy trip home.
The manned mission to Mars will therefore be the toughest test of enduring isolation and close confinement: Valery Polyakov, the current record holder for time in space, returned to Earth in March 1995 having spent a mere 438 days aboard the Mir space station.
During long missions, space travellers have shown signs of increased territoriality, withdrawal, and need for privacy. As a result of these sorts of psychological difficulties, one cosmonaut had a religious experience that led him to make a dangerous, unauthorised spacewalk.
Nasa's Skylab missions in 1973 and 1974 almost immediately ran into trouble. One astronaut erroneously changed the control systems while suffering from psychological problems. Crew members Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson and William Pogue began the third mission with a schedule that was too strenuous. They felt behind in their work and became demoralised.
On their 45th day in space, the crew went on strike, refusing to perform scheduled tasks. Disregarding orders was an unusual and dangerous response for astronauts. After concessions from mission control, the crew settled down and eventually completed an 84-day mission.
The Russians have identified three phases in adaptation to space. The first lasts up to two months and is dominated by adjustments to the new environment. This is followed by increasing fatigue and decreasing motivation, "asthenia". What once seemed exciting becomes boring and repetitious. Next comes a lengthy period during which the asthenia, which can include depression and anxiety, worsens.
The spacefarers are unusually upset by loud noises or unexpected information. This is the period when crew members get testy with one another and with the ground crew. There have been reports describing how one crew member did not speak to another for days; there are even rumours of fist fights - one over a chess game. Tensions frequently spill over to mission control, as they did in the Skylab strike.
One Russian crew aboard a Salyut space station reportedly got so cross with mission control that they shut down communications for 24 hours.
According to Henry Cooper, who wrote a book, A House in Space, on the loneliness of the long-distance astronaut, at least three missions have been aborted for reasons that were in part psychological. In the 1976 Soyuz-21 mission to the Salyut-5 space station the crew was brought home early after the cosmonauts complained fiercely of an acrid odour in the space station's environmental control system. No cause was ever found, nor did other crews smell it; conceivably, it was a hallucination. Coincidentally, the crew had not been getting along.
The crew of the Soyuz T-14 mission to Salyut-7 in 1985 was brought home after 65 days after Vladimir Vasyutin complained that he had a prostate infection. Later, doctors believed that the problem was partly psychological. Vasyutin had been getting behind in his work and was under pressure, having been passed over for a flight several times before.
Alexander Laveikin returned early from the Soyuz TM-2 mission to Mir in 1987 because he complained of a cardiac irregularity. Flight surgeons could find no sign of it. The cosmonaut had been under stress - he had made a couple of potentially serious errors. And he had not been getting along with his partner, Yuri Romanenko.
The same psychological phenomena curse men and women on expeditions to remote places. Isolation and sensory deprivation are the common denominators, whether the mission is in the Arctic wastes or the realm of the deep, causing a series of symptoms - heightened anxiety, boredom, depression, loneliness, excessive fear of danger and homesickness.
The scientists and support staff who work in Antarctica have been studied by Dr JoAnna Wood of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston, who also studies how crews behave in a special test chamber. "After a few months, you get tired of looking at the same faces. People frequently have behaviours that might be endearing in the larger society, but when you're living with it day after day it's an annoyance.''
This continent, the last to be explored by humans, is the coldest, windiest and driest land mass. Because of the extreme environment, researchers must "winter over" for six months out of the year. During this period, there is little contact with the outside world and groups tend to be confined indoors by the extreme temperatures.
Antarctica has served as one of the primary means of gathering the psychosocial data for the proposed space station and interplanetary missions, according to Dr John Annexstad, a space scientist and 10-time veteran of scientific missions to Antarctica.
During the first few weeks of an Antarctic mission, interpersonal problems don't play a major part. The problem arises, says Dr Annexstad, after the initial shock and awe of the environment wear off, and crew members get to know their surroundings a little better. Then they begin to rebel against authority and each other.
In one ice base, anxiety episodes increased from three during the first four months to 19 during the last four. In a study of personnel who wintered over in the Antarctic, 85 per cent reported periods of significant depression, 65 per cent had periods of anger or hostility, 60 per cent suffered from sleep disturbance, and 53 per cent had impaired cognition.
During the 1977 International Biomedical Expedition to Antarctica, a 12-man adventure lasting 72 days, bickering became such a problem that psychologists accompanying the expedition had to intervene. Antarctic literature is full of stories about teammates who stopped talking to one another or even fought - one concerns a cook with a meat cleaver facing off against an engineer brandishing a fire axe.
So psychologists will have to find new ways to select crews that will not crack in close confinement. Evidence suggests that the best crew may be female: we may be celebrating the first woman on Mars in a few decades. They tend to be smaller than men, saving on fuel, food, water and oxygen. Most important of all, they tend to be more tolerant of their companions.
Dr Annexstad has noted the positive effects of women on long Antarctic missions. In crews with women, he notes, there seems to be less competition, and the crews seem to get along a little better. So women in space crews serve a socialising purpose, as well as their mission function.
But the introduction of a female into a male group causes destabilising effects partly because of sex issues. What effect would a passionate affair on board the mission to Mars have on crew performance?
Perhaps there has been too much worry about sex and the quest for the zero G-spot in mixed crews: the latest research has found a dramatic drop in sex hormone levels in astronauts, producing a profound decline in sex drive - so maybe sex won't be such a problem after all.
Just to be on the safe side, it might make sense for all sorts of psychological reasons to send an all-female crew rather than a mixed one (stress caused by sexual tension) or an all-male one (stress linked to competition and aggression). But then there may be medical issues.
Weightlessness causes bone loss, and women are at greater risk of osteoporosis. "That would probably be the biggest argument against women going to Mars," says Prof Millie Hughes-Fulford, an osteoporosis researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who flew on the space shuttle in 1991 and would love to see an all-female crew. Women astronauts could load up on calcium, but that could create kidney stones, adds Dr Arnauld Nicogossian of Nasa.
Whether male or female, Mars astronauts will have to be carefully selected. Dr Al Holland, head of psychology at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre, points out that the ability to put the astronauts on the couch and help them through difficulties is going to be limited. So psychology, perhaps for the first time, is going to have to focus on prevention rather than cure.
Mr Bush clearly hopes a mission to Mars will drive science onwards, as happened with Apollo. Psychology may also be a major beneficiary.
Dr Raj Persaud, consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, London, presents All in the Mind on BBC Radio 4. His latest book, From the Edge of the Couch, is available for £11.99 + £2.25 p&p. To order, call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222
The Bush space plan
2004 Space Shuttle flights due to resume.
2004-08 New shuttle developed.
2010 Space shuttle fleet retired. US work finished on International Space Station
2014 Manned exploration of space resumes using new shuttle.
2015-20 Astronauts return to the Moon. Works starts on first lunar base.
After 2020 First manned mission to Mars?
I say sell the whole idea to TV and have 'em fund it and produce it as "Survivor - Mars". Each week of the trip HAL picks a loser to shoot out the photon torpedo tube.
Looks like chess is out.
"I, like, wanna go to Mars because I hear that 'men' are from Mars..."
Doc
But somehow I think the proposition that women get along better together flies in the face of every catfight I've seen.
Don't forget to bring the trail mix, and this could make a good "National Lampoon's Martian Vacation".
Yes, there is the allure of space, but this isn't like Christopher Columbus setting sail for the New World. It's strictly BYOOS (bring your own oxygen supply) on Mars, not to mention water, food, life support systems.....
It's a cool idea on paper, and I wouldn't mind at all getting to choose who gets sent.:)
You just can't throw away the Leather Goddesses!
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