Through the deep space desert
Inner space
Humanity is about to embark on the longest, most tedious round-trip ever. Fretful passenger Regina Peldszus
asks, “Are we there yet?”
T
he overpowering blandness of the timber veneer in the Mars500 simulator
at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow has an apparent rationale: to reinforce the monotony a crew would experience during a round-trip to our neighbouring planet. In its warped fidelity, it is a more than unsubtle metaphor for 520 days of epic tedium. Might it not be easier on both eyes and mind to handle the jungle-like hardware agglomeration of a present-day space station? Or does neutral have its merits, even in the monochrome void of a round-trip through deep space?
In its fictional account of a Mars mission, Arthur C. Clarke’s The Challenge of the Spaceship
(1960) summed up that particular situation: a “little, self-contained community floating in vacuum millions of miles from anywhere, kept alive in a bubble of plastic and metal” with “absolutely nothing” happening. The missions seeping into the agenda today expose astronauts to spatial, social and sensory isolation. Confined in a small habitat-vehicle, the five or six crew members are “alone together”. The quality, quantity and range of stimuli on board and beyond the tiny windows will be restricted; abort, rescue or resupply impossible. The behavioural challenges set by such missions are quite as daunting as any technical issues they raise.
Space psychologists predict that after an initial period of enthusiasm and adaptation, morale is likely to drop, falling to its lowest during the third quarter of a mission. Even though punctuated with extraordinary events – be they accomplishments or crises – sustained remote duty operations will necessarily be dominated by routines.
To stop frustration turning to despair, there are options at hand: bring with you what you enjoy; produce your own diversion regardless of the constraints; and prepare to appreciate the locale you encounter.
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Many of the measures that alleviate the comparably mild isolation experienced in orbit depend on the proximity to Earth. Real-time video conferences while cloud-spotting over the Pacific? Fresh lemons and crispy clean pants in the resupply? Not on a lengthy asteroid expedition, you don’t. Even your handful of beloved provisions will have to work in microgravity, fit into storage and pass flight certification. (What develops into your favourite jumper by a possible mission in 2020-30 had better be lint-free.) The point about isolation is that its remedies are precisely those things whose absence defines isolation in the first place: a medium-rare steak; the sea; your family. Deep space is devoid of everything you were used to. Remoteness is an infinite party pooper.
So, now and again, a mission’s work payload morphs into a vital off-duty resource. Scientific research into plant growth has been greeted with relish by space station crews in the past; some current life science studies have taken advantage of the fact, setting aside experimental botany to examine the psychological and nutritional benefits of gardening. Take a look at the programme that’s running on the International Space Station as I write this: “Validating Vegetable Production Unit Plants, Protocols, Procedures and Requirements Using Currently Existing Flight Resources” (“LADA-VPU”
to you and me: in the space industry biotope, acronyms are like strings of friendly bacteria – you can’t help acquiring them, and they quickly make life so much easier).
Whether supplemented with home-grown produce or freeze-dried vegetables, a decent menu and the odd drink are powerful motivators, galvanising morale during extended missions. Given the logistical constraints, however, planning the menu involves carefully balancing possibilities, personal abilities, and preferences. For his TV series Heston’s Mission Impossible
, molecular chef Heston Blumenthal played off “brain” versus “comfort” food on a Royal Navy submarine. His diners – confronted with a menu of blueberries, mackerel and dark chocolate – vividly attested to the difficulty of his task.
Even fictional crews voice their grievances about sub-standard supplies – the disillusioned company aboard Alien
’s commercial cargo vessel, for one. (They did, though, have a thoughtfully designed galley: a space so neutral that the vibrantly coloured food and ironic executive toys were accentuated and really “pop”.) It is bad when personnel reject the refreshments, but all is lost when the cook is moody too. A 1970s review of Antarctic station leaders’ logs compiled by the US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery cites one telling entry:
“Cook’s at it again… Threw a lemon pie and cookies all over the galley… then went to his room for a couple of days and wouldn’t come out… no clear reason… probably antarcticitis catching up…”
If only he, and the submariners, had spent their lunch breaks at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre. The complexity, variety and abundance of its amazing canteen, plotted against employee satisfaction, would probably tell us exactly how much meaningful complexity we should be embedding in the meals served on a long mission.
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It is hard to grow fresh produce in orbit: an issue that has already thrown up a battery of hoaxes and subversive acts, from using plastic cucumbers to fool ground-based scientists to eating onion bulbs originally set aside for science. Humour in space serves as a lubricant, smoothing relations among the crew and between the crew and their management.
Skylab commander Alan Bean’s mission diary is peppered with references to “kidding”. He pioneered the hygiene joke: self-maintenance was a crucial part of the crew’s routine, and bizarre or unpleasant experiences, from out-of-control moustaches to flatulence, were rendered light through humour. They were an amusing gauge of daily life. Bean recalls a dialogue between his colleagues Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma:
“‘There’s music to waltz by, no better, music to float by’ – ‘Hell, that’s music to fart by; in fact all music is that way up here.’”
Like many other astronauts after them, Bean and his associates built elaborate props to delight subsequent crews and controllers on the ground. For ISS astronaut Donald Pettit, prolific on-board tinkering went beyond practical jokes. The MacGyver of Low Earth Orbit meticulously videoed his experiments with spare components and a modified Makita drill. His off-duty work was playful and provided an experience of flow; it also revealed the dual capabilities of onboard materials. Such self-directed resourcefulness prompted his Russian colleague, Sergei Krikalev – the cosmonaut with the longest accumulated time in space – to write a paper arguing that astronauts should be given greater autonomy and involvement in decision-making.
Pleasurable pursuits are ambivalent, however. Not everyone enjoys orbital jardinage
. In one North American mission simulation, a row blew up over whether to watch the TV series Lost
. (How apt.) What you cherish will highlight what you miss. Worse, your predilection for Blumenthal-style snail porridge might change mid-mission.
In a 1986 NASA analysis of “space analogue conditions” in polar outposts and submarines, the author, an ergonomist, wisely pointed out in the chapter on habitat aesthetics:
“Many people appreciate the works of Jackson Pollock… or the photographers of Playboy, but it would be unfair to inflict those tastes on others on a regular basis unless it were mutually agreeable.”
Blog entries and photographs from the Mars500 simulation suggest that decorating the communal lounge by group consensus is not easy to do; especially when the only aesthetic common denominator of a six-person crew seems to be portraits of heads of state in the living room.
On the Soviet space station Salyut, cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and Anatoly Berezovoi took great pleasure in watching the 1982 World Cup. This, it turned out, was not an unalloyed good. Lebedev recorded in his on-board diary:
“Wonderful game! For the first time I regret that I am not on the ground.”
Reviewing the footage of that particular game (Brazil played Scotland, 4-1), it is striking how the exhilaration of the players and the rapturous stadium responses reinforce
the fact of the watcher’s utter seclusion.
At the dire end of Lebedev’s mission, tending to the greenhouse, observing the Earth and talking to friends – things that until then had mitigated his isolation – actually made life worse. Diligent solitude gave way to crippling isolation. Lebedev’s apathy was such that the publishers of his memoir omitted the “repetitive” descriptions of his low mood in the final quarter of his mission.
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Last summer, some colleagues and I visited Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan – a trip masterminded by the Architectural Association’s Unknown Fields Division
. Having persevered through a detailed guided tour of its human spaceflight museum, we were rewarded with a peek inside a cosmonaut’s typical bail-out pack. It included a close-up photograph of a firearm: part of the standard survival gear of a Soyuz spacecraft. (An emergency earthfall could conceivably land a crew in a wilderness frequented by bears or wolves.)
It’s the first thing guests ask about: to date there are no records of a gun having been unpacked in flight. But what happens when the fragile equilibrium of exuberance and disillusion tips into recklessness?
Potential future missions include prospecting, satellite repair, and cleaning up space debris. Each mission profile throws up new demands: dilemmas that have already been deliciously exploited in fiction.
Shrouded in cosmic tedium, the self-medicating, bored-to-death crew of Dark Star
(1974) indulge themselves at a smorgasbord of what psychologists would term “coping attempts”, from dares involving knives to drinking jags (not to mention that the common area is plastered with those Playboy
photographs).
In Eolomea
, a 1972 East-German/Soviet/Bulgarian co-production, a recalcitrant space pilot frolics along a sun-bleached strip of Black Sea shore as he considers quitting the service. His exhilaration is damped when, on his “last” mission, he finds himself stranded on a remote asteroid base. He leaves his geodesic pressurised hut for unscheduled sorties, succumbs to binge-drinking and builds a tiny do-it-yourself Christmas tree made from instrument scraps (much like the “real” thing the Skylab Four crew built out of discarded food cans a year later). A Leipzig newspaper critic called our hero a “contemporary of tomorrow”.
The desolate loneliness of the mining professional in Duncan Jones’s Moon
(2009) assumes a sadder tone, and illustrates just how viscerally fiction can explore the psychological dimension of spaceflight. Films help us spot the behavioural wildcards an entirely unprecedented setting can throw at us. The construction methods and aesthetics of the full-scale human base built in the studio are not unlike the plywood mock-ups used for habitability testing and astronaut training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The main difference is in the stories being played out there. Dramas invariably expand upon the doldrums of a mission’s “third quarter”, playing out scenarios that would contravene the research ethics and burst the organisational politics of “actual life” simulations such as Mars500.
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Sifting through production documents of 2001: A Space Odyssey
, I was captivated by the polished, impeccably crafted letters Kubrick’s production team wrote to their partners and collaborators. They exuded a warmth and incisive wit missing from the polite, somewhat tranquilised post-purée-dinner exchanges of the Discovery
crew and their patronising on-board computer. Their sober, laid-back alertness signifies a third approach to dealing with a deprived setting that’s as forthright as it is unpretentious. Inquisitively, 2001
’s astronauts hurl themselves into the emptiness and silence.
The architectural critic Reyner Banham made a lucid point on the potential of apparent lack of context in the desert: “[The] profundity and simplicity of the view… the absence of barriers… in a landscape where nothing officially exists, absolutely anything becomes thinkable, and may consequently happen.”
Steeped in a supposed void, people winkle out its meaningful elements, however minute or initially elusive they may be. During his extended mission on the Russian space station Mir, Jerry Linenger learned to distinguish his crewmates purely by their vibrations:
“Sasha is running on the treadmill, medium pace. I didn’t see him go there. And it is not Valeri. Nope, it is definitely Sasha, and he is running on the treadmill in module Kristall and not… in base block… Frequency about 1 hertz.”
Similarly, those who overwinter in the barren expanses of Antarctica learn to discriminate between different shades of what used to be uniformly white ice.
Free from the constraints of daily life – its bills, its adverts, its sensory overload – people become attuned to another scale of observation: a fine scale that turns out to contain its own enormous pleasures.