Customers in space! The time is ripe, the field clear—not counting the International Space Station, a weary fixture that conjures images of, well, nothing, unless it’s that shot of Thelma and Louise’s car frozen over the gorge. So the spotlight has turned to the private sector, to an ambitious few straining to reclaim space in the name of the people. They themselves are not the people. They are titans of commerce like Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk of SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. And why not? If we had ever stood onstage swinging Kate Moss in our arms till she nearly came out of her dress (Branson), if Robert Downey Jr. had ever used us as a model for Iron Man (Musk), if we, like Bezos, simply groaned to consume, what would be left to us? Where else to reach but up? With a few smaller companies frisking at the margins, there hasn’t been such a sense of wild possibility since 1638 when the Bishop of Hereford sent Domingo Gonsales to the moon lashed to forty swans.
Yet putting members of the public in space, projected to be difficult, is proving even more difficult than that. Target dates have been pushed back and back. In part that’s because there can be no mistakes, and Branson’s grand goal of sending a party of A-listers on a 2 ½-hour Mach 3 thrill ride—Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie and others have signed on—has only added to the pressure. No matter how much dark gratification millions will receive if a spaceship full of celebrities explodes, it would be bad for the company. “NASA has lost about 3% [of its astronauts],” Branson said. “… For a government-owned company, you can just about get away with losing 3% of your clients. For a private company you can’t really lose anybody.”
This got me wondering if on launch days the prayers for success might get a last quarter turn: if there were superstitions attached to spaceflight, things to do for luck. I found that there are. So for example, if Tom Hanks et al. were to emulate Russian cosmonauts, they would urinate on the right rear tire of the vehicle that carries them to the launch pad or, via NASA, they might play blackjack with the tech crew before boarding the flight and ground control would eat peanuts. But I wander from my purpose. The concern of this book lies not with the immediate future but well beyond it, when paying customers are routinely orbiting the Earth like loose laundry and it’s nearing time for the first lunar colonists to embark.
The initial challenge will be deciding who gets to go. The details of that process we can’t foresee, but there are one or two things we do know. We know, for instance, that there will be more qualified candidates than experts once believed. Back in the 1950s some scientists thought only acrobats would ever go into space. Or contortionists. Or with luck “very small people.” Then someone suggested females: “Women could probably weather long periods of loneliness better,” a psychologist explained, “because they are more content to while away the hours dwelling on trivia.” Or as Professor Harold Pepinsky of Ohio State University comprehensively put it, the ideal astronaut might well be “a female midget with a PhD in physics.”
By contrast, screeners of tomorrow will face a huge applicant pool. They may even be under siege from candidates animated by the principle that it’s better to break up with Earth before Earth breaks up with you. In such a press of volunteers, Job One will be weeding out the screwballs. For as former astronaut James Reilly has pointed out, once we start sending non-professionals into space, “We stand a greater chance of someone getting a little nuts.”
To learn how this winnowing might be done, I contacted Dr. Patricia Santy, former head of psychiatric selection criteria at NASA, and asked her.
“I wish there were really good psychological tests,” Dr. Santy said, “but there aren’t.”
Given that over the years candidate astronauts have been put through everything from the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory to the Minicog Rapid Assessment Battery, that they’ve had to Draw-a-Person, give twenty different answers to the question, Who Am I?, and on and on, her reply took me aback. But Dr. Santy explained that, useful as they are, none of these tests can predict for sure how someone will react to actually being in space. She added that during her time at NASA she had learned even less than she might have because astronauts went into full macho lockdown whenever she appeared: “I felt barely tolerated there.”
All right, I thought. Then let’s go at the problem a different way. When it comes to experiencing spaceflight, what can we learn from the pros in action? What sorts of coping strategies do we see?
One I discovered in a 2007 NASA internal report:
Interviews with both flight surgeons and astronauts identified some episodes of heavy use of alcohol by astronauts in the immediate preflight period, which has led to flight safety concerns … The medical certification of astronauts for flight duty is not structured to detect such episodes, nor is any medical surveillance program by itself likely to detect them or change the pattern of alcohol use.
That brought back memories. Back in my college days I would sometimes think to myself ahead of a new adventure, “This will be even better if I’m tripping.” With LSD I was always wrong. I’d lose track of everything looking at wallpaper that wasn’t there. Mescaline, on the other hand, produced the sensation of dreaming what really was there, which on the whole I preferred. Sitting on a lake bank watching dragonflies stitch the water on a summer day was astonishing in itself; they didn’t have to rearrange themselves into other things. Even threads of anxiety or sadness reinforced the idea that drugs enriched and enlarged the complexity of experience.
I don’t think you can make the same argument for being bombed in space. Clearly the goal there is not to feel more but to feel less. This suggests that no matter how tremendous the experience of space travel is—in fact, because it is so tremendous—the gestalt of the thing, the id of the ride, is fear. That’s not a disparagement: as we’re taught by the age of ten, there is no courage without it.
At any rate, this is something the 50s got right. At the US Army’s research center in Dayton, Ohio the architects of manned spaceflight descried at once that terror was the beast in the machine, and they set about trying to analyze its fiber. The first tests were modest enough. For reasons now obscure, one involved analyzing the “mechanics of fainting” in the opossum. According to the literature the best way to frighten a possum is to shake it, whereupon the animal feigns death, “drools and may discharge a noxious substance from its anal glands.” These tests were soon abandoned, but others took their place, escalating in scope and ambition till they vaulted into a sort of scientific Grand Guignol.
The image of a solo astronaut drove a huge amount of isolation and sensory-deprivation research. As it happened, the CIA for reasons of its own was already on top of this: inspired by forms of torture inflicted on US soldiers during the Korean War, the agency was nosing for truffles in the field of annihilating the human mind. In cooperation with Harvard and Boston University it sponsored studies in which, for example, volunteers were placed in “light-proof, soundproof rooms, cardboard tubes surrounding the arms and hands” to see what would happen. What happened were “primitive aggressive fantasies” and “strikingly vivid hallucinations in multiple spheres” along with imaginary things on fire and holes opening in the floor. Impressed by these results, NASA too ran batteries of tests. Soon the line between torturing spies and training astronauts effectively disappeared. It took a couple of years before an air official raised a slow hand to ask, What does this have to do with being an astronaut? After all, in outer space “sensory deprivation would be far from complete; the pilot would have jobs to do.” Besides, the reports of bottomless horror were getting monotonous. “Certainly a space man is going to get the quakes,” an Air Force physiologist pointed out, “but no worse than those poor wretches who were tossed to the lions in ancient Rome. A fellow can get just so scared and no more.”
Much of this grisly saga, like the CIA’s corrupt alliance with higher education, isn’t really surprising. What I keep wondering about, what I keep trying to get inside of, is the hearts and minds of those test subjects. What on earth put them there? Boredom, patriotism, a death wish? Money? I’ve tried to imagine my way into one of those isolation chambers—just for a moment—but it’s not possible. My experience with drugs doesn’t help because the worst trip I ever had was driving a sports car through the kingdom of Babar a lot longer than I wanted to.
But there is one thing that takes me at least a short way into that horror, and it’s not even something that happened to me. I once came across a news item about a woman in New Jersey who went to a clinic for an MRI. She lay down, slid smoothly into one of those tunnels and stayed there overnight. The staff turned off the lights and went home accidentally leaving her in the machine.
I’ve thought of this poor woman more times than I can say. On my one occasion in an MRI tunnel I started screaming in under three minutes. But maybe that’s not your worst nightmare. Let’s say you had a choice. You could either be the lady in the tunnel or Air Force captain Joe Kittinger, sent to learn if a person could survive a rocket crackup on the edge of space. In 1960 he pitched backwards from a balloon 20 miles above the earth, free-fell for more than 4 ½ minutes, accelerating to 614 mph, and when his chute finally opened said, “Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God,” over and over for a minute and forty-five seconds.
Kittinger’s fall was the last of the great wild-ass fear experiments, and since then terror in space isn’t something we’ve considered much. But it’s a subject sure to surface when moon colonists are suiting up, for even in the very latest spaceship the ride will be filled with hazards like:
Equipment failure: To date at least fifty-five space missions have been doomed by software errors alone. Mariner 1, launched to explore Venus, came to grief because of a typo.
The Van Allen belts: These are clouds of radiation that hang like Spanish moss between Earth and the moon, capable of swelling without notice “in response to incoming energy from the sun, engulfing satellites and spacecraft.”
Space debris: The revolving wheel of space junk which has turned our planet into a sort of down-market Saturn contains 22,000 primary chunks, each under individual surveillance around the clock. They sail along in a haze of tens of millions of smaller bits, any one of which could theoretically pop a hole in a rocket.
Given the level of danger, it’s a little surprising that no one who’s gone into space so far has totally lost it. There have been shouting matches, a brief mutiny, funks, but no lunging for the bungee cords and tranquillizers, which is NASA protocol for handling psychotics in the sky. On the other hand, virtually all of these 400-plus individuals have been professionals, brilliantly trained. Tomorrow’s moon colonists may be less so. Which returns us to the problem of how to pick the right people for the trip.
“Sociopaths might do very well,” Dr. Santy offered. “They have excellent survival skills.”
Bring them and welcome, but we can’t expect them to colonize the moon by themselves. Ways must be found to help regular people relax during the flight.
Ironically, given NASA’s resistance to the inner life, Robo-Freud could be one of these. Pioneered by Dr. James Cartreine of the Harvard Medical School, its laconic software is designed to reduce fears and boost optimism in-flight. But the talking cure is being developed primarily for longer trips, say to Mars. How much it would help on a three-day hop isn’t clear.
Who cares? What about sex? Yes, it’s a ragged possibility. But when futurist Laura Woodmansee calls zero-g sex the “killer app” of space travel, when California’s Space Island Group promises “fabulous sex” for the price of a car, when promoters in general swear that before you know it, strenuous tongues will be bursting joy’s grape all over the night sky, they’re getting ahead of themselves. As things stand today, the struggle to consummate would be more involving than the sex itself. Inventions to date like the Snuggle Tunnel—described as “a giant slinky covered in velveteen”—don’t seem to be good enough yet, nor will everyone want to be steered, nudged and held in place by a third party (the 3-Dolphin Technique). As you might imagine a lot of torrid ingenuity is pouring into this field so by the time colonists get set to fly the problems should mostly be sorted out. We can also expect add-ons like the “zero-g Jacuzzi.” According to the designer, John Spencer of California, it is based on the principle that absent gravity, water floats in perfect orbs: “You could have an 8-foot sphere of colored water … and people could dive in and float around.” Add booze (back to that!) and some “zero-gravity bar glasses” and you’ve got yourself a party.
As always, shyer souls will hover at the margins. But there another distraction may lurk. Ancient mariners had a name for it: the Call of the Abyss. In the days of the great sailing ships, seamen mesmerized by the swell of the deep would sometimes pitch themselves overboard and be lost. Apparently the same thing can happen in space. In 1965 ground control had to demand that Ed White, America’s first spacewalker, return to his capsule, and when he finally did, he called it “the saddest moment of my life.” In the 1970s a Russian cosmonaut, hypnotized by what he saw through the window, crept into an airlock undetected and was about to launch himself into the void when others snatched him back. With a bit of luck—good or bad, who’s to say—one of our moon-bound crew might hear the call himself. Bewitched, with untellable adventures in view, he too might slip the airlock and squeeze outside. Too late, fellow passengers mash themselves against the glass, hands splayed, mouths wide. But even if he could hear them, he wouldn’t care, as he glides away with a big fat smile on his face, Ulysses among the stars.
1. nearly came out of her dress: “Branson Manhandles Kate Moss,” Metro (June 22, 2009), http://metro co.uk. Branson has also swung Pamela Anderson and held Ivanka Trump upside down.
2. model for Iron Man (Musk): Alan Ohnsman, “A New Henry Ford,” [London] Independent (July 17, 2013).
3. groaned to consume: Brad Stone, “Amazon, the Company That Ate the World,” Bloomberg Businessweek (September 28, 2011). Also, Brid-Aine Parnell, “Amazon Kingpin’s Pocket Rocket Splatters Across Texas,” The Register (June 9, 2011).
4. Where else to reach but up?: Cf. Chinatown: Gittes: Why are you doing it? … What could you buy that you can’t already afford? Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future. Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppGd-2nEOVQ
5. smaller companies frisking at the margins: One of these, First Advantage, has announced plans to marry couples in parabolas at one-ten-thousandth their normal weight.
6. lashed to forty swans: Francis Godwin, op. cit.
7. you can’t really lose anybody: Chris Matyszczyk, “Branson on Galactic: We Can’t Afford to Kill Tom Hanks or Angelina Jolie,” CNET (February 23, 2014).
8. urinate on the right rear tire: Nancy Atkinson, “Expedition 34’s Ride to Space Rolls to Launchpad,” (December 23, 2015), https://www.universetoday.com.
9. play blackjack with the tech crew: Alan Murphy, “The losing hand: tradition and superstition in spaceflight,” The Space Review (May 27, 2008). Branson in particular might be attracted to such rituals if for no other reason than to counteract his decision to locate Spaceport America in New Mexico’s desert of Jornada del Muerto (“single day’s journey of the dead man”).
10. acrobats … contortionists: Amy Shira Teitel, “Designing the Perfect Astronaut,” (December 7, 2010), www.vintagespace.wordpress.com.
11. dwelling on trivia: Daniel Lang, “Man in Space,” The New Yorker (November 15, 1958). Curiously, another reason offered in support of using female astronauts was that “women have notoriously strong ties to reality.”
12. female midget with a PhD in physics: Ibid.
13. someone getting a little nuts: “NASA Trains Astronauts to Bind, Tranquilize Unstable Crewmates,” Fox News (February 25, 2007). The chances of a crack-up may have increased because so many of us have lost the comfort of religion. Broadly speaking, a 15th-century serf would have climbed into a rocket with more confidence than you or I.
14. but there aren’t: Dr. Patricia Santy, author interview.
15. to the question, Who Am I?: Among the multitude of other tests NASA has administered over the years was the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, which required yes or no responses to statements like, “I often worry about my health,” and “Strangers keep trying to hurt me.”
16. I felt barely tolerated there: Dr. Santy, author interview.
17. change the pattern of alcohol use: Maria Newman and John Schwartz, “Report Uncovers Astronauts’ Heavy Alcohol Use,” New York Times (July 27, 2007).
18. the complexity of experience: With hallucinogens I could also protest the Vietnam war without leaving my room.
19. “mechanics of fainting” in the opossum: Lloyd Mallan, Men, Rockets and Space Rats (Mesner, 1958).
20. substance from its anal glands: Joe Eaton, “Endangered Opossums Really Do Play Dead,” Berkeley Daily Planet (February 1, 2005).
21. isolation and sensory-deprivation research: H. Benaroya, ed. Lunar Settlements (CRC Press, 2010).
22. strikingly vivid hallucinations in multiple spheres: Stuart Grassian, “Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement,” Washington University Journal of Law and Policy 22 (2006).
23. sensory deprivation would be far from complete: A British Air Ministry official speaking at an international symposium on outer space in 1958. He thought being an astronaut would more likely resemble “certain patterns of political imprisonment.”
24. last of the great wild-ass fear experiments: The most important experiment-in-waiting could not then be run. When President Kennedy took office, there was still a general fear in the business that weightlessness might obliterate reason altogether or kill you if you sneezed. The first effort to understand its effects was made by Hubertus Strughold in 1928. At that time Strughold had not yet become chief of Aeromedical Research for the German Luftwaffe, nor had he overseen the torture and murder of prisoners at Dachau, done seminal research for the US Air Force, godfathered the pressure suit for American astronauts and earned the honorific “Father of Aviation Medicine.” His weightlessness test consisted of anesthetizing his buttocks and executing acrobatic maneuvers in a small plane. The idea was to deprive himself of that “seat-of-the-pants” feeling and see what he learned. It wasn’t much.
25. came to grief because of a typo: Comins, Hazards of Space Travel (Villard, 2007).
26. engulfing satellites and spacecraft: “NASA’s Van Allen Probes Reveal Previously Undetected Radiation Belt Around the Earth,” (February 28, 2013), https://universalwavetheory.wordpress.com. Trippy animation at: “NASA | Van Allen Probes Reveal Previously Undetected Radiation Belt Around Earth”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKC MaJBXmzY
27. pop a hole in a rocket: See, e.g., Ran Levi, “The Orbital Menace—Space Garbage,” http://www.thefutureofthings.com. In orbit even the smallest bits are travelling thousands of miles an hour.
28. handling psychotics in the sky: “NASA Trains Astronauts to Bind, Tranquilize Unstable Crewmates,” Fox News (February 25, 2007).
29. Sociopaths might do very well: Dr. Santy, author interview.
30. Robo-Freud: Austin Modine, “Scientists prep robo-Freud for depressed astronauts,” The Register (October 28, 2008).
31. “killer app” of space travel: Laura Woodmansee, “Sex in Space: Imagine the Possibilities,” National Space Society (February 8, 2006).
32. for the price of a car: “Sex in space offered in first space island honeymoon suite,” Marie Claire (December 11, 2007).
33. giant slinky covered in velveteen: As featured on the arresting blog Arse Elektronica, which explores topics at the intersection of sex and technology, e.g., “What goes into the extraction of raw resources, such as the rubber tree plantations of South America, that make our condoms and catsuits?” and “Can fucking charge a battery?” Unconvincing demonstration of Snuggle Tunnel with dolls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl4VODxGUoA
34. 3-Dolphin Technique: To investigate further visit “Sex in Space Resources” at: https://archive.li/yhVcW
35. zero-g Jacuzzi: Michael Behar, “The Zero-G Spot,” Outside (December 5, 2006).
36. zero-gravity bar glasses: Courtesy of one Sam Coniglio.
37. the saddest moment of my life: Ben Evans, “Examinations of Some Kind: The Walk of Ed White,” (June 6, 2012), http://www.americaspace.com/2012/06/06/examinations-of-some-kind-the-walk-of-ed-white/.
38. launch himself into the void: James Oberg, “Extra-Vehicular Adventures, Risky Space Walking,” (2010), http://www.jamesoberg.com/09012005riskywalking_shr.html.