NASA Wants To Know How Astronauts Can Get Along Better
Two astronauts aboard the
International Space Station are keeping personal diaries. No, not
the "Dear Diary" kind; the kind where they'll write "brutally
honest" personal thoughts about living aboard a spacecraft in
close, cramped quarters with two others for six months.
Astronauts Sunita Williams and Michael Lopez-Alegria are
participating. They're to document their thoughts, feelings, moods,
what they miss, how they're getting along with the other
astronauts, etc., three times each week in a personal journal.
The journals will go to Jack Stuster, a Santa Barbara, CA-based
researcher who uses them to measure morale aboard the ISS.
Shortly before she arrived at the space station in December,
Sunita Williams told the Associated Press, "It comes out looking
like a gossip column, I'm sure. But the point is to identify
characteristics that will make expeditions successful."
Stuster has had access to ISS journals since 2003. The results
of his investigation are intended to help NASA and other space
agencies better prepare their astronauts for long stays aboard the
ISS, and even longer stays on the Moon and even Mars.
A NASA publication titled "Bioastronautics Roadmap" documents
incidents of ill-will between some US and Russian crew members.
The document reads in part, "Interpersonal distrust, dislike,
misunderstanding and poor communication have led to potentially
dangerous situations, such as crew members refusing to speak to
each other during critical operations, or withdrawing from voice
communications with ground controllers."
Stuster, who holds an anthropology doctorate, has also studied
French doctors living in Antarctica -- an isolation situation
similar to living in space. He classifies journal entries by tone
-- positive, negative or neutral -- and time, noting the quarter in
which it was made. He says astronauts, like the French doctors in
Antarctica, suffer from the "third-quarter blues." Stuster says
entries made in the third quarter are the most negative.
At least one former astronaut, Leroy Chiao, used the journal
keeping as a form of self-aid. Chiao, who lived aboard the ISS in
2004 and 2005, said, "I used it almost as a therapy for myself --
if I were upset about something or frustrated, I'd write that out,"
adding some of his entries were rather long.