On the difficulties involved in selecting crew for space missions

[Cort Haus]

I was a program a while back about the effects of weightlessness - which basically destroys the body. That, and the psycholgical effects of isolation persuaded me that any serious space travel is effectively impossible.

[Kuciwalker]

I just saw a movie about a ship on a mission to save the earth by flying straight towards the sun and detonating a big nuclear bomb once there.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I was a program a while back about the effects of weightlessness - which basically destroys the body. That, and the psycholgical effects of isolation persuaded me that any serious space travel is effectively impossible.

Rubbish. All you need to do is to register the astronauts on a forum or two, get them to start playing a highly addictive game and watch them happily spam away their psychological need for social interaction.

[Dauphin]

Weightlessness is counteracted as well. But spinning wheels? That is just so 2001.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by realpolitic
Those criteria aren't any different from those who enlist in the military. Getting a dozen sane people a year from a nation of 300 million for space doesn't seem as hard as getting a few hundred thousand a year to sign up for the armed forces.

It does if you don't want any dum-dums.

[Bkeela]

I think the key to our successfully exploring the solar system is to...

Get robots to do it for us.

or

Have highly sophisticated virtual reality (holo deck) so that the astronauts have an escape.

or

Genetically engineer humans to be able to cope.

[b etor]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


I vote we send short people. They breathe less oxygen, take up less room, and eat less.

[Provost Harrison]

Re: On the difficulties involved in selecting crew for space missions

Originally posted by VetLegion
I just saw a movie about a ship on a mission to save the earth by flying straight towards the sun and detonating a big nuclear bomb once there.

To not spoil the movie I'm just going to say that one or more crew members go crazy. Which got me thinking. How exactly do you pick a crew for such a mission? What psychological characteristics do astronauts have to have? The way I see it, a space traveller has to be:

- willing to travel to a cold, lifeless and vast space in a small ship which can malfunction in a variety of ways
- ready to leave family and friends behind
- ready to sacrifice own life to save the mission
- willing to sacrifice someone else's life to save the mission

If someone satisfies those criteria, can he be sane at the same time? Discuss

Also preferably don't go off halfway across the country in a nappy to kill a love rival too...

[Winston]

That's impressive. If only you were the first to point that out..

[DanS]

No need to look to the movie Solaris (Russki version). Just look at the trouble they have from time to time in the antarctic...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2232455,00.html

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Winston
That's impressive. If only you were the first to point that out..

Piss off.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Is anyone familiar with the history of Biosphere II, its a fully sealed artificial terrarium built in Tucson Arizona (ware I used to live) and it house 8 people for more then a year in the first only only experiment of its kind ever conducted.

Before bing forced to leave do to declining oxygen levels due to a flaw in the structures design the "biosphereians" suffered a lot of inter-personal conflicts and tensions. Its said that the crew split into two factions of 4 people each rather quickly and the two groups were quite cold to each other, some reports say they were barely on speaking terms. Yet no violence or major break down in order occurred, despite grueling work loads maintaining the habitat and a bit of undernourishment from the poor crop yields (again design flaw based). Their were no major crisis that needed to be responded to aka Apollo 13 or (insert any movie about manned space exploration ever made) but it was felt that the long term issues from the social tensions combined with their physical welfare were more insidious and harder to address, and in a real mission would actually have been a greater danger for their ability to contribute to an emergency situation and or blunt the crews ability to deal with an emergency.

Unfortunately very little real research was done on the biosphereians psychology (their was no psychologist of any sort among them). The selection process was very unsophisticated and basically consisted of finding people willing to do it (original mission length was 2 years mind you) who also had some professional skills (aka biologist, engineer, doctor etc). Profiling showed they were Psychological similar to Arctic researchers. And I believe it was found that the women in the crew were particularly deviant from the normal psych profile for women.

[Winston]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
And I believe it was found that the women in the crew were particularly deviant from the normal psych profile for women.

At least that must've helped things a little.