The Well-Tempered Astronaut

PhD Dissertation, 2018

The goal of this book is to offer a new origin story for the American astronaut. In traditional space histories NASA’s selection of seven white, male, military test-pilots for Project Mercury in April 1959 is also seen as the creation of the astronaut. But for nearly a decade before NASA was formed, between 1949 and 1959, doctors and psychologists in a field of military research called “space medicine” prepared humans for spaceflight. Instead of the familiar story of test-pilots hired by NASA, this book focuses on an earlier moment when military space medicine experts utilized a surprisingly diverse array of non-test-pilot subjects to model the astronaut. Through episodes featuring studies and simulations with non-flying enlisted men, high-altitude Indigenous people, monkeys and chimpanzees, and women pilots, this book highlights different themes essential for a critical understanding of the astronaut: surveillance, biological appropriation, human-animal interactions, and the construction of gender. Rather than a utopian hero of the Space Race, this book recasts the astronaut as a dystopian creature of the early Cold War.

2011

Studies of the history of the human sciences during the cold war era have proliferated over the past decade -in the JHBS and elsewhere. This special issue focuses on the connections between the behavioral sciences and the culture and politics of the cold war in the United States. In the recent literature, there is a tendency to identify the cold war human sciences with two main paradigms: that of psychocultural analysis, on the one hand, and of the systems sciences, on the other. The essays in the special issue both extend our understanding of each of these interpretive frameworks, and help us to grasp their interconnection.

The research documented in this report was funded by the Space Life Sciences Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The research involved the analysis of personal journals that were maintained for this purpose by the station leaders and medical officers of the Dumont d’Urville Antarctic facility and three other French remote duty stations in the South Indian Ocean. The diaries were maintained during the 1993-1994 expedition as part of the International Antarctic Psychological Program (IAPP). The objective of the study was to further our understanding of the human requirements for long duration space exploration. Although the research involved collaboration among NASA, the French Space Agency (CNES), Territoire des Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises (TAAF), and Institut Français Pour La Recherche Et La Technologie Polaires (IFRTP, the French Polar Institute), the opinions and observations presented in the report are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the positions of any company, institution, or government agency. This content analysis of journals that were written by leaders and physicians at French remote duty stations on Earth provided the first quantitative data on which to base a rank-ordering of behavioral issues in terms of importance. March 1999, for NASA.

Social Studies of Science, 2001

Front matter, including title page and table of contents, for Science in the Cold War

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (HSNS), 2021

In 1958, Bruno Balke, a former German Luftwaffe doctor working for the United States Air Force (USAF), led a team of airmen up Colorado’s Mount Evans. Could acclimatization to the thin mountain air boost the oxygen efficiency of future astronauts living in artificial low-pressure spacecraft environments? To judge their improvement, Balke, an expert in the nascent field of space medicine, compared their performance not with military test-pilots, but with high-altitude Indigenous people he had studied in the Peruvian Andes. This article expands discussions of race in space history beyond Black scientists, mathematicians, and pilots in the Civil Rights era to this earlier case of the permanent residents of Morococha, Peru, who participated in efforts to define an ideal spacefaring body. More than recovering the story of a nearly forgotten group of astronaut-adjacent test-subjects, this article shows how racial discrimination in space medicine functioned by inclusion. Balke studied and even celebrated the bodies of Morocochans, but never considered them potential astronauts. This article begins with Balke’s participation in the 1938 Nazi-funded expedition to summit Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas, and his follow-on work acclimatizing Luftwaffe pilots during World War Two. Then it focuses on his USAF work in the 1950s studying miners living and working in Morococha, Peru, and his attempt to replicate their altitude tolerance in American airmen on Mount Evans. Recovering Balke’s work places the high-altitude Indigenous person and the mountaineer alongside the familiar figure of the pilot in the genealogy of the early American astronaut. LINK: https://online.ucpress.edu/hsns/article-abstract/51/3/285/117359/Andean-Man-amp-the-AstronautRace-and-the-1958

Endeavour, 2006

The history of flight has been strongly influenced by the interplay between physiology and technology. The human body defined the relationship between man and machine-it had to be protected from the cold, bad weather, high altitude, speed and bullets. Technological innovations offered a way to improve on aeroplane safety, and enabled pilots to exceed the limits imposed by physiological constraints. In particular, reconnaissance and bombing missions during World War II, which demanded flight at high altitudes, stimulated intensive scientific research and technological development. This research led to the construction of artificial environments for pilots and ultimately gave rise to space medicine.

The Polish Journal of Aviation Medicine and Psychology, 2013

This article is an review attempting to assess the achievements of space psychology in Poland since the establishment and development of the discipline inspired by the historical space fl ight of the fi rst Pole, Maj. Mirosław Hermaszewski. Polish and worldwide literature in aviation and space psychology was reviewed in a retrospective and prospective manner. Four key areas of interest of Polish space psychology were identifi ed: (1) model for psychological selection of Polish cosmonauts; (2) Polish psychological studies conducted in the space station; (3) Studies in the natural laboratory of the Arctic and Antarctic Stations of the Polish Academy of Sciences; (4) Popularization activities related to space psychology in Poland. Elements common for both American and Soviet (Russian) space psychology were identifi ed in examinations of cosmonauts and astronauts; the original Polish input to the worldwide literature on the subject was highlighted. The historical space fl ight of the fi rst Pole had undoubtedly had a strong impact on the establishment and development of many space-related scientifi c disciplines, including space psychology.

1992

Research on humans conducted during space flight is fraught both with great opportunities and great obstacles. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the limitations to United States research in space in the hope that an informed scientific community may lead to more rapid and efficient solution of these problems. Limitations arise because opportunities to study the same astronauts in well-controlled situations on repeated space flights are practically non-existent. Human research opportunities are further limited by the necessity of avoiding simultaneous mutuallyinterfering experiments. Environmental factors including diet and other physiological perturbations concomitant with space flight also complicates research design and interpretation. Technical limitations to research methods and opportunities further restrict the development of the knowledge base. Finally, earth analogues of space travel all suffer from inadequacies. Though all of these obstacles will eventually be overcome; creativity, diligence and persistence are required to further our knowledge of humans in space.

The Universe is full of stars, and each star has at least one planet, the astrophysicists seek water and life in the cosmos. Long periods spent in the cosmos do not have the tempo of life, they are monotonous. The human brain and sensory systems are adapted to the categories of time and space in which they live normally. The philosophical categories of space and time do not exist in the cosmos, they are unique, because contraria sunt complementa. In Karl Jaspers' view, the Existing is not in fact located in time and space, simply there is; being: da sein. The temporal planes are intertwined to lose their characteristic of continuity. In the long term, the cosmic climate produces a sense of fatigue, apathy and mood disorders, with manifestations of "dark mood". The next step is anxiety and depression, dangerous not only for those who suffer from them, but also for the entire crew. Only the willingness to make that key contribution to the objective of scientific research can provide the motivation to endure the many hardships. The dysfunction, whether of people or things, risks compromising the mission. Harmony becomes a key element for success. He or she who exists in the cosmos must establish an equivalence between the energy of his/her mind, determined by the strength of the will, compared to the mass of a physical system that does not belong to him/her, but that is real. It is a rare human ability to know how to control the emotions, to know how to communicate effectively and to remain calm in extreme situations. Awareness for space travellers means having the consciousness that life on Earth is an illusion with regard to the cosmic reality, and intelligence is the ability to adapt. Human life in space stations and the future extraterrestrial human colonization will open up a new era for the anthropology sciences.