"Impulsive, suicidal, sexually obsessed thrill seeker." Who is it? Participant of the TV project "Dom-2"? Basejumper? Cult leader? Think again. So some psychiatrists of the US Air Force, even in the early days of the space race, presented the psychological profile of potential astronauts. The doctors assumed that if they were not moved, reckless hedonists, no one would force them to buckle on a modified ICBM and go into orbit.
When the space race began, some scientists worried that life in space would be too difficult for humans. Can we handle missions that can take years?
Of course, the people in white coats were wrong and were guided more by the lack of knowledge about space and fantastic stories than by common sense. Instead, astronauts' personality traits - composure under pressure, deep knowledge of know-how, and high physical and mental qualities - led NASA to six successful moon landings and the utterly ingenious rescue of the Apollo 13 crew, a mission that nearly claimed the lives of three members.
But the belief that a slight extravagance is needed in order not to get lost in space has never completely disappeared. And since we are planning missions to Mars in the late 2020s - and even massive colonization of Mars - that have a tinge of insanity in some ways, these criticisms must be viewed in light of the unfounded expectations of the 1950s. Because without serious ambition, space flights are unlikely to progress.
Concerns about the sanity of the first astronauts were uncovered in 2011 in a research paper published by space historian Matthew Hersh, now at Harvard, in Endeavor. Hersh's literature review found that George Ruff and Ed Levy, a pair of US Air Force psychiatrists working with NASA, feared that astronaut pilot candidates "might be thrill seekers who love fast airplanes to compensate for sexual deficiencies."
But test pilots have long been considered astronaut candidates. NASA did not think long about hiring renowned stress fighters - climbers and combat veterans - for their spacecraft. But no group of people matched their general requirements better than a taciturn group of cold-blooded, tech-savvy, engineering-savvy aviators from the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. After examining 500 possible candidates, the list was reduced to 32, of whom the Mercury Seven was recruited - including John Glenn, who died last December at the age of 95.
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Thanks to the care of doctors, an expanded program of psychiatric experts was included in the assessment of 32 candidates, which would show the mental health of the pilots. At the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Raff and Levy, along with two psychologists, fished out personal stories from pilots, forced them to take tests, take exams and check their cognitive functions in conditions of isolation, noise and other "uncomfortable conditions" whatever they are.
“NASA studied space program applicants for several days during this first selection in 1959, but didn't quite know what it was looking for,” says Hersh. However, their theories of searching for impulsive, suicidal, sexual perverts were shattered: the recruits were "completely spared" of such psychoses, neuroses, or personality disorders.
“They weren't daredevils, people with a desire to die, or anything like that,” says Roger Lonius, a former space historian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. “These test pilots assessed risks and made decisions based on them. In some cases, they insisted on making certain changes in space technology to moderate the risks."
Fears were overblown by the lack of information about the vacuum of outer space - after all, in February 1959, when doctors and psychologists from NASA tested astronauts, no one had ever been there. Yuri Gagarin said "Let's go!" only in 1961. Science fiction, films, and predictions in magazines were the only reference points for humans. The idea that humans could go out into space and remain human seemed odd, Hersh says, which is why it was widely believed that space flight caused strange changes in the human psyche.
For example, in the film "The Quatermass Experiment" (1953), a rocket returns from orbit with two dead crew members and a third turned into a mad killer due to contact with an alien in orbit. In the movie "Exploration of Space" (1955), a trip to Mars is threatened with failure due to the commander, who goes crazy and demonstrates a kind of religious paranoia, threatening to destroy the entire crew. Worries about the side effects of spacewalks were so intense that even Wernher von Braun, the architect of the Saturn V lunar rocket, feared the rockets might collide with angels or the wrath of God, Hersh says.
While suspicions of sexual deviation and death searches may sound ridiculous today, doctors were just doing their job, Lonius says. Back then, space flights were an absolute novelty, and those who were to participate in them simply had to pass all kinds of tests that would eliminate the risk of the operation's failure.
“I can understand a psychologist who was thinking about the impulsiveness of astronauts, for example. But I think that such estimates were wrong, and we have seen repeatedly since the first flight in 1961 that the astronauts remained cool under pressure and worked effectively."
The mental stress of space exploration, however, could enter a new phase in the 21st century. It is because of the expected duration of possible flights to Mars and the process of colonization that many commentators question their rationality.
In September 2016, for example, SpaceX announced that it could bring up to 100 people at a time to the Red Planet in a giant rocket - and thus begin the existence of Martian civilization. But the risks of death, especially in the initial stages, will be great.
Dutch Mars One, meanwhile, goes even further in terms of risks, generally rejecting the possibility of colonists returning to Earth: their journeys will be one-way. These former Earthlings will live out their lives on Mars under the constant supervision of television viewers who will pay Mars One's bills.
Yet many people want to be part of these missions - and Mars One is doing a good job of selecting the first crew members, says its chief medical adviser Norbert Kraft, a space psychologist based in San Jose, California who has worked with NASA, JAXA and Roscosmos on crew selection. …
But what if these future colonists went crazy? Perhaps these colonial ambitions are somehow connected with insanity, madness, or at least deviations in the development of personality? Why would they? The first crew members will have to survive a six-month flight, an exciting descent into the atmosphere and a rocket landing on its tail. And then you will have to survive in an absolutely empty, frozen, permeated with radiation, dust and airless desert with a tiny force of gravity - where the crop will not grow, and there will be constant problems with water. Who would go to such a thing, being of sound mind?
And again, just like in 1959, choosing the right personality types will be critical for such colonies. “Long-term missions to Mars seem unprecedented, but we have a lot of experience in recruiting long-distance crews in metal tubes - submarines are a good example,” says Hersh.
At Mars One, Craft selects a crew from the general public, not just astronauts around the world. His choice is supported in part by observations of simulated space missions in an isolation chamber in Japan - for 110 days, eight people lived locked up, mimicking future astronauts flying to Mars. Similar projects were carried out in Moscow, in Star City.
In Japan, Kraft was surprised to see the Japanese astronaut from the ISS fail the test. “Before starting the test, he was the favorite in our interviews and tests, but once inside, he split from the group and became problematic - and ended up last in the group. The personality changes extremely quickly in conditions of isolation."
In the Moscow simulator, cultural contradictions manifested themselves in all their beauty. Some candidates upset others by openly watching porn films on their computers, others fought to the brim with their fists, traumatizing more civilized colleagues. “Finding the right mix of gender and crops is very important. The people are the problem, not the environment,”says Kraft.
So in the case of one-way missions like the ones that Mars One offers, you should definitely not pick up impulsive perverts in search of thrills. You need to find people without personal ambitions. The dumber the better, says Hersh. Time will tell whether it will be interesting to watch such a show on TV.
ILYA KHEL