Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis, interpretation, and application of a paper on space habitation and other related topics. These are my opinions on a weekly scientific paper. They are subject to my perspectives and believes. I am open to debate, so if any reader believes I have misinterpreted something in a paper, please point it out. I'm only a student and learning how to read these papers and interpret them. All quotes are from the paper unless otherwise noted. All papers I review are available for free online.
This Sunday, we will be covering Cultural Factors and the International Space Station, published June 2009 in the Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine and written by Jennifer B. Ritsher. This paper covers one the most important aspects of space exploration, the crew. The physical, mental, and social well being of the crew is important to a mission's success. If any of these aspects are out of tune, the mission may be in trouble. We can ensure the health of the crew through good engineering, but the mental and social health of the people around a piece of engineering is harder to ensure.
Not only does the crew of the spaceship need to be considered, the ground crew and mission control need to have a good relationship with the astronauts. If a member of a team has a falling out with any other member, the mission may be in jeopardy. The possibility of a conflict gets higher when the factor of different nationalities and languages is introduced. More conflict is introduced if these country were at the verge of global nuclear war, nearly wiping out humanity in their conflict. This is what we have on the International Space Station, Americans and Russians working together. It is truly a statement of how far humanity has come from the darkest hour that was the Cuban Missile Crisis, the hight of the cold war. It is easy to see how tensions can arise with these two rivals working in close proximity. “Personal, interpersonal, and behavioral anomalies have resulted” from long term missions. With a long time between each crew rotation, there is a lot of time for a condition to develop and even the most subtle cultural differences to be aggravated.
One example of a cultural difference is the management style of the Russian mission control vs. the American mission control. The authors of the paper “and others found that during the Shuttle-Mir Program, there were systematic Russian-American differences in the style of relationships between crewmembers and mission control staff, with Russian crewmembers preferring more crew self-reliance and seeing their interpersonal environment on board the station as more supportive”. The Russians tend to be collective and work as a team, limiting contact with base.
We also see a straining point in the management style. “collectivism [, a cultural trait in Russia,] is associated with the degree to which pilots prefer a hierarchical command structure, clear rules and procedures, and reliance on automation”. The authors mention that “extremes on these dimensions, such as uncritical reliance on procedures, can reduce safety”. So, a Russian crew member might not question American procedures that were built on the assumption that they would be challenged if their was a problem, whereas Russian procedures are built in an environment where feedback from the field is rare and may go through more stringent analysis and testing before deployment.
We could see a split between American and Russian management. “Training for space station crews tends to be more didactic in Russia and more hands-on in the United States”. I feel that the facts in the paper are indicating that the Russians take a more theoretical management approach, Americans take a practical management angle - incorporating the input from the field. This can be a huge straining point should theory contradict experience.
“Emotional expressivity norms vary greatly across cultures, and on average Russians are relatively more expressive than Americans and people from other Western countries.” So, Americans may be stressed by dealing with their Russian college's emotions which are not displayed amount American crews. Whereas Russians will be confused by and prone to misinterpret Americans who do not display emotions. They will believe everything is well with an American who is hiding any negative feelings. Russians would expect negative emotions if they crossed any lines, but Americans will not show those negative emotions, eliminating a social cue that the Russian astronaut expects to see.
Then, the very design of a spacecraft may aggravate cultural differences. “Even in small towns and villages, it is normative throughout Russia and the former U.S.S.R. to live in apartments or houses that would be considered small or crowded by American standards. The finding of an average of about one person per room in Russia is in contrast to the national American norm of less than 0.5 persons per room[.] Even in Manhattan, where living spaces are small, about 90% of households are spacious enough to have fewer than one person per room[.] The same is true for Houston, where many space program personnel live[.] This suggests that, on average, Russian crewmembers might be expected to adapt more readily to living in close proximity to others in the relatively small volume of a space station”. American spaceships might be designed with the American standards of personal space in mind, whereas Russians will have been designed with less space for crew. So, an American, operating on a Russian spacecraft, will be stressed by the lack of personal space, Russian management will be frustrated by the increased launch costs associated with launching large American spacecraft (Larger because Americans need more room per crew member) when Russians and Americans are co-funding a project.
Even defining mental disorders that develop from the stress of dealing with cultural tensions is impaired by cultural differences. Each culture has it's own definitions of what is abnormal, affecting the judgments of doctors in each culture.
The paper displays a graph with data from a study on depression in astronauts on different missions. I found it interesting that, despite having a low sample size, the cited study found significant results, results that had less than 5% chance of happening if there was not depression rates in the crew while testing some mental abnormalities.
In the end, this will be a significant problem for the future of space habitation. One nation will have trouble achieving this goal alone. In order to aid in achieving human colonies on other plants, nations will most likely have to work together. This means we need to overcome our cultural differences. As the paper and common knowledge indicates, understanding of each other will greatly reduce the stress caused by interacting with other nations.
Well, that my view on this paper, when you read the paper, please give your opinion.
