SPC #7: Maslow Windows

Welcome to the Sunday Paper Club. Every Sunday, this blog will offer analysis 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 I'm still 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 week we are reviewing the paper 21st Century Waves: Forecasting Technology Booms and Human Expansion Into the Cosmos.

Photo by Grant MacDonald

One of my favorite rebuttals for economic arguments against space habitation is the Maslow Window theory. However, when I asked a question on the blog Ask Me Anything, I found myself unable to explain this theory in depth. If I am going to continue to use this theory to support the space habitation argument, I must at least read the paper.

Basically, Maslow Windows are economic time periods that are similar to the 1960s, the height of the space race. Every major event in human history tends to be clustered in 56 year bursts. This theory suggests that economic booms are the driving force behind history's biggest wars and finest engineering projects.

An optimistic society is a more productive one. During times of economic prosperity, the people of the world tend to be happier. If they are happier they are more productive, plus they have the time and resources to dream. I can tell you right now, no major progress in space will be made during this recession. In my opinion, humanity is focused on the negative; we are a pessimistic society. I see extreme movements with negative opinions of the future, like the 2012 movement, forming and growing. If we think humanity is on a downward slide to it's doom, if we think that we will never return to the good old days, then we will not have the will to better ourselves.

I feel, right now, only the most passionate people are in the space field. You can only find people who where born to work in this field, supporting and funding this field. The general public simply doesn't care about space anymore. Dreams of space cities are crazy when your in a world stocking up emergency supplies for a end of the world date which was born out of fear for the future.

It is possible that this recession, a time where the space field is in danger, was born out of the lack of hope in the future. If you thought everything was going downhill, you would roll up into a ball and pull all your money into gold. Look at the news, just looking at this small sample of human event, it is very reasonable to conclude that we are all doomed. But, if you where to look at each industry, each area of human life in depth, there is reason for hope. "The critical factor is our belief about what's going to happen to us".

"Rene Dubos [said] [t]he most distressing thing about the modern world is not the gravity of its problems...it is the dampening of the human spirit...[o]ut very survival as a species depends on hope". I agree with and have first hand experience with this statement. I'm graduating from high school on Monday, yet the morale of my high school's class of 2009 is at an all-time low. My class has a sense of impeding doom; the child-free movement is strong in my class, 2012 is a favorite topic. My class does not have the ambition and passion and all the other characteristics of youth that a fresh, 18 year old, high school graduate should have. Let me give you an example, this is a discussion thread on Facebook. The names have been blacked out for legal reasons. My real name is Daniel Sims.

I see comments like this all the time. We are the youth and we are hopeless. Space dreams can not survive if they can't even seek refugee in our youth. The human spirit is crushed and with it, dreams of space. The Internet might be a factor in triggering the mindset change needed for space habitation. With the Internet, bigger audiences then ever are reachable. One person can try and comfort someone with a dark mind. The great events that happened today are easier to find.

Something I found interesting was the description of a Macro-engineering project: "although sometimes practical in purpose, they are often aimed at satisfying intangible needs of a spiritual or psychological nature and are highly inspiring". A mass space habitation project would be enough to push my classmates out of the dark frame of mind. Since it is a need, maybe, as we get darker, the support for any inspiration will grow. Just like how people start wanting to eat anything as they get hungry.

Maslow windows also call attention to the need for humanity to stop fighting each other. Maslow windows are often shattered by war. The reason we are not in an infinite time of abundance is because of the destruction war brings. "To a visitor from Mars, it must have appeared that the Western world in 1914 was on the brink of Utopia". WW1 brought us away from that joyous brink. Something that is stopping NASA from getting more funding is the Iraq war; if we weren't in Iraq, we might have more money for dreams.

Maslow windows are triggered by great technological developments. If someone where to develop a very cheap rocket, then humanity would less economic reasons not to go, and more reasons to go to space. Which we need to have because if we do not establish space habitations by 2025, according the the theory, we will have to wait till 2081.

Fear in Space Habitation Pt. 4

Fear will cause this movement to burn out.

Photo by hiromy

I love blogging, after writing a post I feel inspired. Like I really changed the world and effect someone. I feel my passion and love for space habitation in every click on my keyboard. But there have been exceptions. Posts that take the following form are exhausting: "ZOMG! We're all going to die, build a space colony. bsbifbuigrbusbuogsevYgvbuiop" After writing a post like this I feel bad, I have self doubt afterwards and feel anxious. I don't have that glorious feeling that I usually get after writing a normal, sane post. After writing a "ZOMG" post I feel like flopping on the bed and sleeping. After writing a really thought out, scientific and thoughtful post I feel like running a marathon. I hate writing posts based I fear but I have done them because it's easy. I can stand on my soapbox here and rant about human extinction without doing any research or checking my logic, even poor grammar and spelling helps a ranty argument. But those post or not my best work, those types of post get the least attention and none of them have comments.

 

My Stat teacher will hate me for generalizing a sample of one person to the world's population, but I feel my experience with delivering posts of fear can be applied the everyone. People sharing the idea of space habitation and explaining why we should have a space habitat will get sick of the draining activity of arguing without the glorious feeling that a logical argument gives the presenter. This will cause a fear based movement, no matter how much support it starts with, to die. I even see this in the 2012 "movement", I haven't seen or heard much of it. I use to get spam e-mails on this, the 2nd best blog on this idea hasn't updated since March 6th, I really think the whole 2012 thing is dying and so will the space habitation movement if we use fear. 

Sunday Journal Club #1: Cultural Factors and the International Space Station

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.